Slave To The Grind (2018)

May 17, 2020

The ironic thing is that a doc about a genre that relies so heavily on speed turned out to be the slowest production in the history of time. Fuck, I have been waiting absolutely years for this thing to come out. So much so in fact, that I had completely forgotten that the whole fucking thing existed.

Roll on to the COVID crisis of 2020, and the film maker has been an absolute legend and uploaded the whole thing for free to YouTube to help us grinders get through the downtime. Hey, he didn’t have to do that. That was a really cool thing to do.

The trouble is, is that I have heard and read nothing but bad things about this doc. Lots of grinders on social media (lol) are moaning about the exclusion of this band or that band, or getting panty-twisted over the inclusion of Anal Cunt. For a genre that is so aurally – and often visually offensive – some of its purveyors aren’t half easily offended! Some of the vitriolic, hateful comments made by interviewees about Seth Putnam are far more offensive than most of AxCx’s output. But hey, you gotta get those liberal points in, right? Its 2020 now. 

I however, absolutely loved this documentary. Yes, there is some bias towards the Canadian grindcore scene, which, honestly, doesn’t hold much weight worldwide, but the film makers are clearly just repping their home town. I had never had that kinda dive into that world before, and I felt I benefitted from it greatly.

The history of grindcore is covered succinctly and a slew of amazing bands are interviewed. Grindcore is my favourite genre of music and is always under-represented, so I can only say positive things about this doc. It brings clarity to an often muddy and unseen world of sonic goodness. So yeah, I couldn’t give a single fuck if a bunch of dreadlocked asshats are pissed that Assück wasn’t included or whatever the fuck, Slave To The Grind is a brilliant documentary about one of the underdog genres of extreme music.