Alex about the Napalm Death Cameo

Speaking exclusively to Terrorizer ahead of the Brummie grind legends' impending appearance on the E4 teen drama, 'Skins' star Alexander Arnold discusses working with frontman Mark 'Barney' Greenway, loving Mastodon and why his character won't be another lazy metal stereotype.



What did you make of working with Napalm Death?

Napalm Death are great! I spoke to Barney on several occasions and we did a scene together, and he was a really genuine guy. I bought [2006 album] 'Smear Campaign' halfway through filming, and what I loved were the lyrics. I really researched them and I could see how genuine Barney is – he's an atheist, he's a vegan and he's a part of an animal rights group, and it's really interesting. Before that, the sort of stuff I liked was probably more post-rock, and there are bands like Mastodon who I really love. I love their 'Leviathon' album.


How did you first hear about Napalm appearing on the show?

I had no idea about it. I don't know how hard it would have been to get Napalm involved, but all I knew was bits and bobs from scripts in the audition process.


What was it like filming your scene with Barney?

He was really natural actually, he seemed fine – although he was playing himself! He was great though, and he seemed quite on the level.



Do you feel like you've come to understand the metal scene a bit more?

Yeah definitely. I really hope that my character Rich doesn't just come across as some bloke who throws on a Metallica t-shirt, because when I started researching the role I realised that Jamie [Brittain, co-creator of 'Skins'] is a massive metal fan, and he got me to watch the Anvil documentary, from which I got into the Big Four thrash bands. 'Anvil' is a great documentary; it shows how passionate a band of brothers those guys are. I watched a great documentary on Norwegian black metal as well.


How did all this help to influence your character?

Rich is a character who will have spent time discovering all these bands, and so I felt that I had to do that as well.


How did Napalm's live scene work?

Well, they pre-recorded the song itself because we needed lots of different takes, but each time it looked completely different, which was great because you could see that Barney is really involved in what he's doing. It was a big scene that we filmed in an actual metal gig venue, and we had about 90 extras there just standing about and dancing and stuff, and they really loved it as well.


What other bands would you like to work with or see live?

I'd love to see Slayer live, because they're one of the top thrash metal bands, so that'd be really interesting, and I'm a big fan of Mastodon, so it'd be great to meet [frontman] Troy Sanders.


Check out Napalm's cameo on the February 3 episode of 'Skins' on E4.

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Labels: Alexander Arnold , Brand New , entrevistas , interview , napalm death , Skins season 5