AN EXHAUSTIVE STUDY is exactly that, an exploratory documentarian medium rather than an authoritative statement. This time around it is a vehicle tasked with collecting and discovering the history of bands/albums that would find a natural fusion between emergent crust punk (“stenchcore”) and nascent death metal movements. I’ll attempt a moderately chronological set of albums herein that are essentially crust punk and death metal hybridized whilst trying to avoid too much direct crossover with grindcore, thrash and (eventual) black metal associations; These variations will inevitably be included in some capacity due to the joyous form-shattering nature of crossover experimentation in the 80’s and 90’s as well as the “there are no rules” mindset in terms of sub-genre of the last two decades. Most of the research (er, listening) for this series was done between 2014-2018 but it was not a thorough practice so, it remains a second revision of a primary list. Please feel free to recommend bands or albums for this venture while keeping in mind a full discography for each band is not the goal, unless multiple releases are particularly important. Feel free to debate entries, etc. this is not a declarative practice on my part. I don’t care about teaching you a damn thing, I want to learn together!

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For Part I we will have to create some sense of scene, mindset and various settings that’d allow for this music to differentiate from nearby developments in related “crossover”-wise sub-genres of punk and metal. It is a small niche with vague parameters so, it’ll be interesting to see if any major feedback is warranted. To start, it’d be helpful to understand that crust punk is essentially the United Kingdom’s answer to “metallic hardcore” circa the late 70’s when Motörhead and Venom (among many others) reached peak grittiness and left an opening for everything from Discharge and Amebix to the much lauded Antisect and their archetypal forms. Chances are your favorite NWOBHM band from that era had at least one member who’d been in a stellar punk band, such as Tank‘s Algy Ward being an important part of The Saints and The Damned, where the transition from punk to metalpunk and full-on heavy metal was a matter of resisting the established idioms of the mid-to-late 70’s and sprawling the possibilities of songwriting as exciting new music styles were developed. I will aim find deeper cuts but not until we’re beyond the later extremes of stenchcore in the 80’s. Once we’ve hit somewhere near Bolt Thrower and Prophecy of Doom, we’re in the thick of the origin story.

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PRELUDIUM AD NAUSEUM (1981-1988)

Any given musician could seemingly spend a lifetime listening to nothing but Discharge and still live a fulfilling gig as a musician, this isn’t hyperbole but a fact proven again and again since (at the very least) their first “big” record, the ‘Why?’ EP back in 1981. It was probably the seminal band’s metallic, catchy, yet apocalypse-harshed debut full-length ‘Hear Nothing See Nothing Say Nothing‘ in 1982 that found their music reaching every corner of the Earth henceforth and even if we don’t consider the regional “d-beat” scenes and their creative variations of the last forty plus years it can be said that the seed and inspiration for thrash metal, black metal, grindcore and well, crust punk were all dribbling from their holes at that given juncture. Anything the guys touched went gold eventually and perhaps the earliest notable was the nation-spanking quips of Discharge tourmates Antisect and their curiously popular ‘In Darkness, There Is No Choice‘ (1983) this’d been the album that would convince folks this new, grittiest British version of hardcore punk was to be an interminable underground obsession. How far did its tendrils reach? I like to use the Brazilian band Armagedom as a decent example of “Yeah, hey we can do this too.” that punk music so often inspires, the odd example I’ll whip up here is the archival recordings ‘Principio Da Agonia‘ a long lost demo tape from 1984 that was to be their debut record before their classic metalpunk record ‘Silêncio Fúnebre’ (1986). This toxic, churning metalpunk violence wasn’t singular (see: Ratos de Porão) but it was rooted in Discharge and set alight the origins of Brazilian thrash metal ethos, raw punk taken to a death-like extreme. I won’t dive into Brazilian “deathcore” here but bands like Sepultura and Sarcófago existed because they had access to tapes/shows playing this form of metallic hardcore punk music. Enough of that tangent then, when do we go metal?

As I see it, the right place to really dig our teeth in is the indomitable Sacrilege perhaps the most apt band to apply their taste in U.K. hardcore to the modus of thrashcore bands like D.R.I. and their ilk with the righteous ‘Behind the Realms of Madness‘ (1985). This ends up being a timeless influence upon both metal and punk throughout the ages, you just don’t have bands like Bolt Thrower or Acephalix without spotting the wrist work of Sacrilege in the glint of their fangs on stage and this applies to high fantasy themes, exploration of doom metal, all the way down to riffcraft/arrangement. That isn’t to say Amebix‘s breakout record ‘Arise!‘ (1985) about six months later wasn’t an even bigger phenomenon, it goes without saying this record was one of the most extreme and avant-garde things of the underground at the time and it’d come to define the true grit and variance of crust going forward. The deep cut from 1985 that all 80’s death metal origin fanatics should know is certainly Warhammer‘s only official demo tape ‘Abbatoir of Death‘ (1985), an important point of notability that’d engaged both Don Kaye and (likely) John Peel circa ’86 with the works of Shane Embury and Mitch Dickinson, who we’ll talk about when Unseen Terror slide into view. This is all well and good, sloppy death metal tapes and thrashcore but where do we see the archetype that’d connect them?

To start we’ve got Hellbastard‘s incredible ‘Ripper Crust‘ demo from 1986 and here you’ll see an exemplar coagulation of the angular chop of Discharge, the lumbering feral mass of Amebix, and the precision punk-thrashing of Sacrilege melded into this muddy beast of a demo tape. If this was a proto-grindcore list, I’d probably lean heavier into Electro Hippies ‘Play Fast or Die‘ and whatnot but if we are touching upon 1986 and seeing the lineage of death and crust/hardcore punk ideas colliding it becomes impossible to avoid the United States any longer by way of Repulsion‘s first demo, ‘Slaughter of the Innocent‘ and the Nausea / Terrorizer split demo tape from nearby. This definitely blurs the line away from our goal but it becomes clear at this point that increasingly fast hardcore punk was giving way to true extreme metal sooner than heavy metal was just yet. We won’t get lost down that rabbit hole, but make sure there is no question that Los Angeles area hardcore punk and grindcore scenes might not have owned “crust” bit their grit and snarling extremity wasn’t any less important for metalpunk than British counterparts. Speaking of the Brits, Deviated Instinct is inevitable in sussing out the major structures of crust punk music as it applied to thrash (and by lineage, death metal) and their ‘Terminal Filth Stenchcore‘ demo from 1987 presages thier eventual popularity alongside other early Peaceville bands. This tape, a “demo” that is longer than their first full-length, features harsh vocals and discordant guitar hysterics that make this band far more notable than they’ve ever been, it fits our narrative preamble, anyhow. As 1987 charged ahead, Unseen Terror‘s fucking weirdo crust/grind album ‘Human Error‘, would only seem to vex people with its fixation on the self-defeating blight of humanity and uh, Garfield, but this is an essential itemization of extreme metal and crust/hardcore punk ideas landing in line with each other (as opposed to the battle that is grindcore).

Without over emphasizing the importance of Hellbastard, I do think they arrive at an important juncture with some notable maturation of their demo ideas on ‘Heading For Internal Darkness‘ in 1988. None of this seems to line up with extreme metal just right yet and that is perhaps because you realize the extreme value of ‘Scum’ and all of the brilliant deathgrind that’d pop up soon after it’d released. Meanwhile crust bands like Sweden’s D.T.A.L. were just beefing up with demos like ‘Solitude‘ (1988) though we can hear the crust and thrash ideas pulling them away from the catchier punk they’d been spinning on earlier works as groups like Totalitär caught on in bigger ways. The band that really sets things in motion for my own taste and really hits the right level of extremity is certainly the underrated Doom and their fucking incredible ‘War Crimes – Inhuman Beings‘ album. This was the paradigm shift for extremist crust and I could certainly write pages upon pages on how vital, exemplar, and forward-thinking these guys were in an era of division, paranoia, corruption and tragedy not unlike the present. It is the perfect album to presage the unearthly thumping entrance of Bolt Thrower.

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GRINDING THE TRANSITION (1988-1991)

BOLT THROWER ‘In Battle There is No Law’ (Vinyl Solution, 1988)

Although there was some buzz over this debut full-length from Coventry, England’s much loved Bolt Thrower it wasn’t necessarily the obvious breakout hit that many might think it’d have been back in 1988. If anything it’d seem like folks outside of the U.K. found it a bit busted with a lot of reviews maligning the unnatural sound and cadence of the drumming, marking it as “almost grindcore”. This was probably in part due to their allegiance with punk label Vinyl Solution and the clear roots of stenchcore all over this record which particularly shows via the album’s artwork from Paul McHale, who’d also done the cover for crossover thrashers (and labelmates) Cerebral Fix‘ ‘Life Sucks… and Then You Die!’ as they both set out on a nationwide tour together. Perhaps the style had aped crust and thrash metal less seamlessly than their grindcore counterparts at the time but this makes it ideal for our purposes here, it is essentially the first merging of death metal and crust punk ideas that meets a certain benchmark of extremity. When I was first getting into death metal as a teenager I’d no qualms placing this record next to Napalm Death‘s ‘Harmony Corruption’ and Benediction‘s ‘Subconscious Terror’ as each record bears operational flaws that bring character to their take on grinding, punkish death metal in their own way. Today I see this as an entirely different beast where the crossover and crust songs they’d written hadn’t quite translated to grindcore, but certainly felt ten tons heavier with this atmospheric death metal thud of a recording. The songwriting, riffcraft, and surreal-yet-brutal sound holds up if you’ve some investment in crust punk and primal grindcore, as for death metal… we’re not fully there yet.

Is it death/crust? Please vote:

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ORAL ‘Demo’ (Self-Released, 1989)

Gothenburg-area crustcore band Oral enter the fray here for the sake of posterity and a glimpse of the city’s “other” side, which was driven by very militant and harsh d-beat, “kängpunk.” Though some of their later revised songs were given a heavy death metal affect circa 1994 on ‘Slagen I Blod‘ the three late 80’s demo tapes from the project were the handiwork of a young band featuring guitarist Alf Svensson. The band would end as Svensson formed Grotesque (and later At the Gates) before the artist would focus on his own project, Oxiplegatz throughout the rest of the 90’s. For a while these demos were just rumors beyond some mention in Daniel Ekeroth‘s Swedish Death Metal book but of course his description is pretty apt “a crust punk bands with some deadly tendencies” indeed. Their only official recording is the right one to check out but I’d favored their demos quite a bit more, great Swedish hardcore punk style with inventive and satisfyingly frantic riffing. Anyhow, I’m just trying to offer some worldview from the punk perspective, it wasn’t all about British groups and for sure the Discharge infection was absolutely murderous in Swedish and Japanese metalpunk scenes of the late 80’s, to the point where they’d quickly become their own thing.

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EXTREME NOISE TERROR ‘Holocaust in Your Head’ (Head Eruption Records, 1989)

No doubt every record worth a shit has an interesting story but this is one that’d never made sense to me, beyond the suggestion that royalties/credits were a careful consideration after members left or whatever. ‘Holocaust in Your Head’ is our first example of crust delivered with an certain deathgrind insanity that unintentionally becomes death/crust as it works itself out. No small part of this stems from the always wild, over the fuckin’ top mania of the two vocalists Dean Jones and Phil Vane (R.I.P.) who’ve got their own range of inflections that keep this record banging all sorts of strange across the board, including some death metal vocals. The version you’ve heard likely has Tony “Stick” Dickens (Doom) on drums but they’d recorded another version with Mick Harris (Napalm Death, Defecation, Unseen Terror, etc.) in 1987 which was scrapped, but if you’re aching to hear what the drummer from ‘Scum’ sounds like behind the kit for Extreme Noise Terror, check out the fucking nuts Peel Sessions for this band circa 1987 where he features. This album was the original inspiration for this exploration years ago, as ‘Holocaust in Your Head’ was one of those records I’d picked up in a record store as a kid and been blown away by its speed and wanton violence. I’ll more than likely have a few words to say about ‘Retro-Bution’ (1994) as it is maybe a more clear crossing of deathgrind/crust punk but you’ll get the right vibe from this one.

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AXEGRINDER ‘The Rise of the Serpent Men’ (Peaceville, 1989)

Despite being quite clearly influenced by the first Amebix record in terms of rhythmic arrangements, those shambling and doomed slow-crust grinds, these London-based fellows had put their own spin on it after about three years plugging away at demos and rehearsals. The major difference here is probably the drums which always suggested a more extreme thrash sound to me thanks to the double-bass pedal kicks throughout. Beyond that these are extended, atmospheric crust influenced mid-paced metal pieces that play with a sort of softness throughout, jamming out a bit of post-punk feeling before grinding into apocalyptic doom. I mention the record here to bolster the nuclear crust punk sound towards the forgotten art that it is, there are elements of death metal within these arrangements but also much, much more. “Evilution” and the title track must be experienced back to back at the very least.

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WINTER ‘Winter’ (Self-Released, 1989)

For many folks the first true release of death/doom metal style is this demo tape from Winter, though this is not historically correct from my own point of view it does all fit quite nicely in terms of what folks actually cared about after historical re-contextualization found and celebrated this obscure gem of a band. The short life of Winter was genius for the visionary extreme that this trio would source from a love for the surreal gloom of Amebix (they are named after “Winter“) and its atmospheric application to the increasingly experimental world of Celtic Frost. The important thing to remember about Winter is that they certainly reached musicians across the world in terms of their influence but, they were only a popular band in hindsight; ‘Into Darkness’ came out on a small label and had no traction until the band had basically split up in 1992, Nuclear Blast licensed the album and eventually packaged this demo as ‘Eternal Frost’ in 1994 before including it with the full-length on one CD in 1999. Crust influenced? Yes. The first true classic of extreme doom metal? More or less. Death/crust? For the sake of 80’s death metal yet being undefined, yes but with the caveat that this is a product of crust punk and doom metal first and foremost. That is how I see it, anyhow. As an interesting aside: The drummer on this demo, Scott Lewis, was the original drummer of Brutal Truth (see: ‘The Birth of Ignorance‘, 1990) who’d leave to join Exit-13 after the first album.

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SAW THROAT ‘Inde$troy’ (Manic Ears Records, 1989)

Sore Throat were a reaction, I mean isn’t that the best way to put it? Purely reactive art that amounted to impassioned political statements (and absolutely hilarious mockery) that not only pointed fingers at the mass selling out of extreme punk/metal opportunists but (on a broader scale) the frightening murderous advance of corporate control over all aspects of human life. It was always going to be too much of a “Fuck You” for most and that’d be why they’re still loved by extremophiles and seen as hotly influential spark for certain sects of grindcore and extremist crust punk. Since their first few records had provocative covers, ultra short shit-hot songs, brutal vocals and a sense of humor all their own few folks would take this fourth record as serious as they probably should have. You might see “punk/industrial” in the tags but this should be taken in context of late 80’s crust punk and industrial atmosphere rather than the stompy barking radio rock shit we’d had enough of by the mid-90’s (see: O.L.D.‘s ‘Lo Flux Tube’ for a good version of that). Oh, I suppose I should say this has little to do with death metal/crust punk hybridization beyond Rich Walker‘s (Yes, of Solstice) brilliantly harsh vocals but it is yet an notable piece of extreme crust-minded music that still holds up today. ‘Indestroy’ is a 41 minute piece, dead serious about the destruction of the environment via corporations and wasteful, murderous industrialized society. I’ve decided to include it here because it speaks to the era of experimentation, the legacy of this influential band, and perhaps to the unappreciated art music we’d get as the few doors open for crust beyond 1989 began to queue ’til the music industry moved on to popularizing highly profitable extreme metal. Walker would pull some of this style into Nailbomb (not that one) and form Solstice soon after Sore Throat was over, but man what a statement piece to end on! Honestly I could go on about this album for pages, it is basically a twelve step mountain that peaks into some maniacal punk innards before floating back again. A massive trip if nothing else.

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FILTHY CHRISTIANS ‘Mean’ (Earache Records, 1990)

Did these Swedes really kick their debut album off with a crustcore parody of Donna Summer‘s “Hot Stuff”? Yep, but it still isn’t as weird as grindcore songs about Garfield. To be fair this was exactly the sort of thing you’d expect from Earache in the late 80’s as they’d match the extremity of Relapse‘s mix of crossover, thrashcore, and early grind. No doubt as we approached the 90’s it felt a bit goofy… but hey, “A bit goofy” isn’t the worst way to describe the absolutely brutal classic we’ve got here which, yes, it is a grindcore record at heart. ‘Mean’ does do a bit more than your average grinder as they flit between Impulse Manslaughter style thrashers, roaring bursts of hardcore, death metal, and grind. I remember a Swedish friend of mine describing this record as “hick” grind (for lack of a better word) because they weren’t from Stockholm or Gothenburg and I think that might be one of the reasons it still holds up, not only for its outsider feeling but for their taste of hardcore punk outside of Sweden. Does it qualify as a death metal/crust punk hybrid? Not necessarily, but you’ll find equal parts of each informing their style. A modern equivalent might be something like Internal Rot. Beyond that it is just a great high-energy record that should please the punk, death, and grind heads equally.

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DESGRAÇA ‘Ruínas que Sobraram’ (Self-Released, 1990)

Desgraça were a primitive “deathcore” band when they’d started back in 1986 São José do Rio Preto, Brazil but by the time they released this sole demo tape in 1990 they’d found the dynamics of crust offered a crucial amount of variation to their brutal craft. This doesn’t shift the heaviest moments away from classic death metal/grindcore most of the time but the slower pieces do serve to even out the blast-heavy side of this 10 song, ~20 minute experience. This demo was likely recorded live in a garage by the sound of it and as a result it is pure punk mess and anxietous energy that comes across first thanks to the disintegrated tape rips you’ll find online. Don’t be too quick to write this one off, it is amateurish but they were nearing a breakthrough with the ambitious amount of change-ups attempted therein.

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PROPHECY OF DOOM ‘Acknowledge the Confusion Master’ (Deaf Records, 1990)

By all means you could call this debut full-length from Prophecy of Doom a deathgrind album if we were using mildly era appropriate sub-genre terminology but these guys were thrashcore addicts who’d clearly listened to years of crust, thrash, and spastic late 80’s hardcore punk prior to whipping thier brief but brutal discography out in the space of roughly four years. Their first demo tape ‘Insanity Reigns Supreme‘ (1988) emphasizes this with primitive death punk rhythms, raw sound, and a Septic Death cover. In 2019 they released a retrospective, well literally ‘Retrospective 1988-1991’ which provides some great detail for the development of the band leading up to their bizarro masterpiece death metal record ‘Matrix’ (1992). Oddly enough Peaceville‘s death/grind hodgepodge imprint Deaf Records (Therion, At the Gates, etc.) would release this album packaged with Axegrinder‘s debut similar to what Necrosis Records did with the debut albums from Carnage / Cadaver that same year. The pairing feels natural enough, I suppose. The vocals on ‘Acknowledge the Confusion Master’ are wild and certain express the noiscore/stenchcore mindfuck perfectly, beyond that the riffs are brutal and the crust punk energy flows through this thing to such a degree that I’ve hardly considered it a grind record for as long as I’ve owned it. Probably a selective mindset on my part but, eh. For the trivia folks out there: Their bassist played on the second half of ‘Scum’ and now features in Extinction of Mankind. If you’re curious about the band the retrospective compilation should have you covered.

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DEVIATED INSTINCT ‘Guttural Breath’ (Peaceville Records, 1990)

The second full-length from this East England trio is perhaps the most definitive death/crust hybridization yet on this list or, at least one that has essentially nothing to do with grindcore. ‘Guttural Breath’ is more or less a mid-paced death/thrash metal version of crust, think along the lines of Protector‘s ‘Urm the Mad’ for pacing and riff-focused heaviness but with a mind still very much connected to late 80’s Amebix. Of course if you are as mad about this era of extreme metal as I am you know why Peaceville moved past their punk years towards emergent black (Darkthrone), death (Autopsy) and extreme doom metal (My Dying Bride) acts but that doesn’t mean the slug-slow and drugged dirge of ‘Guttural Breath’ can’t necessarily hang with extreme thrash records of this era. A personal favorite in my early twenties when mid-paced and doomed records were a big focus, this one still holds up pretty well for my own taste.

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ATROCITY ‘Infected’ (Metalcore, 1990)

These long overlooked east coast United States-based 80’s deathgrinders hit upon something truly curious with their first full-length ‘Infected’, a bounding death/thrash metal sound with the bouncing blasts of grindcore and all of it informed by east coast US hardcore punk and perhaps the hyper shit like Cryptic Slaughter and Septic Death. Is this a death/crust album? No, probably not but ‘Infected’ fits into the worldview of bands like Filthy Christians and Terrorizer well enough, where even if crust isn’t a major focus there is some influence. Bootlegs for this were rampant since Metalcore Records‘ awesome roster (Vulcano, Prophecy of Doom, Epidemic, etc.) were basically single run gigs, all of them underground classics. It wasn’t until 2001 when both Atrocity full-lengths were collected that folks were exposed to their gig, eventually prompting a new EP in 2007 and a third record in 2009 before they called it quits again. If you’re questioning why I’d include this, listen to the whole thing and you’ll see how it helps to paint the bigger picture of extreme metalpunk beyond the general blanket of grindcore as we enter the 90’s. Still not convinced? Check out their ‘Toxic Death‘ demo tape from 1985 for the most effective context.

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NAUSEA ‘Extinction’ (Profane Existence, 1990)

While the rest of the New York City punk reality was hyper-focused on reinforcing the crew-based ideologies of hardcore punk and crossover thrash in the mid-to-late 80’s Nausea were a major outlier when they formed in 1985. This was the right time to stand out, heavily influenced by British crust, worldwide punk niche, and representing a total minority in the United States ‘Extinction’ was not only immediately popular but massively influential for its unique heavy riff style which they’d developed with equal parts art punk, underground metal, and well… There is just too much to unpack here between ska/reggae punk breaks, the Celtic Frost and Amebix level brainwaves, the hugely influential dual-gender dual vocal approach, etc. You’ll hear this influence developing alongside similarly free-thinking bands like Winter and Neurosis and later informing the revisions of crust punk later on in bands like Tragedy. Though ‘Extinction’ isn’t immediately relevant to our death/punk interest here it has long been a pillar for crust punk’s ideological and musical influence reaching metalheads in general, and not only because it sold incredibly well. ‘Extinction’ is “the one” in terms of Nausea‘s popular statement but their sound was much more varied than this, and Volume 2: ’85-’88 of their Punk Terrorist Anthology compilation set is vital for contextualizing their ambitious collective output, which was not at all a dictatorship in terms of songwriting. For the sake of trivia: Perhaps the most visible artist from this collective beyond was drummer Roy Mayorga, who would form close ties with ex-Winter projects, (a reformed) Amebix, Crisis, and eventually become the go-to guy for a number of 90’s/2000’s popular metal/corporate rock bands (Soulfly, Medication, etc.) and uh… session for Vanilla Ice‘s nu-metal album.

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ROSEROSE ‘Brutalize’ (P.M.A., 1991)

Although this Japanese quartet were best known for their crossover/thrashcore releases in the late 80’s I’d always associated them with the crusty metalpunk of bands like S.O.B. who’d likewise brought maniac thrash to the crowds of the Nihon-koku. ‘Brutalize’ is an interesting spot in their discography as it is a brutal death/thrash metal record with some grindcorized transitions. Sure, you could argue that there is no definitive death/crust here but once you’ve sat with this one a bit more you’ll find there are pockets of primal punk energies flowing through this album and its 1989 predecessor, ‘Liquidation’, which hadn’t quite gotten the “serious face” of death metal down just yet. Even if it doesn’t fit very well into our exploration here, man is this underrated as Hell.

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NAUSEA ‘Crime Against Humanity’ (Wild Rags, 1991)

Nausea formed under the name Majesty in 1985, a couple of years before grindcore/death metal fully blew up, and you can hear their Hellhammer-esque d-beaten birth on the ‘Bestial Vomit‘ (1987) tape before the name change. This Los Angeles-based band is tightly interwoven with Terrorizer but only because guitarist/vocalist Oscar Garcia brought some Nausea songs in for ‘World Downfall’, an album which folks wrongly credit Dave Vincent on vocals when it was actually Garcia. I’ll go out on a limb here and say that a few opportunists and their music industry connections shook this guy down, took many of his best ideas and ran with ’em hard enough that he is rarely recognized for the deathpunk breakthrough his material was. But I’m not here for the sake of such a rant, the idea is that this was my introduction to the world of Wild Rags Records as well as a long lost classic of death metal/hardcore punk hybridization, ‘Crimes Against Humanity’ sounds like a garage death metal version of your favorite Terrorizer songs, more tuneful yet inhumane as it splatters its barrels of toxic waste onto your doorstep. There are much more direct crust punk influences here than you’d expect but I’d concede if you wanted to simply call this a classic of 80’s grindcore, same difference in terms of the Los Angeles area output at the time. I love this album and this band, they’ve got a great 2014 album as well. After this album the death/crust idea becomes a bit more readable if you ask me. Check out the ‘The Suffering Continues’ compilation for the direct follow ups or the ‘World Struggle: Demos ’88-’92’ compilation for most of the early days before and beyond this album. Also feel free to double check my facts on this entry, I know the history of this stuff is complex and often skewed wildly.

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GUILLOTINE TERROR ‘No God’ (Battle Planning, 1991)

Since you’re here it should be no surprise that I am a huge fan of the non-traditional rebellious side of Japanese metallic hardcore punk and the burning upside down cross that adorns each Guillotine Terror ensured I would never miss thier records, the first of which I discovered years ago on a Portland-area record store deep dive. Well, it was a bootleg of their 1994 album ‘Japanese Corruption’ but the internet would eventually help out in discovery of ‘No God’, their first 7″ record and probably their most brutal material. These initial ~13 minutes of death-roaring crust might be their most nihilistic and angered release, they’d go in a more melodic punk direction as the decades passed. I’d love to know more about this release if anyone is more up to speed on Japanese crust/hardcore punk history and trivia than I am.

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So… I’ve provided just one pathway from 1981 through 1991 towards death/crust, there are surely things I left out or albums I’ve just spaced on which may be relevant to crust punk and death metal hybridization. Please feel free to let me know but save the 80’s grindcore deep cut stuff for another time. I’ll hold off on fully digging up the 90’s records I’d felt are relevant until I’ve gotten some feedback/suggestions for additions to this list. I am particularly interested in 80’s/90’s death metal demo tapes that were concerned with crust/hardcore punk, the whole Japanese scene beyond adjacent to S.O.B. and the Scandinavian, Brazilian and German stuff [between 1985-1991] I might not know due to language barriers. Contact me at: grizzlybutts@hotmail.com to help me make this a bit more fleshed out and comprehensive. Thanks for checking this out.

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