In my first printed editorial piece for In Retrospect Magazine, I wanted to go back to my musical roots and introduce people to the history of Hardcore Punk on the 35th anniversary of it’s inception.
Formed as a reaction to the dissatisfaction of the Punk scene and its transformation into New Wave, Hardcore was a more visceral and energetic style of music formed around loud, distorted guitars and very clipped vocals often shouted or screamed. Whilst the punk of bands like The Sex Pistols and The Buzzcocks was essentially just a highly energised form of Rock ‘n’ Roll, Hardcore relied more on a rhythmic, driving sound, throwing away the traditional verse-chorus-verse structure for something more complex and discordant.
Starting on the American west coast Hardcore quickly spread across the country, crossing the Atlantic to the rest of the English-speaking world within a few years.
Hardcore’s widely recognised first salvo was the song “Out of Vogue” by the band Middle Class from Santa Ana, released in 1978, but it was the band Black Flag that can be seen to be the Godfathers of the genre.
The full article can be found online here: https://inretrospectmagazine.com/article/1979-punk-goes-hardcore/
