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Choosing Death: The Improbable History of Death Metal and Grindcore by Albert Mudrian, John Peel
xterminal's review
4.0
Albert Mudrian, Choosing Death: The Improbable History of Death Metal and Grindcore (Feral House, 2004)
It is, quite simply, impossible to go wrong with any book that begins with a teenaged Mick Harris meeting up with a teenaged Justin Broadrick while trolling their local record store in the early eighties for Throbbing Gristle albums. History was made in a little English town when the two of them, along with a couple of pals, formed a band that would ultimately be named Napalm Death, and would start both the death metal and grindcore scenes. (Ironically, both of them would ultimately go on to be stars in the electronica field, as Scorn and Jesu, respectively.) This is where Albert Mudrian beings his tale of the history of the twin movements—a history different from those you've already read (Legs McNeil's Please Kill Me and Steven Blush's American Hardcore chief among them) in that, for one brief shining moment, death metal and grindcore got huge. We're talking Columbia Records huge. Arena tours huge. If you know anything about death metal and grindcore, you've probably wondered why. After reading this book, you'll be scratching your head a whole lot harder.
Choosing Death is, at its heart, a tale of utter incompetence on the parts of almost everyone involved. At least half the interviewees are quite forthcoming about their inability to play instruments, even after being drafted into various bands. (And not just outliers, either. We're talking Carcass and Morbid Angel-level here.) There's a good deal of footage from Earache Records, of course, and when you find out what shoestrings were holding that entire operation together, you'll wonder how they ever managed to put an album out at all, much less handle the demand generated when John Peel first discovered Napalm Death. The whole story of the disintegration of the classic Napalm Death lineup is got at from as many angles as possible, though the consensus is that it was all Mick's fault. (History, on the other hand, raises the question: if he was such a hard guy to work with, why did ex-ND member Nik Bullen start working with him again in Scorn?) Pretty much everyone comes off as an asshole to work with, except Chuck Schuldiner. The question isn't why the scene ended up getting so big for so brief a time in 1994; the question is how the scene managed to stay together long enough to make it to 1994 to get big in the first place.
This is one of those books where you turn each page and wish you didn't know the things you learned on the page before, but it's so utterly fascinating to read about so many self-destructive people exploding in one scene that you just can't stop. I kind of understand the appeal of reality television right now, except that no sane person would contend that Snooki is one percent as interesting as Trey Azagthoth. If you're a fan of the music now, or if you ever were, this is a must. *** ½
It is, quite simply, impossible to go wrong with any book that begins with a teenaged Mick Harris meeting up with a teenaged Justin Broadrick while trolling their local record store in the early eighties for Throbbing Gristle albums. History was made in a little English town when the two of them, along with a couple of pals, formed a band that would ultimately be named Napalm Death, and would start both the death metal and grindcore scenes. (Ironically, both of them would ultimately go on to be stars in the electronica field, as Scorn and Jesu, respectively.) This is where Albert Mudrian beings his tale of the history of the twin movements—a history different from those you've already read (Legs McNeil's Please Kill Me and Steven Blush's American Hardcore chief among them) in that, for one brief shining moment, death metal and grindcore got huge. We're talking Columbia Records huge. Arena tours huge. If you know anything about death metal and grindcore, you've probably wondered why. After reading this book, you'll be scratching your head a whole lot harder.
Choosing Death is, at its heart, a tale of utter incompetence on the parts of almost everyone involved. At least half the interviewees are quite forthcoming about their inability to play instruments, even after being drafted into various bands. (And not just outliers, either. We're talking Carcass and Morbid Angel-level here.) There's a good deal of footage from Earache Records, of course, and when you find out what shoestrings were holding that entire operation together, you'll wonder how they ever managed to put an album out at all, much less handle the demand generated when John Peel first discovered Napalm Death. The whole story of the disintegration of the classic Napalm Death lineup is got at from as many angles as possible, though the consensus is that it was all Mick's fault. (History, on the other hand, raises the question: if he was such a hard guy to work with, why did ex-ND member Nik Bullen start working with him again in Scorn?) Pretty much everyone comes off as an asshole to work with, except Chuck Schuldiner. The question isn't why the scene ended up getting so big for so brief a time in 1994; the question is how the scene managed to stay together long enough to make it to 1994 to get big in the first place.
This is one of those books where you turn each page and wish you didn't know the things you learned on the page before, but it's so utterly fascinating to read about so many self-destructive people exploding in one scene that you just can't stop. I kind of understand the appeal of reality television right now, except that no sane person would contend that Snooki is one percent as interesting as Trey Azagthoth. If you're a fan of the music now, or if you ever were, this is a must. *** ½
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