Friday, March 14, 2008

When did grindcore jump the shark?

Just so you know, this is going to be one of those posts where an old guy complains about how things aren't the same anymore and he is scared, confused and angry about it. So if that's not your thing, please close your browser now.

In any case, as far as when grindcore jumped the shark, I'm going to go with 1998. So yes, I am a decade late in writing this, which means I'm old, but we've already established that. But back on topic, 1998 was when bands like Locust introduced the sweet sounds of grind to skinny kids with black hair, and it was all down hill from there.

Grindcore band members then:


When I was a kid, grindcore was for weirdos that, in the words of Chris Dodge, spent most of their time watching porn in their mom's basement and writing angry letters to Maximum Rock N Roll. And that's the way we liked it. Bands like Nuclear Death, Gut, Hemdale, 7 Minutes of Nausea, Meatshits, Malicious Hate and Excruciating Terror were by losers and weirdos for losers and weirdos. Someone in a grindcore band back then was probably a high school dropout with rapist glasses that worked as a drill press operator at a machine shop. Nowadays most people in "grindcore" bands are 19 year olds with MySpace hair.

Grindcore band members now:


I know you can't expect things to stay the same forever, and I wouldn't want them to. For example, it would be a tragedy if Cianide was still a band. But I wish that grindcore had the same kind of gritty, scumbag appeal that it used to. Even stalwarts like Anal Cunt have sold out. Did you know that their albums have had lyrics and music for over a decade now?! What happened to the old days of the 5,643 song 7".

I tell you, it's a sign of the times.

25 comments:

  1. For the most part I agree, but there are still some damn good grind bands out there:

    Insect Warfare
    Gadget
    Rotten Sound
    Machetazo

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  2. about two years ago i interviewed chris from autopsy. he still works at a shipping warehouse, and told me how hard it was to get time off to record. THAT is metal. i don't want to hear music played by well groomed kids with prospects in life that include anything that isn't third shift labor. that's just not how metal (certainly grind) is made.

    okay. going to maiden now.

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  3. Bullshit! I get where you geeks are coming from but you're wrong! You pedophile yuppie shit-suckers sound like my dad belly-achin' over the fact that Deep Purple ain't around anymore.

    It's business as usual for all forms of "underground" music to get attacked by lame nerds with stupid haircuts. Fuck them.

    I know you don't really give a rat's ass, but if you did: check out Cyness from Germany. It's balls to the chin grindcore hell played by drunk scumbag punks! Or maybe Sayyadina from Sweden - hyper fast weirdo freaked out grindcore made by ugly old fuckers! If you can listen to the first few 324 EPs, anything by Machetazo or Insect Warfare, etc - and STILL say grindcore is dead, etc - then you've fucking jumped the shark, fruitcake!

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  4. i like insect warfare a lot, but they don't have the creepy scumbag feel of, say, the meatshits demos.

    but yeah, you're totally correct- i am exactly like your dad complaining about deep purple.

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  5. sergeant, you and i have had this conversation before. of course there' still a lot of solid scummy grindcore out there. the problem is that now (in the last 10 years) there's A LOT of this pussy well educated suburban kids thinking they are scary and scummy. they are not. i want my grindcore to smell bad. i want my grindcore to be grindcore. i saw excruciating terror in fiesta grande in 93 and there were all these PC fags complaining because one the ET songs in the CD was sexist. of course it was! ET were dirty shitcakes! well, after that, im sure a lot of these suburban kids in berkley went home and formed their own "grindcore" bands with very deep personal lyrics.

    and as far as You pedophile yuppie shit-suckers hmmm... shit-sucker, yes! pedophile, only once... but YUPPIE?! we wish any of us could afford a nice sweater, but the fact is that all of us here at MI are broke, third-rate retards with no fashion sense and shitty dead-end minimum-wage jobs. the reason most of us cant keep up with the "scene" these days has more to do with being broke and depressed, than with being old and jaded.

    that being said, 324 were gonna do a record on my label, when i still gave a shit. they are fucking brutal. there's a lot of sick shit in japan, but that does not negate the fact that there's WAY too many pretty boys pretending to be like me and my old band. WE WERE BRUTAL.

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  6. Meth, meth is what is missing from grindcore. Meatshits liked meth and it showed.

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  7. aesop, good point! i don't want to name names, but i know that many of the bands mentioned in my post personally endorse meth- and it shows!

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  8. Kill The Client rips me a new one everytime I listen to them.

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  9. music played by old dudes who don't give much a fuck sometimes proves to be very much a compliment for a band I find.

    Maybe thats why I like Watchmaker so much

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  10. music played by old dudes who don't give much a fuck sometimes proves to be very much a compliment for a band I find.

    for example, 16. one of the best bands ever.

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  11. yep, that's the world i wanna live in: where things still make sense. and grindcore bands/fans are broke, ugly and sexless. save for those who stick their meat in grannies or actual meat like liver (a true story).

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  12. does the fact that a large chunk of old school grind scum had beards go against your anti beard tirades?

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  13. does the fact that a large chunk of old school grind scum had beards go against your anti beard tirades?

    that's a good question! to me it's a question of whether the beard would make you more attractive to indie rock girls or not. if it does, you're a beardo. but if the beard makes you look like a sex offender that lives in a van by the river, it's cool.

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  14. Ahhh, even the comments are great...

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  15. but indie rock girls are kind of cute. probably less diseased than most punk or metal chicks.

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  16. Supposing there was one of those association tests where you're asked to say the first thing that immediately pops into your mind when a word is said to you and the word was grindcore. I definately picture some dirty looking fellas, one absolutely wearing a Dawn of the Dead shirt, from the American midwest jamming in a basement ala Impetigo or Repulsion. That or the dude from Nasum getting washed out to sea. Strange considering that I really love Nasum's first two albums.

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  17. regarding beards:

    much like mullets two years ago, not all were created equal. you had your fashion mullets back then (some fashion dopes still rock these, ugh), and then you had the guy who fixed the elevator in my old work building. this guy was in his forties, had crazy teeth (tiny teeth that looked like grains of rice) with a real raggin mullet down to his waist. this guy communicated in grunts, and his left thumb magically sat somewhere around his wrist, for some reason. if you think that that guy's mullet was the same kind of mullet than the guy who wears those gold stretch pants from american apparel, you are nuts. not all beards are created equal.

    regarding girls:

    someone said that "indie rock girls are kinda cute". if anyone in impetigo would hear you say that, they'd probably ask you to repeat yourself ten times. they wouldnt understand. "girls"? "indie"? they were busy listening to audio recordings of gore films while they worked at a print shop...the concept of women, much less indie rock girls was largely beyond them. i know i'm speaking for the guys..but based on my musical past i can tell you that this is a safely accurate statement to make. look at the guy all the way to the left in this picture. do you think he had that beard for the sake of girls? look at those glasses. come on.

    http://www.spirit-of-metal.com/les%20goupes/I/Impetigo/pics/1.jpg

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  18. like i said, rapist glasses are one of the easiest ways to spot a true metaller

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  19. I definately picture some dirty looking fellas, one absolutely wearing a Dawn of the Dead shirt, from the American midwest jamming in a basement ala Impetigo or Repulsion

    exactly

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  20. I would say the blue hair guy is just as tasteless and creepy as the other old standard, just in a different, worse way - he chose this, the other guy didn't!!!

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  21. Digital cameras, Myspace & Paxil have unfortunately faggot-ized many of today's young people, resulting in the heavily "accessorized" little image-whores we see today. I don't blame 'em, though. At least they're trying.

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  22. faggot-ized <-- that is an fucking brilliant term!!

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  23. Thx, 666, I think it's in the public domain now. I also forgot to mention aspartame.

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  24. Random: But on the "beard" tip, this morning on the way to work a "beard metal" looking guy drove past me and his Volvo had a license plate that said something to the effect of "SWDSH MTL", which I presume to mean "Swedish Metal".

    I hope he was listening to, like, the fifth Carnal Forge album or something "top shelf" like that. (Sarcasm.)

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  25. ANAL CUNT was the real downhill...even if I think that "From enslavement to obliteration" was the beginning of the end.

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