Grindcore is an extreme genre of music that originated in the early to mid-1980s. It draws inspiration from some of the most abrasive-sounding music genres – including extreme metal, industrial music, noise music and the more extreme varieties of hardcore punk. Grindcore is characterized by a noise-filled sound that uses heavily distorted, down-tuned guitars, grinding overdriven bass, high speed tempo, blast beats, and vocals which consist of growls and high-pitched shrieks. Early groups like Napalm Death are credited with laying the groundwork for the style. It is most prevalent today in North America and Europe, with popular contributors such as Brutal Truth and Nasum. Lyrical themes range from a primary focus on social and political concerns, to gory subject matter and black humor. A trait of grindcore is the "microsong". Several bands have produced songs that are only seconds in length. British band Napalm Death holds the Guinness World Record for shortest song ever recorded with the one-second "You Suffer" (1987). Many bands record simple phrases that may be rhythmically sprawled out across an instrumental lasting only a couple of bars in length. A variety of "microgenres" have subsequently emerged, often labeling bands according to traits that deviate from regular grindcore, including goregrind, focused on themes of gore, and pornogrind, fixated on pornographic lyrical themes. Other offshoots include noisegrind (especially raw and chaotic) and electrogrind (incorporating electronic elements such as programmed drums). Although an influential phenomenon on hardcore punk and other popular genres, grindcore itself remains an underground form of music.
Links To Peel[]
EXTREME NOISE TERROR - peel sessions '87-90 (FUL ALBUM)
Extreme Noise Terror's Peel Sessions
When British punk reared its sneering head in the mid-70s Peel was one of the only radio DJs to play it, however just a few short years later it had lost its rebellious sheen, moving offshore to the United States where bands such as Black Flag would bash it with renewed vigour into the shape of hardcore to come. Peel began to look for something that would signal a return to the vile extremity of punk's early days. He eventually found what he was looking for in Ipswich, close to his home in Suffolk. The band was Extreme Noise Terror, and the genre was grindcore. In the foreword to the 2004 book Choosing Death: The Improbable History of Death Metal & Grindcore, Peel wrote:
- "At one of those Ipswich gigs, ENT were joined by the even faster Napalm Death; at another by the short-lived but murderous Intense Degree. All three bands recorded sessions for my radio programmes and most of the tracks they recorded ended up on the Hardcore Holocaust compilations. Almost everyone I knew who heard these compilations, or tracks from them, thought they were all crap. A result, I thought."
Napalm Death - You Suffer
Napalm Death's "You Scum", which Peel seemed to enjoy playing
The progenitors of grindcore are commonly cited as being from the US, but it was British band Napalm Death, and their debut release Scum, which formalised the genre and gave it a name. In 1987, a 48-year-old Peel broadcast Napalm Death’s most well known ‘song’: the one-and-a-half second opus, You Suffer. In September that year Peel invited Napalm Death to the BBC to record their first Peel Session.
Peel’s support for grindcore facilitated an explosion in its popularity. Scum reached number 7 on the UK indie album charts and Napalm Death were invited back in March 1988 to record their second Peel Session. In October that year their second album, From Enslavement To Obliteration, unceremoniously jackbooted Sonic Youth from number one on the UK indie album charts and sold 35,000 copies straight out of the gate. Even New Music Express (NME) felt compelled to give the band a cover feature, declaring grindcore to be ‘the music for which Jerry Lee, The Who, Helter Skelter, The Ramones, Damned, Pistols, Northern Soul, Speed Metal and Speed Core were just practice.’
Carcass - Peel Sessions (1989) Full EP
Carcass Peel Session in 1989
Peel went on to promote the careers of a number of other grindcore bands, including the aforementioned Extreme Noise Terror and the animal rights proponents Carcass, whose 1988 debut Reek of Putrefaction, Peel declared to be his favourite album of the year. Unseen Terror, Intense Degree, Doom, Bolt Thrower and Agathocles all recorded Peel Sessions between 1988 and 1997. Less than a year before his death Peel recorded a session in 2003 with Anaal Nathrakh, an utterly feral amalgamation of grindcore, black metal, industrial and death metal.
Although his attention was not surprising, Peel’s profile and affiliation with the BBC presented a moral conflict for grindcore, at least in theory. Here you have a genre founded on a basis of extremity – extreme speed, extreme volume, and extreme concretion. It was not designed for the BBC, and it was most certainly not for the scrutiny of the public at large. The risk that such attention would force a commercially expedited demise like that suffered by punk was a real and present danger and yet, to this date, grindcore remains one of the few music genres to have enjoyed disproportionate mainstream attention and remain, for the most part, unspoiled by commercial interests.
See also[]
- Earache Records
- Terrorizer
- Choosing Death
- Bllleeeeaaauuurrrrgghhh!
- Record Boxes: Shane Embury
- Relapse Records