animlboogy
Banned
The last punk thread seems to have run its course, so it seemed like a good time as any to try one myself from a different angle than the old one.
The basic rules:
-ALL SUBGENRES ARE WELCOME. Yes, even whatever you listen to, with your peacock hair, or your painted-on jeans, or your smelly leather jacket, or your copious amounts of eyeliner.
-KEEP HATE TO A MINIMUM. Punk is broad, and I myself probably won't like 90% of what's posted in here. But that's sort of the point. This is how you discover new things.
-METAL IS SORT OF OKAY, SORT OF NOT. Metal and punk have been circling each other and alternately taking swings at one another/swapping spit. There is a metal thread for most stuff, but especially right now, there are a lot of bands that the metal community will swiftly ignore (see: the rules at Encyclopedia Metallum) because they're way too punk. Throw them in here, and let the metal thread have more space for more bands with shirtless frontmen with winddblown golden locks who sing about slaying dragons.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Most of us have some preconceived notion of what punk is. The truth of it -- what truth you can really pin down, at least -- is probably very far from the public perception. And the amount of subgenres it has spun off over the years thathave become genres, full stop,is staggering. Following all these strands is a big part of enjoying this, and seeing how these broader movements all connect to each other is part of why this thread exists.
It doesn't begin and end with the Sex Pistols or the Ramones. Nor, as a certain generation often seems to feel, are 90's California pop punk bands the center of the genre. So, if you happen to be reading this and you're a little interested in punk in the larger sense -- generally, various youth movements with some tangential evolutionary connection to the anti-establishment mode of late-70's bands from Europe and the U.S. -- Here's a very, very small sample of the various scenes, movements, and communities that make up the larger punk genre:
---
CLASSIC PUNK: As epic, meticulously accomplished rock was the mainly accepted form of rock, younger acts began to just pick up instruments and start playing. It's hard to pinpoint any one act, as the transition from bands like the MC5, The Stooges, and the more recognizably punk sounds of the Ramones and the Sex Pistols happened in a very short, overlapping period. Most modern punk is some subgenre or another, although there are bands that call back to some form of this era.
Notable acts:
The Ramones
Siouxsie and the Banshees
---
HARDCORE: When someone says something is either "punk" or "not punk enough", they're probably talking about attitudes and mores developed during some stage of the Hardcore movement. This is where punk becomes simultaneously more and less about the music, somehow, and certainly where it, as a scene, became a way of life for thousands of people. Straightedge, youth crew, skinheads, etc., all found or created a niche based on playing faster, harder, and louder. Every decade seems to have its own version of hardcore that is fairly distinct from the last, and fairly disconnected from the previous incarnation, so I won't even pretend to say anything comprehensive about it.
Notable acts:
Black Flag
Bad Brains
Born Against
---
POST PUNK: While hardcore was turning it up, the various forms of post-punk bands were often going in the other direction. The production got weirder, the sounds experimental, the flirtations with reggae more overt, and the general atmosphere got a whole lot darker. A lot of people are familiar with the 00's revival of these sounds, bands like Interpol and The Rapture; that said, it's not like anybody isn't familiar with Joy Division. It wasn't nearly as coherent of a movement as Hardcore or some of the others, so it can end up being the most accessible period for a wider audience in spite of how inaccessible a lot of the actual music often is, since it was often by more mature musicians, and disconnected from any overarching agreement on politics or social issues.
Notable acts:
This Heat
Killing Joke
---
DEATHROCK: Before there was goth, there was deathrock, an informal post-punk moment mostly centered in California. It's gloomy, campy, personal, and joyful in equal parts. Goth largely stands on its own at this point, while deathrock still stays happily connected to punk in many ways. If you're not familiar, imagine goth with all the ultra-seriousness extracted almost entirely.
Notable acts:
Christian Death
45 Grave
Dekoder (modern)
---
ANARCHO-PUNK/CRUST PUNK/D-BEAT:
Deathrock has a lot of connections with anarcho punk via Rudimentary Peni and modern bands like Christ vs. Warhol, and then on the other end bleeds comfortably over to the metal-friendly, extremely political, caveman rage sounds of crust bands. This is probably the most explicitly socially-aware and often insufferably dogmatic wing of punk, but if you can handle that sort of thing, it's also likely the most exciting to get involved with. The "D" in "D-beat" stands for Discharge, the street punks who mostly accidentally created a beat which is distinctive and reusable enough for many a filthy crustie to use as the framework for whatever musical assault on the system they happen to be composing that week.
Notable acts:
Crass (anarcho)
Discharge
Tragedy (Crust/d-beat, recent)
---
GRINDCORE: This is basically far more notable to metal fans, death metal types, specifically, but the punk connections are there, they run deep, and I'd like this thread to be friendly to the punk-leaning side of this genre. This is more extreme than most metal, usually faster than most hardcore punk, it's ugly, filthy, messy, an acquired taste, and probably what your mother imagines punk sounds like before actually hearing it. This is the sort of stuff that novice fans are shocked to find was going on in the 80's and early 90's. It starts as far back as Siege and Repulsion, and continues to be re-interpreted mostly by metal bands (often in repulsively sterile, technically precise ways).
Repulsion (prototypical)
The Locust (connections to power violence and screamo)
Liberteer (punk as fuck, borderline crust)
---
THE FUGAZI SECTION:
Because fuck you, Fugazi gets their own section.
I shouldn't have to explain why.
---
THE 90's HAPPENED:
I wasn't involved with and never really followed 90's skate and/or pop punk acts that many gaffers may be familiar with, going by the last punk thread, so I won't try to pretend to be knowledgeable.
(PM me some info instead of whining!)
---
SCREAMO: I'm skipping emotional hardcore because it pretty much just ties to hardcore; stuff like Rites of Spring and Embrace that are fairly crucial to following the line between hardcore punk and the sad sack stuff that people tend to be more familiar with. And then there's the can of worms that is screamo. A derogatory term that can be traced back to Spin, I believe, much like Emo itself, ended up being a misued catch-all for anything involving screaming or generally having a stage persona that reminds people of being 14. But there was a point in the late 90's, early-00's where this referred to an actual punk movement, and here are some of those bands:
Ampere (modern, so weird internet culture types would probably call it "skramz". Fuck you.)
Antioch Arrow (Likely not what many of you are expecting, borderline deathrock/goth)
---
METALCORE: Another can of worms. In both the metal and punk communities, the mid-00's led to a spate of bands that essentially turned this into a swear word. And, as usual, it all started with much better intentions (Converge) while other bands elected to follow the bleakest, darkest path available (18 Visions).
Notable acts:
Converge
Trap Them
---
VARIOUS ODDS AND ENDS:
I can't even scratch the surface here. There's not enough time or space, nor do I have the attention span. Here's some amazing stuff that has to be included anyway:
Men's Recovery Project (post-hardcore art prank)
Suicide (You don't need a fucking guitar to be punk.)
Young and In The Way (Black metal + crust, totally hip right now, also amazing)
Flipper (Decades later, you cannot go to a basement show without seeing some band that's a poor attempt at this.)
---
Have you seen any great bands lately? Re-discovered something from the past? Do you have some free demos or even your own MP3 blog you could link? DO IT.
The basic rules:
-ALL SUBGENRES ARE WELCOME. Yes, even whatever you listen to, with your peacock hair, or your painted-on jeans, or your smelly leather jacket, or your copious amounts of eyeliner.
-KEEP HATE TO A MINIMUM. Punk is broad, and I myself probably won't like 90% of what's posted in here. But that's sort of the point. This is how you discover new things.
-METAL IS SORT OF OKAY, SORT OF NOT. Metal and punk have been circling each other and alternately taking swings at one another/swapping spit. There is a metal thread for most stuff, but especially right now, there are a lot of bands that the metal community will swiftly ignore (see: the rules at Encyclopedia Metallum) because they're way too punk. Throw them in here, and let the metal thread have more space for more bands with shirtless frontmen with winddblown golden locks who sing about slaying dragons.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Most of us have some preconceived notion of what punk is. The truth of it -- what truth you can really pin down, at least -- is probably very far from the public perception. And the amount of subgenres it has spun off over the years thathave become genres, full stop,is staggering. Following all these strands is a big part of enjoying this, and seeing how these broader movements all connect to each other is part of why this thread exists.
It doesn't begin and end with the Sex Pistols or the Ramones. Nor, as a certain generation often seems to feel, are 90's California pop punk bands the center of the genre. So, if you happen to be reading this and you're a little interested in punk in the larger sense -- generally, various youth movements with some tangential evolutionary connection to the anti-establishment mode of late-70's bands from Europe and the U.S. -- Here's a very, very small sample of the various scenes, movements, and communities that make up the larger punk genre:
---
CLASSIC PUNK: As epic, meticulously accomplished rock was the mainly accepted form of rock, younger acts began to just pick up instruments and start playing. It's hard to pinpoint any one act, as the transition from bands like the MC5, The Stooges, and the more recognizably punk sounds of the Ramones and the Sex Pistols happened in a very short, overlapping period. Most modern punk is some subgenre or another, although there are bands that call back to some form of this era.
Notable acts:
The Ramones
Siouxsie and the Banshees
---
HARDCORE: When someone says something is either "punk" or "not punk enough", they're probably talking about attitudes and mores developed during some stage of the Hardcore movement. This is where punk becomes simultaneously more and less about the music, somehow, and certainly where it, as a scene, became a way of life for thousands of people. Straightedge, youth crew, skinheads, etc., all found or created a niche based on playing faster, harder, and louder. Every decade seems to have its own version of hardcore that is fairly distinct from the last, and fairly disconnected from the previous incarnation, so I won't even pretend to say anything comprehensive about it.
Notable acts:
Black Flag
Bad Brains
Born Against
---
POST PUNK: While hardcore was turning it up, the various forms of post-punk bands were often going in the other direction. The production got weirder, the sounds experimental, the flirtations with reggae more overt, and the general atmosphere got a whole lot darker. A lot of people are familiar with the 00's revival of these sounds, bands like Interpol and The Rapture; that said, it's not like anybody isn't familiar with Joy Division. It wasn't nearly as coherent of a movement as Hardcore or some of the others, so it can end up being the most accessible period for a wider audience in spite of how inaccessible a lot of the actual music often is, since it was often by more mature musicians, and disconnected from any overarching agreement on politics or social issues.
Notable acts:
This Heat
Killing Joke
---
DEATHROCK: Before there was goth, there was deathrock, an informal post-punk moment mostly centered in California. It's gloomy, campy, personal, and joyful in equal parts. Goth largely stands on its own at this point, while deathrock still stays happily connected to punk in many ways. If you're not familiar, imagine goth with all the ultra-seriousness extracted almost entirely.
Notable acts:
Christian Death
45 Grave
Dekoder (modern)
---
ANARCHO-PUNK/CRUST PUNK/D-BEAT:
Deathrock has a lot of connections with anarcho punk via Rudimentary Peni and modern bands like Christ vs. Warhol, and then on the other end bleeds comfortably over to the metal-friendly, extremely political, caveman rage sounds of crust bands. This is probably the most explicitly socially-aware and often insufferably dogmatic wing of punk, but if you can handle that sort of thing, it's also likely the most exciting to get involved with. The "D" in "D-beat" stands for Discharge, the street punks who mostly accidentally created a beat which is distinctive and reusable enough for many a filthy crustie to use as the framework for whatever musical assault on the system they happen to be composing that week.
Notable acts:
Crass (anarcho)
Discharge
Tragedy (Crust/d-beat, recent)
---
GRINDCORE: This is basically far more notable to metal fans, death metal types, specifically, but the punk connections are there, they run deep, and I'd like this thread to be friendly to the punk-leaning side of this genre. This is more extreme than most metal, usually faster than most hardcore punk, it's ugly, filthy, messy, an acquired taste, and probably what your mother imagines punk sounds like before actually hearing it. This is the sort of stuff that novice fans are shocked to find was going on in the 80's and early 90's. It starts as far back as Siege and Repulsion, and continues to be re-interpreted mostly by metal bands (often in repulsively sterile, technically precise ways).
Repulsion (prototypical)
The Locust (connections to power violence and screamo)
Liberteer (punk as fuck, borderline crust)
---
THE FUGAZI SECTION:
Because fuck you, Fugazi gets their own section.
I shouldn't have to explain why.
---
THE 90's HAPPENED:
I wasn't involved with and never really followed 90's skate and/or pop punk acts that many gaffers may be familiar with, going by the last punk thread, so I won't try to pretend to be knowledgeable.
(PM me some info instead of whining!)
---
SCREAMO: I'm skipping emotional hardcore because it pretty much just ties to hardcore; stuff like Rites of Spring and Embrace that are fairly crucial to following the line between hardcore punk and the sad sack stuff that people tend to be more familiar with. And then there's the can of worms that is screamo. A derogatory term that can be traced back to Spin, I believe, much like Emo itself, ended up being a misued catch-all for anything involving screaming or generally having a stage persona that reminds people of being 14. But there was a point in the late 90's, early-00's where this referred to an actual punk movement, and here are some of those bands:
Ampere (modern, so weird internet culture types would probably call it "skramz". Fuck you.)
Antioch Arrow (Likely not what many of you are expecting, borderline deathrock/goth)
---
METALCORE: Another can of worms. In both the metal and punk communities, the mid-00's led to a spate of bands that essentially turned this into a swear word. And, as usual, it all started with much better intentions (Converge) while other bands elected to follow the bleakest, darkest path available (18 Visions).
Notable acts:
Converge
Trap Them
---
VARIOUS ODDS AND ENDS:
I can't even scratch the surface here. There's not enough time or space, nor do I have the attention span. Here's some amazing stuff that has to be included anyway:
Men's Recovery Project (post-hardcore art prank)
Suicide (You don't need a fucking guitar to be punk.)
Young and In The Way (Black metal + crust, totally hip right now, also amazing)
Flipper (Decades later, you cannot go to a basement show without seeing some band that's a poor attempt at this.)
---
Have you seen any great bands lately? Re-discovered something from the past? Do you have some free demos or even your own MP3 blog you could link? DO IT.
