Yours truly (bottom center) finger-pointing to Negative Approach, along with the local recordcollectorcorecore scene. In b4 ‘DYEL?’

Like the word “punk”, “hardcore” has so many different interpretations that it is difficult to say what exactly one listens to when they say they listen to “hardcore”. Do they mean Terror? Defeater? Negative Approach? The Ghost Inside? Gorilla Biscuits? Madball? Although those who have studied the genre’s history even a little are probably aware that it started with ancient bands like The Bad Brains and Minor Threat, those early 80s recordcollectorcore bands don’t really sound much at all like what people typically consider modern “hardcore” today (ie: they aren’t really ‘heavy’ bands per sey, and there are no breakdowns). From the mid 80s into the early 2000s, the definition of hardcore gradually shifted from the fast, punky, often annoying sound of first-generation recordcollectorcore to heavy music with breakdowns.

However, like all youth-oriented western music, hardcore runs in cycles, and eventually what was once old, crusty, and played-out becomes “classic”, “legendary”, and “the blueprint from which to move forward”. The early 2000s saw another generation of annoying beta punker kids enthusiastic to latch onto something different and aggressive, yet less intimidating (and more obscure) than the so-called “tough guy hardcore” of bands like Hatebreed and Throwdown. The release of Steven Blush’s American Hardcore in 2001 consolidated almost anything any young record collector nerd-in-training/‘junior hardcore historian’ would need to know about recordcollectorcore into an easy-to-read manual, and many of the same dinosaur bands featured in the book were on the road again, playing to new audiences for the first time in years to celebrate two decades of existing in some for or another (often only on vinyl or cd anthology for the majority of that time). Thus, the stage was set in the early/mid 2000s for a major revival in the music and fashion of recordcollectorcore, and before long, obnoxious little punk kids went from jocking The Casualties and playing street punk to calling themselves hardcore and aping Negative Approach. Thus, recordcollectorcorecore was born. Read on, and learn more about the strange parallel universe of hardcore that is recordcollectorcorecore, in which 17 year olds gossip about things middle-aged men did 25 years ago, and Maximumrocknroll still relevant…

Although I feel like there were probably a few bands who came bands before them, Orange County bands like Tipper’s Gore (and Harpoon Guns, who appear to have never made it to YouTube) were amongst the first recordcollectorcorecore bands I heard. I had gotten many, many friend requests on Myspace from random punk bands before, but this was the first time I had heard a new band and thought to myself “woah, they are really trying to sound like 80s hardcore”.

Double Negative are one of the biggest bands of this scene, which I find kind of funny as recordcollectorcorecore basically consists of young kids trying revive the steez of early 80s hardcore, and Double Negative was started by a bunch of old dudes who actually were there to see Minor Threat, Black Flag, et all back in the day. Having seen this band literally more times than I can remember in various shithouse basements, living rooms, bars, and clubs, it was a little weird finding out that there were kids all over the country who acted like they’d be willing to stab their grandma for a chance to see them and buy their shirt.

Recordcollectorcorecore is never a very good look. But, for whatever reason, Richmond acquired an excessive supply of smelly white dudes with long hair, dreads, the remnants of yesterday’s lunch dried in their beards, swagless studded battle jackets with dumb late 80s thrash band patches on them, and very loud opinions about stupid stuff. Lots of crusty people really took to Richmond bands like thrash revivalists Municipal Waste and recordcollectorcorecore leaders Government Warning, but I always kept my distance from VA hardcore thrash punx because I was afraid being around them would result in me getting scabies or crabs by osmosis (srs). Part of this contention was probably OCD, but it wasn’t entirely an unreasonable concern either.

As the first decade of the 2000s came to a close, the nostalgia gap in recordcollectorcorecore shifted up, allowing bands there were once ineligible to jock on the basis of either being too new (read: less than 25 years old) or “too tough guy” to become acceptable to like again. My buddies in Lung Matter (RIP) represent the newer breed of recordcollectorcorecore, bands who are obviously influenced by 1^st gen luminaries like Negative Approach, but also like Judge and other stuff that more directly begat the more moshable, heavy sound of modern hardcore. BTW, most of the dudes in Lung Matter were between the ages of 15-18 when they recorded this and everything else they did, and it’s actually really fucking good for this style of music. You’d never even know a couple of them really insist on liking Bold!

Rival Mob are one of the most hyped current recordcollectorcorecore bands, and as their sound indicates, the present and future Shape Of Recordcollectorcorecore To Come is late 80s Youth Crew/NYHC. This development brings things nearly full circle, as recordcollectorcorecore is now veering dangerously close to the “tough guy” sound that OG recordcollectorcorecore opposed in the first place. There’s no way of getting around the fact that a basic underlying principle of this genre is being two decades late to the party, but hey, at least after roughly eight years of revival music, these kids are FINALLY putting mosh sections in the songs, right?

Overall, I have to admit that as a whole, recordcollectorcorecore was not one of my favorite developments in hardcore. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve spent a lot of time there (still do, sometimes), and there’s a lot of nice, sweet, kids who are into this stuff and I’m glad they are having fun with it. But as a former oldfag who jizzed over MDC and Minor Threat recordings over a decade ago, I don’t really have any reason to want to hear more music that sounds like old hardcore when I’ve heard enough old hardcore to last me a lifetime. Furthermore, when we are honest, recordcollectorcorecore is basically the result of when you combine the shitty attitudes and elitism of punk rock with the lack of heaviness and breakdowns of early 80s hardcore – and who the fuck wants to put up with all that, especially when you can just cut loose at a Hatebreed show or have a clean, family-friendly environment (with much better merch) at a The Ghost Inside gig?

Discussion: Are you into recordcollectorcorecore, and if so, who are your favorite bands? Did you read American Hardcore religiously, and where you disappointed when you saw the documentary and realized almost everybody in the book is either bald, fat, and/or leathery now? Is there a place in the world for hardcore without breakdowns anymore, or do you believe this sort of backwards thinking is dangerous, and could lead us into a spiral in which people think it’s a good idea to intentionally sound like YDI or Toxic Reasons? Is anybody who reads this site unlucky enough to have ever heard YDI or Toxic Reasons?