Enemy of the Music Business

After Words from the Exit Wound, Napalm Death had lost both the label and the management they had worked with for years, and Shane Embury remembers the band as disillusioned. Through his old friend Mitch Dickinson they met Rudy Reed, who took the band on. The album was made with Simon Efemey, a long-time friend of Embury's, and Efemey's engineer Russ Russell, and both are credited as producers. Recording took place at Parkgate Studios in Hastings, England, from 26 May to 8 June 2000, with the mix following from 13 to 19 June. The line-up was Mark "Barney" Greenway, Mitch Harris, Jesse Pintado, Embury and Danny Herrera. Embury and Greenway had agreed that the music needed more intensity than on the previous album, the members were getting on better than before, and for Embury grindcore had become exciting again. Greenway's lyrics take aim at the music industry itself. Dream Catcher released the album in Britain in September 2000 as CRIDE 33, and Spitfire Records issued it in the United States in 2001. It spent one week at number 26 on the UK Rock & Metal Albums Chart. After the release, Embury recalls, came television appearances and an award handed to the band by John Peel. The deal with Dream Catcher did not last: in 2002 Greenway said it had not worked out in the end. Century Media Records, the label the band later signed to, had been asking them to sign since this album, Embury says. The closing "Fracture in the Equation" runs into a stretch of silence and then an untitled hidden track.