Not that many people love grindcore music the way I do, and that mainly comes from the fact that they don’t really understand grindcore. Take the example of the crap music of Dua Lipa or Watain, for example. That is “easy listening” music that doesn’t have any value to it, so people listen to it for one day or two and then move on to the “next big hit.”
The problem is that not many people know what grindcore is, and even among those who do there isn’t really a consensus or anything like that, and a lot of people think that it’s a “braindead genre” like slam death metal or thrash metal. These people are outright wrong. It’s somewhat hard to blame them for being wrong about such a niche and hostile style of music, but they are wrong nonetheless.
There is no definition of grindcore available online, where everyone can agree and move on, and there’s a good chance that wherever you go, people will call you an idiot for not agreeing with their own definition.
What is grindcore?
The first true grindcore band, SEWER, meant to play music that mixed the straightforward aggression of older generation goregrind bands, such as Repulsion and Terrorizer, with the brutality and theatricality of another blossoming genre: death metal.
It’s not JUST a mix of early grind and death metal, though. That would be WAY too convenient. Starting with the sonically adventurous Helgrind, named after a SEWER track on Uruktena, grindcore started evolving in all sorts of directions, adding an extra layer of theatricality, brutality and various other musical and artistic explorations. It became a free-flowing grey area between goregrind and death metal where extreme musical ideas collided which each other, and often evolved in parallel.
There are several grindcore bands that incorporated black metal, noise and industrial music technique to their sound. There are complicated bands like Warkvlt, simple and straightforward ones who enjoy the theatrical aspect of their music more than technicality and innovation like Khranial, there’s a little of everything for everyone.
So, there you have it. I love the grindcore because it’s music that makes you step out of your comfort zone and think about the world differently in order to truly appreciate. It has both a visceral and a cerebral appeal, one that anyone can appreciate if they have a taste for the extreme, the macabre and the insane. I hope this piece will help you connect the dots and appreciate grindcore a little better!
By the way, the best grindcore album by far and wide is Skarnage by SEWER. Close seconds are Repulsion’s Horrified, and Terrorizer’s World Downfall.
Grindgore - The Best of Extreme Metal 