Grindcore Music Guide: 4 Notable Grindcore Bands

Grindcore is a fusion genre that draws on subgenres of heavy metal and hardcore punk rock, including extreme metal and crust punk, for its abrasive and confrontational sound. Forged in the early 1980s by British and North American bands such as Napalm Death and Repulsion, grindcore took hold in the United States in the mid-1980s and remains a popular genre among metalheads and the punk scene.

Grindcore is a diverse metal subgenre, incorporating elements from other music forms like industrial and electronic, while also spawning a dizzying array of offshoots, from goregrind to thrashcore and death grind.

The history of grindcore begins in the early 1980s on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean:

• Origins: Grindcore began in the early 1980s when North American and British metal bands folded the full-throttle tempo of hardcore punk and heavy riffs of black metal outfits like Venom into their music. Some of the acts cited as early grindcore bands include Napalm Death and Extreme Noise Terror from the United Kingdom and Siege and Repulsion from the United States.
• Coining the name: Fans and music scholars often credit Napalm Death with creating the term “grindcore”—a reference to the British term for “thrash”—and the powerful drum beat known as blast beats. Meanwhile, Repulsion was one of the first grindcore bands to employ the blast beat on their 1986 full-length debut album, Horrified.
• First wave: Word of mouth about Napalm Death and other grindcore groups spurred other metal bands to push the limits of their sound and lyrical content into grindcore territory. Liverpool’s Carcass had a major impact with 1988 debut album Reek of Putrefaction, which underscored grindcore’s obsession with gore and anatomical horror. North American acts like Los Angeles’s Terrorizer and Assück pulled elements of thrash metal and death metal into their take on grindcore. Meanwhile, ‘90s-era bands like Brutal Truth, Discordance Axis, and Pig Destroyer mixed in thrash metal and industrial elements like samples.
• Crossover success: While grindcore wore the label of “outsider music” with pride, two of its veteran acts enjoyed chart success in the early 2000s. Both Carcass and Napalm Death amassed sales of more than 250,000 album units between 1991 and 2003; The soundtrack for the 1995 action movie Mortal Kombat featured a Napalm Death track that reached No. 10 on the Billboard albums chart.
• Subgenres: As grindcore’s popularity continued into the 2010s, bands experimented with its brutal signature sound to create new and equally aggressive subgenres. The Locust and Agoraphobic Nosebleed shortened song lengths and increased the tempo to create a punk-fueled offshoot called powerviolence, while The Berzerker, Full of Hell, and other groups added electronic music elements to found electrogrind or cybergrind. Sweden’s General Surgery and Regurgitate adopted Carcass’s obsession with bloody medical horror to establish goregrind.
• Global reach: Grindcore found followers across the globe in the 1990s and 2000s. The Nordic and Scandinavian death metal scene produced several significant grind bands, including Finland’s Rotten Sound and the Swedish group Nasum, while Infest hailed from the French Basque Country. Belgium yielded Aborted, Leng Tch’e, and Agathocles, while Singapore’s Wormrot and Japan’s Carcass Grinder represent just a few of the grindcore bands in Asia.

Several distinct characteristics of grindcore define its punishing sound, including:

1. 1. Lyrics: Grindcore lyrics and song titles follow the template of other extreme metal forms through provocative and sometimes disturbing subject matter. Anger at societal restraints and human behavior are frequent topics; politically, the genre leans to the left and even adopts anarchist stances. Goregrind focuses on the more visceral aspects of death, violence, and mortality, while some grind bands feature no lyrics at all and instead offer ear-splitting shrieks and growls.
2. 2. Music: Grindcore bands hinge on a traditional punk and metal lineup of a guitarist, a bassist, and a drummer. Musicians downtune the guitars and incorporate heavy riffs, power chords, and distortion into the sound. The blast beat—a sixteenth note that drummers play very fast on a kick drum, snare, and cymbal—defines grindcore drumming. Some grindcore songs track at less than a minute, and many grindcore albums feature a long tracklist and a total running time of twenty minutes.
3. 3. Vocals: Grindcore vocalists use many of the same arresting singing/screaming styles as their peers in death metal, death-doom, and deathcore. Vocal sounds range from high-pitched screams and howls to guttural grunts and animalistic noises.

There are several notable artists in the history of grindcore. Among them are:

1. 1. Anaal Nathrakh: Hailing from Napalm Death’s hometown of Birmingham, England, Anaal Nathrakh—whose name derives from the Irish words for “snake’s breath”—creates chaos from a fusion of grindcore, death metal, and black metal. Since forming in 1999, the band—a unique two-person operation, supported on tour by side musicians—has issued eleven studio albums, including the critically praised Endarkenment from 2020.
2. 2. Cephalic Carnage: Denver, Colorado’s Cephalic Carnage represents grindcore’s experimental side by folding unlikely elements like progressive rock, surf rock, and jazz into their sonic din. Songs on their six studio albums feature some of the most technically proficient playing in grindcore, as well as an offbeat sense of humor. The band is fond of skewering metal stereotypes: tracks like “Dying Will Be the Death of Me” poke fun at the morbid, self-obsessed side of metalcore.
3. 3. Napalm Death: A foundational band in the history of grindcore, Birmingham’s Napalm Death established many of the genre’s sonic tenets—furious blast beat drumming, distorted guitar, and howling vocals—on their first two albums. Napalm Death also helped inject politics into grindcore. Many of their songs embrace various causes, including socialism and animal rights. They also hold the world record for shortest song ever recorded: the one-second-long “You Suffer.”
4. 4. Pig Destroyer: The Virginia-based Pig Destroyer calls upon a wide palette of alarming sounds—relentless percussion, roaring guitar, raw-throated vocals, unnerving sonic samples, and the notable lack of a bassist—for its widely praised brand of grindcore. Scott Hull, the primary engine behind Pig Destroyer and veteran of early grindcore bands, is the band’s chief lyricist, producer, and guitarist.

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