Since joining Napalm Death in 1987, bassist Shane Embury has been an unstoppable force of both extreme creativity and creative extremity. He’s also in a billion side-projects exploring just about every avenue of extreme metal you can imagine.
From grindcore (Lock Up) and death metal (Brujeria), to ambient industrial noise (Dark Sky Burial) and hardcore punk (Venomous Concept), Shane has seen plenty in his career. With Veneomous Concept's new album The Good Ship Lollipop again asserting his brilliance, we asked Shane to share some of the most important experiences that have driven him to keep pushing boundaries for almost 40 years.
ROCK’N’ROLL WAS NEVER FAR AWAY
“I got into guitar stuff pretty early. I remember watching Top Of The Pops because it had the intro by Led Zeppelin and you’d have stuff like Slade and The Osmonds on, too. There was a lot of poverty in my hometown – this little village called Broseley [in Shropshire, in the West Midlands] – and we definitely struggled, but my mom was encouraging musically and she’d buy me a seven-inch each week.”
HAVING BLACK SABBATH ON MY DOORSTEP WAS A BLESSING
“We’d walk around the village fantasising about stage lights and logos. Sabbath, Priest, Zeppelin and Slade all had members from our area, so it felt like it could happen. Neat Records was a big thing at the time too, bands like Raven and Venom. I used to write to the label and they’d send me signed letters from Cronos and Mark Gallagher. They were very down-to-earth blokes, but they were my heroes.”
YOU CAN ALWAYS BE HEAVIER, FASTER, LOUDER
“With my first bands, we went right into the extreme stuff. Mitch [Dickinson, Warhammer guitarist/ vocalist] moved to Broseley when we were 10 and soon we were getting into thrash metal. Warhammer sounded like Bathory and Possessed because we were big on tape trading – we’d get stuff from [guitarist] Bill Steer from Carcass and [UK publication] Metal Forces.”
IT’S FUNNY HOW THINGS WORK OUT
“Warhammer split up because me and Mitch wanted to play fast after hearing the [Possessed debut] Seven Churches advance tape, but the other guys were more into Metallica. Next thing, we were out in Birmingham and someone tapped me on the shoulder: 'I see you’ve got Siege on the back of your jacket – my name is Justin [Broadrick], I play in Napalm Death. I reckon you might like us.' We went to see them, Heresy and Amebix play, and I became really good friends with them. I quit my job pretty much to hang out with [early Napalm drummer] Mickey Harris.”
TAPE-TRADING MADE THE METAL WORLD GO ROUND
“When Napalm recorded the A-side of Scum – long before it was released as an album – we were instrumental in getting the word out about it through tape-trading. Later, a friend of mine, Atso, from Estonia, single-handedly took the second Napalm album [1988’s From Enslavement To Obliteration] all around the Soviet Union. We played in Moscow in December 1991 and 15,000 people turned up, so that was strange. Tape-trading made you part of this wider thing, so you could go play Israel, China or Nepal, Kazakhstan, and people would know who you were.”
SOMETIMES CHEAP AND CHEERFUL DOES THE JOB
“We went to this reggae studio in Worcester to record From Enslavement To Obliteration. We had six rehearsals for the entire album and recorded the music in three or four days. It was pretty rough; we slept on the floor by the mixing desk and Pot Noodle was probably the culinary delight of the day. It was very quick – it only cost, like, £300 to make.”
THERE WAS NOWHERE LIKE FLORIDA IN THE 90s
“All our favourite bands were there. At the time, we were barely in the studio because we were hanging out with the Morbid Angel guys, Deicide, Obituary, Atheist! We loved it out there, though, driving around blasting out Public Enemy’s Fear Of A Black Planet at full blast, with a Subway and 64-ounce Big Gulp soda.”
YOU NEVER KNOW WHO MIGHT BE A NAPALM DEATH FAN
“I’ve seen Jim Carrey talking about Napalm Death a few times. Maybe that’s why Cannibal Corpse got the Ace Ventura gig! We’ve heard some strange tales that there’s a lot of comedians and actors out there who really like Napalm Death.
When we toured with Crowbar, Barney [Greenway, vocals] got their guitar tech a Villa top. A few years later we run into him, and he tells Barney that he works on film sets now as a key grip. He says he’s working on a movie with Tom Hanks, and Hanks comes over to say, ‘Interesting soccer top you’ve got there.’ He says thanks, and he got it from his friend from Napalm Death, and Hanks apparently said, ‘Napalm Death? They were shit after Utopia Banished.’ I’ve no idea if that’s true, though!”
MUSIC MEANS EVERYTHING TO PEOPLE WITH NOTHING
“There was a strange line between who had money and who didn’t in Europe after the Soviet Union fell – you’d cross into places like Serbia and Croatia and it was like the wells dried up. We were touring with At The Gates at the time and Tomas [Lindberg, vocals] had all this vodka and soda he was lugging around.
We passed a bunch of kids literally kicking rocks on the street. We pulled over, he took out all these cases of Coca-Cola and suddenly there were kids everywhere. He was like, ‘Well, these kids have nothing.’ Some of those kids lived and breathed Napalm – we meant everything to them.”
WE SING ABOUT WHAT MATTERS
“What Nick [Bullen, original ND vocalist/bassist] was doing lyrically was pretty typical of the 80s – following the same kind of path as bands like Discharge or Crass.
Barney actually came from a very similar background to me, but when he came into Napalm [in 1989], he really wanted to keep a similar lyrical stance – very outspoken, but in a humanist way. His angle is about things that should matter to everybody, but it all ties to what Napalm had always screamed about: freedom, equality and that person in the shadows who’d spent their whole lives being ignored.”
ITS NOT POLITICS – IT’S BASIC HUMAN DECENCY
“As a kid, my parents struggled, and my friends’ families struggled, so I always veered towards the left. But certain things seemed like common sense, really. Even coming from a village which wasn’t very racially mixed, I didn’t understand people’s attitudes. I liked people for who they were, not for the colour of their skin or their sexual preference.”
NAZI PUNKS FUCK OFF
“Having Nazis try to break into our dressing room after we played Nazi Punks Fuck Off at a gig was pretty uncomfortable! I remember we did the New Titans On The Bloc tour with Sepultura and Biohazard, and a bunch of Nazi skins turned up to that and there was lots of violence.
But the worst was in Estonia in 1993 – we were doing a festival and Deep Purple were headlining, so we were on in the afternoon. Barney was talking to this band from Russia who’d helped bring us over, and they started saying this racial stuff. I’d been drinking Estonian beer all day, so I jumped through a window and hit one. Then they grabbed Barney and someone started choking me; I was basically blue by the time [ND guitarist] Mitch Harris rescued me. We weren’t a fighty band, but we’ve had our scraps. Fish from Marillion walked past and said, ‘You mad Brummie bastards!’”
TAKE LIFE AS IT IS
“We were invited to play Brazil the week after we finished recording [1990 album] Harmony Corruption, to play with Sepultura.I think Max [Cavalera] was getting it in the neck, because people were saying they’d sold out, but they were Sepultura, of course they hadn’t fucking sold out! It’s not their fault people thought they were amazing! They’re lifelong friends of ours.”
THE FACES CHANGE BUT THE PASSION STAYS THE SAME
“There’s always going to be difficulties in bands – it’s like a family. We’re brothers, but we’ll argue about things like setlists. Even on the last record, with Mitch [Harris] moving away to the States and me writing the songs, we still got him over, he was still part of it. John Cooke will be the guitarist from now on, but certainly from ’92 to very recently, we’ve all been close.”
DIO WAS A TRUE HEAVY METAL ICON
“Meeting Ronnie James Dio is the most starstruck I’ve ever been. We’d met Geezer [Butler] when we were rehearsing because he was using the same space, so he introduced us. Ronnie was with his wife and had this exceptional memory. He asked where we were from and I said ‘Sparkbrook’, and he just went, ‘Oh, excellent curry houses there!’ Later, he put his hand on my shoulder and said, ‘You know I like Napalm Death, don’t you? Never stop’, and I’d already been emotional, but that was it – I broke down. Ronnie James Dio made me cry!”
Venomous Concept's New Album The Good Ship Lollipop is out now. A biography of Shane Embury titled Life?... & Napalm Death is expected later this year via Rocket88.
