Hardcore punk
Hardcore punk is an intensified version of punk rock usually characterized by short, loud, and often angry songs with exceptionally fast tempos and chord changes.
| Hardcore punk | |
|---|---|
| Stylistic origins: | Punk rock |
| Cultural origins: | early 1980s North America |
| Typical instruments: | Guitar - Bass - Drums |
| Mainstream popularity: | Little to none during the careers of the bands, has gained much popularity in recent years |
| Derivative forms: | Emo |
| Subgenres | |
| D-beat - Queercore - Skate punk - Straight edge - Crust Punk - American Oi! | |
| Fusion | |
| Grunge - Metalcore - Ska punk - Thrash metal | |
| Regional scenes | |
| Boston - Los Angeles - Southern California - DC - NY | |
| Other topics | |
| Bands - DIY Punk Ethic | |
History
Hardcore originated in the late 1970s and early '80s in North America, primarily in and around Los Angeles and Washington DC, but also in around New York City, Vancouver, Boston, and other cities. Former DC club promoter Steven Blush claimed, in his book, American Hardcore: A Tribal History, that hardcore was punk rock adapted for suburban teens. Hardcore lyrics often express righteous indignation at society, usually from a politically left perspective.
The origin of the term 'hardcore punk' is murky. One story is that the term was coined by NYC producer and manager Bob Sallese when promoting a show by the band The Mob in 1981, at a Bayside, Queens club. (The common New York term for fast punk, at the time, was 'thrash.')
The general consensus, however, credits the term to an album by Vancouver's D.O.A., entitled "Hardcore '81". Until roughly 1983, "hardcore" was used fairly sparingly, in the spirit of an adjective, and not in the sense of a defined musical genre: American teenagers who were into hardcore considered themselves into 'punk' -- as opposed to 'punk rock' or '77 punk,' the earlier, slower style of the Sex Pistols, et al., which they generally considered hopelessly dated and passé. 'Hardcore' was initially an in-group term meaning, in perfect anthropological fashion, "music by people like us," and included a surprisingly wide range of sounds, from hyper-speed punk to sludgy dirge-rock, and often including art/experimental bands such as Mission of Burma, The Stickmen, and Flipper. Today (and for the purpose of this article), it refers more-or-less exclusively to what used to be known as 'thrash.'
American hardcore
Like the British punk wave of 1976 to 1978, American hardcore was initially a tight-knit movement that evolved into an enduring genre. The sound borrowed elements from bands such as The Ramones, the UK Subs, and Motorhead (often at second- or third-remove), but quickly became a thing in itself.
As with most musical genres, it's difficult to place the exact origins of hardcore; furthermore, the music's creation -- when and where earlier styles transformed into something new -- is subject to debate among fans.
Michael Azerrad's Our Band Could Be Your Life traces hardcore, ultimately, to three bands: He calls LA's Black Flag (formed in 1976) the music's "godfathers"; credits the Bad Brains, an all-black ensemble from DC formed in 1978, with introducing their often astonishingly fast "light speed" tempos; and calls Minor Threat, a DC group formed in 1980, the "definitive" hardcore punk band. The Bad Brains' eponymous first album (originally a cassette-only release, in 1981), has been called the "holy grail" of hardcore. [1] (A similarly-esteemed single, "Pay to Cum" b/w "Stay Close to Me," preceded it in 1980.)
Also often cited as the definitive hardcore band are The Teen Idles, formed in 1978 in Washington DC. (Ian MacKaye was a member of both the Teen Idles and, later, Minor Threat; the Teen Idles' EP was posthumously released in 1981.) However, several bands in the Los Angeles area in the late 1970s released records whose style is functionally identical to what would later be called 'hardcore.' The most striking is the Middle Class's thrashing "Out of Vogue" EP from 1978 (the stub on this band was voted for deletion from Wikipedia by the usual pack of cryptographers and Operations Research students [= music experts]. Don't tell them about the audio file here: [2] Or the sleeve photo here: [3]).
Also historically crucial is Rhino 39's 1979 "Xerox" b/w "No Compromise"/"Prolixin Stomp" single (Audio clips here: [4]). The Germs' 1979 "GI" LP is essentially a hardcore record, not only for its quick tempos but especially for its notably fast chord changes (clips here; choose "What We Do Is Secret" and below for the important (GI) album:), while the Circle Jerks' first album, from 1980, features both blinding chord changes and tempos.
During this period, records and bands traveled from the far more organized California scenes to the East Coast, but rarely in the other direction (the Teen Idles played two poorly-attended shows in California in the summer of 1980, and were the first ostensible East Coast hardcore band to do so. Minor Threat's 1981 shows in Los Angeles were also somewhat spottily-attended).
All of the above suggests that despite Azerrad's thesis, hardcore punk arose more or less organically, and can't be reduced to an easy (or necessarily to the most famous or imitated) set of progenitors. For further instance, Black Flag's canonical singer, Henry Rollins, first appeared under his given name, Henry Garfield, in the early DC hardcore band, SOA -- and joined Black Flag under fairly random circumstances after filling in on vocals--as a fan--at a 1981 show at New York's A7 club. In 1981, DC and Los Angeles both featured major bands called Youth Brigade, neither of which was initially aware of the other.
Other notable early hardcore bands (circa 1980-81) include The Neos, from Victoria, British Columbia; The Fix, from Detroit; The Necros, from Maumee, Ohio; Strike Under, The Effigies, and Naked Raygun from Chicago; The Dicks and The Big Boys, from Austin, Texas.
College radio stations throughout the country played early hardcore, but the most influential single show was Rodney on the ROQ, on Los Angeles' commercial station KROQ. DJ Rodney Bingenheimer played many styles of music, and helped popularize what was, circa 1979-80, called "Beach Punk" -- a rowdy suburban style played by mostly teenage bands in and around Huntington Beach, and in the heavily-conservative Orange County. The San Francisco-area public station KPFA feautured the Maximum Rock 'n' Roll radio show, with DJs Tim Yohannon and Jeff Bale, who played the younger Northern California bands. A wave of zines also helped spread the new, younger punk style, including Guillotine, Ripper, Flipside, and in late 1981, Yohannon and Bale's Maximum RocknRoll zine -- modeled on Tim Tonooka's Ripper, but with a national circulation and 'scene reports' from around the country. A strong infrastructure of indie labels, linked with already-existing radio outlets and both old and new zines (Slash, Option, Flipside, and others had already covered alternative music for several years), helped to create a functioning, nationwide subculture, if not always one that was appreciated by older indie-music fans.
The hardcore scene became associated with violence even before it had a name, and especially after the release of the film, The Decline of Western Civilization, which attracted a new, more aggressive crowd to hardcore shows, especially in Los Angeles. Clubs were often trashed, and police riots were common at shows, in which officers in riot gear would surround and attack concertgoers, often without provocation (a notable exception was in San Francisco where, according to an interview with the police chief in Maximum Rock 'n' Roll, the chief himself was a punk fan).
Skateboarding was also associated with the scene, at a time in which the radical sport known today was practiced underground and almost without official notice. The hardcore scene created slamdancing ('moshing' was a later term borrowed from Jamaican reggae -- the original one was '[doing] the Huntington Beach skank') and stagediving.
1981 saw the release of Black Flag's first album, Damaged. Popular at the time, but not much imitated, two decades later it's often seen as the defining album of the genre. The album would briefly appear on Billboard Magazine's top-200 album chart (at Number 200, for one week). The early hardcore scene was, however, highly regional, and equally important records of the period include The Adolescents' first LP (from Los Angeles), the Boston-area This Is Boston Not LA compilation LP, the Zero Boys LP (from Indianapolis), the Detroit-area Process of Elimination compilation EP, the Negative Approach EP (from Detroit), The Necros' IQ 32 EP (from Maumee, Ohio), SS Decontrol's Kids Will Have Their Say LP (from Lynn, Massachusetts), the New York Thrash cassette compilation, the DC-area Flex Your Head compilation LP, the Northern California Not So Quiet on the Western Front double-LP compilation, the Chicago-area Busted at OZ compilation LP, and the Fartz's Because This Fuckin' World Stinks LP (from Seattle).
The cult-like influence of many of these bands persists to this day.
The influence of American hardcore
Hardcore had a huge influence on other forms of rock music, especially in America. Heavy metal band Metallica were among the first bands to fuse Hardcore with metal, incorporating the technical emphasis and heavy guitar sound of metal with the speed and aggression of hardcore. The new style became known as Thrash metal or alternately Speed metal, though this term came later, and other bands such as Megadeth and Slayer played music along similar lines. This was to much the dismay of some hardcore punks who felt hardcore bands who were crossing over to metal styles were selling out to some of the very sensibilities hardcore was supposed to be rebelling against, as well as taking umbrage at headbangers who were making a travesty of something that was not theirs. Moreoever, it was believed by these die-hard hardcore punks that these new long-haired intepreters of hardcore were merely engaging in contrivance and attempting to mimic emotions, such as raw anger, they they truly did not feel.
In 1985, New York's Stormtroopers of Death, which is a side project of the thrash metal band Anthrax released their landmark album, Speak English or Die. Though it bore similarities to Thrash metal, such as a heavy guitar sound and fast drumming and guitar riffs, the album was distinguished from Thrash metal because of its lack of guitar solos and heavy use of crunchy chord breakdowns known as "mosh parts". Other bands, most notably Suicidal Tendencies, and DRI, played music similar to that of Stormtroopers of Death, eventually resulting in it being dubbed Crossover.
Grunge was also heavily influenced by Hardcore. In this case, the sense of liberation that many of the grunge bands felt, that you didn't have to be the world's greatest musician to form a band, was at least as important as the music. Even though the early grunge sound was more influenced by Black Sabbath and Black Flag's My War album than hardcore punkrock, bands like Mudhoney and Nirvana would go on to take the sound into punk territory. In fact, Kurt Cobain once described Nirvana's sound as "The Knack and The Bay City Rollers being molested by Black Flag and Black Sabbath". This ultimately resulted in renewed interest in American Hardcore in the '90s.
In the early '90s, bands like NOFX and Bad Religion achieved varying levels of mainstream success, though both NOFX and Bad Religion had been around since the '80s. They added catchy melodies and anthemic choruses to the Hardcore template whilst removing much of the aggression and anger that had been the genre's trademark. Though NOFX and Bad Religion are generally accepted as authentic by fans of Hardcore punk, other bands that towed a poppier line, such as Green Day and Blink 182, are widely regarded as sellout. Bands that retained the aggression of '80s Hardcore into the '90s include The Distillers, The Dwarves and Zero Bullshit. Many early hardcore bands have regrouped.
Outside of North America, the influence of Hardcore has been less universal. Holland, Finland, Sweden, and Germany had, and continue to have, notably active and prolific scenes, but in the United Kingdom, more traditional punk bands like The Exploited GBH Discharge, and The Anti-Nowhere League occupied the cultural space that hardcore did elsewhere. These UK bands at times showed a social consciousness like that of the Hardcore bands, as well as quick tempos and other musical similarities, but were more influenced musically by the early street-punk band Sham 69 and/or the proto-speed-metal band, Motorhead. In much the same way, Anarcho-punk bands like Crass, Conflict, and Rudimentary Peni had little in common with Hardcore other than an uncompromising political philosophy and an abrasive aesthetic.
The Hardcore punk scene had an influence that spread far beyond music. The straight edge philosophy was rooted in Hardcore and still exists today, though by no means were all Hardcore punks straight edgers. Hardcore also put a greater emphasis on the DIY punk ethic of punk rock, with many bands making their own flyers and booking their own tours. Veganism is also a big topic in the Hardcore scene and more people are living vegan as in different music scenes.
Hardcore in the '90s
Even though American Hardcore is often thought of solely as a product of 1980s Reaganism, many bands have continued to play an aggressive form of punk rock, similar to that of hardcore, well into the '90s and even into the early 2000s.
Whereaes the hardcore movement of the '80s had gone down a very narrow path, with the exception of Husker Du and other bands who had gone to great lengths to extend the hardcore template beyond basic thrash, many of the '90s/'00s hardcore bands began to include new sounds into hardcore whilst retaining hardcore's aggression. Seattle's Zeke incorporated the heavier guitar sound and ranted vocals similar to Stormtroopers of Death into hardcore and, eventually, evolved into a thrash metal band. Other bands to follow a similar, hardcore metal, path include Pennywise and The Dwarves.
Hardcore today
There are still many bands today that follow the lines of original hardcore. It has evolved somewhat since the 80's but still follows many of the ideals like Straight edge and hasn't been fused too much with metal. One of the most prominent record label of harcore music currently is Bridge 9 Records. They have signed many of these bands like Champion, Sick of It All, Ten Yard Fight (in the 90s).
Hardcore bands
References
- American Hardcore: A Tribal History (Steven Blush, Feral House publishing, 2001, ISBN 0-922915-717-7)
- Smash the State: A Discography of Canadian Punk, 1977-92 (Frank Manley, No Exit, 1993)