VICTORY RECORDS defined 90s hardcore

The 90s are back, baby-- thanks to ppl like Fight Fair's Alex Bigman, all the cool kids want to relive the bad old days of 90s hardcore. But skramz are for posers: If any of you kids want to start a REALLY authentic 90s-style band, you should put on XXL Snapcase basketball jerseys, JNCOs, and wear backpacks everywhere you go. And as for musical inspiration, forget about skramz-- only a few emo dorks listened to that shit back then. Put down your Fingerprint 7" and back issues of Heartattack; to truly understand 90s hardcore, look no further than the catalog of VICTORY RECORDS!

The fact of the matter is that no band, person or label defined 90s hardcore like Victory. I will leave it to other people who have had a few too many glasses of Haterade to critique their business practices or whatever and focus on what I know/care about: the music they put out and how they were received in the hxc scene at the time. All you dumb little kids who want to relive the 90s, take note: this is your handbook to being AUTHENTIC 90s HARDCORE!

Kurt Angle + Tony Victory = BFF

Victory: The original Stuff You Will Hate
It seems like everything I do, say, or post on the internets is a lightning rod for hatred. If I like it, everybody not only hates it, but wants to tell me what a moron/fggt/imbecile I am because I am into it. I feel like Tony Brummel and I might be budz, because that's how it's always been for Victory. People have been hating on them basically since day one, for various reasons.

I snapped this photo of the Victory break room while undercover as a member of Billingsgate

I am not tight with the label by any means, but I have worked with them doing interviews, reviews and whatnot since about 1994. Back then you could call them up, ask to talk to Tony and they'd say "Yeah let me grab him-- TONY, PHONE!" These days I am guessing he's too busy swimming in his money bin to chat, but the point is that I've seen them grow from a tiny little startup to one of the very biggest indie labels in the world. Many things have changed, but one thing remains the same: everybody hates on Victory!

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In this video, some Germans sing "Firestorm" at a wedding karaoke party. Aside from the obvious, my favorite is how they pronounce it "wiolence against wiolence."

There may have been something earlier, but the first thing I remember people getting butthurt about was the Earth Crisis "Firestorm" 7". I will write more about this band another time, but if you haven't heard the lyrics to the title track on that record, they are about killing drug dealers in "a firestorm to purify." It's hard to imagine anybody these days getting upset about that line because it is so silly and over-the-top, but at the time the No Fun Club was furious and treated Victory like child molesting Nazis for releasing it.


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The infamous One Life Crew "riot" video from 1996. So many lulz in this video, hopefully BloodyGuts will come through with a lengthier post on it since she was there and I wasn't.

A couple of years later Victory made everybody angry again by putting out the One Life Crew 12", "Crime Ridden Society." Aside from being a brilliant old-school hardcore record in a time in which almost nobody was playing that style, it had a song about immigrants called "Pure Disgust" which contained lines like "don't come here, we don't want or need you," and so forth. Again, by today's standards it's almost laughably tame, especially when the lyrics are delivered by a fat Turk like Mean Steve, but the 90s were a very uptight, PC time in which we got angry about anything and everything. It all culminated with the legendary Cleveland fest "riot." I didn't live there until shortly after the riot, but you can watch the video above. It's not much to get excited about, but it happened, and naturally everybody blamed Victory for it all.

I don't remember if I have posted this before, but back in 1997 or so I actually went to OLC vocalist Mean Steve's tanning salon with my friend Bobby. We were just hanging out talking to him about our bro Jesse Parsh (or as Steve called him, "Faggot Jesse"), and every 30 seconds or so he would answer the phone with, "Thank you for calling Sunbelievable, this is Steve, may I help you?" Needless to say it was beyond ridic, and I hear he currently has a motorcycle shop or something at the mall, so stop by there if you want to experience your own piece of 90s hxc history!

Say what you want about flash-in-the-pan emo bros Hawthorne Heights, but at least we know they didn't get popular because of their looks!

Later, I guess Victory had some sort of falling out with Thursday or something. Then there was some contractual dispute or whatever with that fucking awful, gay emo band Hawthorne Heights I guess. I don't know or care about the details of that stuff, but I know the Absolute Punk/VLV types were pretty furious and ready to lynch Victory for whatever they supposedly did. I am not sure if there were any more recent scandals, kerfuffles, or controversial records, but people still hate the records Victory puts out. I love A Day To Remember and Emmure, but they seem nearly universally hated among the people I talk to. Of course the punchline is that both bands sell a lot of records, so my guess is that it is the same now as it was in the 90s: the people hating on Victory are just butthurt fgtz who like to complain while everybody gets the party started to the tune of "Victory Style Volume 2."


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I remember Charlie being mad that Victory made them pay for this video as part of their contract or whatever. As I recall it was produced for the princely sum of $900.

Must have pro gear/look
These days all bands have dozens of "promo shoots," an absurdly polished MySpace layout, a booking agent, and manager before they play a single note of music, but it wasn't always like that. It was Victory who created the blueprint for being a "professional DIY" brand (band/label/whatever), like today's annoyingly-pro kids. It made a lot of ppl angry, but it was cool with me because it just meant that hxc bands got to record at decent studios, put out records that sounded good and you could actually fucking find them in record stores. I mean, if your band was any good, wouldn't a label want to put it out? DIY is cool and all, but if you have to resort to self-releasing 500 copies of your 7" in hand-screened paper bag covers, it probably just means your band sucks :P

Nothing really says "90s hardcore" like an Earth Crisis jersey by Cabal!

Victory's merch machine was second to none, pumping out windbreakers, basketball jerseys, and XXL t-shirts faster than shit through a goose. These days every band under the sun has 4 zillion SKUs of merch available via a Big Cartel store, but nobody did it like Victory back in the 90s. Well, there was Rick Ta Life's traveling flea market, but that's kind of like the Big Lots/Canal Street of hardcore.


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This Snapcase 7" still sounds pretty damn good to my ears. Love that 90s super-cranked snare!

The other thing about Victory is that they were the only hxc label who actually had their shit together in terms of promotion, publicity and marketing. If you had a zine, they would actually send you review copies of stuff with alarming frequency (although back then they were cheap and often sent the cassette version lol). They were also one of the few labels who actually paid for ads, which was pretty amazing at the time.

ADTR's "Downfall Of Us All" was the best song of 2009, hands down

They took promo photos, made music videos, had a street team, and all kinds of other things that are de rigeur for modern "hardcore" bands who have a press kit before they have songs. Of course that means they are indirectly responsible for countless musical crimes against humanity such as Never Shout Never, but you know what they say: if you want to make an omelette you've gotta break some eggs. If being blessed with "Destroy The Machines" means I have to suffer through a couple of Underoath videos 15 years later, that's a price I'm willing to pay.

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Victory continues to explore innovative ways of marketing their bands, as you can see in this commercial for the latest Emmure "package deal"

The bottom line
Obviously the Victory catalog has plenty of lolwat moments like Catch 22 and Hifi And The Roadburners, but it's also full of legit classics like Bloodlet, Earth Crisis and Snapcase. There are tons more unsung gems like Martyr AD, Inner Strength, All Out War, and some really fucking great newer stuff like A Day To Remember and Emmure. We love to joke, but in all seriousness Victory has done more to shape hardcore than anybody since mid-80s Revelation.

Tony, if you're reading this, thanks for all the years of great records, and LOL @ the crybaby fggts who hate on your label. Now if only I could find that absurd video of Integrity playing Dekalb with Mean Steve playing air bass during their set.


Next: What do the youth of today think of Victory's 90s steez??
YeahYouKnowIt showed what a lolfactory 80s hardcore can be, but we have not yet explored the fertile ground of 90s hxc. If you have ever wondered what Kids These Days think of what I listened to in high school, you will be excited to hear that the next installment of Scene Girl Reviews will cover Victory Style Vol III. Stay tuned!

Earth Crisis' Karl Beuchner is a very strange man. Seriously.

Does anyone have a copy of Greedy Bastard's fake ExC interview? Where is Bill Florio these days?? Do you love Bloodlet as much as I do? What current Victory releases do you like? WTF is the deal with Hifi & The Roadburners? Do you have any video of the legendary EVEN SCORE???