Grindcore for Beginners Part 8 - WTF is that!?

The Locust
Plague Soundscapes

I couldn't think of a title for this section of Grindcore for Beginners, so I just went with my first reaction to the frenetic grindfuckery of The Locust. Like Captain Beefheart jamming with Agoraphobic Nosebleed, or The Dillinger Escape Plan before they got boring, this California-based four-peice has included two former members of Cattle Decapitation. They're well-known for wearing strange costumes, only playing all-ages shows and being completely batshit insane. Their brand of noisy, conspicuously technical Dadaist grind, replete with neck-snapping tempo changes and oblique lyrics, has made them more enemies than fans - odd, seeing as their detractors are often the same people who will be tripping over themselves to lap up every pretentious note that Melt Banana shit out. Their music is unbelievably complex, but never wanky, and probably about as weird as it gets.

The Locust exemplify the fun-loving insanity of punk and grindcore - an aspect people often forget. Remember, Napalm Death used to fall about laughing in their early rehearsals, and for every Dropdead there's a Cogs and Sprockets.

What's also interesting is how they exemplify the tendency towards high levels of technicality in grindcore. This tendency may be down to the influence of metal on the genre, or it may simply be due to the fact that it takes considerable chops to play grind - punk and hardcore prided themselves on their simplicity, but the sheer speed of grindcore means that even the simplest riff will take a lot of practice. Whatever the cause, there have always been grind bands whose technical wizradry is a vital part of their music, and most of them tend to be pretty dull. The Locust, however, are the exception. They may fit more riffs into one song than most bands have on an entire album, but they never forget that the technique must serve the song, not the other way around.

Anyway - have a listen.

Grindcore for Beginners Part 7 - From the Sublime to the Ridiculous

Anal Cunt

The 88-Song EP

Anal Cunt. Now there’s a name. If ever there was a band whose name was their mission statement, it’s these guys. They set out with the intention of being the most hilariously, parodically offensive band in the world, and they managed it. With album titles like 20 More Reasons To Hate Us and Everyone Should Be Killed, and songs like “You Only Converted To Judaism So A Guy Would Touch Your Dick”, AxCx (as they have to be known on album sleeves) took the in-you-face, look-how-confrontational-I-can-be attitude of many grindcore and death metal bands and parodied it mercilessly. Their lyrics – when they had them – were (to begin with) concise, to-the-point and utterly hilarious. The music was stupid in the extreme – apparently largely improvised, it sounded like what it was: a couple of blokes trying to make the noisiest racket they could. I’m not sure if the late great John Peel ever heard Anal Cunt, but they sound like the band of his dreams. The 88-Song EP was their second release, and it captures the band in that brief moment when they were still funny, before frontman Seth Putnam started to buy into his own shtick and the band crossed the line between hilarious bad taste and boring, childish shock tactics.

There are an awful lot of comedy bands in grindcore: there are also a lot of awful comedy bands in grindcore. Basically, Anal Cunt is the one band that rises above the level of Tenacious D. Grindcore has always had a certain stupidity at its heart, like all punk – grand opuses and incisive social comment are all very well, but sometimes it’s fun to just listen to something so brilliantly idiotic that it’s fun. So give it a listen, if only to remind yourself that music doesn't have to be smart to be good.

Grindcore for Beginners Part 6 - Intelligent Aggression

Cephalic Carnage
Conforming to Abnormality
US; 1998

The debate over whether grindcore is more metal or punk has been going on since the genre was invented, and will still be going as long as it exists. As the ‘90s wore on, however, it was clear that the balance was shifting to the metal side. Napalm Death – hitherto the exemplars of grind’s punk roots – released their controversial, death-inflected album Harmony Corruption, Carcass went full-on death metal with Heartwork, and bands like Cattle Decapitation headed a new wave of grinders who wore their metal influences on their sleeves. This new influx of musically and lyrically complex bands breathed new life into the genre with their unusual time signatures and lyrics that were considerably more nuanced than the standard political sloganeering. No band better exemplifies this intelligent aggression than Cephalic Carnage.

            CC, along with fellow grinders Brutal Truth, threw out the stale punk clichés that threatened to choke the life out of the genre, and replaced them with jazzy experimentation and a new, metallic edge brought in by larger production values. Thanks to them, grindcore did not stagnate; instead, it branched out into new realms, and began to become a genre in its own right, rather than just another branch on the punk family tree.

Grindcore for beginners Part 5 - Choosing Death

Cattle Decapitation
Humanure
US; 2004

I'm listening to this album at the moment, and I've had to pause it to write this because I keot getting destracted by its awesomeness. While not my favourite Cattle Decapitation record (Human Jerky takes that prize hands down), this is an amazing record, and perfect for the next chapter of Grindcore for Beginners.

Oddly enough, it could also have worked in the previous chapter. Cattle Decapitation began life as a damn good gore band before moving into deathgrind, and they have retained the fascination with blood, guts and the mortification of the flesh. Unlike other gore bands (except, rather aptly, Carcass) Cattle Decapitation are devoid of the childish shok tactics and rather worrying misogyny that characterises so many others in the subgenre. This, you see, is gore with a conscience. Cattle Decapitation are militant animal rights enthusiasts, and their songs point out the horrors of factory farming, hunting, etc. usually by putting humans in the position of the animals involved. Sample lyric:

Unwanted humans food for carnivorous gimp
Rotted remnants and leftovers
Victim now a bloated flesh blimp
Blackened and purple from decay
Fetishistic sex acts with the dead
Dying from shock and being chained to the rot
Kicking and screaming and slipping in slop
Humanity is the stench that fills your nostrils
Release the gimp

That's from their fantastically titled song "Release the Gimp". But, as I said, they're not a gore band any more - this album is pure deathgrind.

Deathgrind is a subgenre that takes grindcore and adds the conspicuous technicality and higher production values of death metal. It's still brutal as fuck, but it doesn't have the lo-fi muddiness that you'll find on so many grindcore records. It's also more accessible, so if you know a death metal fan who's struggling to get into grind, this could be the perfect gateway album.

The misanthropy that permeates Cattle Decapitation's lyrics is quite common in grind. The general mindset of grindcore as a genre seems to be quite negative - I'm pretty sure it's a combination of the political/social awareness that characterises a lot of grind, and the fact that loud, noisy music is great for when you;re pissed off.

For more awesomeness from Cattle Decapitation, check out their earlier, more gore-focused album Human Jerky or last year's Monolith of Inhumanity.

Grindcore for Beginners Part 4 - Goregrind

Carcass
Reek of Putrefaction
Earache; 1988

So. We've dealt with the origins of grindcore, the righteous anger of Conflict, Discharge and Napalm Death - now, onto another fork in the path. Carcass' debut album was not only one of the first grindcore albums ever released, but is widely credited with inventing the subgenre of goregrind. Their sophomore effort, Symphonies of Sickness, is arguably the better album - and is certainly closer to what the band wanted from their music - but as an example of goregrind, Reek is perfect. The vocals are as gruesome as they come, the production values are so low that they're almost nonexistent, and who could possibly dislike an album with song titles like Genital Grinder and Carbonised Eyesockets?

But what really makes this album - and Carcass themselves - special is the band's sense of humour. A lot of metal and grind bands sing about gore, violence, death, etc. but Carcass are a cut above the rest because they don't take themselves seriously. Compare them to Deicide, for example. Deicide aren't a gore band, but they do work on roughly the same principles: shock everyone and teenagers will like you. Now, I'm not slagging off Deicide - they're a damn good band - but lyrically, let's be honest, how many of Glenn Benton's attention-seeking "fuck Jesus" rants can you listen to before you get bored? If the lyrics were intelligible, Deicide would be about as interesting as Marilyn Manson.

But Carcass manage to pull off the gore thing largely because they keep their tongues wedged firmly in their cheeks. They're not a full-on joke band, like Anal Cunt, but - much like The Darkness (now there's a comparison I never thought I'd make) - they realise that their music is, in many respects, quite funny, and they accept that and go with it.

But that's not to say that this album is only great because of the humour. The songs are fantastic. The riffs, the drum fills, the vocals that burble like a tar pit - all of these elements combine to make a genre-defining classic.

Also, Carcass are set to release a new album, Surgical Steel, this year.

Grindcore for Beginners Part 3 - Origins

Napalm Death
Scum
Earache Records (UK; 1987)


Ok, so it's part 3 now and we're finally onto proper grindcore. And where better to start than with the album that kicked the whole thing off?

I won't bore you with Scum trivia - it seems every time someone mentions this album they talk about how the A side and B side were essentially recorded by two different bands, how "You Suffer" was listed in the Guinness Book of World Records as the shortest song ever recorded, how Napalm Death basically invented grindcore, etc., so I'll just assume you know all that already. I'm just going to dive straight into the music.

The previous two installments have been basically a warm-up, preparing you for this record; Scum takes the joy of punk, the bass-end heft and rumble of crust and the sheer speed and aggression of hardcore and turns them up to 11. The vocals are guttural, grunting, bear-like; Bill Steer (Side B) and Justin Broadrick (Side A) play riffs that come at you like a freight train, only breaking into the upper end of the scale with a few screeching solos; and the whole thing is held together by the hyperspeed blastbeats of Mick Harris, the only member present on both sides of the record.

This is a great starting point for our exploration into grind proper, not just because it was the first real grindcore record, but because it represents perfectly one of the key aspects of grindcore. The subgenre has always been a combination of metal and punk, and while I'm not going to get into the (seemingly endless) debate about which genre grind leans to more, it's clear that it began in punk. Napalm Death's earliest demos sound like a cross between Crass and Discharge, and while the band were all into death metal, it's pretty clear that Scumowes more to the low-budget anger of punk than the theatrics of metal. Scum exemplifies the punk end of grindcore, from the dirt-cheap production to the political sloganeering of tracks like "Multinational Corporations" and "C.S. (Conservative Shithead)" (love that title). While Side B leans more towards metal with the buzzsaw guitar tone, this is undeniably a punk record from beginning to end.

While Napalm Death would eventually move into more metal territory, to mixed reactions from fans, this album shows their punk roots more than any other, and that's part of the reason it's one of their best.

So turn it up and enjoy.

Grindcore for beginners Part 2 - Pre-history part 2

Ok, it's been a while since I posted the first part of this series, and I guess it's time for the second. To recap, in the first part I presented Increase the Pressure by Confilct as an example of how punk is supposed to be fun. To continue that theme, here's...

Discharge
Hear Nothing, See Nothing, Say Nothing
1982

 This is one of my favourite punk albums of all time (no, we still haven't got to actual grindcore yet, be patient). The basic thrust of this post is the same as the last one - heavy music is fun - only this time, I've taken it up a notch in terms of heaviness. Just listen to it - the guttural, half-screamed vocals, that deliciously dirty low end and the drums that spawned an entire genre of soundalikes. This is closer to grindcore, as it has that deep, bassy sound and it's much less lyric-based than most previous punk records. That's another thing you should take away from this - you don;t need to be able to understand the lyrics to a song to enjoy it. But yeah, just get used to that grinding guitar sound and enjoy.

Grindcore for beginners part 1 - Prehistory

Hello, fellow humans! Time for my first non-review-y-type post. The idea for this one comes from a conversation I had with my dad back in January while visiting my parents for the Christmas holiday. I was listening to the new Napalm Death album (which I reviewed here) and my dad came into the room. Heavy music is one of the areas where my taste and his diverge, and his first reaction was to burst out laughing at the strange noises coming from the stereo. Once he'd got his breath back, he said, "What do you like about this?"
I was stumped. I tried to communicate to him how great it sounded, how much fun it was to listen to, but I couldn't find the words. So I decided to show him, and anyone else out there who's interested - this is Grindcore for Beginners.

Conflict - Increase the Pressure
Released 1984, in England.

Ok, I know, this isn't grindcore. Seeing as this list is called "Grindcore for Beginners" I thought I'd better ease you in. So, this is your starting point.

I chose this album as our embarcadero because, quite simply, it's fun. That's a quality a lot of people don;t associate with heavy music, but remember - Napalm Death, Minor Threat and the Stooges were all out first and foremost to have a good time.
And what a good time this album is. I mean, if the title track doesn't make you want to jump around like a hyperactive five-year-old, then there's something wrong with you. That combination of anger and good vibes runs through the entire album - unlike original anarcho-punks Crass, who just preached, Increase the Pressure is as much a party as a political broadcast. If I'd been born 25 years earlier, Conflict would have been the band of my adolescence - they show that protest music doesn't have to be some over-earnest Woody Guthrie wannabe (Leon Rosselsson, take note). Like all good punk bands, Conflict combined righteous fury with genuinely enjoyable music - and that, dear readers, is what grindcore and all other punk derivatives are about.