Hardcore punk

Hardcore punk
Stylistic origins	Punk rock
Cultural origins	Late 1970s, United States
Typical instruments	Vocals - Guitar - Bass - Drums
Derivative forms	Alternative rock - Grunge - Post-hardcore
Subgenres
Christian hardcore - D-beat - Emo - Grindcore - Melodic hardcore - Nardcore - Powerviolence - Skate punk - Thrashcore - Youth crew (complete list)
Fusion genres
Crossover thrash - Crust punk - Digital Hardcore - Funkcore - Jazzcore - Horror punk - Metalcore - Rapcore - Skacore - Sludge metal - Thrash metal
Regional scenes
Australia - Brazil - Japan - Canada Europe: Italy - Scandinavia: Umeå USA: Boston - California - Chicago - Detroit - Minneapolis - New Jersey - New York - Indiana - Philadelphia - Phoenix - DC - Tragic City Hardcore
Other topics
Hardcore dancing - Straight edge - Street punk - DIY punk ethic - List of hardcore bands - List of hardcore genres

Hardcore punk is a subgenre of punk rock that originated in North America in the late 1970s. The new sound was generally thicker, heavier and faster than earlier punk rock. The songs are usually short, fast, and loud, covering topics such as politics, personal freedom, violence, social alienation, straight edge, veganism and vegetarianism, war, and the hardcore subculture itself.

Hardcore spawned several fusion genres and subgenres, some of which had mainstream success, such as melodic hardcore, emo, metalcore, screamo, post-hardcore and thrash metal.

History

In America, the music genre that became known as hardcore punk originated in different areas in the early 1980s, with notable centers of activity in California, Washington, D.C., New York City, Michigan, and Boston.

The origin of the term hardcore punk is uncertain. The Vancouver-based band D.O.A. may have helped to popularize the term with the title of their 1981 album, Hardcore '81. Until about 1983, the term hardcore was used sparingly, and mainly as a descriptive term. (i.e., a band would be called a "hardcore band" and a concert would be a "hardcore show"). American teenagers who were fans of hardcore punk simply considered themselves fans of punk – although they were not necessarily interested in the original punk rock sound of late 1970s (e.g., Ramones, Sex Pistols, The Clash, or The Damned). In many circles, hardcore was an in-group term, meaning music by people like us. Since most bands had little access to any means of production, hardcore lauded a do-it-yourself (DIY) approach. In most cities the hardcore scene relied on inexpensively-made DIY recordings created on four-track recorders and sold at concerts or by mail. Concerts were promoted by photocopied zines, community radio shows, and affixing posters to walls and telephone poles. Hardcore punk fans adopted a dressed-down style of T-shirts, jeans, and crewcut-style haircuts. While 1977-era punk had used DIY clothing as well, such as torn pants held together with safety pins, the dressed-down style of the 1980s hardcore scene contrasted with the more elaborate and provocative fashion styles of late 1970s punk rockers, which included make-up, elaborate hairdos and avant-garde clothing experiments.

Pioneers

Michael Azerrad's book Our Band Could Be Your Life and Steven Blush' documentary film American Hardcore describe three bands -- Black Flag, Bad Brains, and Minor Threat -- as the most important and influential in the genre. Azerrad calls Black Flag the genre’s "godfathers"; credits Bad Brains, formed in Washington, D.C. in 1977, with introducing "light speed tempos" to hardcore; and describes Minor Threat as the "definitive" hardcore punk band.

Black Flag, formed by guitarist and songwriter Greg Ginn in Los Angeles in 1976, had a major impact on the Los Angeles scene – and later the wider North American scene – with their raw, confrontational sound and DIY approach. Tours in 1980 and 1981 brought Black Flag in contact with developing hardcore scenes in many parts of North America, and blazed trails followed by other touring bands.

Bad Brains, formed in Washington, DC in 1977, incorporated elements of heavy metal and reggae, and their early work often emphasized some of the fastest tempos in rock music. .

Minor Threat, formed in Washington D.C. in 1980, played an aggressive, fast style directly influenced by Bad Brains. The band inspired the straight edge movement with their song, "Straight Edge".

Other early notable bands

Template:Sound sample box align left Template:Sample box end According to Brendan Mullen, founder of the Los Angeles punk club The Masque, the first U.S. tour of The Damned in 1977 found them favoring very fast tempos, causing a "sensation" among fans and musicians, and helping inspire the first wave of U.S. west coast hardcore punk.

San Francisco's Dead Kennedys formed in 1978 and released their first single "California Über Alles" in 1979. By the time they released the In God We Trust, Inc. EP in 1981, Dead Kennedys were playing very fast tempos. Circle Jerks’ first album, Group Sex (recorded in late 1979, released 1980) features several songs with very fast chord changes and tempos. The Misfits (of New Jersey) were a 1977-style punk band involved in New York’s Max's Kansas City scene. Their horror film aesthetic was popular among early hardcore fans. In 1981, the Misfits integrated high-speed thrash songs into their set. Hüsker Dü was formed in Saint Paul, Minnesota in 1979 as a post-punk/New Wave band, but soon became a loud and fast hard punk band. Hüsker Dü released the 1982 live album Land Speed Record, which has been called a "breakneck force like no other... Not for the faint of heart." By 1985, the band morphed into one of the seminal alternative rock bands. In 1982, Bad Religion released How Could Hell Be Any Worse?, which is considered a benchmark hardcore album, and which secured them as one of the most enduring outfits of the early 1980s hardcore scene.

By 1981, many more hardcore punk bands began to perform and release recordings. The Beastie Boys, more widely known for their later hip hop music, were one of the first recorded hardcore bands in New York City. Negative FX, perhaps the most popular hardcore band in Boston around early 1982, did not appear on record until 1984, after they had broken up. In Honolulu, the skateboarding and surfing community juxtaposed with the hardcore punk scene.

Notable early hardcore punk records include The Angry Samoans’ first LP, the Big Boys/The Dicks Live at Raul's Club split LP, the Boston-area compilation This Is Boston, Not L.A., Minor Threat's 7" EPs, JFA's Blatant Localism EP, the New York-area compilations New York Thrash and The Big Apple Rotten To The Core, Negative Approach's eponymous EP and the DC-area compilation record Flex Your Head.

Early media support and criticism

An influential radio show in the Los Angeles area was Rodney on the ROQ, which started airing on the commercial station KROQ in 1976. DJ Rodney Bingenheimer played many styles of music and helped popularize what was called Beach Punk, a rowdy suburban style played by mostly teenage bands in the Huntington Beach area and in conservative Orange County. Early radio support in New Jersey came from Pat Duncan, who hosted live punk and hardcore bands weekly on WFMU since 1979. In New York City, Tim Sommer hosted Noise The Show on WNYU. In 1982 and 1983, MTV put the hardcore punk band Kraut on mild rotation. College radio was the main media outlet for hardcore punk in most of North America. The Berkeley, California public radio station KPFA featured the Maximum RocknRoll radio show with DJs Tim Yohannan and Jeff Bale, who played the younger Northern California bands. Several zines, such as Flipside and Maximum RocknRoll, also helped spread the new punk style. A few college stations faced FCC action due to the broadcasting of indecent lyrics associated with hardcore songs.

Concerts in the early hardcore scene increasingly became sites of violent battles between police and concertgoers, especially in Los Angeles. Reputed violence at hardcore concerts was featured in episodes of the popular television shows CHiPs and Quincy, M.E., in which Los Angeles hardcore punks were depicted as being involved in murder and mayhem.

Early history in Europe

The Netherlands, Finland, Sweden, and Germany have had notably active hardcore punk scenes. In the United Kingdom, street punk (also known as UK hardcore, and retrospectively as UK82) occupied the cultural space that American-style hardcore did elsewhere. These UK bands at times showed a musical similarity to American hardcore, often including quick tempos and chord changes, and they generally had similar political and social sensibilities. However, they represented a case of parallel evolution, having been musically inspired by Oi! bands and the speed metal band Motörhead. The UK band Discharge played a huge role in influencing early Swedish hardcore bands such as Anti Cimex. Many hardcore bands from that region still have a strong Discharge and Motörhead influence. UK Anarcho-punk bands shared an uncompromising political philosophy and an abrasive aesthetic with American hardcore.

Many American hardcore punks listened to British punk bands, but others upheld a strict regionalism, deriding the UK bands as rock stars and their fans as inauthentic. American hardcore bands that visited the UK (such as Black Flag and U.S. Chaos in 1981-1982) encountered ambivalent attitudes. European hardcore bands suffered no such prejudice in the U.S.; Italian bands Raw Power and Negazione, and the Dutch BGK, enjoyed widespread popularity there.

In the more underground part of the UK punk scene, a new hardcore sound and scene developed, inspired by continental European, Scandinavian, Japanese and American bands. Their sound – only heard at concerts and on demo tapes and compilations in the mid 1980s – evolved into metal bands such as Heresy, Napalm Death and Extreme Noise Terror.

There were many 1980s bands that could be described as sounding like something in between the styles of the dominating UK and US bands. While the bands that had the most significant influence were bands such as Discharge and Charged GBH, others, such as The Stupids (a UK band influenced by US hardcore) gained brief but widespread college-radio airplay in the US.

European bands that continued to play the original style of hardcore in the 1990s included Voorhees, Totalitär, Disfear and Sin Dios. After the fall of the Iron Curtain in eastern Europe, many hardcore bands were created or became more publicly known (after hiding in garages and being known only by small circles of underground fans).

Late 1980s and the 1990s

By the late 1980s, the American hardcore sound was mainly based on the east coast, particularty the New York hardcore scene. Most of the notable hardcore bands in the late 1980s were from New York City. Slapshot was the premiere hardcore band from Boston. However, there were some notable American west coast bands such as Chain of Strength and Inside Out. By the end of the 1980s, hardcore became more diverse, branching off into two sounds: one traditionally punk-based and the other heavier, slower, more intense, and often more technical, influenced by heavy metal, known as metalcore or metallic hardcore.

In 1985, Stormtroopers of Death released the album Speak English or Die. Although it bore similarities to thrash metal – with a bass-heavy guitar, fast tempos and quick chord changes – the album was distinguished from thrash metal by its lack of guitar solos and heavy use of crunchy chord breakdowns (a New York hardcore technique) known as mosh parts. Suicidal Tendencies and Dirty Rotten Imbeciles (DRI]), switched from hardcore to a similar metallic style, which came to be known as crossover thrash. The Los Angeles-based thrash metal bands Metallica and Slayer incorporated the compositional structure and technical proficiency of heavy metal with the speed and aggression of hardcore. Sepultura's members were in hardcore bands in Brazil and have recorded with hardcore musicians such as Agnostic Front.

Sick of It All's second studio album, Just Look Around (1992) is illustrative of the intense, heavy and slower style. Judge and Integrity were some of the earliest bands to feature an amalgamation of deep, hoarse vocals (though rarely as deep or guttural as death metal); downtuned guitars and thrashy drum rhythms inspired by earlier hardcore bands; and slow, staccato low-end musical breaks, known as breakdowns. Thrash metal and melodic death metal elements are also common in melodic metalcore. Biohazard, Unbroken and Candiria emerged as notable metalcore bands. Other bands of the era retained elements of classic hardcore along with more progressive rhythms, chord progressions and lyrics.

Hardcore saw a major rebirth in the mid 1990s with bands starting up all over the east coast of the United States. Two bands from the west coast who made a large impact were Strife and Ignite. Cold As Life from Detroit had a strong following throughout the hardcore scene during the 1990s. In 1996, Slayer released an album of hardcore cover versions called Undisputed Attitude.

Post-hardcore

The later 1980s and early 1990s saw the development of post-hardcore, which took the hardcore style in a more artistic and complex direction, much as the bands of the post-punk era did for classic punk rock. Washington DC, in particular the community surrounding Dischord Records, became a hotbed for post-hardcore, producing bands such as Hoover, Nation of Ulysses, Jawbox and Fugazi, who helped define the scene and included Dischord founder and former Minor Threat frontman Ian MacKaye. Other notable post-hardcore bands from the United States include Chicago's Big Black, New York's Quicksand and Orange 9mm.

Post-hardcore included and influenced other styles, such as emo and math rock. Early emo bands were influenced by hardcore bands like Rites of Spring, Minor Threat, and Black Flag. Emo bands are heavily influenced by hardcore punk's powerful lyrics, song structure and emotion. Sunny Day Real Estate are sometimes called the "first true emo band."

Political and social views

Punks burning a flag

While the aforementioned "godfathers" of the hardcore genre—Bad Brains, Black Flag, Minor Threat—usually did not deal with overt political themes, many bands that followed in their wake took strong left-wing political stances against Republican US President Ronald Reagan, who served in office from 1981 to 1989. Reagan's policies, including "Reaganomics" and social conservatism, were common subjects for these bands. Dead Kennedys, Reagan Youth and MDC promoted anarchist views. However, a minority of hardcore bands were relatively conservative, such as The FU's, The Undead and Antiseen.

The straight edge philosophy of no smoking, drinking or doing drugs was rooted in a faction of hardcore particularly popular on the east coast of the United States. Hare Krishna bands like 108 and Shelter typified this movement, taking it even a step further. Hardcore also put a great emphasis on the DIY punk ethic, which inspired other types of bands to make their own records, flyers and other items, and to book their own tours through an informal network of like-minded people.

Hardcore dancing

Main articles: Mosh and Hardcore dancing

The early 1980s hardcore punk scene developed slam dancing and stage diving. In the second half of the 1980s, the thrash metal scene adopted this form of dancing, with bands such as Anthrax popularizing the term mosh with the metal scene. The term hardcore dancing now describes a type of dancing that has become staple of hardcore concerts.

Hardcore punk record labels

• 625 Thrashcore
• Alternative Tentacles
• Alveran Records
• Amphetamine Reptile Records
• Bad Taste Records
• Blackout! Records
• Bridge 9 Records
• Burning Heart Records
• BYO Records
• Clay Records
• Dischord Records
• Deathwish Inc.
• Ebullition Records
• Epitaph Records
• Equal Vision Records
• Eulogy Recordings
• Facedown Records
• Frontier Records
• Gravity Records
• Havoc Records
• Hellcat Records
• Hydra Head Records
• Indecision Records
• Level Plane Records
• Lifeforce Records
• Mystic Records
• New Red Archives
• Nitro Records
• Posh Boy Records
• Punk Rock Records
• Revelation Records
• Rivalry Records
• Seventh Dagger Records
• SideOneDummy Records
• Slap-a-Ham Records
• Spook City Records
• SST Records
• Striving For Togetherness Records
• Sudden Death Records
• Taang! Records
• Touch and Go Records
• Trustkill Records
• Uprising Records
• Vermiform Records
• Victory Records
• Your Choice Records

References

• Going Underground: American Punk 1979-1992 (George Hurchalla, Zuo Press, 2005)
• Smash the State: A Discography of Canadian Punk, 1977-92 (Frank Manley, No Exit, 1993), ISBN 0-9696631-0-2

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