Diatribes

Diatribes followed the Greed Killing EP of 1995 and opens with that EP's title song. The line-up was Barney Greenway on vocals, Mitch Harris and Jesse Pintado on guitars, Shane Embury on bass and Danny Herrera on drums. It was recorded at Framework Studios in Birmingham with Colin Richardson producing and Daniel Sprigg engineering, and mixed at Parr Street Studios. Embury has noted that it was the first album the band had recorded in Birmingham since Scum, which they made at Rich Bitch Studios. Looking back in 2017, Embury gave his account of how the album came together. Greenway took little part in the rehearsals that set the album's course or in the sessions themselves, and it was Embury, Mitch Harris and Pintado who drove the music forward; the singer was not happy with every song at the time. In the mid-1990s, when nu metal and black metal held the attention, the band felt it belonged to neither and went looking for something new, a turn that took part of its audience by surprise. Embury regards Diatribes as the first part of a trilogy that ended with Words from the Exit Wound in 1998. Earache Records released the album in January 1996: a twelve-track CD (MOSH 141 CD), a collectors' double digipak with an empty slot for the Greed Killing CD (MOSH 141 CDD), a pair of 10-inch records and a cassette. The disc's copyright line reads 1995, but the record reached the shops in January 1996. It spent one week at number 73 on the Official Albums Chart of 28 January to 3 February 1996, and it peaked at number five on the UK Rock & Metal Albums Chart, where it stayed for four weeks.