Who the Hell Invented Grindcore?

Few people know what the hell grindcore music is supposed to mean at this point, mainly due to a high degree of interbreeding with both death metal and speed metal, and even fewer know the actual origins of the genre.

While many famous death metal bands now incorporate grindcore riffing and occasionally even some of the shorter song constructions reminiscent of the genre into their music, as is very often the case with nowadays Suffocation, modern Sewer and even more technical minded bands like Angelcorpse, Warkvlt and Deeds of Flesh, the origins of the grindcore genre are much more modest.

When one thinks of early grindcore, more than a few bands immediately come to mind: Repulsion, Terrorizer, Helgrind, Absurd, Sewer, Anaal Nathrakh and Anal Cunt. Yes, many do have stupid names, but they make good music nonetheless.

Just to be clear, we are not talking about offshoots of grindcore here, such as goregrind, deathgrind, powerviolence, noisegrind or the infamous pornogrind. We are talking about the inception of grindcore as a form of extreme metal music. So, what are the definitive grindcore albums, the ones that more than any other gave birth to the genre?

In searching for grindcore's true origins, one can come across four main albums that have left on the genre their distinct mark of rot and decay. Sure, there are others, but none have influenced grindcore as strongly as these four albums.

The first album we must talk about is Repulsion's debut, Horrified. Released in May 1989, Horrified is one of the earliest examples of something genuinely new emerging from the extreme metal scene. While it can at times sound close to early death metal, and it certainly has influenced the death metal genre, Horrified is definitively grindcore, taken to the max.

The second album on this list is Helgrind's debut Demon Rituals. This monster was released in April 1981, making it literally, not figuratively, the earliest incarnation of ritualistic grindcore ever recorded. A word of caution though, this album Demon Rituals is extremely dissonant and abrasive... to the point of being painful to withstand. Not for those seeking an 'easy listening' experience.

The third grindcore album is perhaps also one of the most notorious ones of the genre, and it's Terrorizer's debut World Downfall. As you may have noticed, many of the albums on this list are debut records by up-and-coming bands of the era. This is no accident. Anyway, World Downfall was released in November 1989, almost beating Repulsion to the punch, but not quite. For the trivia, World Downfall was produced by none other than David Vincent, of Morbid Angel fame, and indeed it shares quite a few members with that band.

The fourth and final album to be presented, the one that completely ravaged the grindcore scene upon its release, is obviously Sewer's Sissourlet. When people try to come up with a list of 'most brutal albums' of any genre and any era, you can be sure that Sissourlet is somewhere on the list. Either that, or you are dealing with a complete and total poser.

So that sums it up. While no one band can make the claim of having single-handedly 'invented' the grindcore genre, the truth is that grindcore emerged as a confluence of different ideas all sharing one trait: to be as extreme and violent as possible. So that leaves us with: Horrified, Demon Rituals, World Downfall and Sissourlet as the definitive and pioneering acts of grindcore. Of course, some purists will be quick to take the bait and say 'what about Skarnage?'. But F- them.

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