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Artist
Earache Records
12+ albums
about
Earache Records started during the summer of 1986 in the Nottingham apartment of founder Digby Pearson, who for years previously was a prominent scenester and avid fan of the 80's Underground Hardcore scene, following bands like Discharge, MDC and DRI etc. Dig's apprenticeship in the rudiments of the music industry was served by stints as a writer for Punk fanzine Maximum RocknRoll, promoting American HC bands' tours in the UK and self-releasing flexidiscs of bands such as The Stupids and Heresy. Noticing the beginnings of a crossover of the Hardcore Punk and Thrash Metal scenes, Digby, without any particular fanfare, set about releasing records by those bands he considered pushed the envelope of Hardcore to its most extreme, soon discovering an obscure Birmingham oufit called Napalm Death. Their brand of hyper-speed ' blast ' beats with political and social lyrics, - dubbed 'Grindcore' by the band themselves - made their debut LP 'Scum' an instant hit with fans and ensured widespread notoriety for what was, by some measure, the most extreme and harsh music ever released to the public. By their second album 'From Enslavement to Obliteration' in 1988, Napalm Death had, against all expectations, broken into the mainstream by debuting at Number 1 on the UK Indie charts , scoring the label's first NME front cover and radio sessions with noted BBC Radio 1 DJ John Peel, who had typically supported the sound from its inception. In turn the label grew from a bedroom operation into
