Originally posted by tireironsaint
Enlighten you on what's good? That's a tall order. I'm not even sure exactly what you mean by that, so I'll try to carve a little section out of what
I assume you might be looking for and try to answer that.
I'll limit this to Hard Core just to simplify. Some of the first HC bands I heard are still some of the best in my opinion even though a lot of kids
in the current HC scene would claim that they're Punk bands and not HC. As I was coming up in Punk I got a tape that had been passed around a bit. It
had two bands on it, a local one and a "bigger" band. I must have been about 10 when I heard it and it absolutely blew me away. I had been listening
to The Cramps, some Sex Pistols, and still a lot of stuff that I grew up on like Kiss and Alice Cooper and this tape made me wonder what else I was
missing. The local band is now legendary in a lot of circles, The Big Boys. I've still never heard anyone come close to replicating their formula and
think they'll always be one of the most original, fun, creative, and intense bands. The other side of the tape had a lot of early songs from a little
band called Black Flag. I don't think I need to say much about them here, but the songs on there were all from before Rollins joined the band and Ginn
decided to get weird and boring. Those bands set the bar pretty high for anything that I heard after that.
A few years later I was turned on to some bands from the midwest and a few other places around the country. That raised the bar again, at least in
terms of balls out rage filled HC. That stuff was on a tape that had Negative Approach, The Necros, early Die Kreuzen, Poison Idea and a few others. A
while after that I sobered up and part of what helped me feel that I was not alone in fighting the urge to get dragged back into my addiction was
Straight Edge music. My favorite of all those bands was Slapshot, but I liked a bunch of the usual suspects from that time, Youth Of Today, No For An
Answer, Uniform Choice, and later on Judge. Slapshot is the only one I can still listen to without it mostly being a nostalgia fest, but occasionally
I'll play some of that stuff and it's all much better than the vast majority of current HC bands. Not the smallest reason for that is the fact that
most bands out there now are either ripping those bands off or are just adding Slayer riffs to what those bands brought to the table. I find VERY few
bands that come out these days are coming from the same place any of the old bands who were interesting were coming from.
Around that same time, I got into a lot of NYHC. I loved Sick Of It All, Side By Side/Alone In A Crowd, Breakdown, Raw Deal/Killing Time and I really
found a classic when I stumbled on Sheer Terror. It's sad to me that even though there are more bands than ever and more pop up every day, fewer and
fewer of them bring anything worthwhile to the table. The HC scene has become so incestuous and cannibalistic that almost everybody sounds like a
shitty version of some band from not too long ago. I guess that's fine with a lot of people, but it's not good enough for me.
I realize that pretty much everything that can be done has been done, but there are occasional glimpses of new takes on old themes that still get my
blood pumping. There's bands like The Bad Vibes that blend so many of the things I love in such an unapologetically pissed off way that I can't help
but love 'em. There's the Slumlords who put so much humor and love for what they're doing into everything that I just hafta chase down everything they
do. I had literally given up on HC when I heard Blood For Blood. They gave me hope that there were people who saw it the same way I did and had the
guts to pull it off.
I dunno if that's really the kind of answer you were looking for, but that's what I got for you right now. |
