DE GROOT, GRINDPADGELUIDEN!
The phenomenon called Grindcore completely passed me by. I saw Heresy in 1986 and I didn't like it. When Napalm Death arrived on the scene I thought they were just a joke. In hindsight I think I never gave it a chance, I simply didn't want to like it. Maybe it was because this particular bastard son of Hardcore caught on at a time I was getting away from HC, into 70's and 60's music. Or maybe I was already too familiar with Grindcore's two main ingredients: ultra-fast "steak-cutting" style drumming and The Grunt. As early as 1982, local heroes Blitzkrieg played at grindcore speed. I sorta looked up to them, quite literally as they were all big, tall (and big-haired) guys. They were "Crass punks" who thought they had some pretty serious stuff to get off their chest (but hey, so was I, back then). Their Complete Disarmament LP from 1983 doesn't hold up that well after two dozen years; the ultra-fast tempos often send them flying off the rails, and the tone-deaf singing gets tiresome after a while. But it still establishes them as pioneers in the steak-cutting er... steaks.
One of the first singers to introduce the Neanderthal "undecipherable at any speed" grunt was Hans of Amsterdam's Mornington Crescent. I remember people seriously didn't know if "Possession", their EP's opening track, should be played at 33 or 45 rpm! Mornington Crescent didn't play a lot, and I vaguely recall they were deemed "politically incorrect" by some of the scene's more left-wing elements. But apart from the fact Hans was nicknamed Heinrich, I never noticed anything "wrong" about him when he tried out as a singer for my band Gepopel back in '85. I wanted to concentrate on my guitar playing (as the saying goes...) and he wanted to give it a try. The first song we practiced was In Our Hands; we did the instrumental intro, and then instead of my "baby-voice" (courtesy Tony Nitwit) this earthshaking roar comes in! I remember falling about laughing, unable to continue playing the rest of the song. It sounded great (I wish we'd recorded it), alas, 6 weeks later we'd imploded and it all came to nothing.
Anyway, behold the true roots of Grindcore:
Mornington Crescent - Possession
Mornington Crescent - Dying In The Street
Mornington Crescent - In Bed
Blitzkrieg - System Needs War
Blitzkrieg - Dankbaar
Blitzkrieg - Wat Ben Je Dom
Blitzkrieg - Val
(All songs 1983)
posted by Niels at 17:21
12 Comments:
thanx a lot :-)
"crust" is a shitty term while hard core - punk défines all of this easily
ik ben van mijn stoel gevallen van het lachen om het laatste stuk. en blitzkrieg dat vliegt idd voornamelijk de rails uit.
Mornington Crescent is echt te gek. kende niet alles van wat hier gepost is. draai het op repeat!
DAMN!, great fucking band! MC is one of thee best along with the almighty NOG WATT(!) & Gepopel. LONG LIVE AMSTERDAMN! Great blog man. Keep the Updates Coming!...yes, i am high. BITOUSHA!
Just in case you were serious about that, niels: These bands were not all "roots" of grindcore.
Just semi-kidding there, Erich. I was just talking about two Grindcore "ingredients" anyway. I always regarded Grindcore more as a Metal subgenre than punk, and since I don't know shit about metal, there must be a bunch of seminal protogrinders I don't know about. (Fortunately, there's your genre-busting blog to educate me)
Grindcore was in fact a crossover thing, really. So the HC "roots" are definately there, but to us, bands like SIEGE (well, a one-of-a-kind-band) were the main inspiration. To me, personally speaking, bands like the NEOS, PANDEMONIUM or LÄRM were important too, but the two mentioned were kinda "regular", traditional bands, methinks.
more obscure holland hardcore please! thank you!
Hi...interesting post...
I'm Nic - one of the 2 founder members of Napalm Death (back in 1982)...I left the band at the end of 1986 after recording the first side of the first album...
'Grindcore' as we defined it in late 1985/early 1986 was influenced by:
SIEGE - the intensity of the playing, combined with the politicised lyrics...
DISCHARGE - riffs...
CHAOS UK - riffs...
RATTUS - vocal style...
UNITED MUTATION - vocal style...
GISM - vocal style...
Various Japanese thrash bands - vocal style...
HELLHAMMER / CELTIC FROST - slow metallic riffs...
DEATHSTRIKE - drum style...
THROBBING GRISTLE / WHITEHOUSE - noise...
SWANS - slow grinding of the bass...
We also liked bands who played at a faster tempo such as Gang Green, The Neos, and Larm...
and we liked the noisy abrasive approach of bands like Asylum, Disorder, Pandemonium, Rapt, Kaaos...
We were coming squarely from the 'Punk' side (rather than 'metal') as we had grown up with punk, particularly the 'Anarcho Punk' bands and the thrash of the early 1980's...
We became interested in metal around 1984 and incorporated elements of it into the sound, largely for the slower riffs (the bands became more metal as time went on, which is one of the main reasons why I left the band)...
I've been watching the blog for a while: I've always loved Dutch punk and hardcore, so it's great to see what you're posting...
Hi Nic,
I didn't know Napalm Death existed as far back as '82! I think you mentioned earlier you were covering a Rondos song; that would be interesting to hear! Some of the bands you mention were big favourites of mine as well, like Siege and of course Dutch stuff like Pandemonium; the United Mutation tracks on the '82 "Mixed Nuts Don't Crack" sampler are amazing, ever heard those? I always thought Rudimentary Peni was a big influence, both on my first band (Gepopel) and on the "sinister" chord structures used in grindcore.
But to get back to my "criticism" of the whole Grindcore thing: I think something got lost when punk sloppiness gave way to the hermetic Metal approach. It's also the sound; I just happen to like open, mid-range sounds, like garage/70's punk guitars, ambient drums, shouty vocals; the opposite of the "steamroller" sound Grindcore came up with in the mid-80's.
there are countless bands who people say are the true "originators" or "prototype" of grindcore, for example impulse manslaughter from chicago, or repulsion from michigan.
there are for certain, however, countless bands of genres beyond just hardcore punk and thrash/speed metal that helped influence grindcore.
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