About Grief

United States of America (Boston, Massachusetts) Grief was founded in 1991 by Terry Savastano and drummer Randy Odierno of crust band Disrupt. Grief's sludgy doom metal brought extremely slow riffs to the metal underground. The band was heavily influenced by Black Sabbath, Eyehategod and doom warriors Saint Vitus. Grief's music was jagged, noisy, harsh and brutally dissonant. Lead singer Jeff Hayward favored the sort of tortured, throat-shredding, screaming vocals that were quite common in death metal/black metal and grindcore, and that risk-taking combination of torturous vocals and slow, Sabbath-influenced riffs made Grief one of the more influential sludge/doom metal bands to emerge in the early '90s. They broke up in 2001 mainly due to drummer problems - something that was an ongoing problem for the band from the start. They also cited what they called a "hostile environment for doom metal bands". They reunited briefly in July 2005 to play a cluster of reunion shows. The band had several 7"s including one with Dystopia and Corrupted each. A compilation album called Turbulent Times appeared in 2002 through Southern Lord. The group reunited for one show at the first annual New England Grind And Doom Fest on July 17, 2005 at The Middle East Cafe in Cambridge, MA. They were so excited by the response to this show that they began booking others, and they toured intermittently throughout 2005 and 2006. In 2005, the band played shows through in venues including The Ace of Clubs and The Knitting Factory in New York, The Khyber in Philadelphia, O'Brien's in Allston/Brighton, MA, The Living Room in Providence, RI, and Cherry St. Station in CT. In 2006 Southern Lord Records released a full length live album called Alive which featured their performance at the Middle East in November 2005. The album features artwork by Eric C. Harrison, who did much of the band's painted cover artwork. One of Grief's final appearance was at Emissions from the Monolith 8, a sludge/doom festival that took place in Ohio, May 2006. The band reformed in 2008 and toured the United States and Europe, but they soon disbanded again in March 2009, giving this announcement via their myspace page; "I'm sorry to announce that Grief is no longer playing. We have dis-banded or whatever. The last show we played was the Wien Arena in Vienna Austria (i think i spelled those things right) our reasons for disbanding are our reasons. we have chosen not to get into it but it may or may ot include the following reasons. - Jeff has finally become Rip Van Winkle and will be asleep for the next 50 years. - Ray has finally eaten so much that he can not fit out of the door to his house and is unable to leave home - John has become so death metal that we' d have to actually be ghosts to jam with him and none of us feel like it. - Eric finally became an actual dog and has not learned how to play bass or do artwork with his paws." http://www.myspace.com/officialgrief