Grindcore legend Shane Embury is a busy cat. The British bassist and longtime member of the legendary Napalm Death – alongside what seems like an endless supply of side projects and for-hire bass-slapping' including Lock Up, Brujeria, Venomous Concept, Born to Murder the World, Bent Sea – recently dropped the debut record of his new project Tronos, Celestial Mechanics.
Comprised of iron man Embury, drum-lord Dirk Verbeuren (Megadeth, ex-Soilwork) and longtime Napalm Death producer Russ Russell, Tronos is dark, trippy and heavy as fuck, with Embury himself stepping up front for vocal duties with an All-star list of album collaborators including Mastodon’s Troy Sanders, Faith No More’s Billy Gould, Voivod’s Denis “Snake” Belanger, Nuclear Assault’s Dan Lilker, and The Wonder Stuff’s Erica Nockalls.
Metal Injection recently caught up with Embury to delve deep into all-things Tronos, plus get the scoop on Napalm Death, the evolution of grindcore and how becoming a father prepared him as a frontman.
On the Origins of Tronos:
It was something we talked about, myself and Russ Russell. We had been friends for a long time and had several conversations while touring or recording about doing something together. It was talked about a long time before it started happening. We finally got around to it in I think 2012. Basically me and him started recording riffs, doing up tempos and ideas and concepts. Me and Russ have been friends a long time, so it was like mixing heaviness with ambiance and lyrically exploring thoughts about the world, who we are and where we are really. It wasn’t until Dirk laid drums down that the blueprints started becoming full songs. I knew Dirk for awhile, he was a big fan of Napalm and we had met at festivals. That was the beginning and it took awhile, as it does really, because we had no sort of agenda for where we were going with it. It just came naturally.
[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ss0jFmu7XWA][/youtube]
Stepping Up for Lead Vocals:
It’s a strange thing in some ways, because I’d done backing vocals for Napalm where you’re doing more hardcore styles of vocals. It’s something you don’t do very often because you quickly lose your voice. I was aware I had some sort of tonal potential, but not a seasoned professional. I was kind of nervous at first. We asked some friends of ours if they’d like to try singing a song here or there and it took forever. Everyone is busy doing their own thing. So me and Russ said we want to arrange the songs, so we wrote the lyrics and said let's try to put the patterns down as we see it and try to arrange everything. Because we were in Russ’s studio, we had as much time as we wanted at first. I was able to explore and build confidence. Let’s see what happens. In a strange way, it was around the time my daughter was born. When you have a little child, you’re singing to your child and humming all the time. A few of my friends say it’s very good practice for your throat. It sounds weird to say that actually, but it seemed like a really good method to build vocal strength. But it was very weird and very nerve wracking because it’s not something I was thinking of doing for Tronos. The more I did it the more I got more comfortable and tried to layer things and put different ideas out.
Guest Collaborations on Celestial Mechanics:
It was an ever evolving thing. I've known Billy from Faith No More forever. He’s a really nice down-to-earth guy and he was the first guy I approached. I didn’t really want to play bass and he just said yeah! It took awhile to get his contributions down. Troy (Sanders) really made an effort to get his contribution quickly. I was over the moon in some ways. It was people I’ve known for a long time and all really nice people, people me and Russ have known awhile and fit in there emotionally and mentally with the project. It’s more than just music for us in some ways, it’s more of an evolving growth, to use a weird word. Snake from Voivod kindly said yeah and that was great for me. I’ve been a Voivod fan for years. I was just surprised that these people were so keen to help us out really and add their own creative part to it.
Side Projects and Experimenting:
It’s all important. Tronos is special. For awhile Russ had wanted to be doing something on his own, because obviously he records and engineers many bands. He was very keen to do something for himself. For me as well. Over the years I’ve done all different kinds of music and I’ve kind of put the experimental, industrial stuff on hold for a bit. I was really into pursuing this in the early 2000s when I first started messing around with Atari STs and I just put it on the back burner. I finally jumped into it now with this record. I see it as a starting point for some ways in that it can go many ways. It’s quite important for us because it’s not just musical expression, it’s also a lyrical expression. It’s almost like when me and Russ get together It’s like a meeting of two friends, our experiences and how we see the future and our lives. We tie that in musically. Tronos is quite a big thing really for me and I hope we can expand in different areas.
Updates on Napalm Death:
It’s looking very well. We’ve been extremely busy since Apex Predator. Many shows, many tours. We’re going back to Russia again in September and we recently put out Coded Smears album of rarities which bought us a little time. We have sort of silently been chipping away on the new Napalm album. We’ve been recording here or there over the past 12-18 months. It’s not really a secret, it has just taken longer for many reasons, life and things like that. We’re nearing completion of that album finally, which is album number 16. It’s sort of a challenge on this record, because whilst Mitch (Harris) plays on this record, because he relocated to the States, musically he hasn’t really contributed much to this album, so it kind of fell on me to compose pretty much everything, which was kind of a challenge musically. But I feel like we’ve been able to cover a bunch of areas with Napalm and managed to push it forward again from the last album. So that will probably come out in January or February of next year, the new album, and then off we go again. Things are constantly evolving and the new album, fingers crossed, will surprise people again in some ways. It obviously has all the ingredients that Napalm Death is known for. I spent a lot of time recording industrial percussives on this record, recording lots of different sounds and using them as rhythms with Danny’s drumming. A couple of songs go off on really weird tangents on this album. It's been extremely crazy, but there’s a lot of ingredients going on.
On the Newly Announced Tour with Municipal Waste & More:
We’ve toured with all three bands. Napalm and Sick of it All go way back really. It kind of taps into every corner I think. It’s going to be pretty intense I think. Sick of it All I think are one of the most amazing live bands ever really, still, for me. They’re a hard band to go on after, which I believe we have to which, Jesus Christ, is always a bit scary, because they’re so intense live. It’s going to be a good tour. We all know each other really well and It’s going to be a smooth, easy, friendly tour with a lot of interesting people showing up, and that’s fun to do at this point in our ever evolving career.
On the Evolution of Grindcore:
It’s hard to keep tabs on everything really, as it evolves. I do try. Social media being the way it is, it’s sometimes an easy way to listen to some bands and get access to bands you wouldn’t normally get access to. I think it’s a naturally evolving thing. Every so often there will be a band that pops out that will sort of tweak my ear. It’s interesting with all the different kind of blast beats there are now. I’m not always a fan of every one of them, but to me it seems totally natural that there would be loads of different offspring going on. It’s always quite exciting to hear something that makes you smile. The blast beat has been used quite a lot, but when it has the right ingredients it’s really exciting for me. I’m, at the moment, looking out for something new to check out. I’m a bit starved for something to turn me upside down. I’m always keen to hear something, because it can drive you to something creative.
On the Future of Tronos:
There will definitely be more … I’ve actually been down to the studio with Russ a few months ago and working on some new songs and ideas, which will probably take awhile to finish because of our schedules together. But I do see Tronos as something that can expand to different directions because we want to try to follow our own thing I guess. I’m hoping that we could maybe do one or two shows here and there, with heavy projections, laser show and things and something that reflects the psychedelic element of the band.
[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PxgOYeL5RLQ][/youtube]
