Forging Heavy Metal's Song Structures Or the Impact of Black

8 Use Your Mind? Embodiments of Protest, Transgression, and Grotesque Realism in British Grindcore Gabby Riches The Well, a metal venue in Leeds, was heaving with people cheering, whistling, shouting, and near the front a chorus of voices were chanting ‘Napalm Death! Napalm Death!’ with such force that it drowned out Bar- ney’s voice as he attempted to address the fans. The crowd was a mixture of metal fans, crusties,1 punks, older fans headbanging alongside metal newcomers, women colliding into men in the pit … People were moving closer to the stage, bodies swaying in anticipation for Napalm Death’s next song. Barney growled abrasively into the mic ‘Suffer the Children’ and a pit immediately erupted. Several people clambered onto the stage and tossed themselves off the edge into a throng of moving bodies adorned in black band t-shirts, tattoos, patched vests and long hair. People were being thrown, tossed, pushed, and pulled in multiple directions, and I was caught up in this maelstrom of aggression. There were quite a few women in attendance, some of them I saw weaving themselves in and out of the chaos while others were being carried across the room as they stage dived and crowd surfed. Metal horns pierced the air and a cacophony of hollers rang in my ears as Barney delivered various political anecdotes with the audience between songs. He urged us to remain skeptical of the ‘system’, that Nazism and any other form of racist and bigoted thinking should and will not be tolerated, that orga- nized religion is the catalyst for terror, and most importantly, he encouraged us to keep thinking for ourselves. … (Author’s field notes October 4, 2012) Why Grindcore, Why Now? Grindcore is a subgenre within the extreme metal umbrella that developed within an anarcho-punk environment in Birmingham during the 1980s. During this time grindcore bands were heavily influenced by the radical politics of nihilism and ‘aesthetic negation’ and the rudimentary song structures of British hardcore and Anarcho-punk bands such as Crass (Dee, 2009). Dee (2009, p. 57) argues that unlike other extreme metal subgenres, such as thrash and death metal, which adopted the ‘stripped back speed of hardcore punk’, grindcore’s extremity developed from punk, which detached the subgenre from the continuation of heavy metal virtuosity. As a result of this ideological and stylistic alignment with the UK Anarcho-punk scene, many grindcore musicians share a commitment to and affiliation with various political and ethical causes such as animal rights, environmental groups, and DOI: 10.4324/9781315742816-10 126 Gabby Riches anti-war initiatives. As a dynamic and amalgamated style of music, grindcore incorporates death metal’s guttural vocals, fast drumming, and extreme vol- umes and fuses these with punk’s blatant satire and political orientation (Overell, 2010). With its radical-left politics, grindcore portrays a different lyrical and political orientation in comparison to other extreme metal genres with many bands tackling global inequality in their lyrics and offering, rhe- torically at least, anarchist or socialist revolution as the only suitable solu- tion (Napalm Death, 1989; Overell, 2014; Unseen Terror, 1987). Within the Leeds grindcore scene, the junctures of anarcho-punk and metal are evident as audiences are comprised of crusty punks and metal fans, and the gender ratio is less disparate compared to typical extreme metal gigs. Grindcore bands usually play short, fast songs, characterized by heavy distorted, down-tuned guitars, high-speed tempos, unfathomable blast beats, and vocals ranging from guttural growls to high-pitched screams. The subgenre was popularized in both the United States and Western Europe; bands such as Napalm Death, Discharge, and Extreme Noise Terror are credited with laying the groundwork for the style (Mudrian, 2004). Notably the members of the Birmingham-based band, Napalm Death, are considered by many to be the forefathers of grindcore as they played criti- cal roles in shaping the subgenre’s stylistic demarcations and nomenclature (Brown, forthcoming). Overell (2014) contends that grindcore’s aggression is directed toward the ‘machinations of late capitalism, and identities that are seen as complicit with dominant culture’ (p. 2). It was this sort of politically conscious aggression that enabled grindcore to flourish in the work- ing class milieu of the Midlands in the mid to late 1980s in Britain. The deep unpopularity of Thatcher’s conservative administration, coupled with high youth unemployment, attacks on workers’ rights and public service cutbacks provided the context for the formation of this ear-splitting subgenre, which rapidly became a vehicle to express and embody political and social discontent. Similar to other extreme metal genres, grindcore operates on a DIY ethos where independent, more underground methods of musical production, dis- tribution, exchange, and performance are highly valued. Of all the subgenres of extreme metal, grindcore has probably received the most positive attention from music critics because of its fiercely political orientation. The highly influential DJ John Peel often played grindcore and death metal on his ‘Top Gear’ show on BBC Radio 1 (Kahn-Harris, 2007; Mudrian, 2004). For Peel, there was something unique about 1980s grindcore in Britain; he found bands like Napalm Death, Carcass, and Extreme Noise Terror exceptionally visceral and exciting, and he admitted that 20 years after Napalm Death made its first appearance on his show he was still ‘wandering the record shops, still standing amongst the boys searching the racks marked ‘metal’, still hoping to hear something that will thrill me and make me laugh out loud’ (cited in Mudrian, 2004, p. 18). Many fans and popular music critics saw Napalm Death as a subcultural trailblazer of a new underground youth Use Your Mind? 127 movement that was shocking, unique, and controversial; consequently, the band was afforded front page coverage by the NME (New Musical Express) and received a surprising amount of attention in the BBC Arena art’s pro- gram special on Heavy Metal, which aired in 1989 (Brown, forthcoming). Yet over three decades later grindcore still deeply resonates with metal fans and remains a popular subgenre within local British metal scenes, especially in the north of England. Although grindcore has received some scholarly attention within metal music studies, most discussions have emphasized its origins, political significance and affective qualities of belonging for male fans, while women’s participation and experiences within the subgenre remain largely ignored (Dee, 2009; Mudrian, 2004; Overell, 2010, 2011). Drawing upon my ethnographic experiences of attending various gigs and interviewing female metal fans in Leeds’s grindcore scene, I argue that the subgenre has a significant and dedicated female fan base. This chapter aims to address the aforementioned gaps in the literature by focusing on the ways in which grindcore politics are produced and made meaningful through gen- dered, corporeal performances within Leeds’s grindcore scene. This concep- tual shift from the discursive to the corporeal moves us beyond normative understandings of what extreme metal means and opens up new theoretical and methodological spaces to explore how extreme metal and its politics are felt (Driver, 2011). Methods Drawing upon Phillipov’s work on the implications of politically oriented music criticisms and Overell’s (2010, 2014) research on the affective dimen- sions of grindcore sociality, I argue that grindcore’s political significance is manifested in fans’ embodiment of extreme and grotesque realism (Halnon, 2006; Taylor, 2009). By referring to the lyrics of three UK grindcore bands: Napalm Death, Extreme Noise Terror, and Unseen Terror; utilizing ethnographic interviews from female grindcore fans and musicians; and drawing on ethnographic field notes from my experiences in the Leeds grindcore scene (February 2012–August 2013), I suggest that grindcore opens up spaces for social critique and is a form of corporeal politics and pleasure for its fans. Frith (1981) argues that using a lyrical analysis approach to understanding the meaning and value of popular music is limiting because ‘words are sounds we can feel before they are statements to understand’ (p. 14). He goes onto say that the words in rock songs, if they are noticed at all, are absorbed after the music has made its mark. Accordingly, I argue that a multi-method approach, as outlined above, alongside the examination of lyrics and album artwork, offers a more nuanced rendering of grindcore aes- thetics. There has been very little written about the political significance of grindcore and even less on the bodily pleasures experienced by female metal fans. While other authors have discussed contemporary grindcore bands that are known for their gory imagery and misogynistic and violent lyrics 128 Gabby Riches (Overell, 2014), this chapter focuses specifically on the songs of politically oriented bands in order to consider to what extent they can be considered to produce a form of protest music. In particular, I will examine how discursive transgressions, such as the use of dystopia and extreme, grotesque realism in grindcore lyrics are embodied and played out in the UK grindcore scene by female metal fans. Limitations of Extreme Metal Politics: Grindcore as Protest Music Although grindcore has a self-evident political orientation, it is import- ant to place the sub-genre within

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