Hardcore punk: Difference between revisions

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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.

History

Hardcore originated in the United States, primarily in and around major cities like Los Angeles, Washington D.C., New York City, 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. Most hardcore bands had lyrical themes that ranged from righteous indignation at societal hypocrisy--both within and without the punk scene itself--to the promotion of some form of anarchism.

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 arose in suburban beach communities of Southern California, taking influences from The Ramones, Wire and Sham 69. Bands like The Germs, Middle Class and Fear were among the pioneers of the musical genre. Outside of California, D.O.A. (Vancouver) 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 led by Flipside 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, the three definitive hardcore bands were Washington D.C.'s Minor Threat , Los Angeles' Black Flag,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.

British Hardcore

From England, Discharge emerged as one of the most copied bands, and were among the first to pare down their songs into ultra-fast three-chord blasts, without melodies and without excess ornamentation. Many consider that as a musical form and pervasive youth culture, British Oi, an English post-punk phenomenon, closely resembled the American hardcore scene of the early 1980s.

Diversification of influences

Later in the 1980s hardcore music found a kindred spirit with heavy metal and vice versa with bands such as Agnostic Front, DRI, and Sick of It All. Metallica claimed both the Misfits and Discharge as early influences on their own brand of metal. Discharge themselves took a 180 degree turn from hardcore to play slower metal songs, and switched from spiked hair to long hair in the process. Hardcore has since been a genre in which the stylistic line between "punk" and "metal" has often blurred.

There have been numerous trends and movements within hardcore, mostly self-classified according to a particular philosophy or political outlook. One of these is the pacifist anarchy movement, which began in the U.K. It was popularized by bands such as The Clash and the Sex Pistols, although many followers of the genre credit Crass, which sprouted many less popular anarcho-punk bands like Conflict.

The most notable American movement is the straight-edge contingency, which got its name from a Minor Threat song that espoused complete avoidance of drugs, alcohol, and promiscuity. Other hardcore scenes include Hindu bands, and even Eastern Orthodox Christian bands.

Hardcore splintered off into many subgenres, including thrash, thrash metal, 3-chord power-pop, and a form of rockabilly revivalism. One of these subgenres, "emo", which originally stood for "emotional hardcore" came to be a full musical genre in it own right, and many of the grunge bands of the 1990s had their roots in the hardcore scene of the previous decade.

Hardcore Bands

General

Straight Edge

Pacifist/anarchist

Hindu/Hare Krishna

Hardcore-Metal

Irrealist

Suine Anget

Acapella

Jud Jud

Emotional Hardcore (Emo)

Reference

American Hardcore (Feral House, 2002)
American Hardcore: A Tribal History (Steven Blush, Feral House publishing, 2001, ISBN 0-922915-717-7)