You Grind…But Why?: Cloud Rat

With a musical progression that goes something like Foreigner->Def Leppard->Metallica->Dead Kennedys-> Napalm Death, I completely get where Cloud Rat’s Rorik is coming from when he describes his meandering musical history. Here’s how the promising Michigan up and comer got his grind on and what keeps him coming back.

“I grew up in a really small town (Shepherd, MI), and I wasn't surrounded by a punk/metal scene until I got into my mid/later teens and traveled to other bigger cities,” Rorik said. “My mother was in bar rock bands her whole life, but by the time I was old enough to get into music she was a devout Christian. On a tip from a friend, she ordered some tapes through some Christian distro that I can't remember, and the bands were Vengeance, Mortification, Deliverance, and Tourniquet. At the time I was only about 9 or 10 and didn't really get into the more extreme Vengeance and Mortification stuff, but the other two helped to open my eyes to heavy music (it's funny that Christian music did this, because now I'm of a very different philosophy). I heard Napalm Death for the first time when I was 13, the BBC Sessions on CD. I didn't get it yet.
“It wasn't until I heard Pig Destroyer a couple years later that I started getting into it. After that it was a rapid progression into many extreme music styles, death/grind/doom/hardcore punk/etc. I've been in metal bands, hardcore bands, and rock bands, but nothing has ever got my blood to boil like playing in grindcore bands.
"I guess that I got into grind because to me, it is the fastest, heaviest, and rawest that you can get. And on top of that, to keep it interesting (for me at least), there has to be some sort of real songwriting going on, or some quirk thrown in there that keeps it fresh. And for a style of music that is defined by absolute speed and heaviness, it's amazing how much variety there is! Also, I'm a generally calm person, but I have a lot of intense thoughts and feelings that I can only get out when I play music that is as loud, fast, heavy, and cathartic as I can possibly create.
"I sometimes question my sanity when I'm in a putrid basement with 20 other weirdos, drunk and running into each other, having ear-bleeding noise pounding my ear drums. It's fun to stop and look around at those moments, wondering how you got there. I guess at this point I can't really see it better any other way."