grindcore

Grindcore, as such, was developed during the mid-1980s in the United Kingdom by Napalm Death, a group who emerged from the anarcho-punk scene in Birmingham, England.^[28] While their first recordings were in the vein of Crass,^[29] they eventually became associated with crust punk.^[30] The group began to take on increasing elements of thrashcore, post-punk, and power electronics.^[31] The group also went through many changes in personnel.^[32] A major shift in style took place after Mick Harris became the group's drummer.^[33] Punk historian Ian Glasper indicates that "For several months gob-smacked audiences weren't sure whether Napalm Death were actually a serious band any longer, such was the undeniable novelty of their hyper-speed new drummer."^[34] Albert Mudrian's research suggests that the name "grindcore" was coined by Harris. When asked about coming up with the term, Harris said:

Grindcore came from "grind", which was the only word I could use to describe Swans after buying their first record in '84. Then with this new hardcore movement that started to really blossom in '85, I thought "grind" really fit because of the speed so I started to call it grindcore.^[35]

Other sources contradict Harris' claim. In a Spin magazine article written about the genre, Steven Blush declares that "the man often credited" for dubbing the style grindcore was Shane Embury, Napalm Death's bassist since 1987. Embury offers his own account of how the grindcore "sound" came to be:

As far as how this whole sound got started, we were really into Celtic Frost, Siege – which is a hardcore band from Boston – a lot of hardcore and death-metal bands, and some industrial-noise bands like the early Swans. So, we just created a mesh of all those things. It's just everything going at a hundred miles per hour, basically.^[36]

Carcass, an early UK grindcore group, in 1989.

Earache Records founder Digby Pearson concurs with Embury, saying that Napalm Death "put hardcore and metal through an accelerator."^[37] Pearson, however, said that grindcore "wasn't just about the speed of [the] drums, blast beats, etc." He claimed that "it actually was coined to describe the guitars - heavy, downtuned, bleak, harsh riffing guitars [that] 'grind', so that's what the genre was described as, by the musicians who were its innovators [and] proponents."^[38]
While abrasive, grindcore achieved a measure of mainstream visibility. New Musical Express featured Napalm Death on their cover in 1988, declaring them "the fastest band in the world."^[39] As James Hoare, deputy editor of Terrorizer, writes:

It can be argued that no strand of extreme metal (with a touch of hardcore and post-punk tossed in for flavouring), has had so big an impact outside the gated community of patch-jackets and circle-pits as grindcore has in the UK. [...] the genre is a part of the British musical experience.^[40]

Napalm Death's seismic impact inspired other British grindcore groups in the 1980s, among them Extreme Noise Terror,^[30] Carcass and Sore Throat.^[41] Extreme Noise Terror, from Ipswitch, formed in 1984.^[42] With the goal of becoming "the most extreme hardcore punk band of all time,"^[43] the group took Mick Harris from Napalm Death in 1987.^[44] Ian Glasper describes the group as "pissed-off hateful noise with it roots somewhere between early Discharge and Disorder, with [vocalists] Dean [Jones] and Phil [Vane] pushing their trademark vocal extremity to its absolute limit."^[45] In 1991, the group collaborated with the acid house group The KLF, appearing onstage with the group at the Brit Awards in 1992.^[46] Carcass released Reek of Putrefaction in 1988, which John Peel declared his favorite album of the year despite its very poor production (Mudrian 2004, p. 132). The band's focus on gore and anatomical decay, lyrically and in sleeve artwork, inspired the goregrind subgenre.^[47]
In the subsequent decade, two pioneers of the style became increasingly commercially viable. According to Nielsen Soundscan, Napalm Death sold 367,654 units between May 1991 and November 2003, while Carcass sold 220,374 units in the same period.^[48] The inclusion of Napalm Death's "Twist the Knife (Slowly)" on the Mortal Kombat soundtrack brought the band much greater visibility, as the compilation scored a Top 10 position in the Billboard 200 chart^[49] and went platinum in less than a year.^[50] The originators of the style have expressed some ambivalence regarding the subsequent popularity of grindcore. Pete Hurley, the guitarist of Extreme Noise Terror, declared that he had no interest in being remembered as a pioneer of this style: "'grindcore' was a legendarily stupid term coined by a hyperactive kid from the West Midlands, and it had nothing to do with us whatsoever. ENT were, are, and - I suspect - always will be a hardcore punk band... not a grindcore band, a stenchcore band, a trampcore band, or any other sub-sub-sub-core genre-defining term you can come up with."^[51]Lee Dorian of Napalm Death indicated that "Unfortunately, I think the same thing happened to grindcore, if you want to call it that, as happened to punk rock - all the great original bands were just plagiarised by a billion other bands who just copied their style identically, making it no longer original and no longer extreme."<sup>[52]

source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grindcore</sup>