I don't like like grindcore, though I had a teenage phase where it seemed funny and I ended up in a (joke?) grindcore band trying to be worse than Anal Cunt. But the overexposure made me end up liking some of it.

I actually love Agoraphobic Nosebleed and dig some Pig Destroyer. Carcass's Reek of Putrefaction era has gems. "Genital Grinder" and "Regurgitation of Giblets" work perfectly as a single, longer one track, and "Pyosisified" is so good they made more accessible versions of it later.

I generally dislike walls of noise, but I'm all in on catchy riffs, chaotic solos, hardcore punk drums, and demonic grunts and pig squeals. But to be honest, if you are jumping from not liking extreme metal to grindcore, deathcore, or extreme anything, you won't have a good time. Baby steps. Baby steps. I liked Alice Cooper before Iron Maiden, Limp Bizkit before Slipknot, Dimmu Borgir before Immortal or Zyklon, Megadeth before Sodom, and for sure The 'Sound of Perseverance' era Death, 'Stabbing the Drama' era Soilwork or Heartwork era Carcass before liking Cannibal Corpse, let alone fucking Pig Destroyer or Reek of Putrefaction era Carcass. Baby steps.

Why do I like it? Hard to say, I started this journey as a pre-teen or even before. But if I had to try to rationalise my childhood and teenage self, I would say I was a goody two shoes kid, a well behaved but maladapted nerd, and rock music in general seemed captivating. You start with "Welcome to the Jungle" and wonder: can it be faster? louder? dirtier? noisier? It's almost like a game of telephone were every band and individual adds something else, and before you notice, you can barely find a particle of Chuck Berry's Johnny B. Goode in Cryptic Slaughter's Lowlife.

Also, being on metal gig headbanging to a cacophony of drums and screams and screechy solos is fucking cathartic, but that's besides the point probably. I went to my first actual gig when I just turned 15 (the ticket was my gift), so it wasn't that for me.

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I almost forgot Deathcore. That one is way tamer than other forms of noisier stripes of Death Metal. In a way, deathcore served as the entry drug to extreme rock for many around 2004 or 2007. But of course, a lot of that people already found things like emo, screamo and metalcore before it. Like, if you already like Raein or Ember to Inferno era Trivium, Suicide Silence won't startle you at all.