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We can, and perhaps should, continue discussing the vital bridge between hardcore, whatever it turned into mid-decade and everything that happened in Seattle during the 1990s. And that’s where Milwaukee’s Die Kreuzen comes in. It took the band about two years to turn its 1982 demos into a debut long-player, released through Touch and Go. Issuing a hardcore album so deep into the genre’s development meant the disc would either be buried amid its doppelgangers or point a possible way beyond hardcore’s limitations. Dan Kubinski’s vocals may be the definitive feature allowing for folks to care about all this a few decades on. His determined yowl’s still more metal than Lars Ulrich and the trio backing him was capable of turning a fast tempo even faster. Read the rest of this entry »

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Back in the nineties when Derek Hess’ art featured prominently on any number of album covers and grunge seemed to need an angry nemesis, a buncha straight-edge types went and upped the musical ante. Displeased with most aspects of the culture surrounding punk and metal, some folks in Syracuse, New York, founded Earth Crisis to function as a mouthpiece for the animal-rights and righteous-living camps. Remember when fights broke out at shows because someone was drinking a beer? Yeah, it was some tough guy who liked Earth Crisis instigating all that. Read the rest of this entry »

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For the remainder of Sam McBride’s life, his public appearances are going to be marred by an incident that occurred in the late eighties. He up and killed his girlfriend, reportedly during a smacked-out frenzy. It’s pretty much impossible to skirt the fact when mentioning his band Fang, which counts as a reasonably important part of the East Bay’s punk and hardcore scene. From the time Fang started laying waste to cheapo recording setups, McBride—or Sammytown as he’s now known—made clear he had a fascination with drugs and warped characters. The beginning of “Red Threat” includes a weird a cappella group sing-along about Charles Manson being God. Read the rest of this entry »

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Murphy’s Law is, and always was, pretty much Jimmy Gestapo and some guys behind him playing music. Cropping up in the mid-eighties, the band can’t really be considered a trendsetter of the New York hardcore scene. The ensemble, though, should be recognized for taking some of the seriousness out of the genre, which was becoming more codified and stodgy with each passing year. Of course, no band from the era could resist trash-talkin’ the president. So, the 1986 track “California Pipeline” and its closing refrain, “Ronnie Reagan, he’s my man/If he can’t do it, no one can/America rules,” should be understood as a sign of the times and an extension of the band’s ham-fisted humor. Read the rest of this entry »

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The Locust didn’t seem like it would have the longest life of any skewed hardcore band out there. In part, that was apparent from the group’s schtick—an ensemble dressed up in matching custom-made costumes that make each musician look like a threatening mutant fly can only last for so long. But the music SoCal punk impresario Justin Pearson helped usher in through his time in Swing Kids, then the Locust and now Retox only becomes less tenable through each reinvention. It’s not that hardcore, meted out in the most bizarre time signatures, can get tired. Read the rest of this entry »

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North Carolina has a pretty heady history within hardcore’s trajectory. With Corrosion of Conformity developing an international following, the state can be figured as an important locale for the merger of aggressive musics. Double Negative won’t ever hit the big time, but some of its members have worked with CoC dudes in the past. And hearing anything from the group’s all-too-scant discography explains why. Read the rest of this entry »

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HoZac’s Blackout Fest returns for another year of unrefined rock ‘n’ roll. And each evening’s headliner represents a different portion of underground weirdness: The weekend’s festivities run the gamut from psychedelia to South Bay hardcore and garage. Davila 666 sound like every other garage band you’ve heard—there are just more dudes in the group than most would find necessary, and the whole thing’s dispensed in Spanish. Read the rest of this entry »

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Not to ruin the band’s mythology, but Midnight’s actually fronted by a guy who steered Boulder, Abdullah and a few other Cleveland-based metal bands during the last decade and change. Midnight, for some reason, has captured the attention of metaldom, perhaps in part due to the fact that frontman Athenar has gone out of his way to remain a character as much as a real human being. Read the rest of this entry »

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The entirety of Negative Approach’s recorded legacy can be taken in over the course of a half hour or so, but hardcore’s meant to be fast and to the point. The band’s frontman John Brannon—who also did time at the helm of Laughing Hyenas and Easy Action—has somehow continued screaming over the last several decades as convincingly as when he was eighteen. How his vocal chords hold up is a mystery. NA’s all pretty standard fare at this point. But when the Detroit band first recorded its slew of anthems, there weren’t more than a handful of bands taking such an aggressive approach to punk and shooting it through with a message of individuality. Read the rest of this entry »

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When discussing Boston’s illustrious history with hardcore, it’s difficult to leave out Dicky Barrett, best known as the gruff-sounding frontman for The Mighty Mighty Bosstones. That the man’s work with a third-wave ska band is subservient to contributions made to D.Y.S. or Gang Green isn’t too surprising—the music’s been more impactful for a longer period of time than third wave bands. Read the rest of this entry »