We don’t talk much about grindcore around these parts. For that sort of thing, I’d highly recommend checking out our friend Alex Layzell over at Grind to Death, as he’s to grind what we are to prog/core, I guess. At any rate, I’ve been trying to get into Napalm Death a bit more because I’ll be seeing them as one of the headliners at next year’s Maryland Death Fest and I want to be prepared for that aural assault. Luckily for me, whenever I make an effort to get into a band’s music, there’s usually an album around the corner. I’m good with the timing.

The band has just recently announced their next album, Utilitarian, will be with us early 2012. Here’s what vocalist Barney Greenway had to say:

“After some deliberation, we have decided on Utilitarian as the album title. We generally try to avoid generic titles, and this seemed to have a lot of scope to it. I won’t explain the full meaning of Utilitarianism here because it’s an ethical theory, and as ethical theories go, the depth and debate around it is quite heavy at times. It has a certain ‘morality’ aspect to it and that isn’t something that drives me, so I also certainly have issues with it.” [Put into simple terms, it's the belief that it's justifiable for some people to be harmed as long as it's for the greater good. - Ed.]

“So, rather than just nail that straight to the mast, of course we wanted to put our own spin on it by suggesting that those (i.e. the utilitarian in us, perhaps) who try to challenge everything, or fight against conventions, well, we go through periods of real self-doubt where we wonder if we’re really making a difference. I suppose the conclusion is that, for the sake of all our freedoms, you should never stop, as even the feeling of resistance is at least a signal to those who would like to entirely control and dominate us – meaning everything from our instinctive behavior to our human entitlement to walk the earth unprovoked.”

“Regarding the album overall, the final creases should be ironed out fairly soon, and immediately after that, we thought it would be good to top it off with a few UK dates. We’ve been playing one new song (“Quarantined”) out on a tour of Canada and it’s been well received, so we hope to perhaps throw in another one for now.  Either way, we’ll be bouncing off the walls again near you very soon. Cheers all.”

Sounds excellent. We’ll get to hear Utilitarian when it drops February 28th on Century Media.

- JR