Beginnings and Napalm Death
Harris' recording debut was as Napalm Death's second drummer, joining after founding member Miles "The Rat" Ratledge left the band in November 1985. His first live appearance with the band was on 18 January 1986, opening for Amebix. Harris was the driving force behind the band's seminal Scum album and the second release From Enslavement to Obliteration. A subsequent review of From Enslavement to Obliteration in the punk/indie fanzine Flipside went as follows: "This sounds like someone is literally firing a fully automatic rifle while a bassist and guitarist try to keep up."
After the release of the EP Mentally Murdered, Napalm Death began to become more interested in the death metal scene and their sound started to move away from the British grindcore sound. At this point Bill Steer and Lee Dorrian departed the band due to creative differences, later, Harris was the sole band member who remained in the tumultuous group through many line-up changes, eventually leaving in 1991, just after the tour for Harmony Corruption.
While in Napalm Death, Harris also played drums for Doom and Extreme Noise Terror, and participated in a side project with Mitch Harris called Defecation, which produced two records, Purity Dilution and Intention Surpassed, through Nuclear Blast. Harris contributed only to Purity Dilution, however.
Read more about this topic: Mick Harris
Famous quotes containing the words beginnings, napalm and/or death:
“Let us, then, take our compass; we are something, and we are not everything. The nature of our existence hides from us the knowledge of first beginnings which are born of the nothing; and the littleness of our being conceals from us the sight of the infinite. Our intellect holds the same position in the world of thought as our body occupies in the expanse of nature.”
—Blaise Pascal (1623–1662)
“I love the smell of napalm in the morning. You know, one time we had to hailbomb, for twelve hours, and when it was all over I walked up.... We didn’t find one of ‘em, not one stinking dink
body. That smell, you know, that gasoline smell. The whole hill. It smelled like ... victory.”
—John Milius, U.S. screenwriter, Francis Ford Coppola (b. 1939)
“It is better to sit down than to stand, it is better to lie down than to sit, but death is the best of all.”
—Indian proverb, quoted in Sébastien-roch Nicolas de Chamfort, Maxims and Considerations, vol. 1, no. 155 (1796, trans. 1926)