Career Talk: Shane Embury (Napalm Death)
In this talk, Shane opens up about his life, addiction, sobriety, falling off the wagon, life on the road, his musical history, his book and everything in between. Join us for this one-on-one discussion with his Brujeria bandmate, and Orange is the New Black star, Jessica Pimentel as they dig deep and explore Shane’s legendary career.
Driven by a relentless hunger for creating new and mind-blowing sounds, Shane Embury is the metal underground's premier prolific polymath. With a career stretching back to the mid-'80s, he is best known as bassist with UK grindcore legends Napalm Death, a band he joined in 1987. But over the last three decades, Shane has demonstrated an unwavering enthusiasm for exploring every possible musical avenue for the sheer, unadulterated joy of it.
As the longest-standing member of Napalm Death, Shane has been relentlessly involved in the building of that band’s glorious legacy. Widely revered by fans of metal, punk, noise and many other genres, the band have been a remorseless touring machine, while also releasing a startling number of acclaimed albums along the way. As the band’s most prolific songwriter, Shane has been instrumental in sustaining Napalm Death’s unassailable reputation as one of heavy music’s most inventive and exciting bands.
Meanwhile, Shane has forged his own artistic path via countless left-field and extreme projects, including the alt-metal experiments of the recently-resurrected Blood From The Soul, blistering deathgrind with Lock Up, warped hardcore punk with Venomous Concept, and bombastic classic metal with Absolute Power, amongst many others. An instinctive co-creator, Shane has made music with a vast array of cult heroes and maverick talents, ranging from jazz renegade John Zorn and Melvins’ Buzz Osborne to Megadeth’s Dirk Verbeuren and Faith No More’s Billy Gould. As Shane explains, working with other people has been a constant source of inspiration.
In recent times, Shane has released a vicious blackened grind album under the name Born To Murder The World, formed the psychedelic metal outfit Tronos (in cahoots with long-time collaborator, producer Russ Russell), releasing the band’s astonishing debut album, Celestial Mechanics, in 2019. Shane has also begun to explore the world of dark ambient music with his widely lauded Dark Sky Burial project, with two full-length albums released since late 2020 and a third and fourth already in the works.
"I get more and more enthusiastic as time goes on. […] You want to get to grand old age and look back and say, 'Fuck me, that was fun!' You can't lose that spark or the feeling that music gives you."
Text by Dom Lawson - Photo by Rob Blackham
Moderator: Jessica Pimentel (US)
The Brooklyn born and raised native New Yorker is best known as an actress in her role as Maria Ruiz on the Netflix original series Orange Is the New Black where she received 3 Screen Actors Guild Award wins and 1 nomination.
Jessica is currently developing several projects for film and television where she will be incorporating her friendships and experiences in the Metal community as well as her own sprirtual tradtions and cultural upbringing, which she infuses into everything she does. Featured on both stage and screen,
Jessica is a graduate of the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, where she holds a degree in Theater arts and The High School of Performing Arts (aka “Fame”) where she studied music performance, composition and theory. She began her musical career at a young age earning a full scholarship to study the Roosa School of music and is a trained classical violinist as well as a frontwoman, recording guitarist and bassist for the metal band Alekhine’s Gun, Co-Vocalist for Brujeria and Black Heart Sutra and former bassist of Desolate and several notable New York Hardcore bands.