Napalm Death release a video for the track A Bellyful of Salt and Spleen

06/09/2020 Articles Share

Legendary grindcore pioneers, Napalm Death, have just released a new video for the song A Bellyful of Salt and Spleen. This is the final track of the band’s upcoming album – Throes of Joy in the Jaws of Defeatism which will be released on September 18^th 2020 via Century Media Records. You can buy the new album here! The video was directed by Sam Edwards & Khaled Lowe of A-Side Films / www.a-sidefilms.com.

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Napalm Death’s front man talked about the song and the video in detail: “’A Bellyful of Salt and Spleen’, you could say, is about building and breaking down in the same discordant breath. The building came in the sense of many layers of coruscating industrial ambience, all marching to the beat of a home-made drum kit consisting of rubbish bins, oil drums and industrial screw parts and other bits that Shane could find littered around the studio grounds. The scope and gravity and density just demanded a vocal that was as baritone and anguished as I could push out of myself.

The breaking down side of it was the intention to just focus minds to understand that people who traverse continents, suffocate in confined spaces or drown grasping for assistance are as keen to live in dignity and peace - and without violence and hunger – as the rest of us. As ever, quite simply, we are all human beings and if that means anything anymore, a helping hand is the least we can offer.

Sam Edwards & Khaled Lowe, directing the video, really focused our minds in the way they wanted to drill down into the indifference generated around these things – via some incredible animation and suchlike married to the stuttering engines of unseaworthy vessels and the precision shunt of our industrial pounding. The whole visual concept of beach life going on around bodies washed up on the shore is a grotesque scenario that illustrates how meaningless those we can’t connect to our own small universe can become.”

Video directors Sam Edwards / Khaled Lowe from A-Side Films also commented on the video:

This film was commissioned by UK Grindcore pioneers NAPALM DEATH. Both the song & video address the disturbing prevalence of the “anti-outsider” in contemporary society; from popular right wing publications filled with hate-fuelled rhetoric through to the chilling nonchalance of holiday makers found relaxing in front of washed up corpses.

Based on real events, the film uses a combination of live action and animation to depict a doomed voyage; Escaping their ruined city, a family of refugees meet a tragic end when their boat sinks during a storm. As the dinghy sinks near the shoreline, indifferent tourists party & picnic. Bodies wash up on the beach while people take selfies, heedless to the carnage behind them. The story concludes with images of a vast “sea cemetery” of floating gravestones & an obscure ghostly figure drifting on the horizon - these represent the countless lives lost in the pursuit of freedom from oppression and the ease with which they are forgotten.”

Napalm Death have previously released 2 videos for the upcoming album: "Backlash Just Because" and "Amoral".

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