Grind After Death – The End of an Era
Words: Dan Barnes
Just after submitting my preview of this year’s Grind After Death festival’s fifth anniversary show, it was announced that 2026 would be the last GAD event. The stresses of pretty-much single-handedly organising any show of this nature have finally caught up, meaning Doc has had to bring the curtain down on one of the region’s best events.
As promoters, Eat the Rude have been bringing the extremity to the north-west for some time before the advent of Grind After Death, and the first event under that name happened on 1st October 2022, at Bolton’s Alma Inn.
Cast your mind back to that crazy time; lockdowns were still a painful recent memory, but the live music scene had been back in some sort of normal operation for about twelve-months. I can’t recall whether we were still having to show personal medical information to event security – was never one-hundred percent sure that wasn’t breeching the General Date Protection Regulations 2018 – at that stage but just being away from de-facto house arrest was a bonus.
The first event was a smaller affair, bringing together a host of UK bands to rage and blast away on a Saturday afternoon. Headliners that day were Basement Torture Killings, who were festival veterans by 2022, Leeds’ grinders, Gets Worse and Preston’s All Consumed, alongside a supporting cast that included Nothing Clean, Pteroglyph, Skabs and Carnal Rot.
At a mere five of the King’s own pounds – Her Majesty having passed away the month before – it was a bargain in anyone’s book.
Less than a year later and Grind After Death went for a summer date of 1st July 2023, with a promo around Christmas time to grab yourself a ticket for £6.66 if I remember correctly. Buoyed by the success of the 2022 show – and anticipating a bit of sun-stroke – in Bolton, I know! GAD expanded to fourteen bands and running for the better part of eleven hours.
Early bands that day were Nottingham slammers, Black Mass, Rugby grinders, Grunk, and everyone’s favourite Yorkshire cyber-grinding bakers, Grindcore Cake Makers. This year’s openers, OmegaThone, played mid-bill in 2023, with Penny Coffin and Casket Feeder, heading into the evening and Coprocephalic Mutation, Boycott the Baptist and Suffer (UK), leading to a headlining set from Crepitation, who’d already played the second stage at Bloodstock Open Air 2022 alongside Party Cannon and Discharge on a blistering Friday afternoon, and would be appearing in the autumn at Damnation with Anaal Nathrackh, Rotten Sound and Undeath.
Also on Grind After Death’s 2023 roster were grinders Krupskaya, the feral Priest Crippler, Public Execution, and Xenomyiasis.
A happy medium was stuck with a nice-round dozen bands booked for 2024; headlined by east midland agitators, Atomçk, with old school death metal outfit, Malediction, and Austrian porno grind troupe, VxPxOxAxAxWxAxMxC, topping the poster. The poster itself being a gruesome work of art, featuring a chain saw wielding, pig-masked – I’m not jumping to the conclusion that this figure is a n’er-do-well but there’s a few distressed looking folk off to the right of the image. Down at the bottom there’s a chap going about the business of slaughtering his second female victim, so maybe Piggy is up to no good, after all.
Embodiment played it technical and mellow – relatively speaking, of course; Frenchmen AxDxT took the day’s Crazy-Bastards slot and Brummie bruisers, Spawned from Hate, featured one-time Razor’s Edge scribe, Dan Phipps, and blasted some torturous tunes from their short but oh-so brutal discography.
Invited back for this year’s Grind Before Death preshow in February, Vast Slug is always a riotous time and I wear my Slug of Death shirt with a certain amount of shameful pride! Early bands included London duo, Overthrow, Mancunian industrialists, The Machinist, Glaswegians StairMaster, bringing their Fast Buck grindcore to Bolton, with the show being opened by local slammers Strxanded, proving Grind After Death was become a national affair.
In 2025, GAD adopted the tagline of “A smelly, junky, sausage fest with shit music”, a moniker that attracted much mirth at Bloodstock that year as I walked around the site with it blazoned across the back of a long-sleeved shirt. Chernobyl-obsessed Germans, Cytotoxin’s fifth album, Biographyte was freshly in the shops when they arrived at the Alma to headline and they levelled the place with a combination of brutality and technicality; providing some respite from the grind were The Bleeding, whose set was probably the most accessible of the day and included a cover of Death’s Open Casket.
Elsewhere, Barren nailed it and almost took the honour of being band of the day; power violence mob Trading Hands brought punk element and humanist stance to Bolton. Unburier twisted minds with their technicality, Corpsing made the trip to BL2 after playing The Black Heart in Camden the night before, with Acid Vat and Accelerated Mutation providing early entertainment.
After a triumphant show in 2023 it was kind of obvious Grindcore Cake Makers would be invited back and their set of inhuman cybergrind-meets-The Great British Bake Off is a show that will long in the memory.
I think I speak for all at The Razor’s Edge when I say Grind After Death will be missed. We’ve only been on-board as media partners over the past year but have made some good friends in that short-time. Last year’s show was a blast, so let’s make this one a farewell for the ages.
