Shortly after being founded by Digby “Dig” Pearson in 1985, Earache Records earned a reputation as being at the forefront of extreme metal’s ever-shifting landscape. Some of its earliest releases, like Napalm Death’s Scum and Carcass’s Reek Of Putrefaction, pioneered and popularised the grindcore genre. From there, the label had the prescient ability to sign game-changing death metal, melodeath and post-metal bands before they got big, making its albums a fixture of any metalhead’s shelf in the 90s and 2000s.
Earache has since shifted gears to signing everything from new wave nu metal bands to nostalgic rock ’n’ roll act. Here’s the essential guide to its history in just five albums.
