Almost every day i see flyers online of gigs or split releases between doom/sludge and grindcore/hardcore/powerviolence bands. I know this is pretty common nowadays but i wonder how this relation between these differente genres begun, did i miss something? i know you can trace some background of this relationship back in the mid/late 80s when Saint Vitus released their first albums on SST Records (Founded by Greg Ginn of Black Flag) and the birth of The Slugs (pre-Crowbar), Graveyard Rodeo and Eyehategod.

Is there any other event i should know about to fully comprehend this relation? Let me know, this has been quite an intriguing topic for me for the las couple of years.

Well I'm pretty sure sludge's hardcore influence can be traced to Black Flag's My War, and so sludge and hardcore have been intertwined since it's inception.

There's also Grief, formed in the early 90's by Disrupt (crust) guitarist. The griminess of the crust punk/hardcore genre just compliments well with the tempo that doom metal provides.

Can you give examples of such split albums? More often than not, the tag 'doom' is wrongly used.

Right now, the link doesn't seems absurd at all if you stick to Sludge as the genre set up by the originators. Sludge played by bands like Eyehategod in the early 90ies for instance is very much the typical angry hardcore vibe enriched (so to speak) with a fat bluesy guitar tone to portray a sense of southern decay and deliquescence, hence the name of this style, sludge... The emphasis on slowness, the doominess, came later and, I feel, took more an more the prevalence over the HXC influence as time went by. That being said, a band like Grief can play really slow too.

Sludge is a sub tag that has been merged with many other styles to give birth to rather different incarnations...

To me, it'd be the hardcore touch that would make such split releases relevant or not.

The doom genre tag is often misused, for sure, but it does seem like there are more collaborations between traditional doom and hardcore than one would expect. Offhand, I can think of the following:

https://www.metal-archives.com/albums/R ... ema/303894

https://www.metal-archives.com/albums/T ... ead/147366

Even weirder is Gangsta Rap and Grindcore.

ive found that people into traditional doom tend to be more into old hardcore punk than people who arent as much into trad doom.

Sludge has been associated with punk/hardcore since its inception, to the point that some people consider it to be a type of hardcore with metal influences, rather than a metal subgenre. As others have said, a major influence on sludge was My War, but people forget that slow, sludgy punk/hardcore bands like Flipper, Kilslug, and Stickmen With Rayguns were around in the early/mid 1980s as well, and their sick, deranged lyrical fare helped to contribute to sludge's "I Hate Myself/The Human Race" vibe. Mike Williams even said in an interview that his original idea that led to the formation of Eyehategod was to "play hardcore, but slow".

Sludge has gone through various permutations in the last decade and a half (and sounds pretty different nowadays), but in the 1990s, sludge bands in Florida, California, and the Northeast primarily played shows with hardcore bands, and most bands had a lyrical and visual aesthetic that was way closer to punk than the metal of the time. There's not really a singular event that needs to be understood to "get" the relationship between sludge and hardcore; it's more like sludge primarily grew out of the American hardcore scene and so was naturally associated with those bands. Crowbar is considered to be a classic sludge band, and they have their fair share of songs with breakdowns and fast hardcore parts, but I always thought that their bluesy, trad-metal influenced take on sludge was the exception, not the rule.

Was a huge Sabbath fan since the early 80’s. Heard Saint Vitus when I tuned into an old UHF station that had a metal show that featured Vitus and Venom. I’d say the 2 Carnivore LP’s were the first doom/hardcore I ever heard. I was into Black Flag since ‘85, but at the time didn’t think of them as “doom.” There were other slow hardcore bands, but most lacked metal influence. Later I heard the Melvins since they were on Alchemy Records with Poison Idea, bought their LP on a whim and it was crushing. . Then Asbestosdeath when I bought their record from a distributor based on its hyped up description. Then I heard Eyehategod and Crowbar and Sleep when I was getting interviewed at a college station and going thru the new releases, pre-internet days being able to tape from college station libraries was heaven. Then I heard Man Is The Bastard when they opened for Brutal Truth. Then I heard Grief when they played a house near me billed as ex-Disrupt who blew me away when I saw them. Then Noothgrush (Grief clones) due to Matt of Exhumed’s suggestion (their drummer was married to Exhumed’s drummer)I sent them 20 bucks requesting a shirt and demo and eventually received it. then Corrupted through Vacuum distro when I ordered the record on a whim.

Examples of doom-inspired mid-80ies HC

People who liked extremely fast/angry music also often liked slow and heavy. Napalm Death surely loved Swans for example and did tracks influenced by them. Other bands like Black Flag had slower tracks, more and more so, and I'm sure others too. Amebix was pretty doomy, etc. Doom bands on the same labels, etc, people already mentioned it above.