Genre story · Hardcore
Grindcore
Hardcore and extreme metal colliding at speeds that left almost no room for a song to breathe.
Grindcore took recognizable form in the mid-1980s, with Birmingham's Napalm Death playing a crucial role in giving the sound a name and a wider audience. Elsewhere, groups including Siege and Repulsion pursued similarly extreme speed from different punk and Metal starting points. Their stories overlap but should not be reduced to a single birthplace. Tape trading, independent labels and the UK underground helped push the music across borders.
Blast beats and abrasion
Grindcore is known for extremely short songs, furious drum patterns, heavily distorted guitars and harsh vocals. The bass and guitars can almost collapse into one thick sound. Some bands emphasize Hardcore's political confrontation; others take cues from Death Metal and develop a more overtly metallic vocabulary. The genre's earliest years already contained several approaches.
Separate from powerviolence
The shared speed can be misleading. Grindcore's history is strongly tied to hardcore meeting thrash and extreme metal, while Powerviolence grew from another set of hardcore scenes and rhythmic ideas. Later bands often crossed that border, so it is worth describing the relevant recording instead of treating the names as synonyms.
Essential recordings
- 1987Napalm DeathScumThe breakthrough recording of British grindcore.
- 1989RepulsionHorrifiedRecorded 1986, released 1989. A crucial US counterpart whose delayed release complicates simple chronologies.
- 1988CarcassReek of PutrefactionAn early, abrasive step toward the death-metal-oriented end of grindcore.