Hardcore punk
Hardcore punk is an intensified version of the punk rock genre, characterized by bands who play short, loud, and angry songs with exceptionally fast chord changes on highly overdriven guitars. The lyrics are often political in nature, and typically violent in expression.
| Hardcore punk | |
|---|---|
| Stylistic origins: | Punk rock |
| Cultural origins: | early 1980s North America |
| Typical instruments: | Guitar - Bass - Drums |
| Mainstream popularity: | Little to none |
| Derivative forms: | Emo |
| Subgenres | |
| Queercore - Skate punk - Straight edge - Crust Punk | |
| Fusion | |
| Grunge - Ska punk - Thrash metal | |
| Regional scenes | |
| Boston - Los Angeles - Southern California - DC | |
| Other topics | |
| Bands | |
| Table of contents |
|
2 American hardcore 3 The influence of American hardcore 4 Hardcore in the '90s 5 Hardcore bands 6 References |
History
Hardcore originated in North America, primarily in and around major cities like Los Angeles, Washington DC, New York City, Vancouver, and Boston, as a vehicle for expressing urban and suburban teen angst. Commentator Steven Blush claimed (in American Hardcore: A Tribal History) that hardcore was punk rock adapted for suburban teens. Many hardcore bands have lyrical themes that range from righteous indignation at societal hypocrisy to the promotion of some form of anarchism.
The true origin of the term 'hardcore' in relation to punk rock is lost in a haze of time, distance, and quite likely, drugs and alcohol. Generally credited with popularizing the term, however, is an album released by Vancouver's D.O.A titled simply "Hardcore '81".
American hardcore
Like the British punk wave of 1976 to 1978, American hardcore was an initially tight-knit movement that evolved into an enduring genre. The sound takes elements from bands such as The Ramones, Wire, and The Dickies.
Bands like The Germs, Middle Class, and Fear, D.O.A were important early groups, and Bad Brains (Washington, DC) were especially important.
A radio show called Rodney on the ROQ played on Los Angeles' KROQ, an influential radio station, helped popularize the sound in California, and a wave of zines including Flipside and Maximum RocknRoll brought it around the country. The hardcore scene became associated with violence almost as soon as it was born, especially after the release of the film The Decline of Western Civilization. Skateboarding, slamdancing, and stagediving also associated with the scene.
During the first stage, which lasted from about 1980 to 1984, notable hardcore bands included Washington DC's Minor Threat , Los Angeles' Black Flag, The Circle Jerks and Social Distortion, San Francisco's Dead Kennedys, Vancouver's DOA, Toronto's Zeroption and Boston's S.S.Decontrol.
Minor Threat, particularly in their emphasis on speed, were heavily influenced by Washington D.C.'s Bad Brains. In 1980 to 1981, Minor Threat combined a blunt and tightly organized sound with the more loose experimentalism of the "first generation" punks of the 1970s.
Black Flag, meanwhile, released in 1981 their album Damaged, which pretty much defined the musical aggression of hardcore. S.S.Decontrol, which started out primarily as a militant straight-edge band, soon struck a chord with a darker, more aggressive libertarian side of the nation's youth undercurrent and quickly pioneered the trend of expanding the boundaries of hardcore toward an all-encompassing form of hard rock music. The cult-like influence of these bands persists to this day.
The influence of American hardcore
Though Hardcore itself did not last long and achieved little commercial success, it did have 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 ability 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.
In 1985, New York's Stormtroopers of Death 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 it's lack of guitar solos and heavy use of crunchy chord breakdowns known as "mosh parts". Other bands, most notably early 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 mid '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 and The Dwarves.
Outside of North America, the influence of Hardcore has not been so prevalent. In the United Kingdom, bands like The Exploited and The Anti-Nowhere League played music that, at times, showed a social consciousness like that of the Hardcore bands, though they were actually more influenced by Sham 69, but were not as aggressive musically. To differentiate between bands like The Exploited and American Hardcore, then Sounds journalist Gary Bushell coined the term Oi, in recognition of the bands "football hooligan" style chantalong choruses and threatening image.
Discharge, even though they are often thought of as British Hardcore, were more influenced by the garage rock of The Stooges and the English Post punk band Killing Joke. In much the same way, Anarcho-punk bands like Crass and Conflict bare little in common with Hardcore other than an uncompromising political philosophy and limited commercial success.
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 owns tours.
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 three chord 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 vocal-style of 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 bands
General
Note that while some fans and musicians have firm notions of genre and subgenre, others regard such categorization as useless, or worse, limiting.Irrealist
Straight edge
Pacifist/anarchist
References