The Dirty (Baker’s) Dozen: Number 13 Anal Cunt

Ah the countdown list. No one is immune. There is a secret (or rather obvious) collector nerd hunkering in every serious metal head. I have no shame when I say endlessly rearranging my albums is the joy of my existence. Some go the alphabetical route, but I prefer filing by genre, subgenre, band and then year of release. It’s the grouping of bands that brings me the most joy.
But even beyond endlessly rearranging our intricately filed collections, metal nerds love to argue who was the greatest. In that spirit G&P brings you this list of the 13 greatest, most groundbreaking or just otherwise exemplary bands that created, shaped and continue to prod grind forward. Why 13 instead of 10, you ask? I will not be a slave to the cheap numerology of round numbers. That and I just couldn’t bring myself to cut anybody from the list. So let’s do this thing.

Anal Cunt
Morbid Florist
Relapse

1992

This twenty minute burst, recorded as a teaser as they shopped around for a label, epitomizes early Anal Cunt, who boasted the most patently offensive moniker in metal prior to the advent of “Christ raping black metal.”
Hate or tolerate loudmouth frontman Seth Putnam, at their height, A.C. were grindcore’s ultimate reductio ad absurdum, pushing the genre’s speed and brevity to humorous extremes with suites of mini songs that featured few or no lyrics. The piss-take humor, with titles like “Some Songs,” “Some More Songs,” and “Even More Songs” pierced the pomposity of grind’s forerunners in hit and run bursts of unintelligible noise. Add in a Siege medley and a cover of EMF’s now-forgotten but totally inescapable in 1991 “Unbelievable” and A.C. reigned supreme as grind’s comedian princes.
Where full length debut Everyone Should be Killed was a patience-trying hour long, this micro-album encapsulates A.C.’s improv blur-core ferocity without overstaying its welcome.
Unfortunately, the band would quickly slide off the rails. Their later attempts at being haha-funny were just, well, gay.