The Strange History of Myspace-Grind

The Strange History of Myspace-Grind

Hello everyone!! One scene/micro trend I quite enjoy yet frustratingly cant find much information on is "Myspace-Grind." I stumbled across the term a few months ago and frustratingly couldn't find any information on the term. After asking around and doing some research, here's what I came to understand. I hope you all enjoy and come out with some exciting new information. 

What Is Myspace-Grind? 
Myspace-Grind is not necessarily a genre, its more of a micro scene movement that focused on grind influence in the Myspace-Era. I like to pinpoint this to around 2002-2011. Bands that were mathgrind, deathgrind, cybergrind, and grindcore could fit in this scene, as long as they followed traditional br00tal aesthetics, which is why a band like Cattle Decap was deathgrind but not necessarily myspace-grind. 

Mathgrind tends to be pretty synonymous with myspace-grind. Other labels thrown in would be false-grind (stupid term, just people mad that scene kids brought their aesthetics into grindcore.) 

Origins (early 2000s)

Grindcore, Death Metal, and Mathcore are all excellent genres with histories that date back to the 80s, and 90s I guess for mathcore. But these genres were quite geographically limited and didn't have much specific visual characteristics (except for death metal). So when MySpace came around, it changed the game for the music scene. Bands could upload their songs over night and fans could discover bands from anywhere in the world. This created a platform for microscenes to develop on the internet, one being of course, Myspace-Grind. 

Myspace
As Myspace adopted a grind scene, most of the songs were short, chaotic, maximalistic. A lot of the bands were grindcore with deathcore vocals or breakdowns, mathcore structures, slam riffs, and even electronic synths. The songs had blast beats, high screams, low growls, tempo changes, messy mixing. Visually, it was unique from the previous grind scene. Tight jeans, band tees, scene hair, gore fonts, LOTSSS of accessories, absurd band names. (iwrestledabearonce, wecamewithbrokenteeth, massacre of the umbilical cord) Myspace-grind was mostly a term for mathgrind bands but some deathgrind and cybergrind can also see fit to the scene.
Bands from this era:
Ed Gein
Duck Duck Goose
iwrestledabearonce (early)
See You next Tuesday
Tower of Rome
Oktober Skyline
The Great Redneck Hope
Arsonists Get All The Girls

A lot of these bands were intentionally obscure and spazzy as hell. The bands were mostly ironic and used a lot of shock value. But yeah, it was pretty hated by metal elitists, grindcore fans, and hardcore traditionalists. It got the anti-scene label false-grind by them.  Sawtooth Grin
Me and Him Call It Us

Late MySpace Era and Backlash (2007-2011)
MySpace-Grind was never the most popular genre but it did pretty well for itself, its influence was found in later br00tal bands, but many of the bands either broke up or started going for a more "mature" direction. Its quite interesting how daughters went from a sassy mathgrind band to making one of the most critically acclaimed noise rock albums. But during the tail end of this era, myspace started to decline and facebook/youtube became the dominant platform. The scene fractured into deathcore bands, mathcore revival bands, and internet extreme acts. 
Bands:
iwrestledabearonce dropped most grind influence
Molotov Solution had deathgrind influence
Beneath the Massacre was actually still there kinda

Legacy
Short and chaotic songs are pretty common in the current myspace revival scene. Deathcore and modern mathgrind bands still write pretty short songs from time to time. Also, it popularized meme culture in extreme metal. Most modern deathcore aesthetics come from bands like killwhitneydead. I would argue any band that uses movie samples in their deathcore songs are to a degree, influenced by killwhitneydead. 

Myspace-Revival

There is (kinda) a revival. Bands like gif. from god, wristmeetrazor, seeyouspacecowboy (rip) took a lot of influence from myspace-grind aesthetics. The revival isnt mainstream its more so aesthetically in the revival of mathcore and deathcore. Myspace isnt a thing so technically, MySpace-Grind cant really exist in todays context but the sounds and aesthetics still carry on in the revival scene. Myspace aesthetics are popular amongst scene kids on this website and in their fashion. But Myspace-Grind requires a dominant platform like myspace for many reasons. It allowed teenagers to have easy access to extreme bands, and helped bands establish shock value, and was part of the scene fashion. But as mentioned earlier, Myspace-Grind isnt a genre in its own, it was a micro-community that drew in elements of extreme genres like deathcore, mathcore, grindcore, mathgrind, and deathgrind... etc....
Modern bands 
.gif from god
Ted Williams
SeeYouSpaceCowboy (2017-2020)
Meth.
Combat Evolved
Gxllium
In Which Divides Us

Thank you for reading all of this, if you did. I was mostly frustrated by the lack of coverage this scene had. Anyway, here are some sources. 
combat wounds myspace-grind albums
mathgrind (has a stupid ai image in the post sadly)
cooked up a playlist to help contextualize the sound