In Caitlin Smith’s interview series with Napalm Death’s Barney Greenway, on of the themes was change and renewal while sticking fiercely to the ideals that have always marked the band. Of the may shifts for the veteran grindcore act on their new album Apex Predator – Easy Meat (Century Media), another big change for the band was the artwork. Replacing the collages and the cut-outs, their usual punk style is replaced with a stark, powerful image of pre-packaged crushed brains.

“It was just purely because we’d done the collage and cut out thing a few times and we just wanted a change. That’s not to say we wont go back and revisit that style and develop it a little further. I mentioned the band Swans, their artwork as well as their music has a real characteristic to it. There were 2 colours to it surrounding a main image usually and it was really powerful stuff. We really wanted to try and replicate that for ourselves. The “Easy Meat” we’re talking about on the album is the people in the world that manufacture the goods that we take for granted. They have a lot of negative connotations surrounding them in terms of the production side of things and so they are the easy meat, so you’ve got the meat there in the container. One of the things the album is about is easily disposable things and I think, what is more disposable than those cheap and nasty plastic packages you find in the supermarket. To me that’s one of the icons of disposable consumerism. I wanted to combine the two things and I think it worked really well.”

CAITLIN SMITH