Biography
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Years Active
1991 – present (33 years)
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Founded In
Sunnyvale, Santa Clara County, California, United States
Hailing from Sunnyvale, a working class suburb outside of San francisco California, Godstomper are D.I.Y. noise musicians who support lo-fi analog, do it yourself recordings, anti scenes, antifascist and antiracist organizations, anti rockstar, anti popularity, anti political and religious attitude.
Starting in 1991 as a two piece bass and drum band due to their problems of dealing with guitar players, Godstomper recorded a few tape demos in their bedroom of crude death metal and early napalm death inspired grindcore mixed with sample recordings and one such recording, their first, was pressed on a 500 press ep split with Germany's Skrupel on Rescued from life records in 2005 as a experimental collectors record of bands first demo recordings. Soon Godstomper was put on hiatus as the two brothers Paul barfo and Daniel 666 started their anti music band The Barfos with three guitarists from high school, Dave Winters, Krish Irish and Raina Kumra. The band was a mess of untuned guitars, samples, noise, punk, death metal and sonic youth meets napalm death meets the buthole surfers sound.
In 1996 The Barfos went their seperate ways and Paul and Danny started writing songs, influenced by the sounds of San joses shoe gazer heavy indy rock band Calm and Redwood citys Spazz infest influenced powerviolence sound, wrote songs like Fozzy bear about the night one of their friends singer/guitarist John Ogle of the band Fifteen and Wooly Mammoth was punched out by a thug skin head at a local show and so the was born the start of many of the songs that would make up Godstomper's two man bass and drum influenced heavy rock powerviolence sound or as they rather see it as structured noise with shouting. Godstomper was born again on febuary 14 1996 at 3am live on KFJC 89.7, a local college radio station Paul was a staff member of and soon a split 7inch with San jose's youngest and only grind punk band with female vocals Cathy Ames was put out and the support from the Cupertino library scene and the Redwood city hardcore scene like bands like Slobber, RWs, Agents of Satan, No Less, Benumb, The Misanthropists, Uttered Bastard helped create a unified and strong local bay area hardcore scene in the south and west bay. Bands from the south bay that also contributed to the support of said bands included Noothgrush, Exhumed, Calm, The Lipids, Psychobabylon, Jenny Piccolo, Woolly Mammoth etc…
Soon Godstomper was putting out splits with local bands they were friends with, playing live radio shows, 924 gilman st. project, solidarity festivals, anarchist fests. Soon offers from much well known diy record labels 625 prod. and slap a ham records came in for full length 7inches which the band was happy with since they loved the records that came out on the labels plus their fondness of diy principles that anyone can put out a recording and not with the support of big corporate labels. Godstomper til this day still represents their diy ideals of putting out records on smaller labels, music before profit, supporting new bands, and being a accesible group to young show promoters without the attitude or politics. Through all their ups and down as a band, personal problems, and keeping a moderate position in the music scene unless you mention their attack on the emo scene due to the similarities of the once pompous and ego fueled metal scene of the 80's, Godstomper still records and plays shows when they can .
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