Posts Tagged ‘morbid angel’

Napalm Death’s Barney Greenway Responds to Harsh Words From Earache Records Founder

Facebook: Napalm Death Earache Records founder Digby Pearson has gained the respect of many metalheads by signing some of extreme metal’s most legendary bands, such as Carcass, Morbid Angel, At the Gates, Deicide and of course, Napalm Death . Although Napalm Death and Earache Records shared a successful business partnership at one point, Digby recently took some jabs at Napalm vocalist Mark ‘Barney’ Greenway . Reacting to some harsh words thrown at him, we recently got to experience Greenway’s retort during an exclusive interview. The initial verbal assault began on the ‘ Ask Earache ‘ blog when a fan asked Digby about the best and worst personalities he had worked with over the years. After singing the praises of Tomas Lindberg (At the Gates, Disfear) and Troy Azagthoth (Morbid Angel) among others, Digby addressed the ‘worst personalities’ side of the question: I’ve never had a pleasant time dealing with Napalm Death’s  Mark “Barney” Greenway. We supported him and his band for over a decade, investing eye-wateringly huge sums of money into his career. It’s quite possible he was never even aware of this fact, as his bumbling manager Mark Walmesley dealt with everything for him — including all his financial affairs I suspect — on a daily basis. The basic problem stems from the fact Barney was not involved with the explosive first 2 albums by Napalm Death so he completely missed out on the feel-good factor which came from a brand new band and label both blasting-off from obscurity. He had no reason for any goodwill towards me or Earache because he walked into an already successful band. Likewise I never actively chose to sign the dude, he was the band’s roadie,  he was the Benediction singer, suddenly drafted into the role of singer of a successful band,  and was obligated to sign into an existing contract, not one of his choosing. Barney did willingly ink deals with Earache twice more in the 90s though. The band’s slow gradual loss of fanbase during their groove-grind phase could have proved fatal, but Earache worked tirelessly behind the scenes to prevent Napalm Death splitting, quiting or becoming a totally spent force — for very little gratitude I might add. Even Barney himself jumped ship from Napalm to join ENT at one point. It was not a happy camp during those latter Earache years. His enmity to Earache is legendary and grudges are held, for the most trivial of reasons, for an inordinate length of time. On Oct. 28, we had the opportunity to speak with Greenway before Napalm Death’s Connecticut co-headlining show with Municipal Waste. After bringing up the topic of Digby’s harsh words, Greenway offered an in-depth response about Digby, which was less than sterling. Greenway says that he in fact never had a personal manager, that Digby never pumped an unusually large amount of money into Napalm Death and that the Earache Records founder has not come through with contractual obligations in the past. See Mark ‘Barney’ Greenway’s full response in our exclusive video below and stay tuned for our full interview with the booming Napalm Death vocalist. Napalm Death’s Mark ‘Barney’ Greenway Responds to Digby Pearson

Morbid Angel’s David Vincent Dishes on North American Tour, Latest Album + More

Season of Mist Records Morbid Angel frontman David Vincent was the guest on Full Metal Jackie’s radio show this past weekend. He spoke all about the band’s headlining North American tour with Dark Funeral and Grave. Vincent also spoke candidly about his troubles crossing the border into Canada as well as Morbid Angel’s latest disc ‘Illud Divinium Insanus.’ If you missed Jackie’s show, read the full interview with David Vincent below: Morbid Angel out with Grave and Dark Funeral through late October; tell us how the tour’s been going so far. This tour has been going really well, we’ve had some great shows – a lot of support, a lot of excitement. It’s been a long time since Morbid Angel’s toured the states so a lot of the hoopla that we’ve garnering in Europe and South America and elsewhere, we’re now able to bring it home and show everybody what we’ve been up to for the past so many years. A band can’t really say that they’ve made it without being denied entry into Canada. What are border crossings like for a metal band especially Morbid Angel? You know I got to say that we’ve been back and forth about this, we did have some challenges getting into Canada – this happens to bands throughout their career. I’ve personally never had a problem getting into the country and this particular agent, the agents up there – if they decide they want you in or they don’t want you in then that’s pretty much what’s going to happen, all reasons be damned. It is what it is, my main thing with it is I just don’t like disappointing fans, when we’re that people plan on going to – luckily they worked it out, both the promoters in Montreal and Toronto are standup people and they honored people’s ticket prices and be refunded and stuff. That’s all the business side of it, the real crime here is that the border agents they don’t care about their promoters, apparently they don’t care about their Canadian citizens who are fans and I would hope in the future that they wouldn’t be so benign to some of these concerns. You’ve been getting good reviews on this current tour, so, David, how will that most affect what you do going forward? Well I think the main thing is we enjoy touring … we enjoy playing and really getting down and showing people what we’re all about. It has been several years since the band has done a complete stateside tour. We’ve been out doing west coast stops, flying in special events, Maryland Deathfest, we did that this year – just sort of larger events but not really gearing up and getting everybody all suited up for battle and getting on the tour bus. It’s feeling fresh, the bands that we’re touring with are really good bands both of which we’ve been friends with for a number of years. Everything’s going well and like I said the response has been really good and we’re riding it all the way home to our final show which is in our area, in the Tampa Bay area on the 21st of October. The latest record ‘Illud Divinium Insanus’ was your first Morbid Angel album in 16 years, in what ways did you find your creative relationship with Trey [Azagthoth] had changed and what about that changed relationship would you like to explore next? One thing about Morbid Angel is that there’s never been any rules and it’s an interesting perspective, we just kind of go in and do what we do and sometimes it blossoms – every flower is a different color and a different smell and this album it surprises people, a couple of track on there and then there’s a couple of other tracks that are as Morbid Angel as you can get. People are coming around, it was slow going at first, people were going “What are these guys doing here?” and night after night I’m getting comments, people are like, “I finally really listened to it and I really like it, it just took me a while.” That’s no different than some of the other records we’ve done in the past so everything is going as planned, thanks for asking. You’re a guest on the new Chaostar album and rumor has it in a narrative sense? Yeah, you find out things – you’re the metal oracle these days. How’s voice over work satisfying compared to singing or playing? When there’s something creative that I can identify with, it’s easy when you have like minds sharing a creative outlet – it’s good stuff so I’m looking forward to seeing what the end result is going to be. What’s the best way for people to keep up with you on what’s happening, is it your personal Facebook or Twitter? Sure the easiest thing to do is official David Vincent on Facebook and you can keep up with me and all the day to day idiocies and stupid things that happen along with special messages to the fans. It’s a cool thing, I’ve realized that these things are important so that’s where people can go and I read it. I do have some people to help me from time to time. We do get busy overseas and sometimes and even in the best of third world countries, internet is something to be coveted. I’m just really excited about a lot of this stuff and we’re looking forward to pounding our way through the states. Full Metal Jackie will welcome Joe Duplantier of Gojira on her next show. Full Metal Jackie can be heard on radio stations around the country — for a full list of stations, go to fullmetaljackieradio.com .