Escuela Grind: Making Memories… Life On The Road

Over the past few years, ESCUELA GRIND have been making a name for themselves with their energetic and furious grindcore that is bolstered by a host of other musical elements. Having toured extensively throughout the US, over the summer the band released their second album, Memory Theater, and it is a collection of non-stop razor sharp grind, that will rightly see ESCUELA GRIND garner more and more deserved accolades. We caught up with vocalist Katerina Economou to hear all about Memory Theater and life on the road with ESCEULA GRIND.

With the album having been out for a month now, Katerina tells us what the reaction to it has been so far now fans have had a chance to absorb it. “Really great. We just finished up a full US tour right before the album came out, and we played a bunch of music off of it. We’ve had the songs for a while now, a lot of them were written during the pandemic so to hear them played live and to see the actual reaction, and compare it to what we thought what happened is great and It’s exceeding our expectations.”

With their debut album Indoctrination, ESCUELA GRIND definitely had a vast amount of intensity embedded in their grindcore sound and this is certainly the case with Memory Theater too, but on the new record they upped the heaviness even more as Katerina explains. “I think the same amount of intensity but with this album, we were really trying to expand on what we liked about the last album, so there’s a lot more influences put into one album, the songs are a little longer and there’s more room to breathe. We wrote it in an entirely different way than we wrote our last album so it’s more thought out. There’s a bit of a groove in between some of the parts that we would always keep in our old music.”

The 2020 release of the GGRRIINNDDCCOORREE and PPOOWWEERRVVIIOOLLEENNCCEE EPs, saw ESCUELA GRIND exploring different elements of their sound with an energised focus and just as they have on Memory Theater, the band are looking to delve into the same exploration of different sounds but also looking as to what to incorporate in their music in the future as Katerina tells us. “We’ve been writing a series of EPs, there’s going to be four all together. We started them in 2020, the first two being grindcore and powerviolence, so it’s an expression of our main influences. The second two we’re writing for right now and we have some big plans for that. We’re writing and recording our death metal EP now and we’re going to be recording that with a heavy hitter, then we’ll be writing our hardcore style EP and all of those will get a physical release through our label, once they’re all done so we’ve been really just diving into each of our styles in our own way. For me, personally, I really like what we’ve decided to do with Memory Theater and I’d like to explore a bit more about how we’re crossing all the different streams of our influences and bringing some groove and blasts together so I would like to explore that more on the next record.”

With a massive tour of the United States, both prior to and after the release of Memory Theater, ESCUELA GRIND covered a lot of ground in playing as many shows as they could, something they have always done and Katerina told us all about the highlights of such an extensive touring run.“It was great, we did pretty much a similar route the year before, at the same time, right when shows came back for us so we’ve had that to compare with. It’s just so great to see how that the energy is still there. Even though we’ve had shows for a while now, the energy compared to when they first came back to now was still there for us. To meet all the bands and friends that we had made the previous year and then to see how it’s grown since then is just amazing. It’s such a cool feeling. We’ve gotten a lot of new fans and friends from our videos that we put out and some live performance videos that went semi viral and a lot of young people coming out to show, so that’s so exciting for me. I love the energy that young people are bringing to shows right now no matter how they get into the music. A lot of people like to poopoo Tiktok and whatnot, but it’s opened a lot of minds to extreme music over the past year. It’s interesting to see and the energy is just so crazy right here in the States right now.”

Having extensively covered the States with their ferocious live show, a long awaited trip over to these shores is thankfully on the cards and Katerina and the rest of ESCUELA GRIND can’t wait to get over here and show us the power of their music in a live situation. “We were just talking about that! We’re definitely making our way over to the UK and Europe. We intend to do a pretty long tour around that for the album. We’ll be playing the Venezia Hardcore Fest next year which is a really great Italian hardcore fest, so it’ll be structured around that.”

With all the talk about touring, the subject of how touring has changed for the band since they have been able to start doing it again arose. “Even when we started, we just hit the ground running like no matter what vehicle we had, no matter what lineup, no matter what instruments, we just hit the ground running and we started touring. That ethos is still there. Now we’re a four piece band as opposed to before we were a three piece band so having a whole low end section just brings out so much more in the music. In the States our drives are so far apart, we ended up getting a van and trailer so it’s the same style of touring, same DIY style of that we’ve always done, but just more pieces are getting added.”

The return to the stage also added as catharsis with all that has gone on over the past couple of years for ESCUELA GRIND, as they unleash their fury and give their all when they play live. “For me, we put so much heart into the performances. I really put a lot of motion and thought and intention in what we do live, so to be able to go back, it was a little daunting. However, we eased ourselves in and didn’t just jump in and go and do big clubs, we did floor shows, outside benefits, skate shows, like real punk stuff, and met a bunch of young people that weren’t in the scene before the pandemic happened. That was also influential and how coming back to shows really reshaped us in a way, so it was definitely cathartic. It was necessary for us. We all lived together during the pandemic, so we were practising and playing and writing the songs. We had each other to bounce off of and feed off each other’s energy, but playing live, there’s nothing like it, so the catharsis, like you said, was missed, and was matched when we came back.”

With all of that said, Katerina definitely sees ESCUELA GRIND as a live act first and foremost. “I think for me, we’ve always been that live, We have this finalised lineup that we we have now and our live act before was definitely different from our recordings. I think that we’ve been able to take the energy that we put into our live act, and it’s coming through clearly and it’s translating in the way we write, so the live show is always going to be really important for us.”

Memory Theater is out now via MNRK Heavy.

Like ESCUELA GRIND on Facebook.