Friday, February 11, 2011

Grindcore Alphabet: A

I do not alphabetize my albums. No thank you very much. I’ve got a genre/subgenre/related artists/artist/album/year released system that works just fine for me. That way whenever I’m in the mood for a particular sound, I’ve got plenty of albums right there to choose from.
But I’m prepared to acknowledge the potential benefits an alphabetical approach has to offer. Because I’m about to school you on the ABCs of grind. Essentially, if all goes well, each Friday for the next six months, I plan to drop a new mixtape of grind, hardcore, fastcore, power violence and whatever else passes my fleeting fancy on your screen-tanned asses based on each letter of the alphabet (at the end I may go back and do something about those pesky numerical bands).
I’ve actually been obsessively thinking about this ever since Cosmo Lee at Invisible Oranges asked me to make him a modern grind mixtape. He probably had no idea the can of obsessive worms he opened up with that one. I spent a good couple of weeks combing my collection. At an hour, I’m sure that was longer than he anticipated, but I still stewed over the stuff that got left off because I thought it was too obvious (hello, GridLink! Seriously, I was surprised to find out some people don't consider The Inalienable Dreamless to be a life changing album.) in favor of something slightly more obscure (at the time, Wormrot). I’ve pretty much spent the 14 months since thinking about this because there were so many more bands past and present I thought deserved a second look by the larger masses.
Essentially, my friends, there’s so much grind in the world -- and new bands keep making more -- that I can’t keep up. So I’m going to wrangle together everything in my collection and everything I can scrounge off the interhole and shove it down your greedy gorge each week in the shape of a new mixtape. This is not to say they’re all gonna be gems (so, Bill, that means you can’t hold this against my streak). Instead, I’m trying to paint as wide a picture of what grind et al have to offer as I possibly can.
Hopefully all goes well because there’s some scary looking letters lurking at the end of the alphabet. I don’t wanna drop a comp of nothing but XXX Maniac songs if you know what I’m sayin’.
Invariably, I'm gonna overlook somebody. So feel free to add additions in the commenets. Anyway, I present you with the letter A mixtape [Mediafire]:

Arsedestroyer – “Untitled” (Sweden)
Abstain – “My Generation” (United States)
Apartment 213 – “Kill For Christ”
Archagathus – “No Help” (Canada)
Afgrund – “No One Gives a Fuck Anymore” (Sweden)
ATKA – “14” (Germany)
Agenda of Swine – “Decimation of World Trade Through Organization” (United States)
Agents of Satan – “Kill for Baloff” (United States)
Anarchus – “Creation of a Religion” (Mexico)
Abcess – “Red Eclipse” (United States)
A.C. – “Siege” (United States)
Amputee – “Nothing” (United States)
ASRA – “Exploiting the Dead” (United States)
Audio Kollaps – “Squadrons of Death” (Germany)
The Arson Project – “Unbreakable” (Sweden)
As the Sun Sets – “Borderline Sarcasm” (United States)
Ablach – “Confessit & Declait Furth” (Scotland)
Agathocles – “Porcelain A” (Belgium)
Antigama – “You Have the Right to Remain Violent” (Poland)
Assuck – “Reversing Denial” (United States)
Attack of the Mad Axeman – “The Philosophy of Rudiger Nehberg” (Germany)
Asshole Parade – “As Nails Rust” (United States)
Antischism – “Greedy Bastards” (United States)
Asterisk* -- “Green Eyed Angel in My Dream” (Sweden)
Agoraphobic Nosebleed – “Blind Hatred Finds a Tit” (United States)
Agents of Abhorrence – “Sick Disguise” (Australia)
All is Suffering – “Siege Warfare” (United States)

Total to date: 27 bands

24 comments:

Unknown said...

this is a project after my own heart, seeing as i made it my goal long ago to have every letter represented in my library. the only letter missing 6 years later is x. so heres hoping that you unearth something other than xxx maniac.

Andrew Childers said...

sneak preview: early xysma if i can find what i'm looking for. also try xbrainiax if you'll allow that to pass muster.

Invisible Oranges said...

Hahaha, what a project! I'm honored to have helped open this can of worms. The Inalienable Dreamless is indeed life-changing. It's set the bar so high that ever since Nasum ended, everything in grindcore has paled in comparison.

Unknown said...

I have a couple of questions. Are you literally putting as many bands of each letter into the mixtape, or just enough to span the sounds of grind?
X will be easy, so many straight edge bands. Z, U. I don't know. Y isn't so bad with all the hardcore bands using "Youth" in their name.
I want to say we could all dig out our printed zines/magazines to find tons of rarely ever heard bands if you want, but otherwise it seems dickish.
Your file system sounds interesting. I do alphabetical by vinyl type(LP or 7") and then genre, non metal and metal. This includes hardcore and grind.

Ryan Page said...

This is great. I've been missing a continual installment after brachetology ended. I thought I was going to hate that, but now that it's gone, I've come to realize how much I enjoyed checking in every couple of days.

Andrew Childers said...

@shane: yes, i am literally trying to find every band i can and cramming them into one mixtape.

@ryan: i know right? i've actually been trying to find another screwball project since then. let's see how this goes.

Unknown said...

Well alright man. I'll dig through my shit for posterity sake.

Alex Layzell said...

Fantastic Idea, I look forward to discovering many a new band this method.
I personally sort my music in the manner of
G:\Music\(Artist Name)\(Release Year - Release Name)
If I prefer to be on a specific mood, I can from my media player choose the mood from the genre list and play it.
A few bands I also recommend that begin with A are:
Aborted
Active Minds
ACxDCx (The Grindcore one)
Anaal Nathrakh
Apathetic Ronald Mcdonald
Aus Rotten

Vegas said...

I really like my music organizing system. It's just a bunch of different playlists in iTunes with different functions.

New, unprocessed music goes in the "uncategorized" playlist. In there, I find the correct year, names, genre, and album art for each artist. Then, if I want to put it on my iPod, I put it in my "research" playlist. If I end up listening to it a lot, I'll take it off "research" and put it in "heavy rotation." If an album becomes so frequently rotated that it has risen to the status of "Crucial," it goes in my "essentials" playlist, which contains Kyuss, Pig Destroyer, and other artists I don't want off my iPod.

I'll also take it out of the uncategorized playlist and put it into its respective genre playlist, like "grindviolence" or "sabbathian" or "industrial/noise," etc. Those playlists are shuffled, so it's like listening to a genre radio station. This is good for artists I'm kind of interested in hearing but don't feel like putting on my iPod for whatever reason.

Wooderson said...

As much as I love music, I'm terrible when it comes to organizing my collection. For a while there I had it by genre and alphabetized but it always ends up being a bit disorganized with purchases being made and...gasp...selling a few things off. I just took a glance at my collection and here we have AC/DC next to Steely Dan next to Carcass. I gotta fix this shit up.

Anyways, this a great idea. The next 6 months should provide some good musical education, cheers!

Bill Willingham IV, Esquire said...

Looking forward to this!

I will make a deal with you on the streak...if there's at least one cool song under each letter you win.

Much like Woody, my albums are not organized at all. They're crammed on a bookshelf, in no order whatsoever. Their digital simulacra are organized very neatly on my hard drive, though.

Unknown said...

Tell me when to stop because I might feel bad if you don't. I will be relentless in sweet bands of every letter of the alphabet. Even if that requires multiple replies. I'm sorry. Here goes.

Amebix
Arson Anthem
Antiseen
All These While...
American Nightmare
Agent Orange
Avulsion
Abaddon
Aghast
Autoritar

metaldose said...

It will be interesting to see where this list goes, and where it doesn't. Include Abscess and not Autopsy; hmm.
Like WillH, I have a "heavy rotation" pile; for latest releases or stuff new to me. To be honest, I use many different bins to help decide what to get rid of.
My system is complicated. Waiting for the patent.

@Shanetera: you might turn yourself into a dictionary, dammit! don't do it!

Andrew Childers said...

add as many as you want shane. between all of us, this should make a pretty solid compendium of punk and grind.

and i really went back and forth over adding amebix and a bunch of swedish dbeat like acursed. i still haven't made up my mind on that. i'm pulling D together now and debating on adding discharge since it was so influential. thoughts anyone?

Unknown said...

Add Discharge for sure, they're CRUCIAL. But only add any extremely relevant clones after that. There's only so much to do with a D-Beat, but there are some super sick bands out there .
I'll try to not go too punk, more hardcore punk. Keep with the spirit. Grind came from hardcore, not from punk. Same with crossover and thrash, I don't want to get too far out there.
A.N.S.
Avskum

DesiccatedVeins said...

Asocial's stuff from '82 is nice. They're the Swedish band that snobs claim pre-empted Siege in the "playing really fast hardcore" department. Either way, worth a listen. (Asocial never wrote "Grim Reaper," though, so Siege win anyway.)

I'm also very excited to see a post-bracketology weekly feature starting up here, it's nice to have something to look forward to.

rasyid said...

i love atka. last I heard they gonna do a split with swarmmm.

Bill Willingham IV, Esquire said...

Atka is indeed badass. I had heard about the Swarrrm split, too. The one they did with Shimetsu was awesome.

DesiccatedVeins said...

Yeah, the Swarrrm/Atka split is out; it's awesome and you should totally get it.

rasyid said...

awesome I'll hunt it down when I visit the US or EU.

Andrew Childers said...

i'm just gonna throw it out there: swarrrm does not excite me. the songs are too long and too busy.

anybody wanna take a crack at explaining to me what i'm missing?

rasyid said...

I realized I spelt swarmmm. heh.

DesiccatedVeins said...

If you don't like the idea of Soul Discharge-era Boredoms being smashed together with S.O.B. or mid-career DA, you probably won't like Swarrrm. That being said, Nise Kyuseishu Domo (aka Thee Imitation Messiahs) is the best place to start if you plan to try to like them. See, this is the reason that internet piracy is a good thing. No wasting $15 on something you don't actually want.

orfee said...

i think SWARRRM sometimes takes to reggae, as in, the bass seems to lead instead of the guitar, i can see how that could put off some people. but some other people like their shit busy... plus i find SWARRRM vocals [notably the first vocalist] very enjoyable, i like hearing the sound of damage or strain in oesophaguses and other oral parts [for the sake of creation].

"inglyti"