Mincecore
Growled or shrieked. Unintelligible without a lyric sheet. The thing most newcomers bounce off.
In short
Deliberately primitive grindcore with blunt political messages and thousands of appearances on split releases.
How it sounds
- Deliberately primitive production, often recorded straight to cassette.
- Songs under a minute with simple, accelerated punk riffs.
- Blunt political lyrics printed in full, with an anti-militarist message.
Hear what that means
- The practice, not the genre from 35:24
Agathocles - Theatric Symbolisation of Life
Several hundred split releases, almost none through a conventional label, on the principle that the music should cost as little as possible.
Open on YouTube at 35:24 - Politics as the content from 1:59
Agathocles - Razor Sharp Daggers
The words are why the records exist. The riffing is deliberately not the value being pursued.
Open on YouTube at 1:59 - The tradition continuing
Twenty years later, the same brevity, the same distribution model and the same refusal to improve the production.
Open on YouTube
Loaded only when you press play — nothing reaches Google before that. Every second here is the uploader's own, read from the recording's tracklist.
The specifics
- Tempo
- 200-300 bpm
- Song length
- 18 sec-1 min
- Tuning
- Down-tuned and loose, on cheap equipment, recorded badly on purpose. Fidelity is contrary to the political position.
- Production
- Deliberately primitive, frequently released on split records with a dozen bands. The distribution model — splits, tape trading, cost-price mail order — is as much the genre as the sound is.
- Written about
- Animal rights, Anti-capitalism, Anti-war, Direct political address
What each part is doing
- Guitar Simple down-tuned riffing with almost no development, alternating between blast and crawl. Technique is explicitly not the value.
- Bass Distorted and loud, frequently the clearest instrument on a very murky recording.
- Drums Fast and loose, played by a human at the edge of control rather than programmed.
- Vocals Two registers trading, delivering political statements rather than lyrics — the words are the reason the records exist.
What it isn't
That it is a genre in the usual sense. It is closer to a practice: Agathocles have released several hundred split records, almost none through a conventional label, on the principle that the music should cost as little as possible and reach as many people as possible. The sound follows from the method rather than the other way round.
Told apart from
- Grindcore Mincecore is grindcore's most explicitly political and least musically ambitious wing, and Agathocles have been making it continuously since 1985.
- Goregrind The same brevity and speed aimed at politics rather than at pathology, and much less interested in production.
- Powerviolence Both are short, fast and hostile to the scene around them. Power violence is comic and American; mincecore is earnest and European.
- Crust punk Crust shares the politics and the infrastructure with far more musical ambition and metal influence.
The genres this one is most often mistaken for. Written, not derived.
History
Agathocles formed in Belgium in 1985 and have since put out over a thousand releases, mostly split seven-inches with bands from all over the world. The term 'mincecore' is their own invention, coined to separate themselves from grindcore once it turned metal. It is the purest example of a mail-order DIY network in the whole tree.
Descended from
Siblings on this branch
Sounds like this, elsewhere in the tree
- Raw black metal 1.4 apart by rating · meets it at Heavy metal
- Mathcore 2.0 apart by rating · no shared ancestor
Closest by the three ratings, among genres at least 4 steps away in the tree. A rating match is not a musical claim.