BRUTAL DEATH METAL - GRIND

In the beginning of the last decade of the 20th century, a new musical phenomenon took life from the very streets of the western cities. The influence of heavy thrash bands such as Slayer, Sodom, Dark Angel and more, spawned a new branch of people interested in the most fearful and controversial argument: DEATH. In a while, bands seemed to begin to compete at 'the world's heaviest band' game, and, as any game, there was rules to follow. The guitars were so heavily distorted, drums seemed jackhammers, and vocals were growled/screamed out as voices of a demonic soul. At the roots of it all, Death, from Florida USA, the creation of guitarist/singer Chuck Schuldiner, formerly member of the first real death metal band Mantas. Death's debut maintained the promises, and caused a musical earthquake worldwide. For few years, the boom of death metal caused a large amount of bands to recycle the sounds and purposes of the earlier bands Death, Morbid Angel and Obituary. But an evolution has to come. The real first band that crossed the boundaries was Cannibal Corpse that in the year 1990 released the debut Eaten Back To Life. For the first time ever, the new term defining their music was Brutal Death.

The peculiarity of the interests about the splatter-gore b-movies, the extreme attitude and a good dose of polemics/advertising in the genre newspapers and 'zines of that period, helped out Cannibal Corpse to transform themselves, in a short period, from underground band to blockbuster reality. The explosive sounds and the extremely growling 'vocals' of Chris Barnes, accompanied by a vast utilization of gore images signed by Vincent Locke, made Cannibal Corpse a real legend of that period in extreme music. As seen in cinema, people have a strange taste in splattergore imagery, so , even in death metal, or better in brutal death, the stereotype was consolidated by all the new bands that tried to come out from the massive production of death metal it that period. Even older than Cannibal Corpse was another American band, Autopsy. They were really hard and slow in some parts, when in others really fast and chaotic. Band's leader, drummer and singer Chris Reifert was in Schuldiner's Death, before deciding of building up a personal project. Together with guitarist Danny Coralles and bassist Josh Barohn, Reifert built up a new act more near to the ultra violent imagery and lyrics. While Death was abandoning the gore thematic release after release, Autopsy seemed to get more extreme. Albums like the 1990 debut Severed Survival, through 1991 Mental Funeral to 1992 Acts of the Unspeakable, this last with one of the most violent and perverted cover, representing a sort of infernal valley where tiny yellow bodies are forced/delighted to suffer the most perverse tortures imaginable. Never a title has been better represented by a cover.

These were just acts of the unspeakable. It is doubtful the most extreme end of the musical spectrum has ever possessed such a transfixing dichotomy as Brutal Truth. The band progressed with boundless enthusiasm through the primal fury of traditional grindcore and hardcore punk. They attacked suffocating city life on the edge of the 21st century and its media noise overload with the bare-knuckled forcefulness of passion, conviction and a simple love for playing music. They created chaos with a surgical precision and finesse unmatched by their peers. The best bands in the genre are nowadays the powerful Incantation (whose albums Onward to Golgotha and The Infernal Storm are a must have in every death metal fan discography), Mortician, the polish Decapitated and the Swedish Regurgitate (featuring Peter Stjärnvind, drummer in the great Entombed). In this moment, the death metal scene is still evolving, but so much people are continuing to play hard and 'underground'. Bands such as Skinless and Gorguts, with their last works, are trying to get the 'spirit' of death metal back as the touch given from the earlier bands. The real 'progressive' minds in death/brutal/grind are nowadays Dillinger Escape Plan, Nasum, Cephalic Carnage, Locust and Agoraphobic Nosebleed.

Nowadays, the brutal death metal reality counts millions of bands, cloning some way and renewing in some other all the 'elder' productions such as Cannibal Corpse. The main difference is that, today, bands are extremizing the concepts, the graphics (real gore pictures are the disgusting substitution to the earlier childish drawings, often really ridiculous, expecially for the self produced issues of underground bands), and obviously music. Where Cannibal Corpse and Autopsy never forced their sound in a maelstrom of speed, (even if they can't be considered slow bands), today speed is really excessive for most bands. Mortician for example, use a drum machine to record their albums, and the result is ultra pounding mid-tempos and chirurgically precise and clear grind speed. But also other bands, without the use of processors reach the top speed in the genre. But, apart from the kind of production whose media improved drastically in the last five years, the unbelievable still must be said. Cannibal Corpse's singer, Chris Barnes, really seemed to reach the more perverse and low pitched vocals possible, resulting like a flatus vocis of a damned soul between a real distorted and noisy storm. But something even more extreme and sick can be foud in the singers of bands like Mortician, Regurgitate, Haemorrhage and Gore Beyond Necropsy literally human stuck sinks. Today, the future seems to belong to bands as Nasum, Cephalic Carnage, Dillinger Escape Plan, Locust and Agoraphobic Nosebleed (take a look to the Carcass tribute CD Requiem Of Revulsion), just to say few names, wich seems to be more open minded, with their brutalgrindcore fury, fusion jazz overtures and acid keyboards atmospheres.