If you're an extreme metal fan, you almost definitely know about Shane Embury. The 56-year-old has been the bassist of Napalm Death since 1987, during which time he’s not only served as one of the chief creative forces with the grindcore rabble- rousers, but used any downtime for
a litany of side-projects, indulging in everything from extreme metal (Lock Up, Brujeria), to industrial metal (Blood From The Soul) and hardcore punk (Venomous Concept). But while you might know Shane Embury, you don’t know Shane Embury.
In his new autobiography Life...? And Napalm Death, Shane gets into the nitty-gritty of his personal life in a way he never has before. And, the multitasking musician says, it took finally sitting still for him to set about revisiting his past.
“The past couple of years, everyone’s been through tough times,” Shane tells Metal Hammer. “Covid was very weird for me. I went from being away on tour six or seven months of the year to being at home. I did a publishing deal with AMF Publishing, which is run by Andy Farrow [manager of Opeth, Paradise Lost and Devin Townsend]. He asked if I would be interested in writing a book, and I’m always into doing something new.”
Life...? And Napalm Death covers all the bases. It explores Shane’s childhood, before describing in vivid detail both the highs and lows of spending 36 years on grindcore’s frontlines. Shane’s story’s interspersed with observations from “eyewitnesses” across his life: some well-known (Napalm singer Barney Greenway and Faith No More bassist Billy Gould), and some not (Shane’s sister, Sarah Wright).
“I’ve always wanted to play music,” Shane says. “So I wanted to mingle in, ‘What comes with that?’ Being young, you just want to play music and you don’t really care about the money. But then it becomes your career. At the same time, egos are in play and you have different relationships with different people, and that places a strain on you. I think it’s important and interesting, hopefully, to show the different sides to being a musician.”
The first sentence sets the scene of the dinky market town of Broseley, Shropshire, on November 27, 1967: the day and place Shane was born. From there, the book narrates how this child of quaint, rural England in the 1970s ends up relocating to Birmingham to join the nastiest band in the world.
“One of the things I enjoyed talking about most was growing up in that really tiny village,” Shane says. “In the 70s, I watched Top Of The Pops and grew up watching bands like Slade and The Sweet, and it really was that clichéd, ‘Oh, I wanna do that!’ My mum taking me to the bicycle shop that was also a record store and buying me a record every week – it’s quite nice to revisit a childhood memory like that.”
Shane joined Napalm in mid-1987 – around the same time they released their game-changing debut, Scum –and at age 19 was swept up in the whirlpool of hype around the band. Legendary DJ John Peel was a champion of the Brummie noisemakers, and they also appeared in media as surprising and diverse as BBC children’s TV and on the front cover of NME, which proclaimed them “the fastest band in the world”.
“It was odd and surreal,” Shane says of the attention at the time. "We were all so young and I don’t think we even thought about it. We found it humorous in some ways: ‘How come this [is making it into the mainstream]?!’ I understood John Peel liking us, but when we had to do children’s TV with Craig Charles, it was very bizarre.”
Life...? And Napalm Death doesn’t gloss over the downsides of Shane’s life, either. It discusses how, in 2002, he had to stop drinking due to health issues. However, the biggest gut- punch comes when it addresses the death of Shane’s mum, Ann-Lilian, in 2022. The bassist writes that it was “the hardest time of not only the last few years but of my whole life”.
"My dad died five years ago, so you sort of realise you’re an orphan,” explains Shane. “Some of the feelings that come with that are strange: they come in waves and don’t hit you straight away. It’s still something that I think about a year on.”
Shane admits in the book that the pandemic and his getting older made him question his place in Napalm, yet during our conversation the bassist also looks excitedly towards the future.
“I enjoyed the improvisation and creating different sounds [on previous album Throes Of Joy In The Jaws Of Defeatism],” he explains. “For the next album, though, I wanna push it further. I have a lot of ideas and riffs and recently got into a lot of projects with electronic sounds.” Shane may have just summarised his entire life and career to date in an autobiography, but he’s clearly not wrapping things up yet.
Life...? And Napalm Death is out now via Rocket88
