Watch the priceless moment Napalm Death frontman Barney Greenway showed Ed Miliband how to scream
To much to the surprise of the onlooking British press, in 2017, Napalm Death frontman Barney Greenway and former Labour Party leader Ed Miliband converged in arguably the strangest radio segment imaginable. No one – from the halls of power to the mosh pit – could have foreseen the partnership. Witnessing two prominent figures from such different worlds was a spectacle in itself, and the circumstances of what unfolded defied expectations and crystallised the moment in pop culture lore.
The meeting occurred when Miliband was guest hosting Jeremy Vine’s BBC Radio 2 show. That morning, Greenway was in the studio to discuss a piece on extreme metal. An informative segment for the listeners of the station, even those with little interest in the genre were alerted when Miliband cautiously warned: “I’m now going to take my career into my hands, if it’s not already gone down the pan…”
Greenway then instructed Miliband on executing his extreme vocal style, demonstrating how to force the air from the diaphragm up through the throat in order to create an aggressive burst of noise. The former leader of the opposition then proceeded to give his best attempt. After his first limp effort, Greenway prompted: “No, you need more throat”.
Although slightly better, Miliband’s second and final attempt was also a dud, confirming that he will never leave politics to pursue a career in metal. Typically self-aware, he later commented on Twitter with a crying emoji: “Seems unlikely I will get death metal record deal,” he quipped.
When sitting down with The Quietus in 2020, Greenway looked back on the famous Miliband interview and revealed that the Labour politician was a fan of the band before their discussion. He said: “I’m sure you can imagine the amount of times that I’ve done radio interviews and people have been going, ‘Do the voice on air’. The BBC contacted me before and said, ‘We might ask you to do some…’ and I said, ‘Mate, I’m not doing it, it’s so cliched, I’m not doing it. I don’t care what it is, it’s so predictable.’ In the end, they twisted my arm, I was like, ‘Oh, I’ll just do it this once.’ But when I first walked into the studio, I had a little conversation with Ed Miliband. I told him that he appeared on my trade union voting form; we were just laughing and joking. Then he told me a couple of things about Napalm Death that only somebody who had a knowledge of the band would know. I was gobsmacked. And he goes, ‘Yeah, been a fan of the band for years.'”
Surprisingly, Miliband is not the only fan of Napalm Death to be found in the Labour Party. The somewhat controversial Leeds East MP Richard Burgon is one of parliament’s resident metalheads and has even struck up a friendship of sorts with Greenway over the years. Asked whether his attitude to politicians has changed over the years, Greenway explained: “With Richard, me and him kind of became friends; I talk to him semi-regularly, because our beliefs cross over a bit. I grew up on the left. My dad was a trade unionist. I had an understanding from a very early age that the world is unequal and that it shouldn’t be unequal. But then, as I grew, I was introduced to bands like Crass, Conflict, and so on, and I started to realise that if politics didn’t liberate people, then it’s not worth anything. So I have that real conflict within myself. I treat politicians like anybody else. My real problem is with the system itself. There’s an argument that all of it – much like the Roman Empire – needs to collapse and that politics needs to fall in on itself and revise itself.”
