Thanks to commenter Rygar for this gem, I hadn’t seen it before- or should I say SCENE it?! Ba-dum *crash*

This kid knows what’s up: Oftentimes the things that your peers will ridicule you for the most are the same things that attractive girls will be the most interested in. This is not always the case, but if you find your friends hating on something you are wearing, before abandoning it, you should ask yourself what kind of feedback you’ve gotten from hot girls about it. For example, many of my (old, male) friends make fun of my watch.

And maybe they are right, maybe it does look gay. But I also know that many attractive ladies with good style have used it as an excuse to talk to me and hold my hand while they look at it, so I’m laughing all the way to the bank.

If I made a video about it, it would go, “And look at my new scene watch. It’s fuckin’ pink as fuck. Yeah, it’s totally gay, because bitches love that shit. And it matches my new Nikes, they’re scene as fuck too.”

Fuck the haters, dawg! If the ladies are feeling your scene hair, keep working it! I mean personally I place Norma Jean shirts somewhere near truck balls and Big Johnson gear as far as indicators of subhuman stupidity, but who cares what I think? U go, girl. And for all you butthurt pussies who want to strangle this kid, remember…

I am a big fan of joke bands. For example, ex-Dillinger Escape Plan bassist Jeff Wood’s amazing side project SHAT or Timm Mcintosh from Trial‘s HARD AS FUCK. In that same proud tradition comes X GUMBY X, courtesy of The Devil Wears Prada singer Mike Hranica. They play brutal metalcore for fans of Throwdown, Suicide Pact, and Demolisher.

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Lyrics:

O (move this place)!!!!!!!!!
Kill, Doom, Kill, Doom.
I eat the ground round raw.
Crying is only for the weak of hearted, and pussies.
I Knocked out Throwdown once.
I HATE TOM DELONGE.
Open the skies above, since the gates of hell have opened up, and all of hell has been released, the earth is now saturated with evil.
MOVE THIS FLOOR!
I’m going to kill Circa Survive.
So cut my wrists and black my eyes.
Just Kidding!
I KILLED MY WIFE BECAUSE SHE COULDN’T COOK (BREE).
If I don’t see a circle pit, I’m going to nuke this place!
I chew on nails.
LET’S GO.
I kicked the cat out the window.

The best part is the line “So cut my wrists and black my eyes” where they make fun of Anthony Green from Circa Survive’s girl voice (he is my friend and I love him dearly but it’s true, he sounds like a girl).

Download the song here
X Gumby X on MySpace

Back in the old days before blogs, the Twitters, Youtubes, and all that, we had something called zines. I made few different ones, starting in about 1992 and going through 2003 or so. Most of them are fucking wretched, but I found a copy of the first issue of my best zine, HATING LIFE, from 1999 or so. I had just moved back to Seattle from Cleveland, and was very influenced by Lifesucksdie, Bruce from Phobia’s zine Jellobungresia, and Fat Chicks In Party Hats. Sure, there are plenty of things about it that are awful, but all things considered I think it holds up pretty well for being a decade old.

I was living with a bunch of friends from high school (including Todd from Champion/Betrayed, who I miss a lot), and basically was just real into going to hardcore shows, writing graffiti, and hanging out with girls/my mosher bros. Accordingly, it’s mostly pictures of graffiti, chicks I liked at the time, and dumb shit about metal and hardcore records, and generally along the same lines at Stuff You Will Hate– as you will see, I’ve been doing this kind of annoying bullshit for a long time, for better or worse. I’ll post some of the most notable pages, but you should download the full zine and read it in detail. The second page of all the interviews is in the ZIP, so what better way to piss away 20 minutes of your life that you’ll never get back??

The cover, featuring shred legends NITRO! As you can see, I have been repping them for a long, long time. Also, HATING LIFE is the name of a really fucking sick song by the death metal band Grave.

First of all, note that I titled this “INTRO BUST” many years before Double Crossed. Second, the gist of it is “if chicks aren’t into your band, you suck.” Sounds familiar, right?? I have been beating the “don’t play boring music for beardos” drum for quite a while!

At the time, The Locust were getting real popular, and they still had proto-scene hair (before entering their more recent gasmask/light-bondage phase). People still mention this page to me from time to time, so I guess it was memorable?

Some very rare mid-90s Seattle graffiti pics- WERL, SOBER, PACE, etc. The girls are my former roommate/current BFF BloodyGuts (left) and some lame chick I was dating at the time (right). On the bottom right is KERN TA aka Metal Inquisition’s Skullkrusher doing a Mother’s Day piece (“Feliz Dia De Madrecita”).

Interview with the geniuses in Deeds of Flesh, featuring some classic lines like “I like to piss in there mudslides and piss there lemondrops.”

Clockwise from upper left: “STRIGHT EDGE” tattoo; Some bitch with busted-out teeth from the then-recent WTO rights in Seattle; misc graffiti; some ORFN/SECTER doodles courtesy of CERT; a screencap from Hamtaro; my favorite piece of graffiti ever, a BW production by BISIE, WERL, SECTER and AMAZE.

Some moderately amusing record reviews, the best one probably being Creation Is Crucifixion: “The songs are all about computers and stuff.” Even then I was pissing people off by reviewing Pyrexia, Hate Eternal, and Candiria alongside Home Grown, The Enkindels, and other gay poppy shit.

Clockwise from upper left: Lame chick I dated showing her tits in front of a Skarhead poster (boobies shopped out, sorry); more rare, mid-90s Seattle graffiti from the likes of BISIE US, ADEK BTM TKO 3A, SAGER LFC NCS, ABHOR KUK, and SOBER AOD LFC; Slayer ticket; funny business card I found on the ground that says “Hey black, can a nigga dick it down from the back?”; a couple other girls I dated/crushed on.

Interview with Chris Elder from Despise You/Pessimiser- I lost his actual responses so I just made up what I thought he would have said. I think I did a pretty good job!

Interview with ARES from Downset and the legendary graffiti crew CBS. He was real, real cool and super friendly. The singer, Rey, was a very fucking strange dude but also nice. I feel like this band never really got the press they deserved.

More graffiti, including MERZ’s first piece, a 625 throwup I did in 1997 or so, and a picture of Jessica Alba when she was still hot. Cringing at some of the design elements.

I don’t know why I included this, but I was real into the Super Robot Wars games at the time, and included a bunch of screenshots from some of the Super Famicom titles. LOL @ the mega-90s graphic design!

Moderately amusing interview with Levi Watson from the awesome Fall Silent. I hear he is a high school teacher these days; he was always a real cool, super nice guy and I wish him the best with whatever he’s up to! Solid dude for sure.

Like many other 20 year-olds, I was a guitar geek. This interview with the thoroughly average grindcore band Assuck is mostly about dumb shit like what kind of pickups Steve Heritage used, blast beats, and other stuff that only stupid kids care about. They were pretty much dicks to me. That guy Kyle from Grade or whatever was there too and was also kind of a dick. They clearly thought they were The Shit despite playing a venue that was essentially a punk rock flophouse in the ghetto with 100 kids in attendance, tops. Lame band.

Back cover- a screencap from Pocket Fighter for PS1. Great game! I don’t know why I blurred out the address since I haven’t lived there since 2000, but I guess it’s better to be safe than sorry?

What do you think?? Please feel free to make fun of it, god knows I’m asking for it after mocking the creative output of many current 20 year-olds. Hopefully it will bring back memories for any oldz reading, and give you newer kids some insight into the bizarre world of 90s hardcore. Either way, hope you like it or at least have a good laugh at my expense!

Remission is a brand new band with ex members of Legend and Salt the Wound. They just released this demo song, and let me tell you, it fucking bangs.

here is a link to their facebook page. https://www.facebook.com/RemissionUSA

They are currently recording, and have big things planned for this summer and later this year.

Varsity letter in Football REQUIRED for this music!!

So I was facebook stumbling upon cheesy ignorant mosh bands like I usually do when I’m bored when I came across possibly the perfection of the rare “workoutmosh” genre… BENCHPRESS! They seem to fall square under LIONHEARTCORE, a direct derivation of HATEBREEDCORE, which is approximately 15.3% more effective for workouts than TERRORCORE. But don’t take my word for it… mosh for yourself!

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JCbyIZomKEs]

The title track of their recent EP, STAY HATED. Strictly for Bench Pressing; caution if mixed with Dead Lifting.

The whole song is p sick, riff for riff. But the real treat here is the build up to that breakdown at 2:25… i get intense chills down my spine. STAY HATED TILL THE DAY I DIE!!! Careful, if listening to while lifting, you may be tempted to punch that large man with siq aesthetics next to you… and it will not end well!

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ok6LPbyHbII]

this song is lovely and DEF has the ability!

I dunno, the more and more I hear their shit, I like it more than Lionheart! It’s almost designed SOLELY for working out: short and sweet, making each breakdown count. This is not music for the skinnyfat!

WAT U BROS THINK? Do your pecs ache just hearing this? How many times did you flex in front of the mirror while listening?? How SICK is the name BENCHPRESS?? brb making the band HIPABDUCTOR

For your information, yes, yes I am mirin’ that exclusive Dr. Gero action figure (complete with original packaging)

There is moshcore… and then there is EUROCORE. Most people who like to keep up with “lulzy euro hardcore” trend have probably seen a view videos by this siqq band RISE OF THE NORTHSTAR, and an older song was covered here a while ago. But it’s time to give them the spotlight again because they put out a brutal EP last year that must be shared with the world! Basically these guys are a French beatdown band that are obsessed with those japanimation comics called “magnas”. And they are here to show you there is no reason you can’t nerd out to DBZ and Saint Seiya and also represent true hardstyle wiggermosh!

as u can see there is a lot going on with this band’s image so pls don’t be afraid to ask if u need help dissecting all the layers of postmodernity

Basically if I had to describe their sound it would be “that other wigger band WINDS OF PLAGUE if they dropped the whole symphonic edge and wrote nothing but simple mosh tracks like CALIFORNIA and RELOADED and occasionally threw in a SLAYER solo bc #yolo”. Personally, I’ve been wanting a band to do that exact sound for a while now so I am more than willing to overlook the fact that their singer’s incredibly thick accent makes me giggle when I try to sing along.

• Notice that the KAMEHAMEHA toy at the beggining has Goku’s original Japanese voice actor (or “seiyū” as these guys probably say) rather than the American dub. This isn’t some shitty plaything you’d get at a Cincinnati McDonalds circa 2000!
• Inverted cross shirt at 0:57! As usual, euros are behind the times and have yet to start repping inverted-inverted crosses for maximum #softgrunge swagger.
• I don’t even NEED to point out a specific instance of wiggerish arm movements here because they occupy a good 90% of the video. WIGGERISH ARM MOVEMENTS CROSSES BORDERS AND UNITES US ALL!
• Idk how prolific and relevant the Japanese hardcore scene is, but I’m gonna guess all the innocent bystanders crossing the street think the shit going on at 2:35 is really weird.
• I like how each member of the band has something unique to differentiate them: the singer wears his hat way too low, one guitarist wears a surgical mask and the other has a giant beard, the drummer is apparently blind in one eye and there is nothing notable about the bassist because he plays bass.
• I can’t decide if “FIND INYA MIND DA SAIYAN RAAYYGE” is the most badass or embarrassing pre-breakdown call ever.

Considering the band’s image and lyrics, I was hoping that their merch would be equally over the top, but unfortunately it’s the usual shirts and crewnecks emulating streetwear brands.  Pretty standard stuff for both European and American bands.  Where are the hoodies with SSJ2 Gohan wiping the floor with Perfect Cell??

 OH HELL YEAH MOTHAFUCKA YOU ARE ALREADY DEAD

Give ROTN a shout out on their facebook page and tell them SYWH sent you! Buy their new EP DEMONSTRATING MY SAIYA STYLE! (translated = favorite it on Spotify)

How freaking cool is it that a band this weird actually exists?? What is the best magna to start with?? Do you think they’ve already seen the new DBZ movie BATTLE OF THE GODS??

Have you ever wanted to call your ex a scum slut? Or maybe you want to exude traits of a dominant alpha male personality that you wish you had? Then it sounds like ignorant moshcore is right up your alley! And maybe you’re one of the many people (including me) who remembers this neat genre of music and holds it closely to their heart.

Brothers In Arms was formed by a bunch of Arizona bros who’s Job For A Cowboy-esque band wasn’t getting them enough street cred so they got haircuts, up-sized their gauges, started dressing and sounding like The Acacia Strain and began singing about just beating people up instead of murdering them. “I’m gonna use my fists if I have to, to teach you respect, now go ahead smack ‘em to the ground!”.

Before the vocalist of Liferuiner decided to reunite the band and go all srscore, he was briefly in an ignorant moshcore band with one of the guitarists from Abandon All Ships. Try not to get too hyped on their music though, because I’m pretty sure this is the only song they recorded :( RIP the days when bands would recite rap lyrics over breakdowns.

Of Salt And Swine is what happens when you want to be a deathcore band but your drummer can’t do blastbeats yet so you just end up doing a Demolisher style mosh band instead. Unfortunately, I couldn’t picture bands with lyrics like “you’re nothing more than a fucking whore” in this day and age without tumblr activists suing them for hate speech or something. BOUNCE!

Bring The Heat may have looked like a bunch of wimpy scene kids but they were tough as fuck. Their songs possess so much ignorance and violence that it’s difficult for me to listen to their demo in one sitting.

Deadwalk was a band fronted by a really jacked red-headed dude who probably heard just one too many ginger jokes growing up. This song is about him wanting to hook up with an underage girl or something.

I have to end this strongly by finishing with BEARCLAW. This EP is one of my favorite ignorant moshcore releases ever. “I WILL END YOUR FAMILY NAME” (so ignorant!). I love it.

What are ur favorite bands in this genre? Have u ever moshed to an ignorant breakdown? Do u think about ur ex-girlfriend or the kid that bullied u at school when u listen to these songs?

This post is the first of this new segment I’m implementing called “I can’t believe they’re still a band”. You know, those bands that you were kinda into like 7 years ago who never really ended up going anywhere and you haven’t really heard about them or thought about them for like 4 years until someone brings to your attention that they’re shockingly still together.

This song was one of my favorite jams back in 2007 when I was super into deathcore and I considered them being one of the best bands to hold it down for the Cali scene even though they only had like 2 good songs at the time. The “I’m cumming straight in your throat” chant at the beginning is legendary.

Their original lineup… their ex-vocalist (far right) was literally 13 at the time. Apparently now he’s a rapper

People hated on their full length but I actually liked the moshcore direction that they took. I usually don’t care for music videos much but I think the comic book effects on this one are really cool. I like T. Mills’ cameo even though he’s not in the video.

One of their really scene looking ex-guitarists was on this MTV show and now he’s a club bro in Las Vegas (via twitter).

So this is their new song. Now they go by just “DEMISE”. It goes pretty hard. Kinda getting sludgewave vibes from it. Does this kinda stuff draw crowds in California?

What bands were you shocked to find out were still together? Were you ever into Her Demise My Rise and the Cali deathcore scene? Would you mosh to their new song?

Longtime readers will know that SYWH has hyped Southern California as the greatest place in the world, and there really isn’t any disputing that. We have the greatest Mexican food, the best weather (provided you don’t live inland lol) and most importantly, the world’s greatest hardcore scene! As a Socal native currently living in the Sacramento area, I’ve been lucky enough to sample a wide variety of California hardcore, and it would be a disservice of me to NOT aware you to the extremely advanced trend that is sweeping the best coast: CLOSEDCASKETCORE.

The best part about naming this part of the California scene after this label is the fact that Closed Casket Activities isn’t even from here, because it’s actually run by some dude in New York.  The label released plenty of east coast bands (Harm’s Way being the biggest name they helped blow up) but a few years ago they became permanently entwined with southwest hardcore.  Incidentally or not, CCA serves as an incestuous hub for California’s latest and greatest bands to lay down sick, metal-influenced hardcore in the footsteps of All Out War and Stigmata. Places like Santa Barbara, Pomona and Van Nuys are on some seriously next level shit, at least as far as putting crushingly heavy spins on old trends go. Any time you see a hardcore kid jocking obscure death and doom metal from before they were born, you can bet it’s due to the bros in Nails, Twitching Tongues and Xibalba making destructive moshcore out of the husks of those bands.  It’s thanks to these bands, heavy in ways that are almost weird, that I was ever able to discover hardcore in the first place, so here is their due.

Obviously the crown jewel of the California scene is NAILS- ABANDON ALL LIFE, but everyone and their sister’s tumblr followers knows about that one.  So next up in Hardcore Worldwide™ visibility is Xibalba, who dropped a new track recently.  These guys pulled an unprecedented move by going full doomcore on Hasta La Muerte, evidenced by the fact it was released on Southern Lord and even featured a guest spot by dronemaster Greg Anderson.  But “Death Threat” is more along the lines of devastating tracks like “Cold” and “Stoneheart”.  Somehow, this song manages to have both thrash riffs AND crushing slamz, which is an unusually anachronistic mixture, like if you time traveled to the Civil War and started killing soldiers with laser guns and plasma grenades. CCA is putting out Xibalba’s new split with Suburban Scum soon, and their song ain’t no slouch either.

For obvious reasons, Twitching Tongues is the flagship Closed Casket Activities band. Taylor (drums – Nails//guitars – TT) and Colin Young (vocals – TT) are almost synonymous with the label and the Socal hardcore sound. As a former IMN that worshiped Type O Negative and oldskool death metal and talked shit on anything that had the “-core” in the name, Twitching Tongues is the hardcore band tailor-made for me. If you told me back in high school that a band in the DIY punk scene would sound like a combination of Life of Agony and Bolt Thrower, I’d get mad trying to comprehend something so inherently bizarre.  But if a band can sound as weird as Twitching Tongues does, then I know hardcore isn’t a bad thing after all. These guys used to get a lot of flak online because the vocals are strange and their debut record sounded like Bob Seger at points, but when I see them play there are always tons of bros singing along and fangirls dreamily staring at Colin so that should tell you who won. I already know the “YOU CAN DIE IN PAIN, OR LIVE ANOTHER DAY” pre-breakdown mosh call at 3:51 here is going to be my favorite pit memory when I’m an old man.

In this photo of THE NAILS, hardcore tastemaker Taylor Young casually sports a Demilich shirt. Thankfully I already had my “obscure Finnish death metal” phase in 9th grade, but expect forgotten bands like Adramelech and Rippikoulu to gain some hardcore cred in the next few years.

I am from Ventura, California, so my experience with CLOSEDCASKETCORE bands are mostly based in neighboring Santa Barbara county.  So I may be biased in saying this, but not much captures the attitude of SBHC and California mosh as well as HARNESS did during their brief existence. Considering these guys barely wrote more than 10 songs, I feel like they managed to command more hype than a sub-mid-3rd tier band normally would. In 10 years people will probably remember them as if they were on the same level as Nails and Xibalba. These guys are literally just mosh riff after mosh riff, like an Exhorder song condensed into two minutes. Victim of Suffering is mandatory listening, and the demo is worth checking out if you can’t get enough of this stuff.

You could consider Disgrace to be the sister band to Harness, because they put out a split together last year and essentially have the same sound but with more fast parts . The band’s current lineup is just Twitching Tongues, but with Taylor on the mic and their guitarist and bassist switching instruments. This EP is heaven if you’re anything like me and your definition of hardcore includes death metal riffs and Dan Seagrave artwork.

Minus is one of the older CCA bands, holding down the southern California scene back in 2010ish, the days of the Ruckus/Xibalba/World of Pain split.  It’s hard to say whether the dudes in Minus are as overtly into metal as most of these bands are; I feel like they fit in well with both traditional and brutal hardcore.  All that matters is that they are from Santa Barbara and go hard as fuck, and this song is particularly violent. Hard Feelings is legendary-status regretcore, and their debut record is one of my favorite 2013 albums. They have a new split with Soul Search coming out on CCA this year, get stoked!

Downpresser is another one of my personal favorite in this scene, and they’re probably the most (relatively) successful SBHC band at the moment. Their new album Don’t Need a Reason has definitely resonated in the tumblrsphere, probably because they choose to write catchier songs with more memorable vocals than most bands do.  Age of Ignorance is my favorite release of theirs but all of their material is excellent.  They recently self-released a compilation CD of everything before Don’t Need a Reason, which should be available online as soon as they finish their current tour with Xibalba and Comeback Kid.

God’s Hate are a new band, so there won’t be that much information about them until they start touring a little bit.  All I know for sure is that Colin plays guitar for them. As you can tell, these guys are jocking late 90s NYHC pretty hard. Everything from the chunky riffs to the wack groaning vocals screams Merauder and Irate. If you like No Zodiac, or thought Crowbar would be better if they sped the fuck up already, you will definitely love this band.

I was pretty butthurt when Harness disbanded while they still had so much potential, so Forced Order might be the closest to a Harness Part 2 as we’ll get.  Same vocalist, and the rest of the members culled from Twitching Tongues, Creatures, Soul Search, e.g. the typical Closed Casket lineup. Like God’s Hate, Forced Order is a brand new band that just has a quick 4 minute demo out so far, but at this point it should be clear that these dudes are experts at churning out brutal fucking hardcore. Their demo is available for free, check the mediafire link on their bandcamp.

Soul Search is the only band listed here that I haven’t seen live or listened to much, even though they’re another important pillar of this scene. They sound like your typical Entombedcore band to me, and that doesn’t have to be a bad thing. They have some sick riffs for sure, and overall they seem to go for a slower approach than most bands.  If you love Xibalba and wish they had more shit out, pick up Soul Search’s EPs. They’re headlining a mini tour of California with Disgrace, God’s Hate, Forced Order and Violent Situation in early April, so I hope I can really get into them then.

What are your favorite CLOSEDCASKETCORE bands??? Did you call Twitching Tongues a nu metal band in 2011 and now jock them like everyone else?? Will ppl in 2025 write blog posts about how Creatures and Skinfather were “legendary” in the California scene??

On my search to find the most downtuned, heaviest, ignorant sludgewave band, I think I found the band that takes the prize. Normally when people bash these types of bands, they’ll be like “that band sucks, their songs are just a 3 minute breakdown” when in reality it’s a bunch of breakdowns with a riff or two thrown in. But these guys’ songs are ACTUALLY a 3 minute breakdown.

lol the vocalist looks like the guitarist from limp bizkit with the black contacts

I get so many weird feels while watching this video. I keep waiting for the riff to happen but it never does. But surely 3 and a half minutes of breakdown should be a good thing right? Then why am I not satisfied? Could I be infected with tr00berculosis? Am I too pussie to handle this level of ignorance? Could I have found a band who is actually too ignorant?

One thing we all have in common here at SYWH is we are all bonded by the breakdown. Whether it’s deathcore, easycore or old school tumblrcore, we love music that brings the mosh. This has lead me to be curious about the origin of the breakdown. Where did it come from? Some will say that it originated in Slayer’s song “Rain In Blood”. Lol, no. That breakdown is weak as fuck. It doesn’t even have double bass. The TRUE origin of the breakdown leads back to a genre once known as “tough guy hardcore” or as I will now call it, “old school moshcore”.

Hatebreed are perhaps the original pioneers of old school moshcore. Towards the end of this song, you will hear an early primitive version of the breakdown. Keep in mind that this is back before they invented drop A tuning and tritone chords, so kids had to mosh to what they could get. They weren’t privileged like kids today who get to mosh to hella heavy sludgewave artists and djent guitar tones. It’s funny to look back on it now though. Like, as if they used to actually accompany breakdowns with fast parts instead of more breakdowns. Lol, so weird!

Throwdown took the groundwork that was laid for them by Hatebreed and brought it to a new level. They were like, “fuck it, we’re STARTING the album with a breakdown”.  The vocalist saying “bounce this” at 1:05 is so advanced. They must have been the first band to hype up the breakdown like that. Lots of Throwdown’s lyrical content was based around the straight edge lifestyle. Their songs served as anthems for 14 year old kids who rly wanted to fit in to somewhere before they got peer pressured into smoking weed and becoming graffiti artists.

Production quality is somewhat of a hindrance on the old school moshcore genre. This is from before they triggered the fuck out of drums so the double bass sounds like the noises a kid would make when he’s violently masturbating in his room while blasting heavy metal music so that his parents don’t hear him jerking it. The vocalist and one of the guitarists from this band are now in Comeback Kid. The other guitarist was this cute Asian girl srs.

                                                         like, reasonably cute

Buried Alive was a heavy as fuck band featuring Scott Vogel of Terror fame on vocals. This is kinda advanced for it’s time because it came out in 1999 when most soon-to-be moshcore kids were still wearing JNCOs and in their nu-metal phase.

All Hell Breaks Loose was one of the many moshcore bands from the Florida hardcore scene. If you’ve ever seen that lulzy “Breathe Hope In Me” video that A Day To Remember put out from when they were first starting out and really crappy, you’ll notice that Jeremy is wearing their hoodie. If this band is responsible for influencing ADTR (basically the best band in the world) in any way, shape or form, then they get infinite props from me.

This band was from Massachusetts. Apparently they’re legends according to this YouTube video description. Lol. Lots of zany shit going on here. It’s pretty dark so all of the moshers who are wearing black with their hoods up look like actual ninjas. At 1:15 one of them does a cartwheel, then at 2:12 some guy starts moshing with a broom. Also, where the fuck are they playing? It looks like they’re in some abandoned building with DIY lighting.

The Payback was a super heavy band from Quebec, proving that skate punk is not the only thing that French Canadians are good at. If the breakdown in this song doesn’t make you wanna wreck shit, then I don’t know what will.

Black combat hats were a popular fashion accessory in the tough guy era.

These guys were from Florida. They were signed to Eulogy Records, which was basically mosh central back then. Like most of the bands in this post, they broke up a long time ago but not before releasing a couple of sick albums, including this moshterpiece “Blood In The Ink”.

Seventh Star was another band from Florida on Facedown Records (the original mosh 4 christ label). Lol, was that intro with those 2 dudes talking really necessary? This band was actually kind of popular and perhaps even influential. I attribute part of their success to their singer actually looking like a tough guy and not a skinny dude on a vegan diet in a youth large t-shirt.

           Lol, the 2 dudes on the left are like “we don’t look as tough as the singer, what do                                   we do??” Then the camera guy is like “just cross your arms and look srs!!”

Bury Your Dead had some of the best breakdowns in old school moshcore. I think they were really innovative in a sense that their breakdown to riff ratio was closer to 50/50 as opposed to a lot of bands from back then that would have like 80% riffs and only 20% breakdowns. Their second album took it further when they started playing mostly breakdowns, paving the way for bands like Emmure and (pre-srscore) Liferuiner to come and take it to the next level.

Brass knuckles were an important symbol in the old school moshcore genre, sort of like how Hello Kitty was to scene girls. It signified the genre’s toughness.

This band was so lulzy. Four vocalists, really? Are two or three singers not intimidating enough? Do they need the presence of four dudes to show how tough and scary they are to a bunch of midgets?

Lol @ song title. These guys were pretty sick. At 1:12 it sounds like the singer tried to do a blegh but he hella failed or something. I think these guys were affiliated with a straight edge gang. Lol. Pretty scary stuff.

On Broken Wings were a bit more on the metalcore side of things. They brought some of the best breakdowns ever though. Apparently they’re the band who coined the term “moshcore”. Apparently they were also “controversial” because they encouraged crowd violence at shows. I am getting this info from their wikipedia page so it could be a member of the band making this stuff up and writing it to make them seem cooler.

Camo shorts were a MUST HAVE item for anyone in the tough guy hardcore scene.

Black My Heart showed up a bit late to the moshcore party which may have hindered their popularity, which sucks because they had some of the best breakdowns ever. I think part of what held them back was their name. It sounds like some soft metalcore band who writes emo lyrics.

Now Hoods is a great band name for a tough guy band. It makes it sound like they’re really in tune with the streets. The graffiti also helps add to the “street” aesthetic. This band had a girl guitarist but the quality of the video is shitty and there aren’t any good shots of her so I can’t tell if she’s cute or not.  :(

What are ur favorite old school moshcore bands? Do u think any of these bands are actually “tough”? How do u rate the Asian girl from Figure Four?

Code Orange Kids: another name in a laundry list of bands I originally disregarded that eventually managed to step their game up and blow me away.  I wasn’t that into COK (heh) originally because they had way too many melodic interludes and they gave off a strong amazingcore vibe instead of consistently bringing the mosh.

hey broe the spoken word poetry slam is at the art studio down the street

But this summer they dropped the KIDS from their name, became CODE ORANGE (because they are srs musicians who make art for mature adults only) and started playing some of the most fucked up hardcore I’ve heard all year.  Their new album I AM KING is a zillion times heavier than their old stuff, with a very hostile, oppressive, almost anti-social vibe. I’d attribute a lot of the album’s success to the massive production job courtesy of the one and only Kurt Ballou. It’s already been blowing up online for weeks now, so now is the time to get familiar with the most hyped record of 2014. Be careful not to cut yourself on all the edge.

haha wat the fuck guys

My theory is these guys got jealous of Twitching Tongues after their album “In Love There is No Law” blew up, so they decided to reinvent their band with a different name and new sound.  I’d definitely classify this as closedcasketcore, but even that doesn’t quite do these songs justice.  The best way to describe this album is lots of Twitching Tongues breakdowns/doom riffs combined with Admiral Angry levels of groove and lots of unnerving sound effects like a creepier version of the first Slipknot album.

congrats to Code Orange for being the first BLAIRWITCHCORE band

They’ll be touring with Twitching Tongues and various other CCA bands this fall (Soul Search and Discourse included). I hate to say it but I fully expect the crowds to be way more into Code Orange than TT. Both bands are fairly weird but dogmatic music nerds are way more likely to complain about Colin’s buttrock vocals than all the weird sound effects and skronk riffs on the new Code Orange songs. I’m going to go out on a limb here and bet that I AM KING-worship is going to be the biggest trend in hardcore over the next 2-3 years.  The credibility of nu metal bands like Korn, Bloodlet and Disembodied will rise within the hardcore scene, the amount of Converge shirts at shows will increase dramatically, and more and more metal nerds will get into closedcasketcore until you can’t even tell the difference between metal dorks and hardcore dorks.

wtf is the deal with this album? do all the spooky sound effects make you feel like ur in a scary movie? what are you going to be for Halloween?

Dictionary.com defines evolution as “any process of formation or growth; development”. We see evolution EVERYWHERE. Not just in plants and animals, but in art too. Do you ever think to yourself, “where did all the awesome scene music that I enjoy today come from? What are its origins? What was music like before the breakdown?“  Well, believe it or not, it actually came from hardcore punk from the 80′s. I know what you’re probably thinking: “there was hardcore music in the 80′s?” Or maybe if you’re aware of this ancient form of hardcore, you might be confused as to how such a brainless primitive style of music could evolve into something so ravishing and beautiful. Let me show you how. But in order to do so, we have to go back to the very start. Ladies and gentleman, I present to you: an inclusive account of the evolution of hardcore.

1978 – The Beginning of “Hardcore”

Don’t let the album title mislead you, there are no breakdowns. 

So this marks the beginning of hardcore. I put hardcore in quotations because I’m not really sure why Black Flag is even considered hardcore, despite being regarded as the seminal pioneers of the genre. I mean, they’ve never even used the fast beat, which is supposed to be the basis for all of these primordial hardcore bands. Even Asking Alexandria have used the fast beat. That makes them more hardcore than Black Flag. BF just sort chugs along (no, not the good type of chug) at a neanderthalic pace, much like the proconsul primate seen on the far left of the evolution chart above. Actually, since they’re more like proto-hardcore, I would relate them more to the aegyptopithecus zeuxis.

I think they reunited last year, but just a small-type gig, for friends and family and stuff. I heard their kids came to see them play after they got babysitters to watch over their kids (BF’s grand-kids) while they were away at the concert. But that’s not to say to say that BF doesn’t have any non-blood related fans. A few BFF’s (Black Flag Fans) have assembled this weird blog in which they have photoshopped BF shirts onto hundreds of celebrities. It’s like they have some sort of strange fantasy that involves important people acknowledging or caring about their niche little thing.

 Lol, Simon Cowell wearing a BF shirt… yeah right. BF’s singer would get roasted so devastatingly bad during an American Idol try-out that he leave the room crying.

That awkward moment when the dude wearing a Nickelback shirt is more believable.

Kim Kardashian repping Black Flag? Not likely. Maybe if the shirt said “Black Dick”.

Well, Christopher Walken is like 70, so this one is possible.

Apart from these obsessive BFF’s fan page, I did some research on their singer and found out he’s a whiny old man…

Can you believe a senior citizen is acting like this? He’s displaying the maturity of a little kid! Everybody’s poking at him? Who does he think he is? The pillsbury doughboy?

Why did they get an 8 year old to interview him? Could he not handle an intellectually stimulating conversation had by two adults? They had to get someone who’s more on his level?

1981 – Hardcore Gets Fast

Not sure why it took 3 years to come to this development but this marks when hardcore discovered the fast beat. Minor Threat were the first band to incorporate the fast beat into their music. Much like a baby’s first words, it’s cute… but it’s not very impressive. Music aside, Minor Threat were known more for the popularization of two important hardcore ethos, the “Do It By Yourself” mentality and the “Straight Edge” lifestyle, both of which would become inapplicable in the near future.

Don’t let their PC white boy demeanor mislead you, Minor Treat has been met with some controversy. Apparently they caught heat for the lyrics of their song “Guilty of Being White” for being perceived as racist. I didn’t check many of their other songs but I think lyrically that must be their best one and it’s actually really relevant today considering how oppressed straight white cisgender males are today all over dumb blogs on the internet. Minor Treat only lasted a couple years I think because they thought the music they were making was crappy so they broke up and started another band.

Check out how rude their singer is. The lady is asking him a bunch of valid questions and he just ignores her like she doesn’t even exist! Things that Ian Mackaye is “too cool” for: drugs, alcohol, professional record distributors and show promoters, interviews.

Are people sure he doesn’t do drugs? He seems pretty drugged out to me here, rambling about all this incoherent nonsense. Hippies on acid could probably come up with better jargon.   

1984 – Hardcore Gets a Little Bit Less Shitty

This is where you can tell production value gets a little bit better. They maybe even went to a studio I think. I’ll admit, when someone first showed me this album, I would’ve thought it was from maybe like 1986, not 1984. But let’s be honest, it’s still pretty fucking crappy. Their song “Not Just Boys Fun” served as a white knight anthem at the time, pioneering a new sub-genre of hardcore known as “fedoracore”.

“UGH, fuck all these ignorant ass jocks who pay money to come see us play and disrespect all of the non-existent women at our shows.”

Channing Tatum repping the fedoracore aesthetic.

1989 – Hardcore Becomes (Somewhat) Listenable

Gorilla Biscuits paid homage to the idea of “evolving hardcore” on the cover of their album “Start Today”. Unfortunately they were far from the homo sapien stage of evolution. 

Now, don’t get it twisted, I said listenable, not good. Right now we are approaching the ardipithecus ramidus stage. A new style of hardcore emerged in the late 80′s called “The Youth Crew”, which was a small circle of bands who had the idea of taking the energy of hardcore and mixing it with the musical sensibilities of a good genre. Most bands who attempted this did not have such great results but one band that kind of had the right idea was “Gorilla Biscuits”. I’m not sure why they named themselves after a street drug when they were a straight edge band. That’s like starting a vegan hardcore band called “Filet Mignon”.

One of the members of the youth crew… post-youth. 

1995 – Hardcore Gets Heavy

While bands like Gorilla Biscuits focused on adding melody to hardcore, bands like Earth Crisis added heaviness. Now, these guys were straight edge and vegan, so you can imagine how preachy their lyrics are. I’m not sure if they were atheism-pushers, but I wouldn’t put it past them. While I do respect Earth Crisis for being heavier than their ancestors before them, they are pretty boring and super dated. I would liken Earth Crisis to the homo habilis stage of evolution. They were very primitive and used stone tools such as the ones on their album cover, but until they start gaining the nutritional benefits found only through eating meat, they will not be able to evolve to the next stage.

1999 – The Dawning of Fake Hardcore and the Fashioncore Revolution

We are now approaching the modern era. Songwriting is becoming better, production is becoming crisper, musicianship is becoming tighter, breakdowns are becoming more plentiful. To represent this era, I have chosen a very advanced track by Poison The Well in which they use the “scream verse, sing chorus” song structure that is found in almost all modern Scenecore. Meanwhile, a band called Eighteen Visions was pioneering a new aesthetic in hardcore that would soon be known as “fashioncore” and served as a progenitor of forthcoming scene fashion.

Eighteen Visions sporting their fashioncore look.  

Jonny OC, the vocalist of popular ignorant mosh-turned srscore band Liferuiner was a huge fan of the fashioncore scene during its heyday.

2004 – Emotional Hardcore

In the mid 2000′s, bands started innovating a new genre of HC called “emotional hardcore”. They usually sung about depressing stuff like slitting their wrists and applying eyeliner. I’m not going to bash it too hard though because it is the closest related ancestor to Scenecore. I guess that would mean it is what the homo erectus is to the homo sapien. I would say that Underoath is the single most important and influential band to the Scenecore genre. They stuck out from the rest of their peers with a certain flair that the other bands lacked. They are like the caveman who discovered fire. When I’m older, I want to start a Scenecore museum, and when I do, Underoath will be the first band that will be inducted into it.

2007 – Early Scenecore

Early Scenecore (also sometimes referred to as “Classical Scenecore”) was pioneered by bands such as A Skylit Drive, Escape The Fate, Alesana, Blessthefall, and Drop Dead, Gorgeous. These bands paved the way for every Rise Records band with a $40,000 recording contract and a 3 year life expectancy. Homo sapiens are thought to be divided into two subspecies: homo sapiens neanderthalensis and homo sapien sapiens (otherwise known as anatomically modern humans). Think of this stuff as the neanderthalensis and modern Scenecore as the latter.

Beau Bokan from Blessthefall rocking a Minor Threat shirt in AP Magazine. Not sure why he is wearing it but at least it’s good promo for MT. Not that a band that’s been broken up for 40 years needs promo. I wonder how he got it? Was there an old folks home next to the Goodwill where he picked it up?

2010 – Modern Scenecore

The modern era of Scenecore was vanguarded by crabcore innovators Attack Attack (RIP) and scene heavyweights such as We Came As Romans, I See Stars, and Asking Alexandria. Modern Scenecore is defined by ballsier breakdowns, catchier choruses and pro-er production. Laced brilliantly with state of the art synthesizers and vocal processing, modern Scenecore can best be described as “the cutting edge”. I remember this era so fondly and the feeling of excitement and curiosity that I experienced upon hearing some of these bands for the first time which will probably not be replicated ever again in my life. This is the Homo sapien sapien. This is the modern human. This is what fundamentalist Christians think God skipped all of the other subordinate steps to get to. It is truly the cream of the crop, the crim de la crim… or is it?

2014 – Progressive Scenecore

Issues is a band that is pushing the boundaries of what we know as Scenecore, paving the way for all future innovation to come. You’re probably thinking – but where can the genre go from here, after such an advanced band like Issues has set the bar so high? Is this it? Is this the pinnacle? Well, if you asked me in 2010 if I thought there would be a Scenecore band with a scratch DJ, a seasoned R&B singer, and 1.5 black members, I would probably say no. Yet here we are. The point I’m trying to make is that evolution is an ever-progressing development that cannot be stopped and we should feel privileged to be living in such an exciting era, thanks to bands like Issues, who continue to expand the horizons of such an already vast scenery. The sky is the limit, my friends, the sky is the limit.

Oh, and for all the nerds who are going to be like “this stuff doesn’t have anything to do with hardcore” or “this isn’t what hardcore evolved into”. Let’s take a look at the top tag of the most popular currently active Scenecore bands on last.fm. What you’re about to find out might shock you…

I rest my case…

Rare fossil discovered by a modern day scene kid.

Where do you see the future of the Scenecore genre heading?  Are you a creationist and just skip to 2010 to pretend that all of the anatomically and musically inferior stuff never happened? Will there ever be a band that is more advanced than Issues?

It’s pretty easily arguable that all forms of music are derivative so I usually scoff at so-called music scholars proclaiming that a band isn’t worth anything if they aren’t original enough. I think some of the best bands have stolen their sound from another band and lots of them even get pretty popular from doing so as well! Here are some examples:

Emmure (ripped off The Acacia Strain)

The Acacia Strain were somewhat of a game changer in hardcore music. They discovered that if they put their finger on the first fret of the lowest string on their guitar while they were strumming a breakdown (instead of playing both strings open), that it would create a heavier, beefier sounding chug, known as the tritone breakdown (also known in mosh circles as the “brown noise”). Of course, they carpet bombed their music with these types of breakdowns, and rightfully so, those breakdowns made The Acacia Strain known as one of the heaviest bands in the scene! That is, until Emmure came along and just totally blew everything they did out of the water.

Saves The Day (ripped off Lifetime)

Before Saves The Day released what is considered by many to be their magnum opus, “Through Being Cool”, they were actually jocking the sound of a lesser known band called “Lifetime”. This even awarded them the title of “Jersey’s Second Best Dancers” (a parody of Lifetime’s CD “Jersey’s Best Dancers”). What do Lifetime and a discount prostitute have in common? They both gave us an STD.

Capture The Crown (ripped off Asking Alexandria)

Can you say “carbon copy”? But seriously, Capture The Crown did a pretty good job at ripping off Asking Alexandria! I would consider both to have some scene classics under their belt at this point but AA was no doubt the most innovative. It sucks to see the futures of each band be kind of shaky in this post-scenecore day and age. Asking Alexandria lost their singer, and Capture The Crown lost every member but their singer!

Slow down Jeffrey, Tyler’s “gay country shit” is actually really good! (go check it out here)

Sum 41 (ripped off Blink 182) 

As a proud Canadian, I got love for Sum 41, but there’s no question that they wouldn’t have existed if it wasn’t for Blink. Not just in terms of their americanpiecore old school mallpunk sound, but also their whole “young adults into mischief” getup. Like, “watch your back when you’re around us, we might just pull a prank on you!” These are the types of guys you don’t wanna fall asleep around at a party. If you want to see the most random cameo in music video history, peep 2:37 in the Sum 41 video to see DMX show up at the party on a four wheeler. I miss the days when pop punk bands had enough money to destroy an entire house for their music video.

Jawbreaker (ripped off Green Day)

If you wanna go suuuuper old school within the pop punk genre, then we could discuss a band called Jawbreaker, and how they used to jock Green Day’s sound back in the day. To be honest I don’t think either of these bands are catchy enough to be considered pop punk. I would go more with “melodic punk” or something along those lines (the types of bands that are jocked by beards on punknews.org).

The Wonder Years (ripped off Simple Plan)

The Wonder Years have built a strong fanbase among rejects over the years with their underdog persona. They even made their mascot a pigeon because pigeons are the most disrespected animal or something. But long before The Wonder Years were doing the whole “if you’re a loser, you’re not alone, I’m also a loser!” shtick, Simple Plan were catering to the outcast emo masses in a much bigger way. Plus lyrically, TWY jocks SP in an almost plagiaristic sort of fashion (example: “I’m Just A Kid” is basically just a G-rated version of “Local Man Ruins Everything”). I guess Good Charlotte also had the whole outcast/loner angle, but I think TWY jocked SP a bit more than they did GC.

Turnstile (ripped off Mest)

The riffs at the beginning of each of these songs are practically the same. So much so, that if Mest wanted to sue, they probably could (and win), but that wouldn’t be very punk rock of them. I think the Turnstile riff is more of a homage. A homage to a band that has infinite more street cred than they could ever dream of having. I mean, just look at the singer and how fucked up he is.

What are your favorite rip off bands? Do you think often times these bands are better than the bands they’re ripping off? Do you think Turnstile bumps Mest in their cadillac?