Escuela Grind, from left, Justin Altamirano( bass), Jesse Fuentes( guitar), Katerina Economou( vocals),
Krissy Morash( guitar), and Jake Sanders( drums).
In a sparsely decorated, dimly lit basement beneath a house in Pittsfield, Escuela Grind is operating at full force. Katerina Economou grips the microphone, unleashing rhythmically precise screamed vocals over the shredding, pulsating guitar riffs of Jesse Fuentes and Krissy Morash. Behind them, drummer Jake Sanders crashes into the cymbals and snaps back to the snare, his feet thundering against the kick drums below, while bassist Justin Altamirano runs his fingers across the frets. At this volume, the sound is physically enveloping, but beneath its sheer force is something equally apparent: precision, musical dialogue, and the easy camaraderie of five people who know how to read one another in real time. Glances are exchanged, rhythms lock together, and moments of apparent chaos reveal themselves as carefully controlled arrangements. The basement itself has been part rehearsal room, part recording space, and part DIY venue, hosting underground concerts by bands from around the world. It is also part of the home Economou and Fuentes have made in the Berkshires.
Watching Economou command that room, her affect and comportment do not suggest her other side. In addition to being a grindcore frontwoman, she is also a soft-spoken architect, a substitute schoolteacher in the Lenox school district at Morris Elementary, and a Berkshire native who can discuss historic preservation, art history, and the practical demands of municipal design with equal ease. At the front of the five-piece extreme-metal band, Economou is instead a physical and vocal force, delivering guttural roars over bursts of blast-beat percussion, distorted guitars, abrupt rhythmic turns, and breakdowns engineered to send a crowd into motion.
For the uninitiated, grindcore occupies one of heavy music’ s more extreme outer edges. Emerging from punk and metal traditions, it prizes speed, abrasion, political intensity, and songs that can sometimes be measured in seconds rather than minutes. Escuela Grind has never been interested in remaining neatly inside those boundaries. Drawing from grindcore and“ powerviolence” as well as death metal, hardcore, electronic music, and an increasingly broad range of influences, the band has gradually stretched its sound into something heavier, groovier, more deliberate, and often considerably more accessible than the genre’ s reputation might suggest. Or, as Economou and her longtime partner and bandmate Fuentes have learned to describe it:“ brutal hardcore from New England.”
That New England designation matters. Escuela Grind was born in Ithaca, New York, and its members now spend substantial portions of their life touring across the United States and Europe, where they have developed a large fanbase. It is also the place where Economou’ s seemingly divergent lives converge: international touring musician and
Fall 2026 BERKSHIRE MAGAZINE // 27