Hardcore punk
Hardcore punk is a punk rock subgenre and subculture that originated in the late 1970s. It is generally faster, harder, and more aggressive than other forms of punk rock. Its roots can be traced to earlier punk scenes in San Francisco and Southern California which arose as a reaction against the still predominant hippie cultural climate of the time. It was also inspired by Washington, D.C., and New York punk rock and early proto-punk. Hardcore punk generally eschews commercialism, the established music industry and "anything similar to the characteristics of mainstream rock" and often addresses social and political topics with "confrontational, politically charged lyrics".
Hardcore sprouted underground scenes across the United States in the early 1980s, particularly in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Washington, D.C., Boston, and New York, as well as in Canada and the United Kingdom. Hardcore has spawned the straight edge movement and its associated sub-movements, hardline and youth crew. Hardcore was heavily involved in the rise of the independent record labels in the 1980s and with the DIY ethics in underground music scenes. It has also influenced various music genres that have experienced widespread commercial success, including grunge and thrash metal.
Although the music genre started in English-speaking Western countries, notable hardcore scenes have existed in Italy, Japan and Brazil.
Characteristics
Hardcore historian Steven Blush credits Minor Threat's Ian MacKaye with starting a "die-hard mindset that begat almost everything we now call Hardcore", which was virulently anti-music industry and anti-rock star. An article in Drowned in Sound argues that late 1970s/early 1980s-era hardcore is the true spirit of punk, because "all the poseurs and fashionistas fucked off to the next trend of skinny pink ties with New Romantic haircuts, singing wimpy lyrics" and the punk scene now consisted of people like Minor Threat, Bad Brains, Black Flag, and Circle Jerks, dedicated to the DIY ethics.Other writers have also attributed hardcore to a reaction against artsy and mellower sub-genres that punk grew into, such as post-punk and new wave. Hardcore punk additionally broke with original punk rock song patterns and visuals, favoring lower-key aesthetics.
Musical elements
One definition of the genre is "a form of exceptionally harsh punk rock". Hardcore has been called a faster, meaner genre of punk rock, that was a stern refutation against it, being more primal and immediate, with speed and aggression as the starting point.In the vein of earlier punk rock, most hardcore punk bands have followed the traditional singer/guitar/bass/drum format. The song-writing has more emphasis on rhythm rather than melody. Blush writes "The Sex Pistols were still rock'n'roll...like the craziest version of Chuck Berry. Hardcore was a radical departure from that. It wasn't verse-chorus rock. It dispelled any notion of what songwriting is supposed to be. It's its own form." According to AllMusic, the overall blueprint for hardcore was playing louder, harder and faster. Hardcore was a reaction to the "cosmopolitan art-school" style of new wave music. Hardcore "eschew nuance, technique, the avant-garde", and instead emphasized "speed and rhythmic intensity" using unpredictable song forms and abrupt tempo changes.
The impact of powerful volume is important in hardcore. Noisey magazine describes one hardcore band as "an all-encompassing, full-volume assault" in which "very instrument sounds like it's competing for the most power and highest volume". Scott Wilson states that the hardcore of the Bad Brains emphasized two elements: "off-the-charts" loudness which reached a level of threatening, powerful "uncompromising noise" and rhythm, in place of the typically focused-on elements in mainstream rock music, harmony and pitch.
Hardcore vocalists often shout, scream or chant along with the music, using "vocal intensity" and an abrasive tone. The shouting of hardcore vocalists is often accompanied by audience members who are singing along, making the hardcore vocalist like the "leader of a mob" commonly known as "gang vocals". Steven Blush describes one early Minor Threat show where the crowd was singing the lyrics so loud they could be heard over the PA system. Hardcore vocal lines are often based on minor scales and songs may include shouted background vocals from the other band members. Hardcore lyrics expressed the "frustration and political disillusionment" of youth who were against 1980s-era affluence, consumerism, greed, Reagan politics and authority. The polarizing sociopolitical messages in hardcore lyrics meant that the genre garnered no mainstream popularity.
In hardcore, guitarists frequently play fast power chords with a heavily distorted and amplified tone, creating what has been called a "buzzsaw" sound. Guitar parts can sometimes be complex, technically versatile, and rhythmically challenging. Guitar melody lines usually use the same minor scales used by vocalists. Hardcore guitarists sometimes play solos, octave leads and grooves, as well as tapping into the various feedback and harmonic noises available to them. There are generally fewer guitar solos in hardcore than in mainstream rock, because solos were viewed as representing the "excess and superficiality" of mainstream commercial rock.
Hardcore bassists use varied rhythms in their basslines, ranging from longer held notes to quarter notes, to rapid eighth note or sixteenth note runs. To play rapid bass lines that would be hard to play with the fingers, some bassists use a pick. Some bassists play fuzz bass by overdriving their bass tone.
Hardcore drumming, typically played fast and aggressively, has been called the "engine" and most essential element of the genre's aggressive sound of "unrelenting anger". Two other key elements for hardcore drummers are playing "tight" with the other musicians, especially the bassist and the drummer should have listened to a lot of hardcore, so that they can understand the "raw emotions" it expresses. Lucky Lehrer, the drummer and co-founder of the Circle Jerks in 1979, was an early developer of hardcore drumming; he has been called the "Godfather of hardcore drumming" and Flipside zine calls him the best punk drummer. According to Tobias Hurwitz, "ardcore drumming falls somewhere between the straight-ahead rock styles of old-school punk and the frantic, warp-speed bashing of thrash." Some hardcore punk drummers play fast D-beat one moment and then drop tempo into elaborate musical breakdowns in the next. Drummers typically play eighth notes on the cymbals, because at the tempos used in hardcore, it would be difficult to play a smaller subdivision of the beat.
Dancing
The early 1980s hardcore punk scene developed slam dancing, a style of dance in which participants push or slam into each other, and stage diving. Moshing works as a vehicle for expressing anger by "represent a way of playing at violence or roughness that allowed participants to mark their difference from the banal niceties of middle-class culture". Moshing is in another way a "parody of violence", that nevertheless leaves participants bruised and sometimes bleeding. The term mosh came into use in the early 1980s American hardcore scene in Washington, D.C. A performance by Fear on the 1981 Halloween episode of Saturday Night Live was cut short when moshers, including John Belushi and members of a few hardcore punk bands, invaded the stage, damaged studio equipment and used profanity.Fashion
Many North American hardcore punk fans adopted a dressed-down style of T-shirts, jeans or work chinos, combat boots or sneakers, and crew cut-style haircuts. Women in the hardcore scene typically wore army pants, band T-shirts and hooded sweatshirts. The clothing style was a reflection of hardcore ideology, which included dissatisfaction with suburban America and the hypocrisy of American culture. It was essentially a deconstruction of American fashion staples—ripped jeans, holey T-shirts, torn stockings for women, and work boots.The style of the 1980s hardcore scene contrasted with the more provocative fashion styles of late 1970s punk rockers. Siri C. Brockmeier writes that "hardcore kids do not look like punks", since hardcore scene members wore basic clothing and short haircuts, in contrast to the "embellished leather jackets and pants" worn in the punk scene. Lauraine Leblanc, however, claims that the standard hardcore punk clothing and styles included torn jeans, leather jackets, spiked armbands, dog collars, mohawk hairstyles, DIY ornamentation of clothes with studs, painted band names, political statements, and patches. Tiffini A. Travis and Perry Hardy describe the look that was common in the San Francisco hardcore scene as consisting of biker-style leather jackets, chains, studded wristbands, multiple piercings, painted or tattooed statements and hairstyles ranging from military-style haircuts dyed black or blonde to mohawks and shaved heads.
Circle Jerks frontman Keith Morris wrote: " was basically based on English fashion. But we had nothing to do with that. Black Flag and the Circle Jerks were so far from that. We looked like the kid who worked at the gas station or sub. shop." Henry Rollins stated that for him, getting dressed up meant putting on a black shirt and some dark pants; taking an interest in fashion as being a distraction. Jimmy Gestapo from Murphy's Law describes his own transition from dressing in a punk style to adopting a hardcore style as being based on needing more functional clothing.
Skateboard culture, streetwear, and workwear are also major influences on clothing worn by participants in both past and present eras of hardcore.
Politics
Music writer Barney Hoskyns attributed hardcore being younger, faster and angrier than punk rock, to adolescents who were sick of their life in a "bland Republican" America. Hardcore punk lyrics often express antiestablishment, antimilitarist, antiauthoritarian, antiviolence, and pro-environmentalist sentiments, in addition to other typically left-wing, anarchist, or egalitarian political views. During the 1980s, the subculture often rejected what was perceived to be "yuppie" materialism and interventionist American foreign policy. Numerous hardcore punk bands have taken far-left political stances, such as anarchism or other varieties of socialism, and in the 1980s expressed opposition to political leaders such as then US president Ronald Reagan and British prime minister Margaret Thatcher. Reagan's economic policies, sometimes dubbed Reaganomics, and social conservatism were common subjects for criticism by hardcore bands of the time. Jimmy Gestapo of Murphy's Law, however, endorsed Reagan and even went as far to call then former president Jimmy Carter a "pussy" in a 1986 New York Magazine cover story. Shortly after Reagan's death in 2004, the Maximumrocknroll radio show aired an episode composed of anti-Reagan songs by early hardcore punk bands.Certain hardcore punk bands have conveyed messages sometimes deemed "politically incorrect" by placing offensive content in their lyrics and relying on stage antics to shock listeners and people in their audience. Boston band The F.U.'s generated controversy with their 1983 album, My America, whose lyrics contained what appeared to be conservative and patriotic views. Its messages were sometimes taken literally, when they were actually intended as a parody of conservative bands. Another act from Massachusetts, Vile, were known to insult women, minorities and gay people in their lyrics and would even go as far as putting their albums on the windshields of people's cars. On the other hand, Tim Yohannan and the influential punk rock fanzine Maximumrocknroll were criticized by some punks for acting as the "politically correct scene police", having what was perceived to be "a very narrow definition of what fits into Punk", apparently being "authoritarian and trying to dominate the scene" with their views.
During the 2001–2009 United States presidency of George W. Bush, it was not uncommon for hardcore bands to express anti-Bush messages. During the 2004 United States presidential election, several hardcore punk artists and bands were involved with the anti-Bush political activist group PunkVoter. A minority of hardcore musicians have expressed right-wing views, such as the band Antiseen, whose guitarist Joe Young ran for public office as a North Carolina Libertarian. Former Misfits singer Michale Graves appeared on an episode of The Daily Show, voicing support for George W. Bush, on behalf of the Conservative Punk website, and in 2023 testified on behalf of the far-right Proud Boys during their sedition trial for their role in attacking the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021.