Grindcore. If you’re a fan, you understand the music’s visceral appeal – everything as fast and heavy as possible, or as grind masters Brutal Truth once put it in the intro to 1997’s Sounds Of The Animal Kingdom, “Still not loud enough, still not fast enough.” If you’re not a fan, you might be curious what the hell all this noise is about and what exactly the appeal is. If you fall into either category, Toronto filmmaker Doug Brown’s Slave To The Grind is definitely worth your time.
Taken from footage shot over the last few years, Slave To The Grind is an entertaining and informative look at the origins and development of grindcore (a fusion of metal and punk) from the early days of originators Napalm Death and Repulsion to the beginnings of subgenres like goregrind and mincecore and on into the current state of grind.
The film features many notable figures in the genre, with the likes of Repulsion’s Scott Carlson, Earache Records founder Digby Pearson, Mel Mongeon and Topon Das of Fuck The Facts and the members of Agathocles all making memorable appearances throughout. It’s often the drummers though who make for the most entertaining interviewees, with Brutal Truth/Total Fucking Destruction’s Rich Hoak, AxCx’s Tim Morse, Terrorizer/Morbid Angel drummer Pete Sandoval and Dave Witte (who’s played in too many bands to mention here) coming up with some of the more memorable moments – not surprising when you consider the importance of drums and the blastbeat in particular to grindcore. And though he’s not interviewed in the film, a special mention must go out to Repulsion drummer Dave Hollingshead who, as Carlson explains, the band discovered after reading an article about him and some others being caught robbing graves. That’s pretty metal.
While I’m sure some grind aficionados might complain that certain bands or elements of the genre may have been overlooked or underrepresented, the film delivers a very thorough and entertaining look at the genre. And if you’re still jonesing for a deeper dive into grindcore lore (grindlore?), Brown did mention in the post-film Q&A at the Toronto screening that there was something like 1000 plus hours of footage shot so I’m sure that when the DVD is eventually released, there will be much more to discover.
Slave To The Grind will be going on a bit of a world tour over the next couple of months, Check it out if it’s playing in your city.