Michael John Harris (born 4 October 1967) is an English musician from

Birmingham Birmingham ( ) is a city and metropolitan borough in the metropolitan county of West Midlands in England. It is the second-largest city in the United Kingdom with a population of 1.145 million in the city proper, 2.92 million in the We ...

. He was the drummer for

Napalm Death Napalm Death are an English grindcore band formed in 1981 in Meriden, West Midlands. None of the band's original members has been in the group since 1986. But since ''Utopia Banished'' (1992), the lineup of bassist Shane Embury, guitarist Mitch ...

between 1985 and 1991, and is credited for coining the term "

grindcore Grindcore is an extreme fusion genre of heavy metal and hardcore punk that originated in the mid-1980s, drawing inspiration from abrasive-sounding musical styles, such as thrashcore, crust punk, hardcore punk, extreme metal, and industrial. ...

". After Napalm Death, Harris joined Painkiller with

John Zorn John Zorn (born September 2, 1953) is an American composer, conductor, saxophonist, arranger and producer who "deliberately resists category". Zorn's avant-garde and experimental approaches to composition and improvisation are inclusive of jazz ...

and Bill Laswell. Since the mid-1990s, Harris has worked primarily in

electronic Electronic may refer to: *Electronics, the science of how to control electric energy in semiconductor * ''Electronics'' (magazine), a defunct American trade journal *Electronic storage, the storage of data using an electronic device *Electronic co ...

and

ambient music Ambient music is a genre of music that emphasizes tone and atmosphere over traditional musical structure or rhythm. It may lack net composition, beat, or structured melody.The Ambient Century by Mark Prendergast, Bloomsbury, London, 2003. It ...

, his main projects being Scorn and Lull. He has also collaborated with musicians including

James Plotkin James Plotkin is an American guitarist and producer known for his role in bands such as Khanate and OLD but with an extensive catalogue outside these bands. He has played guitar for Phantomsmasher and Scorn and continues to remix tracks for band ...

and

Extreme Noise Terror Extreme Noise Terror (often abbreviated to ENT) are a British extreme metal band formed in Ipswich, England in 1985 and one of the earliest and most influential crust bands. Noted for one of the earliest uses of dual vocalists in hardcore,Bon ...

. According to

AllMusic AllMusic (previously known as All-Music Guide and AMG) is an American online music database. It catalogs more than three million album entries and 30 million tracks, as well as information on musicians and bands. Initiated in 1991, the dat ...

, Harris's "genre-spanning activities have done much to jar the minds, expectations, and record collections of audiences previously kept aggressively opposed."

Early life

Michael John Harris was born in

, England. He grew up listening to the radio shows of

John Peel John Robert Parker Ravenscroft (30 August 1939 – 25 October 2004), known professionally as John Peel, was an English disc jockey (DJ) and radio presenter. He was the longest-serving of the original BBC Radio 1 DJs, broadcasting regularly fr ...

and would later record Peel Sessions with both

and Scorn. Harris was influenced by listening to bands such as Coil and

Skinny Puppy Skinny Puppy is a Canadian industrial music group formed in Vancouver in 1982. The group is among the founders of the industrial rock and electro-industrial genres. Initially envisioned as an experimental side-project by cEvin Key (Kevin Crom ...

. He started playing drums in 1984 at the age of 16, after a friend in a

psychobilly Psychobilly is a rock music fusion genre that fuses elements of rockabilly and punk rock. It's been defined as "loud frantic rockabilly music", it has also been said that it "takes the traditional countrified rock style known as rockabilly, ram ...

band called Martian Brain Squeeze asked him to play. Harris then joined a punk band called Anorexia with Dave Cochrane. After applying unsuccessfully to join Napalm Death as a vocalist he later joined as drummer.

Napalm Death

Harris replaced

's founding member Miles "The Rat" Ratledge as drummer in 1985. He was the driving force behind '' Scum'' and '' From Enslavement to Obliteration'', being the only band member to play on both side A and side B of ''Scum''. 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 An automatic rifle is a type of autoloading rifle that is capable of fully automatic fire. Automatic rifles are generally select-fire weapons capable of firing in semi-automatic and automatic firing modes (some automatic rifles are capable o ...

while a bassist and guitarist try to keep up." After the release of the EP ''

Mentally Murdered ''Mentally Murdered'' is an EP by the English grindcore band Napalm Death, released in 1989. It was later included on the ''Harmony Corruption'' CD and the ''Death by Manipulation'' compilation album. On this EP the band's migration to death me ...

'', Napalm Death became more interested in the

death metal Death metal is an extreme subgenre of heavy metal music. It typically employs heavily distorted and low-tuned guitars, played with techniques such as palm muting and tremolo picking; deep growling vocals; aggressive, powerful drumming, fe ...

scene and their sound started to move away from the British

sound. At this point Bill Steer and

Lee Dorrian Lee Dorrian (born 5 June 1968) is an English singer, best known as a former member of grindcore band Napalm Death and later frontman of doom metal band Cathedral. Career During his early teenage years, Dorrian was the editor of a local pun ...

departed the band due to creative differences. Harris left the band in 1991. While in Napalm Death, Harris also played drums for Doom and

, and participated in a side project with

Mitch Harris Mitch Harris (born October 31, 1969) is an American guitarist. He started his career in the grindcore band Righteous Pigs. He did a side project with Mick Harris – then the drummer of grindcore band Napalm Death – called Defecation. Shortl ...

called

Defecation Defecation (or defaecation) follows digestion, and is a necessary process by which organisms eliminate a solid, semisolid, or liquid waste material known as feces from the digestive tract via the anus. The act has a variety of names ranging ...

, which produced two records, ''

Purity Dilution ''Purity Dilution'' is the first album released by Defecation, and the only release of the two to have Mick Harris on it. It was released in 1989 on Nuclear Blast Records, and was issued in four different versions: * The original 1989 release LP ...

'' and ''

Intention Surpassed Intention Surpassed is the second Defecation album, released in 2003 on Nuclear Blast Records. Unlike the debut album, this release does not feature any contribution from Mick Harris, rather Mitch Harris performed all instruments and vocals on hi ...

'', through

Nuclear Blast Nuclear Blast is a record label and mail order record distributor with subsidiaries in Germany, the United States and Brazil. The label was founded in 1987 by Markus Staiger in Germany. Originally releasing hardcore punk records, the label mov ...

. Harris contributed only to ''Purity Dilution''. As a drummer he is generally credited with popularising the

blast beat A blast beat is a type of drum beat that originated in hardcore punk and grindcore, and is often associated with certain styles of extreme metal, namely black metal and death metal,Adam MacGregor, '' PCP Torpedo'' by Agoraphobic Noseblee ...

, which has since become a key component of much of

extreme metal Extreme metal is a loosely defined umbrella term for a number of related heavy metal music subgenres that have developed since the early 1980s. It has been defined as a "cluster of metal subgenres characterized by sonic, verbal, and visual tra ...

and grindcore. Harris coined the term grindcore, later commenting "Grindcore came from ' grind' which was the only word I could use to describe the Swans after buying their first record in '84 ..I thought 'grind' really fit because of the speed, so I started to call it grindcore".

Assorted projects

After leaving Napalm Death and as well as initiating a number of projects in different musical genres such as Fret, Quoit, Lull and Scorn, Harris has also collaborated with artists such as

, Justin Broadrick and Martyn Bates. He was contacted by

who wanted to create a new group consisting of himself, Harris and Bill Laswell on bass. This trio became Painkiller, a

free jazz Free jazz is an experimental approach to jazz improvisation that developed in the late 1950s and early 1960s when musicians attempted to change or break down jazz conventions, such as regular tempos, tones, and chord changes. Musicians dur ...

trio. The group released three albums in the early 1990s. ''

Guts of a Virgin ''Guts of a Virgin'' is the first album by American band Painkiller, a band featuring John Zorn, Bill Laswell and Mick Harris. It contains twelve tracks and was released in 1991 on Toy's Factory in Japan and Earache Records in England. Artwork ...

'' and '' Buried Secrets'' were released by

Earache Records Earache Records is a British independent record label, music publisher and management company founded by Digby Pearson in 1985, based in Nottingham, England, with offices in London and New York. The label helped to pioneer extreme metal by r ...

and contained mostly short aggressive tracks reminiscent of Napalm Death with the added elements of both John Zorn's sax and Bill Laswell's bass. Their third and last record, the two disc set ''

Execution Ground ''Execution Ground'' is a double CD by Painkiller, a band featuring John Zorn, Bill Laswell, and Mick Harris. Reception The AllMusic review by Maurice Rickard awarded the album 4½ stars, stating: "The first disc of this inventive and unsettling ...

'' was released in 1995 on the

Subharmonic In music, the undertone series or subharmonic series is a sequence of notes that results from inverting the intervals of the overtone series. While overtones naturally occur with the physical production of music on instruments, undertones must ...

label. In 2017, Mick Harris returned after six years of total silence under the name of 'Fret' with a new song called "Lift Method" that was released through SoundCloud. It was his first Fret material in 22 years. A new album called ''Over Depth'' was released in October 2017 as double vinyl / DL through Karlrecords. He has collaborated with Eraldo Bernocchi and Bill Laswell on Equations of Eternity, which is an ambient dub music project started in 1995 by Eraldo. Since its members live in separate parts of the world: Mick Harris in England; Bill Laswell in the US; and Eraldo Bernocchi in Italy, the project has been predominantly studio-based, with its members recording music in their respective countries.

Scorn

Harris founded Scorn in 1991 with Napalm Death's original bassist/lead singer Nic Bullen. Scorn released several well-received albums and EPs in the early 1990s, creating a fusion of experimental heavy metal, electronic music, and dark

dub music Dub is an electronic musical style that grew out of reggae in the late 1960s and early 1970s. It is commonly considered a subgenre of reggae, though it has developed to extend beyond that style.Dub: soundscapes and shattered songs in Jamaican r ...

. Bullen left Scorn in 1995 and Harris continued to release albums exploring dark and

minimalist In visual arts, music and other media, minimalism is an art movement that began in post–World War II in Western art, most strongly with American visual arts in the 1960s and early 1970s. Prominent artists associated with minimalism include Do ...

industrial hip-hop Industrial hip hop is a fusion genre of industrial music and hip hop. History 1980s The origins of industrial hip hop are in the work of Mark Stewart, Bill Laswell, and Adrian Sherwood. In 1985, former The Pop Group singer Mark Stewart releas ...

territory, with a focus on extremely low and loud bass frequencies. Harris' work presaged

dubstep Dubstep is a genre of electronic dance music that originated in South London in the early 2000s. The style emerged as a UK garage offshoot that blended 2-step rhythms and sparse dub production, as well as incorporating elements of broken be ...

. Scorn has been associated with

, Invisible Records, Hymen,

Combat Records Combat Records was an American independent record label founded in 1983 and based in New York City. The label specifically was for heavy metal and punk rock acts, Notable artist include: Megadeth, Circle Jerks, Nuclear Assault, OZ, Death ...

and Record Label Records. ''Refuse; Start Fires'' was released in 2010 on OHM Resistance. In November 2011, Harris announced that the Scorn project was "put to bed". Scorn returned in 2019 with an EP entitled ''Feather'' and an LP both released on Ohm Resistance. The LP was called '' Cafe Mor''. It featured a contribution from Jason Williamson of Sleaford Mods and was mastered by Daniele Antezza of Dadub. '' The Only Place'' was released in 2021.

Personal life

As of 2012, Harris was married with two children and lived in Birmingham, working as a technician in a music college.

References

External links

* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Harris, Mick 1966 births Living people Musicians from Birmingham, West Midlands Death metal musicians Godflesh members English heavy metal drummers English electronic musicians Napalm Death members Dubstep musicians English industrial musicians Painkiller (band) members English experimental musicians English punk rock drummers Pigface members