When listening to any grindcore band, with lyrics in hand, you cannot help but notice the political themes which pervade the genre.
After all, grindcore is almost directly a derivative of crust punk, hardcore punk and thrash in the 1980’s — both of which were heavily politically-motivated genres as well. Many will point to Napalm Death, one of the main innovators in grindcore and see their use of political themes in their lyrics across nearly all of their albums. Some will even go so far as to tell you “grindcore is politics.”
But why is it that other innovators in grind, such as Repulsion, opted to maintain the “dark” themes that pervaded death metal (and would influence later “goregrind” creators Carcass)? After all, death metal and grindcore are so closely related, that not even lyrical themes can be the only criteria that set the two apart.
Perhaps the later grindcore artists saw the use of their music as political propaganda — and its clear intent to manipulate — as a detractor to their music as an artform and the overall experience they wished to express.
In theory, fans would become attracted to the music solely because of its political motivations, and not due to the music itself. It’s easy to nod your head to rhythmic music, even if it’s very noisy and unappealing, if it means instant inclusion into a social group. A leftist vegan grind band probably would’ve been considered “original” and “unique” decades ago, if the punks hadn’t done it before, and if the hippies hadn’t done it even further back.
While it would be great to get more people together to be politically active through music thing for an activist cause, political representation is highly unbalanced; grindcore bands tend only to support staunch modern leftist/democratic ideas, as remnants of the political motivations of the bands that influenced them before. And as I said before, it can potentially detract from the music itself — propaganda is not often seen as art. Bands that can be seen as overly preachy can be a huge turnoff to many.
Perhaps subtlety is the best recipe — a special recipe laced with politics that goes down unnoticed with the music, even with music that is as attention-grabbing and imposing as grind, it can’t hurt to be a little more subtle in approach.
In truth, politics lose their value because they are discussed so much on television, in schools, at work, and anywhere else. Ask anyone who once considered themselves a part of the punk/crust subculture. It helps to be politically aware, but both politics and music (or any artform, for that matter) lose any other value they had to begin with when they are deliberately mixed together, unless they are used sparingly or expressed in an indirect fashion, the latter being difficult to do successfully.
What is often seen as art is a truthful re-interpretation of reality. “Goregrind,” as crafted by the masterminds behind Carcass during the band’s early years, was not as politically-motivated, even though the musicians in particular were alumni of some highly politically-motivated bands — Bill Steer, once a guitarist of Napalm Death, and Jeffrey Walker, a former bassist of UK underground crust punk band Electro Hippies.
The idea behind Carcass’ music was to pair repulsive themes with repulsive sounds. Looking at that formula, it becomes easy to understand why you wouldn’t want to pair repulsive sounds with politics. With something as important as politics, you don’t want to associate it with theatrical horror.
But, perhaps Carcass’ music was still socially or politically motivated, but reinterpreted as allegory. One could view Carcass’ lyrics as a social critique, past or present, about the sickest things that latch onto society’s underbelly, where we can hardly see their horrors:
Grimly I dig up the turfs
To remove the corrupted stiffs
Trying to contain my excitement
As I desecrate graveolent crypts…
Fingers claw at coffin lids
Eager festal exhumation
Hugging your wry, festered remains
With posthumous joy and elation…
Body snatched, freshly interred
Whatever takes my fancy
To satisfy my gratuitous pica
My culinary necromancy…
Scrutinised then brutalized
My forensic inquisition is fulfilled
My recipe is now your epitaph
Be it fried, boiled or grilled…
I devour the pediculous corpse
Whetting my palate as I exhume
The festering stench of rotting flesh
Makes me drool as I consume…
Caskets I grate
My larder’s a grave
I’m sickly obsessed (with the badly decomposed)
Rotten remains I eat
Purulent meat
What a funeral feast (putrid reek)
Weeping tissue is stripped
Pus dribbles from my lips
Pulverising this pustular chaff
Butchering up morgues makes me laugh…
Ulcerated flesh I munch
Rotting corpses are my lunch
On bones I love to crunch (on the badly decomposed)
Shrivelled innards I lick
The corpse’s head I kick
Crumbling shreds I pick (eat the stiffs)
(Solo: morbid melody for the deceased with salt to taste)
Rancid flesh, slaughter the dead
- Caskets exhumed…
Corpses disenterred, graves disturbed
- To consume…
Bereaved relatives are not amused
As on their dear departed I feverishly consume…
Slavering worms, decomposure burns
Corrosion born, as bacteria gnaw
Desecrate…
Precipiate…(from the muddy grave)
Macerate…
Eviscerate…
Caskets I grate
My larder’s a grave
I’m sickly obsessed (with the badly decomposed)
Rotten remains I eat
Purulent meat
What a funeral feast (putrid reek)
Saponified fats, nibbled by rats
-Freshly exhumed…
Deep down six feet is where I like to eat
-Human flesh to consume…
The lyrics for their song Exhume to Consume were basically a very articulated, poetic description of a psychopath with a penchant for necrophagia: A subtle call to the audience to support vegan/vegetarianism (at least according to the band). There isn’t any inherent political themes here, but it is just one gross-out of a song for the sake of showing the listener that things like this aren’t outside the realm of reality.
Carcass injected this style with a grotesque, ironic sense of humor which, like the Misfits before them, turned 1950s style rock music into a parodic horror suggesting a society of pleasant illusions hiding a corrupt and more literal reality.
The lyrics are almost laughable in a sense, until the dreadful soundtrack that accompanies the evocative lyrics reminds you that it isn’t. Carcass contrasted the absurd with the imminent.
A blast beat (sometimes written as “blastbeat”) is commonly characterized by successive or coinciding snare/bass drum hits, often accented with cymbals, crashes, hi-hat, (etc.), that give the music a very choppy rhythm at moderate tempos, and almost takes on a flowing and very “un-percussive” sonic personality of its own at higher tempos. The very nature of the blast beat almost necessitates the use of a double bass drum pedal setup, for greater efficiency.
The modern blast beat seems to have its origins in thrash and crossover; most sources point to the Dirty Rotten Imbeciles track No Sense, where such a beat is used sporadically.
Cryptic Slaughter, an oft-cited influence to many bands, and an early user of blast beats, incorporated fast, alternating snare-kick patterns into many of their songs.
The energetic blast beat evolved out of hardcore, crossover, and thrash bands, and worked its way into grindcore, along with its sister genres powerviolence, death metal and black metal.
Mike Smith, drummer of NY death metal band Suffocation, discusses blasting
Although the blast beat is criticized as “soulless” rhythm-less filler, talented drummers who opt to use it often add their own unique and even complex variants of the beat. The beat is also used by more advanced musicians to accentuate more foundational riffs. This can often be observed in works by pivotal grind and death metal bands from the late 80’s-early 90’s.
The beat is so effective at what it does that it has proliferated many “extreme music” fringe genres. Parody bands (such as Job For A Cowboy and Carnifex) utilize the blast beat as a neat fill for all of their dance songs, in between breakdowns.
Grindcore dot org will strive to promote the listening and enjoyment of grindcore as a musical artform — Despite first impressions, it’s not just “unintelligible noise”, and there is a lot to learn from the music. That’s probably why you’re here!
This site will include the history, origins and motives behind grindcore as a genre, key musicians and bands, and up-and-coming musicians.
We’ll strive to keep everything as simple as possible, but maximize the information we can give you to help you stay informed.
After all, grindcore is almost directly a derivative of crust punk, 
Recent Comments