If you’ve got even a passing interest in loud, guitar-based rock music, you’ve probably noticed that we’re living through a uniquely exciting moment for hardcore. Maybe it’s all the pent-up energy from 18 months in lockdown, maybe it’s the crossover success of Turnstile’s Glow On, but whatever the reason, a lot of hardcore bands are making really good music right now, reaching new audiences, and playing to increasingly large crowds. And it’s more than just right time, right place; a lot of these bands are crossing over and roping in new listeners because they’re making creative music that goes far beyond idol worship and far beyond the narrow confines that the hardcore scene has often prided itself on adhering to. Some hardcore lifers are put off by it, but others, like Militarie Gun’s Ian Shelton, say this new crop of bands is going back to the original intent of hardcore, when bands as sonically diverse as Bad Brains, Hüsker Dü, and the Minutemen were all defining this genre and this community in drastically different ways.
As with most genre booms and trends, this current moment is the culmination of something that’s been growing for a long time–not something that happened overnight. There are countless bands dating back to hardcore’s late ’70s inception that have paved the way in one way or another for this current moment, and in a more recent and more direct sense, the past 15 or so years birthed a handful of records that kicked down the doors for the very creative period that we’re in right now. Some of those records were praised right away, others revealed their impact over time, but all of them deserve even more credit than they’ve gotten already, and all of them feel ripe for discovery (or rediscovery) with the added context of the fire they helped light. With that in mind, I put together a list of albums from 2008-2018 that hardcore’s current genre-transcending moment probably wouldn’t be here without. The plan was to make this a list of 10 albums, but the bands on this list taught me to break my own rules, so this one goes to 11. Still, it’s obviously just a small snapshot of the hardcore albums that paved the way for this moment.
Read on for the list, in chronological order…
Cold World – Dedicated to Babies Who Came Feet First (2008)
Deathwish
“I think it’s important [to] be into music in general, and not only into angry stuff,” Cold World drummer Nick Woj told New Noise in 2014. “Our favorite stuff is ‘80s N.Y. hardcore straight edge, Youth Crew hardcore, but we just didn’t see a need for that,” he added. “It wouldn’t be exciting or fresh to anyone.” What the Wilkes-Barre band did instead was they took their love of hardcore and added in slower tempos, metal riffs, and clean-sung hooks, tipping their hats to bands like Life Of Agony and Biohazard, the latter of whom’s Billy Graziadei produced their 2008 sophomore LP Dedicated to Babies Who Came Feet First. Then they added in hip hop samples, and tapped dancehall/dub artist Warrior Queen to assist them on the Caribbean-leaning interlude of “Whagman.” The album echoes a variety of the band’s influences, but Cold World combined things in a way that always felt unique to them, and that’s long proven to be influential. The way they forged their own path and got ahead of trends probably rubbed off on guitarist Alex Russin’s younger brothers Ned and Ben whose band Title Fight were taking off around this time, and I don’t know if Cold World’s sample-based hardcore was a direct influence on Zulu but I do know that Zulu opened a show with a Cold World cover last year. On their 2014 comeback album How the Gods Chill, Cold World would trade their rap samples for actual rappers (Meyhem Lauren and Kool G Rap), and that record helped further bridge the increasingly small gap between hip hop and hardcore. If I was including more than one album per band on this list, I’d have put both, but even without verses from famous guests, Dedicated to Babies Who Came Feet First solidified Cold World as a hardcore band whose music knows no bounds.
Fucked Up – The Chemistry of Common Life (2008)
Matador
There might not be a single band this side of The Shape of Punk to Come to push the boundaries of hardcore more than Fucked Up. With members who had previously done time in Career Suicide, No Warning, Ruination, and more, Fucked Up were immersed in the Ontario hardcore scene from the start, and their earliest 7″s on the trusty Canadian hardcore label Deranged Records were no-frills hardcore, but Fucked Up made it clear pretty early on that they had no interest in staying within any established confines of hardcore. Their 2003 “Baiting the Public” 7″ dipped its toes into trippy psychedelia, and Fucked Up continued to push boundaries from there. By the time they put out their 2006 debut album Hidden World (Jade Tree), all bets were off. Clocking in at 72 minutes and featuring multiple songs around the six/seven minute mark (including a new version of “Baiting the Public”), one at nearly 10 minutes, and violins by Owen Pallett, Hidden World combined the fury and aggression of hardcore with art rock sensibilities and the result was a boundary-pushing album that fit in everywhere and nowhere at once. Fucked Up’s crossover appeal led them to being a rare hardcore band to sign to indie rock label Matador Records, and their 2008 Matador debut The Chemistry of Common Life pushed the boundaries of hardcore–or the very idea of genre in general–even more than its predecessor.
Opening track “Son The Father” begins with a lone flute, before ethereal layers of distorted guitar gradually build and build. It takes more than 90 seconds for vocals and drums to even enter the picture–your average hardcore band would’ve completed a full song in that time. Once it does kick in, Damian Abraham brings in furious screams that could only come from a life of immersing yourself in hardcore, as the rest of the band toe the line between classic punk riffage and kaleidoscopic atmosphere. When the chorus hits, Fucked Up deliver one of the catchiest hooks of their entire 20+ year discography. “Son The Father” alone would make Fucked Up godfathers of hardcore’s current moment, but it’s just the tip of The Chemistry of Common Life‘s iceberg. The album continues to offer up one boundary-pushing hardcore banger after the next, fleshed out by horns, congas, organs, psychedelic guitar effects, ambient interludes, and soaring clean backing vocals by Vivian Girls, Austra’s Katie Stelmanis, and Alexisonfire’s Dallas Green. (Plus sassy shouts from Death From Above 1979’s Sebastien Grainger.) Damian himself never deviates from his gravelly bark, but he frequently uses it in ways that sound equally inspired by pop songwriting and hardcore aggression. It’s an album from a band whose taste not only ranges from Integrity to Queen, but who have actually figured out how to build a bridge from one to the other.
Ceremony – Rohnert Park (2010)
Bridge 9
Ceremony formed in Rohnert Park, California in 2005 as a powerviolence band, but it shouldn’t have come as a surprise to anyone that a band named after a Joy Divison/New Order song had interests outside of hardcore, and that was slowly but surely reflected in their music as well. Their 2008 sophomore album (and Bridge 9 debut) Still Nothing Moves You found them starting to branch out from the fast-faced fury of their debut LP Violence Violence and their early EPs, and by the time 2010 brought their third album Rohnert Park, they’d completely thrown out the conventions of hardcore. Opener “Into The Wayside Part I/Sick” was the perfect way to introduce Ceremony’s new genre-defying sound, and it remains Ceremony’s signature song to this day. It opens with a twangy guitar part not dissimilar to the one that opens Violence Violence, but this time it’s more than just a red herring intro. Ceremony jam on it for almost a minute, before bringing in a drum beat that anyone with a pulse would dance to, and finally around the two-minute mark, vocalist Ross Farrar comes in with some of the most anthemic barks of his career, rattling off everything he’s sick of, including Black Flag, Cro-Mags, homophobes, condos, the GOP, liberals, Obama, living in America, and hardcore. From there, Rohnert Park ranges from bouncy mosh parties (“M.C.D.F.”) to dreary clean-sung dirges (“The Doldrums [Friendly City]”). “Into the Wayside Parts II & III” offer up classic rock guitar heroism and something bordering on dream pop, respectively. And there’s still a whole bunch of straight-up hardcore, even if Ross Farrar is sick of it. After this album, Ceremony would follow in Fucked Up’s footsteps and become another rare hardcore band on Matador Records, for whom they’d release the garage punk-leaning Zoo (2012) and the Joy Division-leaning The L-Shaped Man (2015). After that, they’d sign to metal label Relapse and release the brightest, new waviest album of their career, 2019’s In the Spirit World. Ceremony’s genre may change a lot, but their lack of compromise and their penchant for doing the unexpected is unwavering, and that mission statement was fully laid out on Rohnert Park.
Touché Amoré – Parting the Sea Between Brightness and Me (2011)
Deathwish
Before Sound and Fury 2022 was dubbed as likely the biggest American hardcore festival of all time, before it was praised for its “inclusive big-tent version of what hardcore even is,” Touché Amoré put on an explosive set at S&F 2009 that challenged tired hardcore clichés and also helped put Touché on the map. They had a sound that pulled equally from ’90s screamo bands like Orchid and Saetia and 2000s melodic hardcore bands like Modern Life Is War and American Nightmare, and their 2009 debut album …To the Beat of a Dead Horse–which was officially released two days after that Sound and Fury set–combined those things in such a way that was hard to pigeonhole but easy to like. On its 2011 followup Parting the Sea Between Brightness and Me, Touché fused their influences even more seamlessly, and came out with something much greater than the sum of their various parts. It was their first album with drummer Elliot Babin and bassist Tyler Kirby, cementing the lineup they’ve had to this day. It was also their first for Deathwish and their only album produced by Ed Rose (The Casket Lottery, The Get Up Kids, etc), who helped Touché make something much bigger and clearer than their debut but still raw. With songs that almost all flow directly into the next, Parting the Sea feels like one cohesive work of art rather than a collection of songs, and the songwriting was boundary-pushing and full of depth. The instrumentation is fast and aggressive but full of beautiful melodies, like post-rock set to the speed and intensity of hardcore, and Jeremy Bolm tops it off with impassioned vocals that are as deeply poetic as they are diaristic. It’s easy to see why the lyrical content has gotten Touché lumped in with emo, but their influence on the past decade-plus of hardcore is very easy to spot as well, and so much of it comes back to this record.
Trapped Under Ice – Big Kiss Goodnight (2011)
Reaper
Back in 2007, a young Baltimore hardcore band put out their first demo on their friend Che Figueroa’s new label Flatspot Records, which Che would later say he agreed to do without even listening to it, just because they were friends. That band was Trapped Under Ice, and the tough-looking shirtless guy standing front and center on the demo artwork is Justice Tripp, who would spend the next 15+ years revolutionizing hardcore from so many different angles. Having started out putting a fresh spin on ’90s beatdown bands like Crown of Thornz and Charm City hometown heroes Next Step Up, TUI got increasingly ambitious as they went on, and Big Kiss Goodnight felt like the tipping point. It was their second album and first with drummer Brendan Yates (who that same year released the debut EP by his own new band, Turnstile), and it was the last album they released before TUI would go on hiatus and Justice would start the defiantly genre-agnostic band Angel Du$t. Big Kiss Goodnight is still a beatdown record, but in hindsight, so many labors of Justice and Brendan’s future fruits are present here. With production from New Found Glory guitarist/Shai Hulud guitarist Chad Gilbert, it was a much more polished-sounding record than anything TUI released prior, and it found the band injecting their hardcore fury with danceable grooves, brighter melodies, and occasional flashes of clean vocals. Justice’s lyrics deal with not fitting into any predetermined stereotypes (“Pleased To Meet You”), mental health (“Dead Inside”), and frequent musings on both life and death. Even the album title feels like it’s gently provoking anyone who expects hardcore to be stereotypically masculine. So much of what’s happened in the past few years of hardcore can be traced back to this record, and it still sounds fresh next to everything that’s come in its wake.
Title Fight – Floral Green (2012)
SideOneDummy
Title Fight did so much time in the hardcore scene before breaking out on a more widely-recognized level that it doesn’t really matter what direction they take their music in; they’ll always be a hardcore band. Their 2012 breakthrough album Floral Green was only their second full-length, and the band members were just barely out of their teens, but Title Fight had been grinding for years, they were listening to new things, and it was only natural that their music would start to evolve from their fast-paced, Lifetime/Gorilla Biscuits-influenced roots. The resulting LP was one of the most pivotal albums of its generation not just for hardcore but for guitar-based rock and punk music in general.
Floral Green still embraced the raw grit of the hardcore scene that they cut their teeth in, but with a greater emphasis on melody, atmosphere, and enough soul-bearing lyricism to get them frequently lumped in with the era’s emo revival. They were starting to embrace the influence of bands like Sonic Youth, Dinosaur Jr, Nirvana, Fugazi, Sebadoh, and–most crucially of all–Hum. Title Fight leaned heavily into that last one on the album’s shoegazy lead single “Head in the Ceiling Fan,” which became the big bang for the hardcore scene’s obsession with shoegaze. Shoegaze probably would’ve entered hardcore anyway–especially with bands like Nothing, Cloakroom, and Pity Sex going in similar directions at the time–but even many of Title Fight’s peers agree that their impact hit on a different level. They were trendsetters, and they blazed multiple trails just by following their own instincts. Even Will Yip becoming the past decade’s go-to producer within hardcore, post-hardcore, and emo can be traced back to Floral Green. “[Working with Title Fight] was why I got to work with a lot of those bands,” Will told us last year, before adding, “Even to this day, everybody that shows up in this studio, every guitar player in a band whips out a guitar and starts playing [the ‘Head in the Ceiling Fan’] riff.”
Read our Floral Green retrospective for more.
Trash Talk – 119 (2012)
Odd Future
Punk/hardcore and hip hop have gone hand in hand for decades, but their relationship is more visible in some moments than others and right now we’re in one of those moments. Turnstile have toured with multiple rappers and just put on a fiery set at rap festival Rolling Loud; the UK’s premier hardcore festival Outbreak Fest booked Denzel Curry and Death Grips for headlining sets that we hear were nuts; the new Drain album has a rapper; Soul Glo and Zulu have rap songs–the list goes on. A generation earlier, California hardcore band Trash Talk were fully immersed in the rap world; they toured with Danny Brown and Action Bronson, put out a collab single with Flatbush Zombies, and they became especially close with then-rising rap collective Odd Future. Trash Talk and Odd Future put on some truly wild performances together, TT signed to OF’s label, and Tyler the Creator and Hodgy appeared on their OF debut, 2012’s 119. They weren’t the only band toeing that line around that time (see also: Cold World’s How the Gods Chill), but they were the most visible and they were doing it with a new generation of rappers that was resonating with a new generation of kids, and that mattered. “I don’t feel that punk and hardcore should be stuck to punk and hardcore kids,” vocalist Lee Spielman said in an interview with Submerge Mag. “[Music should be] projected to someone that can make their own opinion to whether or not they like it, but a lot of time people don’t get the chance. Some kid at an Odd Future show may never have heard of anything like this, but the second he sees it he’ll know it’s his favorite shit.”
Sammy Ciaramitaro from the aforementioned Drain was one of those kids. “I went to see them when they played together in LA, and I remember watching the Trash Talk set and feeling someone elbow me in the chest,” Sammy said to Metal Hammer earlier this year. “It was Tyler, The Creator, throwing down. The most insane thing I have ever seen. Trash Talk are punk rock with no barriers to me. That’s something we are trying to be ourselves with this new release.”
Scowl, Militarie Gun, and Zulu (who briefly counted Trash Talk bassist Spencer Pollard as a member) all cite Trash Talk as formative as well, and it’s not just the one song with Tyler and Hodgy from Odd Future that earns 119 a spot on this list. The bulk of the LP is still rooted in the same fast-paced fury as Trash Talk’s earlier releases, with moments that veer cleaner and catchier, and moments that veer slower and sludgier. 119 expanded Trash Talk’s sonic palette without abandoning their ruthless energy, and it’s very easy to hear how its punkiest moments and its most genre-defying moments helped set the tone for hardcore’s current generation.
Angel Du$t – Rock the Fuck On Forever (2016)
Pop Wig
When Trapped Under Ice was entering their hiatus, vocalist Justice Tripp was itching to take his music in a new direction. “People can be afraid to grow, afraid to change,” Justice says in the band’s latest bio. “But I want to be an artist, I want to change and I want to evolve.” That’s exactly what he’s now done for a decade straight as the leader of Angel Du$t. Their first EP (2013’s Xtra Raw) and LP (2014’s A.D.) set the tone for a lighter, happier, catchier version of hardcore than TUI, and the band’s 2016 sophomore LP Rock the Fuck On Forever used those early releases as a launchpad to take hardcore in all kinds of unpredictable directions. The band’s lineup on this album included Turnstile drummer Daniel Fang, guitarist Pat McCrory (who would join Turnstile that year), and backing vocals from Turnstile’s Brendan Yates, and RTFOF feels like a direct precursor to the style of hardcore that Turnstile would help popularize a few years later–especially with the trademark Daniel Fang rhythms that fuel a song like the now-iconic album opener “Toxic Boombox.” It was also produced by the aforementioned Will Yip, who has a serious knack for helping bands explore new territory. Justice seamlessly bounces between hardcore barks and power pop hooks, and it results in some of the catchiest, most inventive, and still-moshable songs Justice has ever written. The album is loaded with contradictions–too pop for hardcore kids, too aggressive for pop punk–and it’s even more loaded with bangers. It wasn’t universally loved upon release–“Angel Du$t isn’t about self-hatred, it’s about love,” Justice said, “and at the time that didn’t feel like what people wanted from me–they wanted me to be the evil guy”–but it’s since proven to have been far ahead of its time. People are still catching up to it.
Power Trip – Nightmare Logic (2017)
Southern Lord
As the outpouring of love for Riley Gale from all across (and beyond) the hardcore and metal communities after his 2020 passing made clear, crossover thrash greats Power Trip left a huge impact on so many different bands, whether or not they were part of the same exact subgenre. They’ve been called one of the best hardcore bands and one of the best metal bands of a generation by so many different people. As far as thrash specifically goes, I don’t think any band in the 21st century ever did it better than Power Trip. Riley was outspoken about politics and social justice in both his lyrics and his life, and he helped make the heavy music world a more inclusive space. The band’s knack for seamlessly combining metal riffs with hardcore spirit helped set the tone for the entire hardcore/death metal crossover boom that’s been taking over heavy music these past few years. They were one of the most fiery live bands of their generation, and their 2017 sophomore album Nightmare Logic had a sense of songcraft that put Power Trip in a league above the rest. It’s memorable and hooky without ever going soft. It honors tradition without ever sounding retro. Their energy is unbridled even when their attention to detail is thoughtful and careful. Nightmare Logic brought a true sense of originality to a style of music that’s too often full of idol worship, and they’ve inspired countless other bands to operate that way. When it came to blazing your own trail, giving a voice to the voiceless, lifting up others who deserve it, and enacting real change, Power Trip borrowed the words of civil rights icon John Lewis and taught a whole new crop of bands to ask themselves: If not us, then who?
Turnstile – Time & Space (2018)
Roadrunner
The “current moment in hardcore” obviously has a lot to do with the vast success of Turnstile’s Glow On, but that was not a success that happened overnight, and Turnstile themselves played a huge part in laying the stepping stones for their own big moment. Glow On may have been the big breakthrough, but its 2018 predecessor Time & Space was the tipping point. Like related band Trapped Under Ice, Turnstile started out as a heavy hardcore band, but even early on they were playing by their own rules. On their 2015 debut full-length Nonstop Feeling, one song is uncharacteristically melodic (“Blue By You”) and another is just basically one long mosh part (“Drop”). “They’re fearless, and they know themselves and they trust themselves,” said Brian McTernan, who produced that LP. As Turnstile were pushing forward, members also spent time in a variety of other bands, ranging from the straightedge youth crew-ish Mindset to the Revolution Summer-inspired Praise to the emo-ish Diamond Youth to aforementioned boundary-pushers Angel Du$t, and it felt like all of that came together on 2018’s highly inventive Time & Space. Big, chunky, alt-rock bangers like “Real Thing” and “Moon” are direct precursors to most of the fan faves from Glow On. “Big Smile” and “High Pressure” are rippers that feel equally indebted to Bad Brains and The Stooges. “Generator” fuses evil Slayer riffs with delightful handclaps. “Bomb” and “Disco” set the tone for the R&B and electronic-leaning elements of Glow On. “I Don’t Wanna Be Blind” repurposed ’90s post-hardcore for the soon-to-be-roaring ’20s. Deeper cuts like “Can’t Get Away” and “Right to Be” are just as effective as the album’s biggest singles. Throughout it all, Turnstile weave in elements of psychedelia, making Time & Space not just a rager but also a trip. It’s full of moments that are just as crowdpleasing as the more streamlined Glow On, but it’s also Turnstile’s weirdest record, and I mean that exclusively as a compliment. Five years on from its release, it’s full of moments that still feel ripe for discovery.
Gouge Away – Burnt Sugar (2018)
Deathwish
Like Ceremony before them, Gouge Away are a hardcore band named after a non-hardcore song, and these Pixies-loving punks brought some of that band’s post-hardcore / pre-grunge energy to their 2018 sophomore album Burnt Sugar. The album was co-produced by Touché Amoré vocalist Jeremy Bolm and frequent Deafheaven producer/Comadre member Jack Shirley, and it’s split between ferocious hardcore rippers and a handful of songs that branch out from the genre. (Also of note: drummer Tommy Cantwell also plays in Jeremy’s band Hesitation Wounds and the current lineup of Angel Du$t.) “Ghost” actually kinda sounds like a Pixies song, with slowed-down tempos, grungy guitars, and a delivery from vocalist Christina Michelle that bounces between airy singing and harsh shrieks. “Dis s o c i a t i o n” injects dissonant, Sonic Youth-y guitars into angular post-hardcore. “Stray/Burnt Sugar” is a full-on melodic indie/alt rock banger with a hard-hitting backbone courtesy of Gouge Away’s roots. And before you accuse Gouge Away of getting too cozy, they follow that song with the discordant AmRep-style post-hardcore of “Wilt (I Won’t)” and the bleak, Slint-like “Raw Blood.” The 2018 album’s disregard for genre limitations is not so different from what a band like Militarie Gun is doing now, so it was pretty fitting when Gouge Away made their return by surprise-reuniting in the middle of a Militarie Gun set earlier this year.
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SEE ALSO:
* 13 great songs from the current hardcore / alt-rock crossover
Pick up hardcore vinyl — including a Nightmare Logic picture disc (and more Power Trip records) — in the BV shop.
And PS, you can see Fucked Up and Cold World together in NYC opening for Gorilla Biscuits this September.
