Choosing Death

by Albert Mudrian

  “It just went ballistic,” says Harris. “We were just doing huge gigs and the crowds were going mental. All of these indie kids were into grindcore and UK hardcore. You had loads of bands forming. It was just a big movement. For us, we just wanted to get up there and fucking do it and get it faster and faster and faster.”

  As Napalm sped onwards, so too did the Earache label. The success allowed (and forced) Pearson to move the Earache operations from his bedroom to a proper Nottingham office in late 1988. The rapid growth of the label also meant that the entrepreneur needed help. One day, in November of ‘88, Pearson received a call from old British indie label friend Martin Nesbitt. At the time Nesbitt was working for an independent label called Fundamental in Covington, Georgia, just outside of Atlanta. When Fundamental’s distributor declared bankruptcy, Nesbitt offered his services to Pearson, who awarded Nesbitt a job as his right-hand man at Earache.

  “I came back to England in December and started working with him,” says Nesbitt. “For me, I just knew nothing of this music until I started at Earache. The first thing we did was work on this big gig, which was filmed for the Arena TV arts show documentary on heavy metal at ULU [University of London Union] in London, which was in January or February. And it was just a big show, with Napalm, Bolt Thrower, Carcass and Intense Degree.”

  Pearson and Nesbitt knew, however, that fresh product from the bands—especially Napalm Death—was vital for Earache’s continual development. In May of 1989, Napalm was commissioned to record their first EP. At Harris’ urging, the band booked time at the Slaughterhouse studio in Yorkshire, hoping, according to the drummer, to showcase “a more death metal influence.”

  “As far as I remember, the reason we ended up going there was because Mick really liked the production on a record by the Sundays and he saw that it was recorded at the Slaughterhouse,” says Steer. “There’s no particular reason why that sound, however good it is, would translate to what we were doing.”

  When Napalm arrived, the band was greeted by house engineer Colin Richardson, who previously worked with hardcore punkers like Discharge and GBH. That aggressive music pedigree helped him properly capture the extreme sounds Napalm Death desired.

  “The thing was, nobody knew how to deal with that kind of music in those days,” Richardson explains. “I think if anybody put in some input, the labels and the bands were going, ‘Woo-hoo! Somebody’s actually trying to help.’ I remember there was another engineer there, and he was like, ‘This is just shit. It’s just noise.’ And I was like, ‘No, it’s just really aggressive and exciting. You got the wrong take on it.’

  “I just wanted to get some clarity going and keep it aggressive and in-your-face,” he continues. “And I think I was learning about the music the same as the bands were, really, hoping something good came out. I don’t think there was a master plan. I just had to make sure that it wasn’t embarrassing.”

  After the resultant six-track Mentally Murdered EP was finished, Harris continued to pursue a more traditional death metal direction for Napalm Death, searching out a second guitarist to complement Steer. Harris turned to Carnage guitarist Michael Amott, a Swede with whom the drummer had been tape trading for years.

  “I first wrote him a letter in ‘87,” remembers Amott, “and he replied immediately and sent me all these tapes. Mick Harris got me into the whole death metal thing, really, and the whole tape-trading thing. He introduced me to bands that I’d never heard of, like Repulsion and Master, and all these kinds of demo bands, like Obituary before they were even called Obituary.

  “I spent a lot of time in England,” he continues. “I used to go on my holidays. I used to take a ferry over to England and just travel around with Napalm Death in the back of their van to gigs and stuff like that, and just sit on the side of the stage.”

  During one of those visits in the spring of ‘88, Harris implored Amott to join Napalm Death as a second guitarist.

  “I came back over and I learned all the songs,” Amott says. “I went up to Bill Steer’s house in Liverpool, his parents’ house, where he was living at the time, and he was showing me all these Napalm Death tunes. And basically Bill said, ‘This is great, because this is the window I’ve been waiting for. When you know the songs you can step in, and I’m gonna get out and I’m gonna focus on my other band Carcass.’ I was like, ‘Whoa, that’s not what I wanted.’ I was looking forward to playing with Bill.”

  “I think it was even more complicated, because around that time I suggested that he join Carcass,” admits Steer. “I imagined Carcass sounding really good with a second guitar player, and I think it all just got a bit weird for him.”

  “When they asked me to join they only had the Reek of Putrefaction album at that point, and I thought that sucked,” says Amott. “So I was like, ‘No, I’ll just focus on my own band back home in Sweden. You’ll be all right. This isn’t gonna go anywhere.’ And the whole thing fell apart for me and I just went back home.”

  More personnel turbulence soon found Harris, not with Napalm but with Ipswich grinders Extreme Noise Terror, who booted Harris from the band in mid‘ 89.

  “Mick was the archetypal hyperactive child,” says former ENT guitarist Pete Hurley when pressed for an explanation of Harris’ dismissal. “He was an amazing drummer, but to go on tour with such a temperamental beast became a little wearing, to say the least. It was a shame that we had to sack our best drummer, but some things just have to happen. We were definitely much slower before the advent of Mick joining, but the jump in speed was really easy to achieve when you have the percussionist to do it. I really learned the ‘a band is only as good as their drummer’ lesson there.”

  “They said I was too metal for the band,” Harris explains. “Napalm was getting a lot of interest, and I think it was pissing the rest of them off. Napalm being classed as more of a metal act than hardcore might not have looked too good with ENT having a metal drummer. And I remember [ENT vocalist] Phil Vane coming along at the end of a gig that Napalm Death played with Killdozer one night, and he said, ‘I’m sorry, Mick, but the rest of the fucking band aren’t down anymore and I’ve been left to tell you that you’re out of the band.’ And I thought, ‘No problem. No worries, Phil, it’s been good.’”

  While Harris was enjoying a little more free time, on the strength of a few phone calls, Napalm vocalist Lee Dorrian was busy organizing a brief summer tour of Japan with Japanese punks S.O.B., who had recently toured Europe with Napalm. Though the Japanese scene was miniscule compared with what was happening in England, a few “Japanese hardcore” bands—as they were simply classified throughout the underground—like S.O.B. exerted a significant influence on extreme music.

  “We were very into the Japanese hardcore scene, and, again, tape trading,” admits Embury. “I traded with some Japanese people, but S.O.B. were one of our favorites. The first time heard we S.O.B. it just totally reminded us of Siege, actually. And we freaked on them. Micky and I just couldn’t believe it. Some of the riffs on From Enslavement were definitely inspired by S.O.B. Lee Dorrian wrote to their lead singer, and he found out that S.O.B. was into Napalm and that we had influenced them as well. But part of the reason the impact was so small was because almost all of the bands except S.O.B. never made it out of Japan.”

  Although Napalm’s Scum and FETO albums had only recently been made available in the country via Earache’s new licensing deal with Japanese label Toys Factory, the group embarked on the precarious two-week expedition. Martin Nesbitt accompanied the band.

  “Three nights in, everybody was going on at Lee, saying, ‘This is really badly organized,’” says Nesbitt. “We didn’t have hotels to stay at, we were sleeping on people’s floors. We ended up getting hotels, but it was only after we kicked up a fuss about it. And Lee and Bill just came to me, I think, on the third night and just said, ‘We’re gonna leave. We’ve had enough with Mick and Shane’s behavior,’ which wasn’t that bad. I mean, Mick was just really funny. There was a complete
ly mad incident where all of them went on a shoplifting spree in some record shop in Tokyo.”

  “I was there, but I was not involved with what was going on,” Harris contends. “Shane and Lee certainly didn’t feel bad about it at those prices. They were like, ‘These are bootlegs. We are not paying these prices, we’re gonna rob.’ And they shoved a few down their jackets.”

  “I remember I arranged to meet up with John Zorn out in Japan and he took us all out for lunch,” Nesbitt explains. “Then after lunch me, Bill and John Zorn are just walking down the street, and the rest of the band just come out of the shop with the alarm going off and arms full of bloody records. I was just completely embarrassed and so was Bill. And the Japanese people never stopped them, because they were Napalm Death, so they just got away with it.”

  Beyond the good-natured antics, Dorrian was now severely disillusioned with the internal state of Napalm Death.

  “I thought two people in the band had just turned into rock stars, really, and they were just in it for the money, and to me it kinda defeated the whole point of what Napalm was about in the first place,” says Dorrian. “I mean, okay, if it was any other band then it maybe wouldn’t be so important, but the fact that Napalm started out with a significant message and stood for something that I always thought to be quite sincere—when I saw that kind of falling apart, I started to lose a bit of interest. Musically, the band wanted to do more death metal, and I thought what we were doing was quite unique. If anything, I wanted to do more slow doom parts, really.”

  “For me, I saw Napalm Death as an incredibly extreme act that couldn’t last forever, and I think Lee maybe felt the same way, but it seemed like Mick or Shane felt like, ‘No, this could really last,’” recalls Steer. “And on top of that, they were bringing in a manager, a guy named Mark Walmesley, who had managed punk bands like The Stupids. And to be honest, I didn’t really like the idea of that, not the idea of having a manager, but he didn’t seem like the right person to me. But the number one thing I really think was just the music. I just thought, ‘Well, I’m more comfortable in Carcass.’ And Jeff [Walker] and Ken [Owen] were my best friends at that time, and there was a little bit more room for doing my own thing.”

  “To be brutally honest, back in ‘89, there was no communication between any of us as a band at all,” says Embury. “I think because we were young we let our immaturity show pretty badly. We were drifting apart, but at the same time I don’t know if we were truly ever together, because me and Lee often talked about parting company with Micky because he had quite an overbearing personality.”

  “The deciding factor for me was halfway through the tour in Japan it became apparent that the tour had lost a bit of money—a grand and a half or something like that,” says Dorrian. “And just before we had got on the plane to go on the tour we received royalty checks, and I didn’t have time to put mine in the bank. I was gonna put it back when I got back from tour but I found out halfway through the tour, without anybody telling me, that my royalty check had been cancelled to cover the losses of the tour while everybody else still got theirs. This decision had been made behind my back without anyone confronting me about it at all, so I just thought, ‘Fuck you, you’re supposed to be my friends.’ And that was the final nail in the coffin for me.”

  “Even though Lee arranged all the details with S.O.B. members directly, I funded the trip, so Earache was entitled to recoup such costs back from royalties under the record deal we had with the band,” says Pearson. “I guess for that reason I felt it was okay to take such costs back from any royalties due the band—nowadays it would be a simple matter of reclaiming any ‘tour support’ paid out on the band’s behalf. At the time, myself having had no previous record company experience, I guess I probably didn’t explain what was happening very clearly.

  “Lee wasn’t happy to be the one whose check was the one I recouped from,” Pearson continues. “Being at that point an ex-member of the band, it seemed easier to recoup from him. After all, the rest of the guys who were still in the band would go crazy if their checks had been withdrawn. Though I was lucky enough to be enjoying quite a few sales, it was still a real hand-to-mouth operation financially. If we didn’t get the money back for the flights, we couldn’t release the next record. As much as Lee would like to assume it, we didn’t exist just for Napalm’s benefit.”

  “At that last gig in Japan, Lee Dorrian actually said to the crowd, ‘Ever feel like you’ve been cheated?’” says Nesbitt. “And me and Bill, we were laughing, and Mick and Shane didn’t even know [what was happening].”

  “There’s a classic photograph that I have that says everything,” Harris declares. “It’s at some airport in Korea where we stopped off on the way home from Japan. It was me in a pair of crazy Hawaiian shorts, a pair of flip-flops, Shane in a Joker t-shirt, and we’re both looking at the camera, but both Lee and Bill, you can see it, it’s over. They’re not even acknowledging the camera. They are not there. Basically, it’s the last photo of the band together. And that was it, we got back and they both announced it. And I think for Shane and I, it was like, ‘Shit, what should we do? We’re fucking loving this. We’ve got songs written already and we wanna continue. Where do we go?’”

  6

  Mass Appeal Madness

  WHILE EARACHE RECORDS WAS ENJOYING SUCCESS OVERSEAS, by 1989, death metal albums finally began slithering out of American record shops, many of them bearing the logo of Roadrunner Records’ new death metal imprint R/C. The previous year, Roadrunner signed contracts with Brazilian speedsters Sepultura and Floridian death metal outfit Xecutioner—what the label felt to be their first entries in the mounting death metal sweepstakes. After Xecutioner changed their name to Obituary at the behest of the label, Roadrunner released the band’s debut album Slowly We Rot and Sepultura’s first domestic LP Beneath the Remains in May of 1989. While Roadrunner A&R Monte Conner was responsible for signing both bands, he effectively served as the publicity contact for the groups as well.

  “You’re talking about Roadrunner in 1989—there were five of us [in the U.S. office],” Conner recalls. “As opposed to now, we have 150 people worldwide. And when you work at a small, little label like that you wear many hats, so I did it all. I was actively working the stuff to magazines. To be honest, it was pretty easy at the time, because Sepultura and Obituary both had amazing angles; the whole ‘Sepultura are from Brazil’ thing—people were really freaking out on that and wanted to write about them. And then as far as Obituary goes, back then they were maybe the heaviest band ever. No one sounded like [vocalist] John Tardy. And to be honest, the whole angle of the death growl and the band not having actual lyrics—people freaked out over that too.”

  “When we used to write music, it wasn’t like I sat down and wrote lyrics and the band would write music so everything goes together,” offers Tardy, whose chilling howl was one of the most distinct of the genre. “They would just be jamming and putting stuff together, and then I’d start singing something in the parts that I wanna sing in. It just seemed like, at times, if I couldn’t come up with words to go along with the song, I’d just kinda make something up and just fill in something that wasn’t maybe a word, but it sounded good and fit in the song so, I’d pretty much go with it. It’s really as simple as that. I just couldn’t really come up with something that sounded good with an actual word.”

  The coverage certainly helped propel record sales in the United States. According to the label, Beneath the Remains sold over 100,000 copies, while Slowly We Rot sold 75,000 units, a somewhat astounding number for a small indie label releasing music once thought to be so uncommercial. Perhaps more surprisingly, Obituary’s achievement came without any significant touring effort from the band.

  “At the time, we didn’t even know it was a success,” offers Obituary guitarist Trevor Peres. “We didn’t care, we were all just working and playing local shows and smoking reefer. When Slowly We Rot came out, I was 19 years old, so I didn’t even know to
care if it was even selling. We were full of testosterone and we just wanted to play music—that was all we cared about. But apparently it did pretty well.”

  Sepultura’s success was equally unforeseen. Although the band’s approach closely mirrored traditional thrash metal, frontman Max Cavalera’s gruff vocal delivery suggested that the band might be too extreme for the typical Anthrax and Megadeth admirer. Furthermore, in Sepultura’s corner was Scott Burns, the producer whose name would become synonymous with death metal over the next few years. In fact, Burns produced Beneath the Remains largely because he was one of the few producers willing to fly to Brazil to record the album over Christmas of 1988.

  “I remember getting there, and I had like 500 bucks to get in the country, and instantly, everybody I was dealing with in Brazil was corrupt,” says Burns. “I came in with drum heads, sticks, strings, picks, reels of tape to record on—all that stuff I could use—and a lot was confiscated. Basically, Max came out and he had bleached blonde hair and tattoos, so he was not looked well upon by the Brazilians themselves, and we just went around to all the customs agents until we found one that would let us in the country with the lowest price, 300 bucks. And I think we had like 500 for everything to get by in the three weeks. So instantly, Roadrunner had to send some more money, so we were starting over budget and things like that. We didn’t finish the vocals, so Max came back and stayed at my apartment for a while, finished the vocals and did the mix.”

  “[Scott] did a great job, and the conditions of that album were horrible,” recalls former Sepultura frontman Max Cavalera. “You didn’t sleep at night, we spent all night awake recording the album, which is physical work with the drums being so fast and all the riffs. And then in the daytime, it was 100 degrees in Rio in the middle of the summer, staying in a one-star hotel, worrying about your shit being ripped off, tired from the sessions. All of that, I think, contributed to some of the anger of the record. We were kinda on the edge. But at the same time, we were so excited, because we were making our first real album. Beneath the Remains, I really think that is the cornerstone of Sepultura, there’s where it all started. That was our chance to prove that Sepultura could do something and could make a mark. And when I went to do Beneath the Remains, I was just hoping we could make a good record. I would have never dreamed that album would have been compared to anything Slayer would have done. From that point on, it was like we were a real band.”