Choosing Death

by Albert Mudrian

  Shortly after Welch left Earache for a position as director of A&R at Columbia in April of 1993, Earache entered into a three-year North American licensing deal with Sony Music on July 13th, 1993.

  “I made the decision to do the whole label and keep everything together, rather than license Godflesh to that company, Napalm to that company or Entombed to that company,” Pearson explains. “It was quite unusual at the time to have enough bands that a major label wanted to do a label deal.”

  One of the contract’s stipulations was that Columbia had free rein to specifically choose which albums to release from the Earache roster. In addition to Cathedral—whose existing contract with Columbia continued separately from the new deal—Columbia would eventually select forthcoming titles from Fudge Tunnel, Carcass, Napalm Death, Godflesh, and Entombed to distribute. Earache artists not selected for release by Columbia would continue to be distributed through Relativity in the US.

  Earache, however, wasn’t alone in its major label association. Though it was never highly publicized, much of the Metal Blade Records catalog had been distributed through Warner Bros. since 1990. Conversely, Metal Blade had the power to decide what records they would offer to their major label distributor.

  “One band that we didn’t put through Warner Bros. was Cannibal Corpse,” says Metal Blade CEO Brian Slagel. “We felt at the time it was just a little too extreme for Warner Bros. And it’s probably a good thing we did. I remember we put out a GWAR [record] and, of course, [Warner Bros.] came back to us immediately and said, ‘Okay, you need to take this song off the record. You need to change these lyrics.’ And I said, ‘That’s not gonna fly.’ I can’t imagine what they would have done with Cannibal.”

  Other mainstream outlets, however, weren’t so afraid to endorse Cannibal Corpse. One afternoon, Metal Blade president Mike Faley fielded an unlikely phone call from the Morgan Creek film production company regarding a new comedy called Ace Ventura: Pet Detective.

  “Out of the blue,” says Faley, “a gentleman from there called and goes, ‘We’re looking for a death metal song for a movie that Jim Carrey is working on. He really wants to use one in the movie.’”

  To that point, Carrey was recognized for his role on the popular sketch comedy television show In Living Color, but was hardly an established draw at the box office. He did, however, own records by Napalm Death and Cannibal Corpse.

  “I said, ‘Okay, we’ve got ‘Hammer Smashed Face’ by Cannibal Corpse—you can use that,’” Faley explains. “They were looking for any band to go in there and headbang to Cannibal’s music. So I offered them Cannibal.”

  “Mike told me, ‘Jim Carrey, the guy who’s doing this, is a fan of yours, he likes your music,’” says former Cannibal Corpse vocalist Chris Barnes. “And I was like, ‘Jeez, this guy must like death metal or something,’ which really kinda freaked me out, and I told the other guys, and me and Paul were like, ‘Oh, that’s fucking cool as shit.’ So we got there and we pulled up to the shoot, and [Carrey] came out and we were talking to him between scenes, and he was so cool, man, he was just so fucking cool. He was goofing around with us, and I was just like, ‘Dude, whatever you do, do not do that thing with your neck, that Fire Marshall fucking Bill thing,’ and he was like, ‘What? This? This grosses you out? All that shit you write and that little thing grosses you out?’”

  While Cannibal were shooting what would become the number one movie in the United States a year later, Roadrunner Records worked out a licensing deal of their own with Sony label Epic Records. Their deal, unlike Earache’s or Metal Blade’s, was exclusively for the label’s most commercially successful act, Sepultura. The group’s Chaos A.D. record, released through Epic in the autumn of 1993, eventually went on to sell nearly 300,000 records, perhaps because Sepultura had abandoned their death metal roots in favor of a more palatable blend of thrash and punk.

  “We were pressured by the band to make the deal,” says Roadrunner A&R chief Monte Conner. “They felt that just being on Roadrunner they would never be able to step up to the next level and sell as many records as they wanted to. As it turns out, the guy that brought them to Epic wound up leaving the company a week before they signed, so their main champion was gone. So a guy named Michael Goldstone, who signed Rage Against the Machine and Pearl Jam, was assigned to be their in-house A&R person at Epic. And at the time Chaos A.D. came out, they were heavily promoting other metal bands like Prong and Fight and just didn’t give a fuck about Sepultura, and the band got very little attention. They quickly realized that they were better off being the big fish in a small pond.”

  More often, however, with label distribution deals the artists themselves have little say in the matter. Fortunately for them, Carcass were one of the few acts that supported Earache’s deal with Columbia.

  “We were chuffed,” admits former Carcass frontman Jeff Walker. “We thought, ‘Fuck it, let’s give her a go.’ The bottom line is, we were doing this band and we weren’t doing it as a serious career thing, so moving to a new level helped us keep it interesting for ourselves.”

  “I thought that it was totally fabulous that we were gonna get some prime international distribution,” says Carcass drummer Ken Owen. “The label had a lot more selling power than what Earache had, and at the end of the day, we wanted as many people as possible to hear it.”

  Other acts, like Napalm Death, weren’t as pleased with the prospect of major label affiliation.

  “I couldn’t believe it,” says Napalm vocalist Barney Greenway. “I was thinking, ‘What is this guy doing?’ Digby signed us to Columbia. We had nothing to do with it. I remember one day he just said, ‘Oh, yeah, by the way, you’re signed to Columbia Records in America and that’s about it, really.’ And I was like, ‘What? No fucking way.’ I don’t remember if I came out right with it, but I remember thinking, ‘This is the end of the band.’ I was so disgusted. I just did not want to be on a major label, it went against what was my vision of the band. The other guys in the band weren’t happy either, but they sorta took it on the chin.”

  Some bands, such as Bolt Thrower, who weren’t selected for release through Columbia, welcomed the decision with a sense of relief.

  “We thought the Earache/Columbia collaboration was the kiss of death for Earache, and we were extremely happy we weren’t a part of it,” says Bolt Thrower bassist Jo Bench. “When major labels get involved in a scene they usually end up killing it; luckily Bolt Thrower weren’t dragged down with it.”

  The Columbia marketing team knew these artists already had significant fanbases upon which to build. Slick videos and aggressive advertising campaigns would help, but to reach beyond the underground death metal disciple, they would need to work more exotic angles.

  Entombed had already determined that Wolverine Blues would be the title of their next LP, so Josh Sarubin contacted Marvel Comics, attempting to arrange a tie-in with the record and one of Marvel’s most popular characters, Wolverine. To their astonishment, Marvel agreed, not only allowing the label to use an image of Wolverine on the initial pressing of the record’s cover, but also permitting a lavish, partially animated video to be filmed featuring Wolverine for the LP’s title track. Not everyone, however, was overjoyed with the turn of events.

  “It was like we were run over by a tank or something,” recalls Entombed drummer Nicke Andersson. “We had nothing to say about it. The actual song ‘Wolverine Blues’ was taken from a James Ellroy book about this killer that was obsessed with the animal the wolverine. And Sony was like, ‘Oh, the Wolverine—Marvel Comics.’ And none of us had, personally, ever read it. But they came up with this great marketing idea that they should include the comic and the video. We were like, ‘Is this really a good idea?’”

  For Carcass’ impending Heartwork record, the label commissioned prestigious artist H.R. Giger to provide a cast aluminum sculpture for the album’s cover art. Similarly, Columbia hired high-profile artist Antonio Serrano to direct a promotional video for the first single
from what would become Godflesh’s more rock-oriented Selfless LP. Although the arresting clip for “Crush My Soul” cost over $75,000 to film, its powerful religious imagery was deemed “too offensive” by MTV, and the video was never shown on the channel.

  As the time drew closer to enter the recording studio, the temptation to craft a more commercial record loomed heavily over some of the artists. While each would record their most accessible albums to that point, to be fair, all of the Earache bands that released material through Columbia claim to have felt no pressure from the label to manufacture a more sellable album.

  “I wanna say right now that we never told the bands to change their sounds at all—ever,” Pearson also stresses. “That’s not Earache’s way. Deep down, it was never actually said, ‘Well, we’re on Columbia so let’s make a record that’s gonna break.’ But it was kinda inherent in the artists themselves—something to force them to do this and do that. Obviously, there was a little bit of pressure, I think, from Columbia. Jim Welch might disagree slightly, but from what I remember he would tell me, ‘I’ve got to go to radio with something by Carcass, I’ve got to go to radio with something by Entombed.’

  “I think it just came to the bands from within,” Pearson continues. “After making so many albums on no budget—the Earache indie budget—they were like, ‘Wow, we’ve got something real to work with now.’”

  After Fudge Tunnel released their Earache/Columbia debut Creep Diets—a sludge punk metal amalgam that stylistically differed little from its predecessor—in the summer of 1993, Entombed was the first death metal band to step forth with a new LP. Although still heavier than anything even approaching mainstream, the aggressively marketed Wolverine Blues, released in January of 1994, delivered a crushing midtempo groove that was more akin to traditional rock and metal than brutal death metal or grindcore.

  “We didn’t know it would be on Columbia when we wrote it,” emphasizes Nicke Andersson. “It was absolutely not written for them.”

  Although the deal was finalized after they had finished recording the blatantly melodic Heartwork album, Carcass were acutely aware while still in the studio that their new LP could be distributed with major label muscle.

  “I think that Carcass would have probably made Heartwork regardless of the Columbia deal,” offers Welch. “But I think the Columbia deal pushed them a little further. It was just like a great steppingstone. I think that one thing inspired the next. I don’t think that it was a conscious thing that Bill Steer woke up one morning and said, ‘I think we can be Megadeth.’”

  “We’d done three brutal albums by then, and although they had worked for us, we wanted to work with something a bit more accessible—something that you could listen to for more than one or two tracks without getting totally bored with it,” recalls Ken Owen. “And although Heartwork made us a lot more accessible, we still thought of ourselves as an underground band, regardless of the fact that we were on a major label. I don’t think any of us thought we were gonna sell millions—I don’t think we were that naïve, really.”

  “Although it was never spoken about, in our heads we all made the decision that this band was gonna progress, so we tried to make each record different and better than the previous one,” says Steer. “When you reach a certain point, are you gonna stay at that plateau or are you gonna try and take it further? There were no qualms about it because there was some frustration in the band because there were a million bands doing similar things out there, and rightly or wrongly, we wanted to stand out, and it just didn’t seem to be happening. In other genres of music it seemed like other people would be respected as having innovated or achieved certain things before other people, but in the world of death metal, everything just seemed like this big mess of bands, and no band seemed to be coming out ahead of anybody else—nobody got any more respect than anybody else, whether you were around for three years or three months.”

  Other circumstances within Carcass, however, wore on guitarist Mike Amott, who, despite the band’s position, left the group immediately after Heartwork’s recording was complete.

  “By that time, everybody in Carcass was bitter and twisted,” recalls Amott, who was quickly replaced with guitarist Mike Hickey. “They thought everything was bullshit, and maybe the combination of the close-mindedness of the fans and their own negativity just wasn’t working for me. So I thought, ‘I wanna do something fresh and get away from this.’ If I would have had my head totally screwed on straight, I would have just hung in there. But I was young and emotional, and I said, ‘Fuck this, I’m out of here.’”

  Napalm Death was the final death metal-inclined act to begin recording their Columbia-distributed album. Entering the studio in October of 1993, the band tracked what would become the far less grinding Fear, Emptiness, Despair, eventually released in May of 1994.

  “To be really brutally honest, the direction was fractured in the band because, after our last record [1992’s Utopia Banished] there were a few reviews that said, ‘Well, this band is treading water,’” says Napalm’s Greenway. “And I think, without naming names, there were a couple of people in the band that were like, ‘Hmm, maybe we should start doing something else.’ So I got to rehearsal one day and I’m hearing all of these like real midpaced songs, and I just kinda turned around and went, ‘Hang on, guys. Where’s all the fast stuff?’ I was just really confused, and thereafter my mood dipped, and that whole writing session for me was fucking agony. And the writing period had a knock-on effect to the recording period. We ended up in these studios, and we had to use the engineer on the previous album to produce it to save money, and it was just disastrous. The studio where we were at was too fucking warm and my throat kept drying up and I couldn’t get the vocals recorded. If I was to go to bed tonight and have the worst nightmare I could ever have, you could describe it as the Fear, Emptiness, Despair nightmare.”

  “It was a massive learning process,” remembers Napalm’s bassist Shane Embury. “Shortly after we got involved in recording the record, it became apparent that there was just far too much bullshit involved with what we normally do—remixing, rerecording, and God knows what else. We’d say, ‘Look, you’re dealing with a band like Napalm. You don’t have to spend stupid amounts of money on this record to make it sound good.’”

  Although Pearson and Earache were pleased with Columbia’s considerable capital helping promote their artists, ultimately, with six full-length LPs to work in the space of a few months, it was becoming clear that even a behemoth corporation like Columbia had its hands full.

  “If it was up to me, I wouldn’t have released so many bands through Columbia at once,” says Welch. “I would have released Carcass, Entombed and Godflesh. Look, you gotta understand, I didn’t know shit about working at a major record label. Everything I learned was trial and error. Columbia was the biggest major record label in America, so I went from working at this tiny little label by myself in my kitchen to working at the largest. So I couldn’t have necessarily raised the red flag when the Earache deal was done and say, ‘Hey, don’t put out six records at once,’ because I didn’t know that that’s just too much for somebody to bite off.”

  That sentiment was ultimately reflected in the album sales. In their first year of release through Columbia, Carcass, Napalm Death and Entombed each failed to SoundScan over 40,000 copies in the United States within their first two years of release, a slightly lower number than what their previous albums managed to shift. Titles from the ostensibly more commercial Godflesh and Fudge Tunnel didn’t even crack the 15,000 plateau.

  “I wasn’t trying to reach a mass audience with this stuff,” says former Columbia head of A&R David Kahne. “I was hoping we would sell 100,000 copies of at least one of the bands. If you sold that many records and you had a scene going around it could continue to grow. If you sold 100,000 Carcass records or if you sold 50,000 Fudge Tunnel and the band was touring, and then there was another band in the scene that you would sign, maybe they would take it a
little bit farther. You’re looking for that kind of vibe. I think part of the reason that I eventually got fired from Columbia in 1995 was that I was trying to take chances with new genres and it wasn’t working.”

  Soon some of the bands were becoming equally disappointed with Columbia and their perception of how they were treated by the label.

  “After a while it was becoming clear that Columbia just wouldn’t commit to actually giving the band any real funding,” claims Carcass’ Walker. “At first, you think, ‘We’ve gotten signed to a major label. They’ve got a shitload of money and they can do what they want.’ But unless you get the support from inside the company or the funding, nothing happens. They basically wanted us to just get back in the van and just constantly tour, and we thought, ‘Fuck that, we’ve done that for five years now.’ Obviously, you’ve got these other bands that have got nothing more, and they’re in it for a career and prepared to tour and tour, but, I’m sorry, we were just lazy. We weren’t prepared to do that. We would have been quite happy if Columbia were willing to put some tour support and get us on a big tour, which they never did. It would have been nicer to play some theaters or get on a support tour, but it just never materialized. Sony was always kind of dangling the carrot that, ‘We can get you this tour or that tour,’ but they just never did. They always made empty promises.”

  The commercial folly of these Earache titles was further perplexing in light of the obvious success Giant was enjoying with Morbid Angel’s Covenant record, an album that was actually more extreme and uncompromising—musically and lyrically—than any of the Earache titles that Columbia released.

  “We had laid a lot of groundwork touring, creating a global business and connecting to the band’s fans through the years,” says Günter Ford, head of Morbid Angel’s modestly named management company World Management. “Our deal was direct to Giant/Warner and had nothing to do with Earache. The Earache deal was with the label, and with that there were too many bands and no focus. When you have a label deal, you have a tremendous amount of infighting between the bands, and the labels each think that they were the reason that the label got a deal in the first place. And I think Columbia came to the conclusion very early on that this wasn’t gonna blow up. This wasn’t the next big thing. And they weren’t gonna get the types of sales that even we were getting with Covenant. And the other part of the problem was that Columbia is a company that has historically been all about songwriters. The types of songs that would be necessary to work weren’t really on the records that they were delivering at that time.”