Goregrind

The grindhouse projector

A grindhouse projector wired straight into a distortion pedal, goregrind runs the blast beat and the downtuned riff under a voice so pitch-shifted and gurgled that every word drowns before it reaches the listener, and the words were never the point. Riffs lean on groove as much as on speed. The bass tone is thick enough to smother the guitar, the snare cracks through the murk, and a sample lifted from a horror film often opens the track. The effect is closer to a midnight movie than to a manifesto. It is meant to be.

The imagery is a convention and a costume, borrowed from medical textbooks, forensic manuals and Italian horror cinema, and it is played as theatre rather than taken as a creed. Recorded in January 1990 and released by Wild Rags that November, Impetigo's Ultimo Mondo Cannibale stitched its songs together with samples from Lucio Fulci films, and its original cover had to be pulled as too graphic. The shock was the whole act. The label blinked first.

Since the 2000s many goregrind bands have swapped the morgue for the bathroom and the party. Gutalax, from the Czech Republic, calls its music gore 'n' roll and turns its shows into carnivals of beach balls, toilet rolls and confetti. The Obscene Extreme festival, held at Trutnov since 1999, gives the scene a home every summer. Pornogrind splits off the same trunk. The humour is as loud as the guitars.

Inside the goregrind lab

A splatter film offshoot of grindcore, the style keeps its brevity, its punk looseness and its blast beat. What it drops is the slogan. What it adds is death metal weight and a sound built for murk rather than clarity, so that guitar, bass and voice often melt into one churning mass. Carcass took the first step in Liverpool. Everyone after them followed a different trail of samples.

The goregrind scenes spread thin and far. Illinois gave it Impetigo, Madrid gave it Haemorrhage, whose Emetic Cult arrived on Morbid Records in 1995, and San Jose gave it Exhumed, who named their 1998 debut after the hybrid they played, gore metal, death metal speed welded to grind filth. Japan answered with Butcher ABC. The Netherlands and Sweden built crews of their own. The lab never closed.

It is most often confused with its neighbours in the low register. Brutal death metal and slam share the gurgle and the tuning, but they build longer, denser songs and seldom reach for a horror sample. Pornogrind shares almost everything except the subject, trading the pathology lab for the bedroom. Deathgrind shares the attack and sheds the costume. The borders are thin, and the sound is unmistakable.

Where to start

Six goregrind albums, from the Earache second record that fixed the template to the Japanese crew still carrying it, each one a different reel threaded on the same projector.

• Carcass Symphonies of Sickness Earache, 1989

  The Liverpool trio's second album, longer and more complex songs than the debut, pitch-shifted voices trading lines over riffs already bending toward death metal.

• Impetigo Ultimo Mondo Cannibale Wild Rags, 1990

  The Illinois debut built on Fulci samples and a withdrawn first cover, and a major influence on every goregrind band that reached for a film reel.

• Haemorrhage Emetic Cult Morbid Records, 1995

  The Madrid band's debut, released in May 1995, riffs thick with the early Carcass sound and a pathology lecture's worth of song titles.

• Exhumed Gore Metal Relapse, 1998

  The San Jose debut that gave a hybrid its name, death metal riffing driven at grindcore velocity with a high voice and a low one trading blows.

• Gutalax Shit Happens! Rotten Roll Rex, 2015

  The Czech party machine's second album, sixteen tracks of groove and gurgle with guest spots and the toilet humour turned all the way up.

• Butcher ABC North of Hell Obliteration Records, 2017

  The Japanese veterans' first full album of their own, over two decades after they began, pitch-shifted vocals riding tight, pounding grind.