Wake up with a steaming cup of grind, courtesy of Grinder
How do you like your grindcore? Black? No cream or sugar? Want any soy or vanilla syrup? No? Just black? Alright, that’ll be NYP, ma’am.
Metal is no stranger to novelty. Over the years, we’ve seen joke bands fronted by dogs or birds, we’ve witnessed normies posting links to that Ned Flanders band, and hell, we’ve actually lauded more than one act whose entire shtick is simply “being metal” for thirty odd years now. There’s little wonder that a genre built as much on escapism and transgressive themes as it is outsider appeal for weird teenagers would play host to such a diversity of punchlines. For all the artistic merit there is in metal, there’s an equal number of bands singing about farts and dicks and comic book characters, and that’s okay.
Until today, though, most of those comedic acts just weren’t really my flavor. I needed something a bit stronger, a bit hotter, a bit more caffeinated. Enter Grinder, the only coffeemaker-fronted metal band! As it turns out, their five-track EP is just the shot of espresso I needed to get my work day off on the right foot.
As far as premises go, Grinder’s is actually pretty solid. “Let’s take those gurgling noises our coffeemakers spurt out in the morning while we’re frantically running around the house, trying to find a shoe that the dog hasn’t pooped in or locating that set of keys we tossed in anger after seeing the load of bills in the mailbox and layer them over some genuinely solid deathgrind riffs, capable if generic blasts, and some hokey horror movie samples.” The end result is an album that, if you were none the wiser, could easily be passed off as some forgotten demos from the Poopsmith-level of BDM.
Is The Black EP mindblowing? Nah. But does it feature some gnarly riffs, stomach-turning gurgles, and fantastic coffee puns for song titles? “Beneath the Grounds” parts 1 and 2 answer yes to all of the above. And at Name Your Price, you can’t ask for much more!
So, now that you’re at your desk, glancing through emails and pretending to be busy while really just nursing a hangover, pour yourself a steaming cup of grind, sit back, and relax a bit. You deserve it, and metal, with its fine line between comedy and extremity, deserves it.
