Metal, Hardcore, Indie, Rock
On November 12 at the Utilita Arena in Birmingham, UK, Mark “Barney” Greenway of British grindcore pioneers Napalm Death performed the Volbeat song “Evelyn” alongside Danish metal rock ‘n’ rollers Volbeat. Below is video footage of his appearance that was captured by fans, as reported by blabbermouth.net. Michael Poulsen, the vocalist and guitarist for Volbeat, discussed Barney’s performance on the studio version of “Evelyn,” which is featured on the band’s fourth album, “Beyond Hell/Above Heaven,” in an interview with Straight.com in April 2011.
Writing a song like ‘Evelyn’ was my way of showing people that it was not only the ’50s elements we were inspired by, but we were actually growing up with a lot of great metal bands,. And Napalm Death was one of the first extreme metal bands I was listening to — I was listening to them when I bought my first guitar. So being able to have a singer like Barney from Napalm Death on my record was a real accomplishment. It’s great to see that it’s actually possible for dreams to come true, in a way.
With the song “Time Will Heal,” Volbeat leaps two spots to the top of the Nov. 1-dated poll and achieves a historic No. 1 on Billboard’s Mainstream Rock Airplay chart. It’s Volbeat‘s 12th number one and their second consecutive number one, after “By a Monster’s Hand,” which dominated for two weeks in May. Since Mainstream Rock Airplay started in 1981, the Danish band has tied Papa Roach for the tenth-most No. 1s with their most recent single.
A year after debuting on the chart with “Fallen” (No. 11), Volbeat had its first visit at the top of Mainstream Rock Airplay in 2012 with “Still Counting.” The band ranks second among non-American acts, after Canada’s Three Days Grace, and is the highest-ranking European-based band on the all-time No. 1 list.
This is what band leader Michael Poulsen had to say about the track:
Musically, it’s one of those songs, I’ll say, that’s also a signature Volbeat song when it comes to the more pop-rock songs from Volbeat. But yeah, lyrically, we are talking about struggling a little bit with life where I think we all know the feeling — suddenly we wake up and we don’t know why we feel bad. Why is this day so terrible? Nothing had happened yet. It’s a feeling. It’s like getting the wrong leg out of the bed. But with life experience, we just know that’s part of life. You will have days where you don’t feel good and suddenly it’s like turning on a switch and the light is there. Where there’s darkness, there will be light. So it’s something where I’m trying to keep a balance in the lyric where you have to accept the bad days just as much as you have to accept the good ones. And while you are in the bad ones, just tell yourself constantly it might get better in two minutes or tomorrow or the day after that everything’s gonna be all right. So the message in that is we all have those days where everything feels wrong and going against you, but tomorrow’s gonna be another day. And it’s very much about appreciating just waking up, being alive. Appreciate what you’ve got.
