Napalm Death’s “A Bellyful of Salt and Spleen” is Political and Powerful
When we spoke with Napalm Death frontman Barney Greenway on The MetalSucks Podcast recently, he talked at length about the themes of the current state of the world and basic human dignity present throughout the band’s new album, Throes of Joy in the Jaws of Defeatism. Those themes are front and center on the band’s latest single, “A Bellyful of Salt and Spleen,” which arrives with a video that puts those everything Barney spoke with us about on full display.
Explains Greenway of the latest single and video:
“’A Bellyful of Salt and Spleen,’ you could say, is about building and breaking down in the same discordant breath,” explains vocalist Mark “Barney” Greenway. “The building came in the sense of many layers of coruscating industrial ambience, all marching to the beat of a home-made drum kit consisting of rubbish bins, oil drums and industrial screw parts and other bits that Shane could find littered around the studio grounds. The scope and gravity and density just demanded a vocal that was as baritone and anguished as I could push out of myself.
“The breaking down side of it was the intention to just focus minds to understand that people who traverse continents, suffocate in confined spaces or drown grasping for assistance are as keen to live in dignity and peace, and without violence and hunger, as the rest of us. As ever, quite simply, we are all human beings and if that means anything anymore, a helping hand is the least we can offer.
“Sam Edwards & Khaled Lowe, directing the video, really focussed our minds in the way they wanted to drill down into the indifference generated around these things – via some incredible animation and suchlike married to the stuttering engines of unseaworthy vessels and the precision shunt of our industrial pounding. The whole visual concept of beach life going on around bodies washed up on the shore is a grotesque scenario that illustrates how meaningless those we can’t connect to our own small universe can become.”
Amen, Barney. This is powerful stuff.
Watch below. Throes of Joy in the Jaws of Defeatism comes out September 18 and can be pre-ordered here.
