Hardcore punk (commonly abbreviated to hardcore or hXc) 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 music. 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".Campbell, Michael. Popular Music in America: The Beat Goes On. Nelson Education, 2012. p. 360
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".The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition copyright ©2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Updated in 2009. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. 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.Williams, Sarah. "Hardcore". In Continuum Encyclopedia of Popular Music Volume 8: North America. Edited by John Shepherd and David Horn. p. 257-260 Hardcore "eschew[ed] nuance, technique, [and] 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 "[e]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 (i.e., melody).Wilson, Scott A. Music at the Extremes: Essays on Sounds Outside the Mainstream. McFarland, 2015. p. 40
Hardcore vocalists often shout, scream or chant along with the music, using "vocal intensity"Malory, Curry and Pena, Milagros. Punk Rockers' Revolution: A Pedagogy of Race, Class, and Gender. Peter Lang, 2004. p. 56 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.American Hardcore (Second Edition): A Tribal History. p. 158 Hardcore vocal lines are often based on minor scalesKortepeterp, Derek, The Rage and the Impact: An Analysis of American Hardcore Punk , p. 12 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 (and outrageous on-stage behaviour) 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.Steven Blush. American Hardcore: A Tribal Tradition. Feral House, 2001. p. 151 Guitar parts can sometimes be complex, technically versatile, and rhythmically challenging. Guitar melody lines usually use the same minor scales used by vocalists (although some solos use pentatonic scales). 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 (whole notes and half 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 (this does not mean metronomic time; indeed, coordinated tempo shifts are used in many important hardcore albums) 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, "[h]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 (also called moshing), a style of dance in which participants push or slam into each other, and stage diving. Moshers have popularized a number of moves used in the pit, with some of the most notable being two-stepping, windmilling, the gorilla, and roundhouse kicking. Moshing works as a vehicle for expressing anger by "represent[ing] 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",Palmer, Craig T. (Spring 2005). "Mummers and Moshers: Two Rituals of Trust in Changing Social Environments." Retrieved November 29, 2014 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. Brockmeier, Siri C., "Not Just Boys' Fun?": The Gendered Experience of American Hardcore, MA Thesis in American Studies Department of Literature, Area Studies and European Languages ILOS (Universitet I Oslo, 2009) p. 12 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. p. 11 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.Leblanc, Lauraine, Pretty in Punk: Girls' Gender Resistance in a Boys' Subculture. (Rutgers University Press, 1999), p. 52 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 (e.g., an anarchy symbol) and hairstyles ranging from military-style haircuts dyed black or blonde to mohawks and shaved heads.Travis, Tiffini A. and Perry Hardy, Skinheads: A Guide to an American Subculture (ABC-CLIO, 2012), p. 123 (section entitled "From San Francisco Hardcore Punks to Skinheads")
Circle Jerks frontman Keith Morris wrote: "[Punk] 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 (spiked hair and a bondage belt) to adopting a hardcore style (shaved head and boots) as being based on needing more functional clothing.