Grant Hart, a drummer, vocalist and songwriter for the influential Minnesota rock band Hüsker Dü, died on Wednesday. He was 56.

The band’s publicist, Ken Weinstein, said the cause was cancer.

Hüsker Dü was formed by Mr. Hart, the guitarist and singer Bob Mould and the bassist Greg Norton in the late 1970s in St. Paul. It soon became known for high-volume blasts of heart-quickening rock that could not quite disguise the hooks buried beneath the noise.

An early member of the hardcore movement, Hüsker Dü was a prolific presence in the 1980s, releasing six albums in fewer than six years. The band’s 1984 double album, “Zen Arcade,” was lauded by Robert Palmer of The New York Times, who said it might be the best record “to have emerged from the hardcore scene.”