VARIOUS ARTISTS (GENERAL) — Grindcrusher (review)

VARIOUS ARTISTS (GENERAL) — Grindcrusher album cover

Album · 1989 · Grindcore

5/5 · 2018-03-31
Vim Fuego

This shouldn’t have worked. Imagine a mainstream death metal label releasing a compilation with saxophone abuse, lo-fi hardcore, vomited goregrind, ropey demos, comedy thrash, keyboard and piano led tracks, avant-garde experimentalism, industrial weirdness, oh yeah, and a bit of death metal. It looks like a big mash up of unrelated and unrelatable genres. And the cover. The gaudy eye bleeding high contrast artwork looks like it would cause migraines in the same manner as the music.

But you know, this odd compilation of unknown, fringe, and underground bands with several different tracklists, and different versions of the tacky artwork has become one of the most important compilations in the development of extreme metal as we know it. This album is a legend. This is “Grindcrusher”.

For an album that’s supposed to be so influential on the death metal scene, there’s not actually a lot of death metal on it. Yes, there’s death metal royalty in the forms of the already legendary Morbid Angel, and the emerging Entombed, the Morbid Angel-related sci-fi death weirdos Nocturnus, and the highly influential Carnage, which evolved into Dismember, and spun off members into Carcass, Arch Enemy, General Surgery, Therion, Dark Tranquillity, and a few others too. But that was it.

But wait, you say, what about… Bolt Thrower, Terrorizer, Napalm Death, Carcass, Repulsion... Stick your little labels on them and call ‘em what you fucking like, but they were considered grindcore at the time. So was Godflesh, Heresy, Unseen Terror, and even Filthy Christians, and perhaps Sore Throat. Hellbastard? Intense Degree? Stick some sort of –core in there somewhere... But then when it came to Naked City, Old Lady Drivers, Cadaver, Sweet Tooth, Mighty Force, and Spazztic Blurr... Just throw up your hands and say fuck. No one bothered trying to figure out what to call the music, it was just there to be listened to and enjoyed.

It’s useless trying to sum up this record track by track. There’s some fucking stunners, like Morbid Angel’s “Chapel Of Ghouls”, Terrorizer’s “Dead Shall Rise” and Godflesh’s industrial nightmare “Streetcleaner”. There’s a couple of historically important tracks, like Repulsion’s “Radiation Sickness” and Carnage “Malignant Epitaph”. There’s some total weirdness in Spazztic Blurr’s “He-Not-A-Home-Me-Marco”, Naked City’s “Osaka Bondage”, and Old Lady Drivers’ “Colostomy Grab-Bag”. There’s an exclusive version of Carcass’ “Exhume To Consume”, and there’s even some novelty fun, with Napalm Death’s “You Suffer”, and “Satan’s Trampoline” from the smarter than they seem Lawnmower Deth.

Hindsight is a wonderful thing. There were a couple of duds on this album. Hellbastard inexplicably never made a huge impact, and “Justly Executed” is not their strongest track. Napalm Death’s “Malicious Intent” is a bit dry. Intense Degree, Sweet Tooth, and Mighty Force had good tracks here, but never made waves beyond this. No matter, “Grindcrusher” is like metal archaeology. Some of these bands grew and evolved. Some are left here in fossil form. All need to be heard.