Repetition : rather than using traditional songwriting or catchy hooks, Gremlin songs are often built around repeating the same phrase over and over and over again until the words almost completely lose their meaning and begin to take on the quality of some sort of dark magic incantation used to summon an ancient beast.Įither the song has one consistent, linear groove that builds in intensity (example: “Houseplants” by Squid) or the song wildly swerves from one groove to another as if time signatures aren’t real (example: “953” by black midi). If your brain hasn’t been turned to mush by your cell phone, you aren’t truly making Gremlin music. Guitars that can be described by lazy music critics like myselfus as “angular” : self explanatory, you’ll quickly learn to recognize The Gremlin Guitar Sound™ as you immerse yourself in the Mindset.Ĭreated after 2010: while Gremlin-core often draws influence from older bands like The Talking Heads, only music from the last decade can be officially categorized as Gremlin-core. Very commonly, Gremlin bands will combine this two at once (see: Black Country, New Road). Vocal performance that either sounds like a Gremlin or completely monotone / spoken word : Gremlin-core is almost entirely unconcerned with traditional melody and tuneful singing, you either have to shriek and scream like a wild animal or you have to deliver your vocals without any emotion or inflection, actual singing is mostly forbidden with some exceptions. These are not strict requirements, but the more of these that get checked off, the more likely it is that something fits into the Gremlin canon: Determining what albums and bands are or are not a part of the Gremlin Mindset is mostly a “you know it when you hear it” thing, but in discussing this movement at length, we have identified a couple of key factors that tend to indicate that a band is Gremlin-core. While initially describing a couple of very specific bands, the Gremlin Mindset has grown into something much larger, becoming a catch-all term for any new rock bands that give themselves over completely to the unhinged energy of their performances.ĭifferentiating Gremlin-core from 2010s post-punk as a whole is a square / rectangle situation: all Gremlin-core is post-punk, but not all post-punk is Gremlin-core. But soon, it became clear that “Gremlin-core” was not just a fun bit, but was actually a perfect genre descriptor for a growing musical movement within the larger 2010s post-punk and noise rock scene. “The Gremlin Mindset” is a term that was jokingly coined by members of the Indieheads Podcast to describe the manic, deranged energy of black midi lead singer and noted short king Geordie Greep, comparing his performance style and diminutive height to the anarchic spirit of the Gremlins.
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