Smear Campaign

Smear Campaign was recorded at Foel Studios in Wales, where its predecessor had been made, in two blocks: from 13 to 27 May and from 3 to 10 June 2006. Russ Russell engineered, recorded and mixed it, the production is credited jointly to Russell and Napalm Death, and Chris Fielding was the assistant engineer. The line-up is unchanged from The Code Is Red...Long Live the Code: Barney Greenway on vocals, Shane Embury on bass, Mitch Harris on guitar and Danny Herrera on drums, each given a mock-heroic job description in the booklet. Embury and Mitch Harris divided the music between them. The guest this time is Anneke van Giersbergen, singer of The Gathering, who adds vocals to the opening "Weltschmerz" and to "In Deference", the seventh track. According to Greenway, it was she who offered to sing on the record. He described the question running through the lyrics as why people should need religion to tell them how to run their lives, and he meant it of every creed alike, from Christianity to paganism and Satanism. Century Media Records released the album in September 2006, a day earlier outside North America than in it, as the label had announced. The limited digipak, 77687-8, and the LP, 77687-1, add two songs, "Call That an Option?" and "Atheist Runt", for eighteen in all. The artwork is by Mick Kenney. In July 2006 the band had also been announced for a North American tour from early September with Hatebreed, Exodus and The Black Dahlia Murder, among others. The running order here is the sixteen tracks of the standard CD, 77687-2.