You’re Not Hardcore Unless You Live Hardcore: Overuse Of The ‘Core Term

This post has been a long time coming and was kind of birthed from yesterday’s article, “Has Metal Succumb To Trend Whores?“. There used to be a day when the word Hardcore meant something in terms of music. These days it’s broken down in the form of different genres by bands that have no clue about what really is “Hardcore“. People think Hardcore is a genre of music when in reality it was a way of life, a subculture.

Hardcore stemmed from Hardcore Punk. The hardcore genre came from kids in large cities like D.C., NYC, Boston, Chicago, L.A., etc. The songs were written about growing up in tough times, broken homes and life on the streets. It was about brotherhood and family and persevering through life and death situations and violence. I’m not writing this from a perspective in which I grew up in that type of atmosphere and I’m not trying to portray myself as someone that is “Hardcore”. I would just like to set the record strait to all the half-ass punks that think they are hardcore and want to start a ‘core band, when that’s the last thing metal needs.

You’re Not Hardcore Unless You Live Hardcore. You can not come from a close, prospering family that lives in a housing development where the average house costs over 300k and call yourself hardcore. Can you really write songs about Hardcore issues when you grew up with an easy life? I suppose you could sing about them, sure, but the simple answer is no. You can be a fan, but I don’t think you can truly call yourself “Hardcore”. 

Hardcore gets a lot of flack for not be very technical music. Of course it’s not because it stemmed from punk. No, no, not the punk of today. The punk of yesterday, the dead punk genre where melodies and complex song structure where non-existent. Metalcore bands have more song structure and melody as well as breakdowns, but I question their ‘core side. Same thing with the Deathcore bands. I like a lot of these metalcore and deathcore bands but there is a new one popping up every two minutes and I have the same problem everyone else has with them. They don’t know the meaning of Hardcore and they don’t know the history of 99% of the bands they are emulating. It’s one thing to be influence by a band, but it’s another to hear a song or two from them and think; “I can do that.”, with no care or knowledge of where the sound came from and the bands that pioneered the genres. I’m not some metal elitist, I just hate posers and I think that genre crossing has got ridiculously out of control.

Now that I’ve gone through that, let me suggest a few NY Hardcore bands that I’ve been in to for quite a few years now. I was never part of the Hardcore scene, I’m just a fan of the bands. Madball is probably one of the most mainstream NYHC bands today with Agnostic Front right at their side. These two bands are closely related because a bunch of the members of Agnostic front were once in Madball and the singer of Agnostic, Roger Mirit is the older brother of Madball singer, Freddy Cricien. Sick Of It All is another NYHC band that has been on the Mainstream for quite some time now. I don’t really think I need to mention Biohazard. They were one of the NYHC bands that took the NYHC sound and added the Rap style to it. Lastly, Sheer Terror is another NYHC band that has been around forever and definitely worth a listen. I had a friend that was in to the Baltimore Hardcore scene and introduced me to these bands. Those are just a few but there are many others out there as well.

Bottom line is, before you go starting another ‘core band, know something about Hardcore subculture, the history and the music. Otherwise you’re just another poser wannabe. And if this article pisses you off then I think we all know where you stand.

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