Napalm Death have released the artwork and tracklist for their upcoming new album.
The British grindcore heroes will release 15th album Apex Predator – Easy Meat on January via Century Media Records.
The artwork was created by Danish designer Frode Sylthe who has previously worked on the band’s previous album Utilitarian as well as with At The Gates and The Haunted.
Napalm Death bassist Shane Embury says: “There are many meanings that you could grab from the new album artwork, I think. But one is the representation of how our natural and most basic needs for happiness and communication are being stripped away by materialism and pre-packaged garbage – crap that we don’t need, filtered to us through the media via the mega-corporations with the goal to maintain the bloated bottom line of profit.
“It’s all just stuff that will be obsolete in six months time. And behind the scenes of course, modern day slavery is alive, well and obscured by this facade. It’s all an exercise in deceit to shower us with fake fulfilment, while the poor and underprivileged fall further by the wayside.”
Frontman Barney Greenway says he loved the supermaket-style packaging image as soon as he saw it. He adds: “When you go into one of those places with nourishment in mind and you’re greeted with some miserable, artificially-enhanced foodstuff contained in a bleak little receptacle of industrial plastics, it doesn’t exactly inspire you.
“To then fill that plastic tray with the dregs of meat production, well, that is the ‘easy meat’ in the title – representing the people who suffer for burgeoning consumption degraded and dumped in the most pitiful way.”
Napalm Death guitarist Mitch Harris is currently on an indefinite hiatus from the band to deal with a family illness. He will be replaced on their upcoming US tour dates by as-yet-unnamed stand-ins.
Apex Predator - Easy Meat tracklist
- Apex Predator - Easy Meat 2. Smash A Single Digit 3. Metaphorically Screw You 4. How The Years Condemn 5. Stubborn Stains 6. Timeless Flogging 7. Dear Slum Landlord… 8. Cesspits 9. Bloodless Coup 10. Beyond The Pale 11. Stunt Your Growth 12. Hierarchies 13. One-Eyed 14. Adversarial/Copulating Snakes
