In addition, many of the lyrics focus on protesting, grouping, or toting against highly disputed topics such as government, America, war, lying, politics, and others. It should be noted that hardcore often refers to two very different styles. Hardcore punk, thought of by many as the original usage of hardcore, refers to bands from the early asses (and modern day bands of similar style), which has more In common with punk than it does with the modern day music simply referred to as “hardcore” (with the word “punk” notably absent), which has more In common with metal.
Origins The music genre that became known as hardcore punk originated In different areas f North America in late 1980 and early 1981. Some of the major areas in North America associated with the origins of hardcore punk include: California, Washington DC, Chicago, New York City, Vancouver and Boston. At the same time, a British equivalent had emerged. Although It would not be known as UK 82 or British hardcore until later. The origin of the term hardcore punk is uncertain, however one theory is that the Vancouver-based band D. O. A. Made the term official with the title of their 1981 album, Hardcore ’81 . Until about 1983, hardcore was used fairly 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 0 although they were not necessarily interested in the original punk rock sound of late asses. In many circles, hardcore was an In-group term, meaning ‘music by people Like us,’ and It included a wide range of sounds, from hyper-speed punk rock to sludgy dirge-rock, and often including arty experimental bands, such as The Stricken and Flipper.
Hardcore was noted for its do-it-yourself (DID) approach. In most cities (California Ewing the exception) the hardcore scene relied entirely on DID recordings, magazines, radio shows and concerts. Hardcore punk fans brought a dressed-down T-shirt, jeans, and correct style to punk fashion. This contrasted with the more elaborate and provocative clothing styles of many asses punk rockers, such as Richard Hell or Side Vicious. The big three Michael Sierra’s Our Band Could Be Your Life traces hardcore back to three bands: I OFF 1976, the music’s “godfathers. Gerard credits Bad Brains, formed in Washington, D. C. In 1977, with introducing “light speed” tempos. He calls Minor Threat, formed in Instigation, D. C. N 1980, the “definitive” hardcore punk band. Black Flag had a major impact on the Los Angels sentenced later the wider North American concession their raw, confrontational sound and DID ethical stance. The original lineup featured Keith Morris (later of the Circle Jerks), and the final lineup featured former State of Alert singer Henry Rollins.
While their musical influence was limited (few contemporary bands sounded similar to Black Flag), their tireless work in promoting their own concerts and releasing self-financed records inspired other bands to do the same. Tours in 1980 and 1981 brought Black Flag in contact with developing redecorate scenes in many parts of North America. Bad Brains are an African-American band that formed in Washington DC. The band members had backgrounds in soul music, funk, and Jazz, and were influenced by rock bands such as Black Sabbath and the Sex Pistols.
Their first album (originally a 1981 cassette-only release from Research International Records) included three reggae songs, in sharp contrast to the rest of their music, which mainly consisted of fast, loud, hardcore punk. Minor Threat, also from Washington DC, formed out of the short-lived Teen Idles. Carry-over members of The Teen Idles were Ian Mackey (who went on to co-found post- redecorate group Fugal and Embrace) and Jeff Nelson. Minor Threat played an aggressive, fast, hardcore punk style influenced by Bad Brains.
The band was responsible for inspiring the straight edge movement, with their song of the same name. After the Teen Idles broke up, Mackey and Nelson put the band’s concert money toward founding Discord Records, initially to release their Minor Disturbance PEP on vinyl. The record label went on to release Peps by Minor Threat and many other early Washington, DC hardcore bands. Other early notable bands Several asses bands from Southern California released records featuring music that mounds very similar to what later became known as hardcore. One of those records is the Middle Class’ 1978 “Out of Vogue” PEP.
It is unclear the extent to which these early records directly inspired hardcore. Mentions of them in contemporary publications are sparse, and little notice appears to have been taken of them outside the Los Angels area. A more influential record was The Germs’ 1979 “(GIG)” ALP 0 essentially a hardcore record, not only for its quick tempos but also for its fast chord changes. Also from Orange County, T. S. O. L made a name for themselves in the hardcore scene with elodea yet aggressive pop-punk sound that has proved to be remarkably influential over the course of the subsequent decades.
San Franciscans Dead Kennedy’s formed in 1978 and released their first single “California Гњbeer Ales” in 1979. By the time they released the “In God We Trust, Inc. “PEP in 1981, the Dead Kennedy’s were playing very fast tempos. The Circle Jerks’ first album features several songs with very fast chord changes and tempos. The Misfits, of New Jersey, were a 1977-style punk band involved in New Work’s Ma’s Kansas City scene. Their horror movie aesthetic was popular among early hardcore fans. In 1981, the Misfits Integrated high-speed thrash songs into their set.
Husker D; was formed in Saint loud and fast. After a postpone single released in early 1981, a live album was released in early 1982 that has been called a “breakneck force like no others Not for the faint of heart. ” By 1985, the band morphed into one of the seminal alternative rock bands of the era. By 1981, many regional hardcore bands began to appear and to release demos and records, including the Ones of Victoria, British Columbia; Negative Approach and Forced Anger of Detroit; The Fix and The Emanate of Lansing,
Michigan; The Necroses of Umea, Ohio; The Effigies and Articles of Faith of Chicago; AS Decontrol, DYES, Negative FIX of Boston; Corruption of Toronto and the Big Boys of Austin, Texas. The Beastie Boys, while more widely known for their later hip-hop recordings were one of the first published hardcore groups in New York Many important early hardcore bands did not release records during their lifetime, and Nerve known only through live shows and demo tapes (or through tracks on multi- band compilations).
One example is the 1980-1982 New York hardcore scene, discographies of which feature many records from the suburbs (including bands such as The Nihilistic, from Great Neck, Long Island; and The Misguided, from Queens). Boson’s Negative FIX 0 perhaps the most popular hardcore band in Boston circa early 1982 0 did not appear on record, and were unknown outside their own area until a posthumous album was released in 1984. Early support An influential radio show in the Los Angels area was Rodney on the ARQ, on the commercial station CROOK.
DC Rodney Bioengineering played many styles of music, and helped popularize what was called Beach Punk 0 a suburban style played by mostly teenage bands in and around Huntington Beach, and in heavily conservative Orange County. He would come under attack from the thriving late ass’s punk band the Angry Samoan. Early support in New York City & New Jersey came from Pat Duncan who hosted live punk and hardcore bands weekly on WFM since 1979 and Tim Somber No hosted “Noise The Show” on WYNN. In 1982-1983, MET put the hardcore band Karat on mild rotation. College radio was, however, the main outlet for hardcore punk in most of North America.
The San Francisco-area public radio station KAFKA featured the Maximum Rockwell radio show with Des Tim Hanson and Jeff Bale, who played the younger Northern California bands. A wave of magazines helped spread the new punk style, such as Flipped. In late 1981, Hanson and Bale’s Maximum Rockwell magazine, had a national circulation and featured scene reports from around the country. A strong infrastructure of independent labels, linked with radio outlets and magazines helped to create a nationwide subculture. Negative publicity ere early hardcore scene became associated with violence, especially in Los Angels.
Hardcore concerts increasingly became sites of violent battles between police and concertgoers. Many concert venues were trashed on both coasts of the United States, spite frantic pleas from magazine writers. Henry Rollins argued that in his experience, the police caused far more problems than they solved at hardcore performances. Reputed violence at hardcore concerts was featured in episodes of being involved in murder and mayhem. Contemporary magazine writers claimed that these media portrayals attracted new, violent people to the concerts, acting at least partially as a cause of the problem.
Influence Hardcore had a huge influence on other forms of rock music in North America. The San-Francisco-based heavy metal band Metallic were among the first crossover artists, incorporating the compositional structure and technical proficiency of metal Ninth the speed and aggression of hardcore. Other early bands in this genre include Megalith and Anthrax. Slayer are also well known for their hardcore punk roots, and have released an album formed entirely of hardcore covers called Undisputed Attitude.
The rising influence of heavy metal in the hardcore scene (circa 1984-1985) dismayed some hardcore punks, who felt that hardcore musicians who crossed over to metal styles were embracing a musical style that hardcore punk had originally rejected. However, some musicians in the first wave of hardcore, such as members of dad Brains and Black Flag, had been influenced by heavy metal acts such as Black Sabbath. Longtime hardcore punks, who remembered fighting with hostile metatheses only a fees years earlier, now felt that those same people were attempting to co-opt hardcore.
These hardcore punks argued that the new long- haired interpreters of hardcore were merely mimicking emotions such as raw anger, that they did not truly feel. A 1986 concert by the I-J band Discharge in New York City generated brief international notoriety when a crowd of roughly 1,500 paid $10 admission and pelted the band with garbage, an apparent response to the band’s turn to a more metallic sound. In 1985, New Work’s Storekeepers of Death, an Anthrax side project, released the album “Speak English or Die”.
Though it bore similarities to thrash metal, such as a characteristic bass-heavy guitar and fast tempos and 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 “moss parts”. Other bands, such as Suicidal Tendencies and DIR, switched from hardcore to a similar metallic style, which came o be known as crossover. Many hardcore bands began experimenting with other styles, moods and concerns as their careers progressed in the asses, becoming known as alternative rock.
Bands such as Minutemen, Husker DO, and The Replacements drew from hardcore but broke even further away from its “loud-fast” formula; critic Joe S. Harrington suggests the latter two “paraded as hardcore until it Nas deemed permissible to do otherwise”. These bands diversified the genre’s sound in ways that would be a major influence on later alternative rock bands. Grunge music was especially heavily influenced by hardcore. In the mid-asses, Washington State bands such as The Melvin and Green River developed an “aggressive sound that melded the slower tempos of heavy metal with the intensity of hardcore. The sense of liberation that many of the grunge bands got 0 that you don’t have to be the greatest musicians to form a band 0 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 punk rock, bands like Mudstone and Nirvana conventional pop-oriented territory. The popularity of grunge resulted in renewed interest in American hardcore in the ‘ass. The hardcore punk scene had an influence that spread far beyond music. The straight edge philosophy was rooted in a faction of hardcore particularly popular on the east coast of the United States.
Hardcore also put a great emphasis on the DID punk ethic, with many bands making their own records, flyers, and other items, and booking their own tours through an informal network of like-minded people. More recently, hardcore punk has given life to new styles of pop punk. Some contemporary pop punk bands (often containing members of former hardcore bands) have created a new blend of the style by mixing hardcore influences. A phenomenon referred to as the “pop punk breakdown” has become increasingly popular, in which bands play hardcore style breakdowns with more melodic chords.
Early history in Europe ere Netherlands, Finland, Sweden, and Germany have had notably active hardcore scenes. However, in the United Kingdom, KHAKI (also known as I-J Hardcore) bands such as The Exploited, Charged GHB, Discharge, and The Anti-Nowhere League occupied the cultural space that American-style hardcore did elsewhere. These UK bands at times showed a musical similarity to American hardcore, often including kick 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 earlier London 01! Ands such as Sham 69, and the proto-speed metal band Motöredhead. Discharge played a huge role in influencing the early Swedish hardcore bands, such as Anti Chime. Many hardcore bands from that region still have a strong Discharge and Motöredhead influence. The band Entombed is also cited as a strong influence on Swedish hardcore bands from the early asses onward. In much the same way, anarchy-punk bands such as Crass, Icons of Filth, Flux Of Pink Indians and Rudimentary Penn had little in common with American hardcore other than an uncompromising political philosophy.
Many American hardcore punks listened to British punk bands, but others upheld a strict regionalism, deriding the UK bands as rock stars. American hardcore bands that visited the UK (such as Black Flag and U. S. CHAOS in 1981-1982) encountered equally ambivalent attitudes. European hardcore bands suffered no such prejudice in the U. S. ; Italian bands Raw Power and Negation, and the Dutch BGP, enjoyed widespread popularity. In the ore underground part of the I-J punk scene, a new hardcore sound and scene developed, inspired by continental European, Scandinavian, Japanese and American bands.
It was started by bands like Asylum and Plasmid, and their sound 0 only heard at live concerts and on demo tapes and compilations in the mid asses 0 evolved into bands such as Heresy, Ripcord, Napalm Death, Hallstead, Doom, Clinical Recipes, Visions of Change and Extreme Noise Terror. Some of the most important Influences among late-asses I-J bands included the Japanese band ISM; Boston band Siege, Idaho band Septic Death, and Swedish band Anti Chime; as well as more italic bands such as Celtic Frost and Metallic.
However, by the late asses, UK bands were becoming far more influenced by American bands such as the Dead Instigation D. C. , New York, Boston and West Coast hardcore bands such as Minor Threat, DYES, Slapdash and 7 Seconds. Straight edge began to make its presence felt in the I-J, with the emergence of small straight edge communities in most major cities n the I-J, and straight edge bands forming in Durham and London. There were many asses 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 parallel-evolved bands such as Discharge and Charged BAH, others, such as The Stupid (a I-J band influenced by US hardcore) gained brief but widespread college-radio airplay in the US. Examples of bands that continued to play that style of hardcore in the asses include: Seeing Red, Tutus, Sirius, Health Hazard, Slapdash, Overshoes, TotalityГr, Los Credos, Sin Adios, and Detestation. 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 by small irises of underground fans).
Examples of such bands include Bracelets, Retreads or Sarcastic front from Czech Republic. Hardcore also become popular in Asia in the late asses and early asses, with bands such as Disaster Bunkhouse, Chronic Mass, Noisemaker and Cramp Mind from Malaysia; 4-Sides and Stomping Ground from Singapore; and Disclose from Japan. Hardcore in the asses In the asses, hardcore was strictly a style of North American punk rock. By the end of the asses and into the asses, hardcore became much more diverse, branching off mainly into two sounds: one traditionally punk-based, the other metal-based.
The gunk-focused sound retains much of the style and feel of the original hardcore bands, while the metal-based sound, now known as metalwork, tends to be more technical. Many fans of traditional hardcore do not consider metalwork a form of hardcore punk. Metalwork Metalwork (also known as hardcore metal) is a fusion genre, mixing elements of extreme metal and hardcore punk. Defining the metalwork sound is not an easy task, as various bands have fused a hardcore-influenced sound and attitude with many different types of metal. The earliest signs of this before being labeled metalwork was crossover thrash’.
The band that declared the crossover was Dirty Rotten Imbeciles on their late asses album of the same name. Other bands, like Nuclear Assault and Suicidal Tendencies, are pioneers themselves. It should be noted that metalwork and crossover are generally considered separate identities, with “crossover” referring to a mix of thrash metal and hardcore, and metalwork being a slower, heavier, hardcore- rooted style influenced by thrash metal and death metal. Nuclear Assault was the first band to call their music a heavy metal/hardcore punk hybrid, though still thought of as a metal band by most.
On the other hand, while not thought of as a metalwork band by many today, Breakdown was arguably one of the earliest to fuse heavy metal-influenced riffing with a more traditional hardcore sound without being thrash metal band. Around the same time, bands such as Damnation A. D. , Integrity, demos and albums, laying the foundation for metalwork bands to come. Most songwriting by these bands was similar to New York hardcore but differed in a more metallic sound, due largely to the use of double bass drums, harsher distortion, heavier riffs, scream singing, and metal influenced vocals.
This basic form of metalwork has received the epithets “tough guy hardcore” due to the lyrical focus, Inch is often similar to older hardcore in that they call for moral and mental strength and integrity, but may also have a slight focus on violence. During the middle of the asses, bands started expanding the metalwork sound, prime examples being Liar and Congress in Europe, being a part of the notorious HO scene that started out in 1990.
The HO scene was located in the West-Flanders area in Belgium. Many other bands followed in their footsteps, bands like Regression, Sector, Spineless where also responsible for putting the term metalwork or Gametal sound on the map. In the U. S there was All Out War who used straightforward thrash riffing, as well as bands such as Rorschach, Streetwalker, Orange County’s Adamantine, and Degrade, who experimented with looser, often discordant songwriting as well as less traditional rhythms.
Converge, although starting out as self-confessed “hardcore kids with leftover Slayer riffs” (fitting well in the crossover of hardcore punk and thrash metal), have since bloomed into a hybrid of hardcore, metal and progressive instrumental and electronic experimentation, they like to call “punk-metal”. From the late asses and particularly after the turn of the millennium, metalwork has grown immensely, to the point where major record companies are taking interest in the genre.
Recent releases, such as Unearths “Ill: In the Eyes of Fire” and Norma Jean’s ‘Redeemer” have charted moderately high on the Billboard 200- and this list seemingly goes on. “Melodic decorator” and “Stevedore” has become immensely popular by playing in the style of Guttenberg melodic death metal, popularized by bands such as At the Gates and In Flames, combined with old school metalwork. Today, many popular metalwork bands play this style, including Eatery, God Forbid, Clinical, Tritium, Darkest Hour, As I Lay Dying, All That Remains, Haste the Day, Still Remains and Unearth.
Progression and experimentation In the late asses, bands like Monsanto (British Columbia, Canada) and Victim’s Family (Northern California) created a new style of music by blending aggressive elements from hardcore with influences such as psychedelic rock, progressive rock, noise, Jazz, or math rock (a development sometimes termed Jazzier). This path was followed in the early asses by Mr. Bungle, Candida and lesser-known bands such as Deep Turtle (Finland), Ruins Pan), and Tear of a Doll (France). Her important hardcore-influenced bands in this genre include the avian-geared Naked City, formed by saxophonist John Zorn, and Neurosis, who started as a hardcore band before exploring slower tempos and dark ambiance to evolve a style of their own. Many bands started to incorporate emotional and personal aspects into their music, influenced by the sounds coming out of Washington D. C. And Discord Records, Inch by the late asses had evolved into memo music (a contraction of ’emotional hardcore’). The Nation of Ulysses was one of the most influential bands to come out ND a seemingly absurdist political ideology.
Their sound and fashion sense influenced the San Diego (or ‘Chula Vista’) hardcore scene. Perhaps in response to this emotional hardcore, bands with a heavy political bent began to appear, such as Struggle, also from San Diego. Ebullition Records, founded in 1990 by Kent McCall in Santa Barbara, California, was a record label with bands that often presented a critique of the American political and economic system and giving far less attention to personal issues. Their sound featured screeching vocals, heavy distortion with thick chord progressions, and busy drums. It contained few, if any, guitar solos.
East coast bands, such as Rorschach and Born Against, from New Jersey and New York, also played a similar left-wing, almost Marxist political hardcore. The Locust, who started out as a fairly conventional hardcore band, developed their own sound, which IS fast, brutal, and spastic. Some have described the Locust as free Jazz meets hardcore. Gravity Records was an important record label of the asses hardcore scene, releasing bands like Antioch Arrow, Climate Kowtow, and The Locust. Today, another heavier sound is represented by bands such as Mosquito Can Kill, From
Ashes Rise, and Tragedy. Straight edge also became prominent in the asses, with the [Out crew revival a popular style among hardliner and vegan straight edge bands like Earth Crisis. Hardcore in the asses Many bands in the asses have stuck to the roots of original hardcore punk. The scene has evolved somewhat since the asses, but several bands still follow many of the deals. Many contemporary bands play hardcore in the original style while attempting to add even more intensity to the music. One common trend is to try to capture the sound of influential bands from an earlier era.
For example, D-beat bands emulate the early music of Discharge. D-beat bands include Discharge, Discharge, and Disclose. Many hardcore record labels continue to keep the tradition of hardcore music alive. Among these are Bridge 9 Records, Sonic Wave International, Deranged Records, Rivalry Records, Think Fast! Records, 1917 Records, and Revelation Records. However, Revelation has been known to stray from the accepted boundaries of hardcore, with releases by Indies rock and memo bands. The term hardcore has been applied to some bands that play death metal, metalwork or thrash metal.