When Did Hardcore Stop Being Punk?
Let’s be honest, hardcore, as we know it, has largely disappeared from the psyche of many listeners. The last 15 years have been filled with a replacement sound that many in “hardcore” today consider the purveyors of the genre, when in reality, hardcore by bands like Sick of It All, Madball, Biohazard, Hatebreed, and latter day Agnostic Front possesses very little of what “hardcore” originally was.
In order to explain myself, we have to step back a bit and examine the origins of hardcore. Originating in the late 70’s, h
ardcore was punk. The origins of the actual name “hardcore” to describe punk music is debated to this day, but looking back, “hardcore punk” is a label used now to describe punk bands who resisted the rising popularity of punk based music in the mainstream by The Clash, The Pretenders, Blondie and The Jam who were taking the punk sound and bringing it into the world of pop, which many in the punk community thought was the biggest sell out imaginable. As a result, a new wave of edgier punk, hellbent on preserving the attitude and rebelliousness of the original punk, was beginning to take formation which would find huge successes in the underground throughout the 80’s in New York, parts of Canada, L.A. and later Boston. In my opinion, the 80’s were the glory years of punk music because of this hardcore punk elite who refused to compromise their sound in order to sell records. This generation of punk brought us moshing, stage diving, gang vocals and so many other telltale constructs which would quickly become an integral part of heavy metal culture as well.
However, once the 90’s rolled around, the hardcore punk movement began developing a third wave , and it’s this third wave of hardcore music that began to shape the term into what it is today. You see, this new generation of hardcore seemingly graduated from the simplicity of punk, to the more technical and heavier aspects of metal. Why an entire generation of punk fans began to adapt into full on metal is beyond me, but the fact of the matter is hardcore stopped being “hardcore punk” and became just hardcore, or more aptly, metalcore. Punk suddenly was no longer en vogue amongst those that had originally set out to keep punk alive. The irony is strong, but wholly apparent.
A good example of this transition from a singular band, would be Madball. Check out Madball’s debut Set It Off which is a quintessential hardcore punk release, however, 4 years later, when you examine the album Look My Way what is presented is a much different sound. The difference is quite clear in my opinion, Set It Off, while beginning to delve into metallic guitar riffs, is still largely cemented in the traditions of punk. However, on Look My Way, the punk has largely disappeared in favor of brutal, downtuned riffs that sound much more like Prong with a swagger to it. This is not punk, this is not hardcore in the traditional sense, this is bare bones metal. I know, I am going to catch flack from both metal and hardcore fans for this whole article, but the truth is self evident, Madball gave up punk a long time ago, as did many of the second and third generations of hardcore and those influenced by them in years to come.
Perhaps the biggest guilty party of substituting the punk traditions with metal, was the band that brought hardcore 
into the mainstream, Hatebreed. I consider myself a fan of most of their work, but very little of their material has anything to do with punk. The guitars are straight up metal, while the only semblance of punk in their music is the drum beat. Where is the hardcore? From what I can hear, Hatebreed from 1997 on, is a metal band with a dusting of hardcore beats. Hatebreed is and has never been a purebred hardcore band contrary to what fans who started listening to hardcore in the late 90’s may think.
To conclude, I want to make it clear that I am not naive. I realize that the musical landscape is a constantly changing entity. In the case of hardcore, I could care less if hardcore has taken on a new form in the last 15 years, because that is the nature of music. I myself liberally toss the term around in regards to the modern notion of what the genre is supposed to sound like. This is the world we live in, but one thing we cannot do is forget the legacy that hardcore and metal has created. What bands like Discharge, Agnostic Front, Bad Brains, The Exploited, Black Flag, The Unseen, The Stupids, Sick on the Bus and so many others did to make sure the true punk spirit lived on through the 80’s and on into the new millenium cannot be dismissed. Bands like the above need their place in modern hardcore lore, just as much as the mainstream metal enfused acts that cite themselves as being hardcore, if not more so, because they are the namesake, they are HARDCORE PUNK.
CODY
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Comments
Comment from cody
Time: June 22, 2009, 8:06 am
I didn’t talk shit about any band, and the whole purpose of the post was to convey what you mentioned yourself, that hardcore hasn’t been punk for awhile. I realize and acknowledge that fact, I am just wondering where and why hardcore punk turned into hardcore, which in reality, is metalcore.
Comment from coled24
Time: June 22, 2009, 11:36 am
Let me clarify, I didn’t really mean you personally talk shit about Hatebreed but a lot of people do and I think there’s something to that in that every album since Perseverance has sounded exactly the same. However, how would you describe bands like Bane, Ignite and so many others in that vein which dominated the hardcore scene for years? I don’t see much metal influence there. If anything that was what standalone hardcore was; some punk influence but not metalcore by any stretch.
Comment from cody
Time: June 22, 2009, 12:11 pm
Well I think it boils down to this: You either have a base in punk, or a base in metal when it comes to hardcore. Hardcore as we call it today, is much more metal than Black Flag just on guitar tone alone. In fact, the term metalcore was very popular in the early 90’s to describe much of the new wave of hardcore from bands like M.O.D. and Pro-Pain when you read interviews from those bands. I am not being critical, on the contrary, I think it was an interesting development in the hardcore scene. But hardcore clearly became much more metallic, even moreso now. I can count a handful of hardcore bands from the 90’s that actually play hardcore. There are several new age bands that are kind of revitalizing the punk based hardcore, some examples include Cockpunch! from Mass (I believe) and Sick on the Bus from the UK. I just feel like that sound has been lost on a new generation of hardcore fans who don’t know their roots. It’s like those new age metal fans who say Dream Theater isn’t metal (which has happened on more than one occasion).
Comment from Tim
Time: June 24, 2009, 2:19 pm
What would you call botch? Hardcore or Metalcore?
Comment from keenesh [Poland]
Time: June 26, 2009, 2:16 am
Good article, I agree with you Cody. And Botch is something like metalcore/technical hardcore, but definitely not hardcore punk. I would stick to the term mathcore when talking about them.
Comment from justin
Time: September 17, 2009, 12:51 pm
Great article. I agree with just about everything you said. I am not mad or bitter or upset that hardcore punk is pretty much dead. Having a couple true hardcore sounding bands left in the country pretty much means that it is dead. I could create a band tomorrow and sound true hardcore punk, but that doesn’t mean it is alive and well. The reason I say that I am not upset is because a lot of these bands out now that are metalcore or even deathcore all have hardcore roots and are awesome bands. I think a lot of these bands would not be as good or have that great sound if they had been based on pure metal sound alone. I refuse to believe that hardcore punk died in the mid 80s, because it was still pretty prominent and a lot of great hardcore bands existed in the early and mid 90s. Anyways, yeah good article man. We are still living in an interesting time in hardcore and metal times. It’s cool to see genres and styles mix and change every year. The cool part is there is no telling what will be popular 5 years from now. On the other hand I highly doubt anything will be as original as what happened in the late 70s.
Comment from The Franz
Time: September 27, 2009, 7:13 pm
As a person who listens to hardcore myself, I agree that alot of it doesn’t sound the same anymore. But the times change and so do music. Take Sick Of It All for example, “Blood Sweat And No Tears” is pretty punk, but if you listen to The Intro Clobbering Time, you cannot tell that that isn’t heavy at all. And look at how Judge progressed as well. Especially Integrity changing from strait up hardcore punk with the Split with AVM all the way to “To Die For” which is straight up metal influenced hardcore. All I can say is that isn’t bad to embrace change and alot of the new bands that have come out such as Terror, Ringworm, or even Hatebreed still know their roots. And the punk is still their in the music, with the fast snare beats, and the guitar work as well. And we still listen to the old Hardcore bands like Crippled Youth, 86 Mentality, S.O.A, and Negative Approach, like I said we know our roots, but It’s okay to embace the new.
Comment from coled24
Time: June 22, 2009, 1:01 am
I feel like you’re leaving out a great deal of the 90’s. Hardcore hasn’t been punk for a while. Sick Of It All is no longer even a hardcore band however, their old stuff was absolutely Hardcore and they’re earliest stuff I would consider Hardcore Punk. Frankly, I’m the guy in the middle that doesn’t really like hardcore punk but also doesn’t like the metalcore it’s become. I was more of a fan of the 90’s-early 00’s era stuff like Ignite and Strife and late 80’s stuff like the Gorilla Biscuits. It was the coolest era in harcore because there wasn’t a dress code. No mohawks or leather (punk). There was no stupid shit essentially. Good kids, good times, cool music. Granted that era brought on what we have now… which sucks, however while it lasted, that style was great. You can talk shit about Hatebreed all you want now (i do here and there) but lest we forget that they are released “Satisfaction Is The Death of Desire.” An album which defined an era and influenced the creation of a genre (metalcore).