Killer episode this week on the pod. Check it out here, here, or here and check the playlist here or here.
Looking back on the history of Hardcore Punk it’s wild to think about how much things used to change in half-decade spans. In 1980, HC was just getting going. By ‘85, the first wave bands were pretty much broken up or were past their prime and metal has seeped into the original sound. By 1990, Hardcore had peaked with the Burn 7”. I kid, I kid (kinda). You get my point though: 1995 was way different than 1990, and 2000 was way different than 1995. I’m not sure when it happened but at some point these five year jumps didn’t seem so extreme anymore and looking back on 2019, nothing feels dated or irrelevant like 1979 stuff may have sounded to a newjack in 1984.
2018 and 2019 were great years for Hardcore releases. When Covid hit in 2020, this was the material that folks locked into, streaming the tunes or watching live videos on the internet - yearning for when they could go see live music again. A lot of kids discovered Hardcore during this time too and with the prevalence of videographers like Hate5six, there was an endless supply of video documentation of the Hardcore scene, now currently on pause, for them to take in. These newcomers submerged themselves in online content, bought records with stimulus checks, and anticipated a time when they could get buck like the people they were watching on their screens. When the world opened back up we saw the popularity of Hardcore surge nationwide, not just with the influx of new kids, but with the return of a ton of dropouts pretending they never left. Would the explosion coming out of the pandemic have been so huge if 2018 and 2019 were weak years for Hardcore? I doubt it.
I know in my old hometown of Oxnard, CA, 2019 was the best year for the scene I had witnessed since I started poking my head around in the mid-1990s, so much so that we started work on documenting it for a compilation that would come out the following year. Down in my current hometown of San Diego, my band got to play with Judge…so hell yea, 2019 was killer year! Let’s get into the picks…
Two quick notes before I get into my list:
2019 was so good that no songs from two of my favorite records from the past 10 years (High Vis No Sense No Feeling/Restraining Order This World Is Too Much) made my list. If only we had 7th and 8th picks…thanks Dan!
Speaking of the Restraining Order LP, we should note that it has one of the greatest Hardcore Punk album covers of all time.
Diving into my list:
Never Ending Game “Evil Minds”
This is my favorite type of Hardcore on the planet and NEG took the world by storm with this LP in 2019 that holds its own with the best shit ever. The first side of this LP is untouchable (sans “NEG Jams”) and is probably my personal pick for best side of a Hardcore record in the last decade. To be so hard and so catchy at the same time is a daunting task that not many can achieve but these dudes slayed with this record, and their following 7”.
Dead Heat “To The Core”
I’ve written a love letter or two for my hometown scene over the years, and here is Dead Heat doing the same with a mini-opus that culminates in one of the best Nardcore sing-a-longs ever written. Dead Heat makes me proud of every Nardcore tattoo on my body, and dat verse riff…cmon man! This shit rules.
Downpresser “Born To Be”
Like NEG, Dan from Downpresser has a knack for being able to write a hook within a pounding two minute flurry of HARD STYLE glory. If you don’t want to bob your head to that opening riff, I dunno what to tell you. Downpresser’s catalog is a bible of savage riffery and witty lyrics that should be studied by students of the game for years to come. This is a top 5 Downpresser track. Fuck yea.
Eyes Of The Lord “Seventeen”
This track comes off the 2nd 12” of this East/West collab band featuring the Young brothers of Twitching Tongues and the original singer of 100 Demons, with the band named after the album he sang on. This song could’ve fit right on that record. I dunno if you’re picking up a theme here, but this shit is so hard and so catchy at the same time. The song tells what may be a semi-autobiographical story of a dude dropping out of high school to join the military and go to war. The lyrics are burly and do justice to the gnarly subject matter while dancing perfectly on top of A+ verse riffing.
Sunami “Contempt Of Cop”
I wrote a longer piece on Sunami here, so check that out. 2019 saw both the Gulch promo and the Sunami demo drop and the RBS explosion begin to percolate. These two bands would emerge from the pandemic as two of the biggest bands in Hardcore and put the Bay back on the map as one of the most important meccas for Hardcore Punk in the United States. Mike Durt’s melt-your-face riffs and Josef’s lines like “187 on a P-I-G” showed zero compromise, and Sunami proved they had the antidote for beatdown’s disease of long song syndrome, giving one of the most tired styles a cattle prod shock to the ass.
Minus “Action”
Minus Compulsion is one of the most criminally underrated Hardcore records that I can think of. 10 songs in 12 minutes with zero filler and no samey monotony - just straight Hardcore Punk that dances seamlessly between styles without sounding contrived or cut-and-paste like so much modern Hardcore. “Action” is an all-timer in the mid-tempo banger category that would bring a tear to Bones’ eye as he sits on his throne as king of the MTB.
I want to give a quick shout to a few things that I’ve been enjoying a lot recently:
Whenever the Sorry State Newsletter hits my inbox, I get stoked. The thing reads like a zine and I forget that they’re trying to hawk me shit. Shoutout to Daniel, Usman, and Jeff who are some of my fav punk writers, joining the likes of George Tabb, Felix Von Havoc, and Anthony Pappalardo.
The Rebirth Records Substack has really come out the gate hard both with Bob Wilson’s writing, and some excellent tour journals from Scarab and False Salvation. Hell yea.
The From Within Podcast does an excellent job of covering modern Hardcore through the lense of dudes who were and are still in the thick of it. For coverage of the 2010s, it’s the best HC podcast. Highly recommended.
Here are my honorables for 2019:
- ZN