The Grubbels

The Grubbels (also known as The Grubbles) is Xefros and Dammek's quasi-revolutionary underground punk/rock band. The two-piece outfit features Xefros as the vocal lead through a heavily-autotuned microphone (which renders his words utterly incomprehensible), and Dammek on both drums and guitar, while also functioning as the studio mixer. The Grubbels are one of the few known examples of Alternian music culture.

The name "The Grubbels" is a portmanteau of "Grub" and "Rebels", reflecting the adolescent age of its members and the revolutionary themes in their music. The alternate spelling "The Grubbles" is also sometimes used (as well as being the title of their real-world EP), with Dammek being indecisive and changing the name of the band back and forth several times.

As well as being a fictional band in Hiveswap, a real-world EP by veteran Homestuck and Hiveswap musician James Roach has been released under the name of the band, as well as posters and other merchandise on the What Pumpkin Store. "The Grubbles" EP was made available on bandcamp and also as a free download for Hiveswap's Kickstarter backers.

Group profile
The band was formed after Dammek gifted Xefros a handmade autotune microphone one 12th Perigee's Eve, informing him that 1. he'd started a band, 2. Xefros was the singer, and 3. that his voice could use a little work.

Dammek appears to be the main driving force behind the band, adopting a persona of "Percussive machismo", while describes his persona as being "'skittish', as if [he's] vaguely terrified of the implications of [his] own pseudo-revolutionary rhymes". This is not without good reason, as the Grubbels' frequent lyrical themes of class uprising and lowblood rebellion are more than enough basis for execution under the Alternian regime.

The Grubbel's music generally concerns the caste struggles of lowbloods within the highly stratified class groupings of the Hemospectrum. Their lyrics discuss the struggle of their respective castes under highblood tyranny, and advocate for violent uprising against the highbloods and the Heiress in particular. These themes carry through to the image the band seeks to adopt; one Grubbels poster features Xefros and Dammek posing in butler uniforms, in order to "subversively transform the rags of their oppression into the fatigues of the revolutionary through their jams", although Xefros questions whether these costumes might make them hard to be taken seriously.

The Grubbles
The somewhat-confusingly-titled Grubbels EP "The Grubbles" is a five-track release of music by the almost-titular band. In the real world, the tracks were composed by Homestuck music team member James Roach, who, along with Toby Fox, was also responsible for the rest of the Hiveswap soundtrack.

A number of songs from The Grubbles were a key part of the publicity for Hiveswap in the year leading up to its release, with two lyric videos posted on the offical Homestuck youtube channel (the lyrics were written entirely in the new Alternian alphabet). This is helpful, as due to the excessive autotuning and digital processing of Xefros' microphone (an intentional choice in order to avoid having to depict a canonical voice for Xefros), the words of the songs are otherwise entirely incomprehensible.

The track list for The Grubbles is as follows:
 * 1) Broom Temperature (01:58) (Lyric video here)
 * 2) Frondly Warning (02:19) (Lyric video here)
 * 3) Ghost Mound (02:02)
 * 4) Every Single Grievance (01:11)
 * 5) Get The Horns (02:15)

Trivia

 * Many of the Grubbels posters seen in game are also available on the What Pumpkin Store. Interestingly, while the version of the "Butlers" poster in the game features text in the new Alternian alphabet (reading "The Grubbels"), the one in the What Pumpkin Store features the same text in the old Daedric alphabet instead.
 * As the new Alternian alphabet replaced the Daedric alphabet sometime during Hiveswap's development (for copyright reasons), this might mean that the version available on the store is an older version of the poster from before this switch was made.