Slaves To The Grind Book (My Review)

Is it good? Is it worth your time? Would I recommend "Slaves To The Grind" to a grindcore fan? Let's find out...

Slaves To The Grind, the full review.

A few months ago, I posted my review of the book “The Death Metal Bible” by Antoine Grand (see below), the famous heavy metal author and Internet provocateur.

It was well received, and many of you asked for more reviews of this sort.

I’m usually reticent to doing reviews, be they for metal albums or, in this case, books, as there is such an immense quantity of information on the Internet that I don’t feel like contributing to the noise.

But more and more of you were asking for reviews of other metal books by Antoine Grand, notably the notoriously “edgy” one on black metal called “Real Satanic Black Metal: The True History Of Satanism In Extreme Metal Music”.

The only problem is that I never read it! Hard to review something you never read… people just assumed that I read everything the man ever wrote (lol). I’m not that prolific with books ;)

However, it just happens that there is one book of his that I did read a short while ago… and by a weird coincidence, it’s one the same theme as my last two posts: grindcore (again, see below).

Yeah, one of the lesser known books by AG is “Slaves To The Grind” and it was the first book from him I ever read - and the only other one, besides “The Death Metal Bible”.

So… is it good? Do I recommend it?

I’ll divide my answer into two categories: if you’ve ever read any Antoine Grand book before, and if you haven’t. The answers should be 90% the same in either case, but there are subtle differences.

Before we start, you’ll remember that I began this post by calling Antoine Grand an “Internet provocateur”. It’s a bit of an exaggeration, but it’s not far from the truth.

While his knowledge of heavy metal genres is extremely solid - be they death metal, grindcore or, I assume, black metal - he is also known to go on “edgy” rants, in order to… well, provoke. In fact, my last two posts were sort of based off his style. I did read “Slaves To The Grind” after all ;)

This doesn’t detract from the quality of his work, but it does give his books a certain “style” that isn’t for everyone. You can read the (equally provocative) thread titled “Why is Antoine Grand so Hated by Metalheads” on the Morsay Forums.

So what about “Slaves To The Grind” - should you read it?

Honestly, there aren’t many books that cover the history of the grindcore subgenre so thoroughly as “Slaves…”. It’s rightfully seen as the all-inclusive guide to grindcore, and its associated subgenres (goregrind, crossover thrash, crust, powerviolence, deathgrind, etc).

But if you’re very sensitive to rants and takedowns of mainstream metalcore artists, I do suggest you skip chapters 19 through 23 (on metalcore, deathcore, screamo, and there was a fourth one if I recall correctly).

You can get the book here (not an affiliate link): https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0F996TG6H