It happened – dear god it really happened… early HXC bands, at some point in the mid-’80s, decided to go metal. SSD & DYS (something in Boston water?) were real offenders, but something was def. afoot in the early HXC scene…
It’s a pretty basic formula many early HXC bands followed. Get shitty punk musicians together, add a little metal speed and growl and slam away. Do that for 3 – 4 years and suddenly they start thinking they are ‘talented’ and want to ‘improve’ their music. So, what happens when you dial down the punk, pump in more shitty metal?
The problem is that when your metal role models are terrible bands like Kiss, Iron Maiden, Judas Preist, *insert crappy early ’80s metal band here*, and you are no where near as talented as those bands, you produce an even shittier product. Case in point – SSD and their two albums “How We Rock” and “Break It Up”.
Holy fuck – I usually really hate on No Fun Club types that get down on bands trying ‘new things’, but you can legitimately hate this stuff. I completely advise you to *not* seek out these albums!
To me it’s amazing a band like SSD can release such horrible music and still be part of the ‘required’ HXC cannon?!? Their legacy is based on one album that objectively isn’t really that good – if you were not in Boston in ’81, can you really say SSD speaks to you?!?
1988 SoCal HXC band Amenity still reppin' SSD?? Guess he never heard those albums...
Now sometimes it works – personally I loved the last three songs on Black Flag’s My War – slowed down and dark and doomy… but guess what? People fuckin’ hated it at the time! Can’t win!
(side note: no one would actually admit they hated it now… but it’s true!) – on average tho, if you were an early ’80s HXC band, mixing in metal was a terrible idea. This, along with issues detailed in my first post, lead to Youth Crew really taking over the HXC scene.
But while the 1 generation HXC bands were busy tearing down their reputations with bad metal influences, there was some decent music being created by god damned good metal bands in the background…
Eventually this would work it’s way into the hardcore scene… Tune in for HXC History III to see the effect this had on our little HXC baby!
What do you think? Can this old school hxc metal ever be cool?? Is this a case of wasted talent, or bands maxing out their potential? Was not having the interwebs around in the ’80s what secured their legacy?? Wouldn’t a trve HXC band that pulled this shit today be crucified??
I saw DYS today and they played a bunch of rock songs from the 2nd LP and I talked to them about it after… told them I was happy about that, the songs are really good.
trololololol did they play “grafffiti”? that’s the best/worst one
they did!
I actually prefer Black Flag’s weird metal phase but I think I’m the only one!
hahaha @ side 2 of My War…those songs are now considered to have basically invented sludge and no one would dare to bag on them today.
I have always liked the “weird” Black Flag stuff as well as the early stuff, but Krakken is 100% correct, everybody hated My War back in the day. Most people hated everything past “Damaged,” actually (although you could find a few people who liked “Loose Nut”). I can understand why, because that shit is really weird and not “punk” at all, but I love all of it.
God fuck DRI. Also, who the fuck moves to San Francisco besides arts majors and women?
Hahaha – maybe not the best example?!? but to me DRI was one of the first ‘srs’ metal act that kids started listening to outside of the major labels?? At least in my area… COC, DRI & SOD all kinda exploded at once. Thrash crossover hit hard at the time.
Also *back in the day* it took a lot longer for stuff to wear out… so kids wearing SSD shirts into the early ’90s were not that uncommon. The interwebs really changed this.. people get over entire genres now in the time it took to ‘get established’ in the ’80s.
+1, DRI are fucking terrible, especially the crossover era and beyond (I mean both the album “Crossover” and the genre). Some of their earlier material is OK when other bands cover it, though.
Also, homos move to SF a lot (unless you were including them under the heading of “women”).
“arts majors” is pretty clear-cut.
It worked decently well when the FUs transitioned into being the Straw Dogs, but yeah, most of those bands were not good when they tried to go metal.
So much truth to this article. I think the only part I disagree with is including Maiden in the same category as Kiss and 80′s Priest. Sometimes, I’m glad I came after a certain scene, because it means I don’t have to be caught up in the bullshit single-mindedness of it all. Hardcore’s definitely a case like that. I get to avoid having to listen to bands like SSD who were never really all that great to begin with, but can enjoy later Black Flag or even DRI without fear of being exiled.
Also, this is a pretty lulzy post by Aesop on the subject:
http://cosmichearse.blogspot.com/2009/07/break-it-up-experiment.html
There’s a drinking game here for the brave soul willing to organize it.
oh man
I remember that record AND that post
what a horrible, horrible idea that was
That SSD song was amazingly bad.
SSD – Get It Away is an all time classic.
What do you think about metal bands mixing a little hardcore into their sound a la Carnivore on Retaliation (aka the hardest record ever made)
Warzone did a “metal” album that apparently they disowned. I found it cheap a few years ago, some of the riffs are okay but its obvious they weren’t sure what they were doing.
Are you talking about the s/t “Warzone” album? I think of that as more of a precursor to the Biohazard/Brooklyn rap/hxc sound?!? You think?
Yeah the s/t one. Never really thought about the possible influence it could of had, though. Interesting.
this record is also known as “the bullet record” because of the cheesy graffiti style warzone logo on the front with bullet holes going thru the letters.
i don’t really think this record is a precursor to biohazard rap-core… listen to “jay takes a break”!
For whatever reason I wasn’t into Warzone – I prob. heard this twice in my life? Relistening now, it reminds me of Biohazard’s first album…
“For whatever reason I wasn’t into Warzone”
Maybe it was because they are fucking awful??
My War is my favorite Black Flag album.
Also,
>objectivity
>music
no.
Good call on my war,def my favorite black flag album…the b-side on that album kills!
I’m not sure if you’re considering the Cro Mags’ Near Death Experience as one of these albums, but that’s the best shit I’ve ever heard in my entire life.
Was this the reason why Hardcore Dancing started happening at shows?
great post, but there has to be more examples of this phenomenon that you could give aside from SSD’s two AC/DC worship albums. what about later era Wasted Youth? the Warzone “bullet record”? TSOL’s hair metal years? anything the cro-mags did after “age of quarrel”? members of uniform choice starting Mindfunk? other members of Uniform Choice continuing on as Uniform Choice but playing hair metal? brian baker joining Junkyard for some sleazy 80s blues rock?
also, are you going to do a post about when HC bands became infatuated with RHCP and made funk-metal albums?
“are you going to do a post about when HC bands became infatuated with RHCP”
Token Entry “Weight Of The World”- worst 50 cents I ever spent
I really didn’t want to fill this post with a bunch of bands playing shitty music, more to provide the background of what happened in the community circa ’85 – 86. Your list is good for anyone masochistic enough to pursue this stuff further.
Did forget about TSOL tho – lolz!
By the mid 80s American hardcore could be divided into two categories: big city (LA, Bay Area, DC, NY) and the sticks (flyover country). By 84-88 hardcore was getting mighty old so musicians and longtime scenesters in the big cities were starting to grow their hair longer and dread it, slow down the tempo, have more experimental instrumentation, even wear things like tie dyes instead of the same punk shit. Post-hardcore, proto-grunge, proto-sluge, pigfuck, first wave emo, whatever you call it, each major city had its own scene. Then bands like Die Kreuzen, Black Flag, Husker Du and whoever would tour to the bumfuck states and backwater small towns. And all of these punker twerps in their postcard punx uniforms who thought it was still ’81 would be baffled and outraged and scream “Sellout!” in their shitty little zines.
Good list – honestly, and maybe it was growing up in NE/Boston area I thought of SST stuff as largely ‘punk’ and not hardcore. I’ve always given punk music a big leeway in how it sounds – I personally have no problem with melodic/metal/country/sludge/whatever punk.
How would the metallic Japanese hardcore bands fit into all of this? They somehow sound more “punk” to me than “hardcore” and tended to play midtempo rather than at breakneck-retard speed. Also, sludgy sounding punk predated Black Flag by half a decade. Other than the Nervous Breakdown single, I don’t like any BF outside of “In My Head”- which I think is more “punk” than the the majority of their hardcore material to begin with. Black Flag were always too “average joe” for me (they even bragged about being more like the guy who worked in a subshop or something like that in early interviews.) Also, they were all afraid of Bobby Soxx (who played sludgy death rock/punk before Black Flag.
Gotta admit – I’m pretty stoked to see think kinda well thought out comment to my posts – thanks bro (srs!)
Honestly, BF was kinda the most ‘underground’ music we used to get growing up? Outside of Thrasher giveaways I used to grab from friends, and some Misfits tapes, and random stuff random scumbag friends would let you listen to… so ‘going deeper’ in any kind of way wasn’t terribly easy. I’ve no idea who Bobby Soxx is (I’m sure this makes me incredibly lame, but oh well…) As for Japanese stuff, I had no way to get it, and would not have known it existed?!? I’ve heard GISM, but that’s about it.
I’m eventually going to write up a post on ‘getting into music’ back in the ’80s – just kinda looking for my angle, but it certainly was different than now – today you just plug in a few search terms and can get the most obscure band’s discography and their full history.. (like it better now BTW)
^ this (I have heard all the big Japanese hc bands like GISM, Lip Cream, Death Side, etc but I never really liked any of it)
Well, I’m from Southern WV and didn’t have internet or even a real local scene and was able to get a hold of all kinds of material through total fanaticism. Weirdly I was able to find more material from foreign bands than I was the old local punk bands from the 70s (who were long gone by the 90s/00s (like Ku Klux Kueer- an actual gay Neo-nazi who played some sort of glam/punk/deathrock in the late 70s before dropping off the face of the earth). Stick Men With Ray Guns/Bobby Soxx were actually one of the first punk bands I ever heard of and made a note to find out more about due to some references to them that Joe Bob Briggs made while hosting Monstervision on TNT. One thing that’s been itching my brain lately is why some bands aren’t catagorized as being a part of certain subgenres; I really think bands like Kilslug/Upsidedown Cross, SMWRG, etc ought to be called Death Rock.
“Gotta admit – I’m pretty stoked to see think kinda well thought out comment to my posts – thanks bro (srs!)” Well, to you and Sergeant D both, I’m glad sites like this exist because I really do HATE 99.9% of what you post and your writing about it gives me the ability to observe it without making any kind of great effort. I can’t ignore all of it because when I start releasing my own material I want it to be hated by the hipsters/scenesters etc as much as I hate them.