A-Z of Music: H is for... hardcore punk

Mosh on: Agnostic Front, one of the seminal bands of the NYC hardcore scene, performing in 2012
Theo Wargo/Getty Images
Jochan Embley17 June 2020

By the time the 1980s rolled around, punk rock — the sound defined just a few years earlier by the Ramones and the Sex Pistols — was pretty much dead, and there were a new breed of young Americans intent on stamping out any last breath.

These were the hardcore punks; the amped-up, DIY, anti-establishment musicians revolting against a genre that had lost all of the sharpness that helped it puncture the mainstream back in the 70s. They abhorred what punk rock had morphed into, refusing the grey-scale gloominess of post-punk, and mocking the flamboyance of new wave.

They inverted the ideals of mainstream rock — no major labels, no trendy clothes, no commercialism — and set about forging a sound that stripped away any unnecessary pretensions. The drums moved at manic speed, the vocals eschewed melody for ferocity, and the guitars were distorted and aggressive. It was only ever played fast, and had to be as loud as possible.

This new musical militia had various outposts. Black Flag, widely credited as godfathers of the genre, spearheaded the Los Angeles scene, followed by the likes of Fear and The Germs. In San Francisco, Dead Kennedys led the way. Over in Washington DC, it was Bad Brains — a band consisting of black musicians, marking them out as an anomaly in a scene dominated by white men — who led the revolution, inspiring other seminal acts such as Minor Threat to do likewise. When Bad Brains moved to New York City in 1981, a new hub was formed there, soon welcoming the likes of Agnostic Front and a pre-hip-hop Beastie Boys.

Each scene had its own quirks. Minor Threat popularised the straight edge movement, which in its various forms avoided drink, drugs, animal produce, casual sex and more. Some would even shun prescription drugs, but it all served as a pushback against the excesses of their punk rock predecessors. Elsewhere, the politics stayed largely left, but varied from Reagan-hating socialism to full-blown anarchism.

What they all shared, however, was the chaos of their live shows. Hardcore punk gave birth to the idea of moshing, a form of dancing that, truth be told, was just an organised form of fighting. Sometimes, the charade was dropped and violent brawls broke out among the crowd, with police often called. Moshing even made its way onto network television, during an episode of Saturday Night Live in 1981. John Belushi struck a deal with SNL that he would make a cameo appearance if his favourite hardcore band, Fear, were allowed to play. The show’s organisers reluctantly agreed and, somewhat strangely, decided to invite other punk rock band members into the studio to mosh in the crowd while Fear performed. It was, naturally, a glorious mess, with bodies flying everywhere and microphones flung across the stage. A premature ad break cut the performance short and quelled the madness.

Like most scenes this explosive, hardcore punk in its most vigorous form was fairly short-lived but hugely influential. Other scenes sprung up in the UK and the rest of the world, but by the mid 80s, the American cohort had splintered, with bands moving off into other directions: post-hardcore, emo, thrash metal, alternative rock and beyond. Hardcore still exists in various forms today, but never did — and probably never could again — change the angry face of music like it did all those years ago.

Listen: Damaged by Black Flag

Read: American Hardcore by Steven Blush

Watch: American Hardcore (documentary, 2006)

The A-Z of Music so far

H is for... hardcore punk

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