Words from the Exit Wound

Words from the Exit Wound is the last studio album Napalm Death made for Earache Records, and Earache's own vinyl box of the band's studio albums from those years, Liberation Through Distortion: The Earache Years of Napalm Death, closes with it. It was recorded and mixed at Chapel Studios in Lincolnshire in June 1998, with Colin Richardson producing as he had on Diatribes and Inside the Torn Apart; Shane Embury has said this was the last time the band worked with him. The line-up was Mark "Barney" Greenway, Mitch Harris, Jesse Pintado, Embury and Danny Herrera; Greenway wrote the lyrics of eight songs, Embury of three and Mitch Harris of one. Embury looked back on the album in 2017 as a turning point. It was also the time when the band parted with its management company, a relationship that by then hung over the writing. Meanwhile Embury and Greenway had been listening keenly to Nasum and felt the band should shift up a gear, and Embury traces the band's return towards its roots to this record. He sees it as the end of a trilogy that began with Diatribes, and in 2017 he still named "Next of Kin to Chaos", "The Infiltraitor", "Repression Out of Uniform" and "Cleanse Impure" as songs he wanted back in the live set. It was released on 26 October 1998 and spent one week at number 23 on the UK Rock & Metal Albums Chart. The label gave the band very little money for touring, and Embury has said that without his friendship with Nick Barker and Cradle of Filth they could not have toured Europe on the album at all. The American edition added three live tracks from Bootlegged in Japan, "Hung", "Greed Killing" and "Suffer the Children", as bonus tracks.