Napalm Death and “The Scum Story”

Text graphic reading "By the balls. Maybe not"

Originally published in ‘zine issue #39, 2008

Napalm Death is a grindcore band with often political lyrics from Birmingham, England that has been in existence, with various and extensive personnel changes, for well over 20 years. In 1987 the British record label Earache, headed by Digby Pearson, released the band’s debut album Scum, a vastly influential work that continues to affect bands and listeners to this day. Earache reissued the Scum album in 2007 to coincide with the 20th anniversary of the original release, with remastered sound and a bonus DVD documentary, The Scum Story.

The original idea [for the bonus], according to early press reports from the label before the documentary was put together, was to have Napalm Death’s lineup which appeared on Side One of the album—Nicholas Bullen, who started Napalm Death; Justin Broadrick; and Mick Harris—participate in the documentary. (Appearing on Side Two were Harris, Lee Dorrian, Bill Steer, and Jim Whitley.) All of the musicians appearing on Scum have since left the band at one time or another over the years.

Quoted in criticalmass.se, Napalm Death bassist Shane Embury, who was present during the recording sessions for the album two decades ago, said that he’d received a message from Harris saying that he would not participate in the documentary. Some of the other would-be participants had other ideas as well.

As Decibel Magazine has inducted Scum into its long-running Hall of Fame series, where all of these musicians talked about the experience of recording Scum (as they did in the excellent book Choosing Death: The Improbable History of Death Metal and Grindcore, written by Decibel’s editor-in-chief, Albert Mudrian), this is an opportune time to look at other comments by some of the former Napalm Death members, outside of the interview process.

Chris Rohde, one of the moderators on the official Napalm Death message board, started a thread at that website in 2006 that asked whether the then-rumored Scum documentary was going to materialize. In the thread, he quoted some of Harris’ posts on the latter’s MySpace page from the same year on the subject of the documentary (the title of this piece is taken from [the title] of one of Harris’ blogs). In response, several regulars to the board weighed in, none the least of which were Bullen and Whitley. What followed were fascinating statements of personal philosophy on music and the music industry, among other subjects.

“Earache are being, let’s say, a little unhelpful right now regarding my business dealings,” Harris wrote in his blog. “But they want help with this so-called making of Scum documentary that they know I have all the answers and truths to. They want my words on film (I’m reluctant, let’s say that), but I feel fans want to know and just want the truth, not half measures.

“I wrote Earache this morning, saying, ‘Well, I have several filmmakers that would love to interview me for a documentary about Napalm Death, etc.’ They replied, ‘Do it, but you can’t use the music. We own it even if you wrote it.’

“The truth to this story is never, never, never sell your publishing rights/songwriting rights to the label. It’s all like the promised positions. All fucking lies.”

Photo of Mick Harris

In a later blog [post], Harris continued, “Told them Harris style, plain and simple—bollocks. Told Earache to fuck off with their desperate money-making idea to make a documentary about the making of Scum. What a load of shit, eh. Shame, as so much can be said …

“Earache won’t help me (they helped themselves many a year ago getting me to stupidly sign away my life/rights). So I have told them, ‘forget it.’ I have a filmmaker friend in New Zealand who is in the middle of finishing off his killer Kraut rock documentary who could do a killer job himself, but Earache have told me my songs can’t be used unless I pay to use them, so I told them, ‘Go fuck yourselves again, as you won’t be getting no documentary.’

“Harsh, whatever. I can be brutal if I want. What I don’t need is weakeners like that weakening me and taking the piss the way they do.”

In one of the replies on the thread, Bullen wrote, “It would be good to have the full details available for people as the album Scum has meant a great deal to many people, particularly as it was their introduction to new ways of viewing music. However, I’m not sure how I feel about the way in which this may all be part of the ‘nostalgia industry’: there are young people all over the world putting their hearts and souls into making music and that’s where the interest lies.”

Whitley posted a response as well, in which he wrote, “Nik, you hit the two main words on the head: ‘nostalgia’ and ‘industry.’ I think you’d perhaps share my distaste of both notions; especially as in both cases we don’t need to afford any oxygen, be it financial or in terms of credibility, towards Digby and his empire.

“That said, I agree with you that there is a story to be told and conversantly there are still lessons to be learned. If there’s a way around Earache not copping a penny from this, then I’m willing to participate and maybe add my 10ps worth. Seeing as Digby now ‘owns’ feelings and expressions that we both had a part in creating a long time ago, I’m not sure how such a project could manifest itself.”


After this [writer] posted a bulletin on napalmdeath.org’s message board in 2007 that Earache had released a trailer for the documentary, and that the trailer featured none other than Harris, there were several responses here as well. In one of the replies to the post, Bullen wrote, “In the initial stages, I personally was interested in being involved in the DVD: it seemed like a good idea to have a ‘final’ document of that period in time—to put a ‘seal’ on it— and (at some level) I thought it might be amusing and fun …

“However, Harris then decided that he was not going to do the DVD. The reason for this (or so I am told) is that he wanted to use his involvement in the DVD as a bargaining tool in order to get back some of the publishing rights which he had previously sold for money to Earache. When they would not agree to this, he said he was not going to do it.

“During this period, Justin and I (and I spoke to Lee about this as well) both decided that we didn’t want to be involved: the main reason for this is that we didn’t want to make anyone involved in Earache any more money from it.

Earache have presented the whole endeavour as a ‘labour of love’ and a ‘necessary document’ of a ‘fantastic period’ in music. This may well be true: however, I may be cynical or overly suspicious, but it seems more likely to be a typical marketing tool utilised by a business (to resell an existing item in new packaging, particularly at the point of an ‘anniversary’), and even more likely that it was inevitable coming from a business which seems to have been slipping into the doldrums of commercial success for a decade or so.

“I personally have no particular disagreement with Earache: when I was on their label, I always regarded them as employers rather than friends (unlike other ex-members of Napalm Death who felt they had a friendship with people in Earache) and was never particularly surprised by the way they conduct their business. However, I understand that others do have a sense of disgruntlement (which may well relate to their perception of their relationship with Earache).

“I think it is probably important to clarify my own position regarding the whole issue of making music and monetary gain. I was never in Napalm Death to make money or be famous or meet people for sex or to be put on a pedestal by my peers: I started the group at a young age and had no interest in those kinds of rationale—all I was interested in was expressing myself through art, a viewpoint which was informed by the anarchist group Crass and my readings on anarchism. If anything, my general attitude was that once people begin to view their music making as a ‘career’ (an engine to make money), it can invariably lead to a somewhat mercenary attitude which has a negative effect on the music being made. I know that this viewpoint may be one that many others do not hold, but it is nonetheless my perception on this issue.

“I have never made any money from Napalm Death: I never received any royalties from the album Scum because I did not sign a contract with Earache for that record. I perhaps could have contested this in the courts (and may well have won because of the prior documentation which would support a claim to the name, lyrics, and music), but I felt that this would be a counter-productive exercise in the long run and decided instead to view it as an unpleasant period in my life and one which I would recall as infrequently as possible. At the time, I was more interested in pursuing my studies at university as they were more vibrant and challenging, and it seemed something of a step backwards to remain in that milieu.

“I also never received any publishing for the lyrics and music which I wrote for Side One of Scum, although I believe a certain member of the group sold the publishing rights to this music and lyrics for their own personal financial gain (as they did with the lyrics of Side Two of Scum which were written by Jim Whitley).

“It may seem somewhat strange (or positively incomprehensible) to a lot of people, but I value my own sense of self-worth and self-respect higher than financial gain: I would rather remain true to my beliefs than sacrifice those beliefs for the sake of money—that’s just the kind of person I am. That is why I continue to make music which doesn’t have to become a commodity in someone else’s marketplace: for me, success in music making is not defined by the potential for a career, but by how it makes me and my collaborators feel—if we can turn to each other afterwards and say, ‘That went really well,’ it has been a success.

“The reason I am saying this is that it becomes a little tiresome when people insist on judging the reasoning behind making music by their own (in my opinion shallow) standards: I understand why people may wish to make music for such reasons, but I am not interested. I earn a living through my work, and the music I make is made free from any consideration other than, ‘Does this music express itself?’ It may seem naïve, or overly utopian, or smugly self-righteous, but that’s what it is.

“Thinking of money: after making the decision not to appear on the DVD, I decided to (for my own curiosity) see exactly what Earache would offer me to appear on the DVD—it was ultimately an academic exercise, but I am naturally curious and thought the exercise might be entertaining. They told me they would pay my expenses and that the reason for doing it was as a ‘labour of love’ to document the period. Of course, this may well be true but I was also aware that this ‘labour of love’ approach seemed to only extend to the participants from the band—Earache weren’t exactly going to give the profits from the DVD to charity.

“I told them this wasn’t satisfactory, so they made a few more offers which ended at £200 for the interview and a say on the edit of the DVD. So, from a potential income of £200,000 (on a conservative approximation of the DVD selling 10,000 copies at £20 a unit), they offered me £200—which is around 0.10 percent. I’m afraid I can only see that the offer they made goes beyond effective business practice into the realms of a lack of respect for me on the part of Earache.

“I’m also interested to see what the DVD contains in terms of insight into the development of the ‘high speed’ aesthetic in Napalm Death and the songwriting process of Side One of Scum, considering that the architects of those elements (Justin and I) are not present on the DVD.”

Whitley responded to Bullen’s post by writing, “I can only concur with Nik’s eloquent and reasoned statement of which I support 100 percent. For the record I was never contacted at all regarding any input to this project; not that I had any expectations or yearning to get on board, although maybe it would have been nice to have the opportunity to tell them where to shove it after hearing what ‘incentives’ there may have been …

“Likewise I never signed a contract with Earache at any stage of my involvement with Napalm Death and similarly I never copyrighted the words I wrote or the odd 3/4 songs I conceived musically to the Scum B Side. In hindsight perhaps maybe I should have, although I too persist to this day wanting to create music/noise as cathartic expression and social interaction without resorting to all of the bullshit trappings and peripheral nonsense of ‘the music business.’ I have no idea to this day who ‘owns’ what I put onto paper—it was all done without my consent, nor my knowledge …

“I only ever received £200 plus around half a dozen copies of Scum as recompense for my efforts; the £200 itself came in 1988 and I’m sure that the money was only on the basis of trying to keep me ‘sweet’ as Digby had expressed an interest in getting Ripcord (the band I joined post-Napalm Death) to sign to Earache. Luckily we declined that offer and proceeded the good old DIY way.

“It’s inevitably sad that friendships get soured when the great God greed emerges from within what was a facade of common purpose and meeting of minds. We all have to evolve and strive to maintain our freedoms and dignities despite it all.”


Even today, 20 years later, the music industry hasn’t changed, but we can take heart that artists in music, be they new to the scene or seasoned veterans like the gentlemen quoted above, still cherish their art and still inspire the generations.

Many thanks to Nicholas Bullen, Mick Harris, and Jim Whitley for expressing their views publicly on these matters, as well as the forum at www.napalmdeath.org, without whom this article would not be possible. ■

Photo: Mick Harris in 2006, from his MySpace page


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