taking the temperature of hardcore

Taking the Temperature of Hardcore

Normally I start these out with a little bit of meaningless preamble about what I’ve been occupying myself lately, but really all I’ve been doing is going to work, reading comics, and playing video games, so I don’t have much in the way of interesting cultural insight and observations. I did see the new Wes Anderson movie, of course. (“Sci-fi Wes Anderson movie” was always going to be the easiest sell in the world to me.) I liked it a lot— especially Jason Schwartzman’s performance— but I feel it needs another watch before I can properly dissect it in the way that it deserves.

I listen to a lot of music, but because of how my life is constructed nowadays, most of that music-listening happens at work. My job alternates between client-facing reception work and non-client-facing reception work (with some animal interaction in between, obvs). When I am up front, where The People are, I sort of have a responsibility to listen to something somewhat palatable, but I also need to stimulate my ears intellectually at least a little bit so that I don’t fall asleep while filing papers. But because it generally tends towards the softer and more accessible side, when I don’t have to take anyone else into account, I tend to reach for more weird, harsh, and alienating music when I am in the back. Because of this lack of middle ground, it has been kind of a while since I’d taken a day to really check in with hardcore, and recently, I decided to do just that and see how my “home genre” so to speak has been doing.

To get a good picture of the scene as it currently stands, I listened to the new releases from Never Ending Game, Militarie Gun, Gumm, Big Laugh, Buggin’, Destiny Bond, Scowl, and SPY. Over the course of the year so far I have also listened to the new Zulu, the new Gel, the new Brain Tourniquet, and of course the new MSPAINT, which I am pretty sure I have talked about here before, and which I absolutely adore.

The first thing to notice about this list of bands is that it seems as though the majority of them are mining that sort of savage, primitive, slightly-dancey lo-fi aesthetic. I would say that the last few years have seen a bit of a synthesis of the ideas of chain punk and egg punk and we are now living in a halcyon era of chained egg punk (or egged chain punk, whichever you prefer). If I had to point my finger at the genesis point of this shift, I would probably say Bib, but I am pretty sure nearly every band I mentioned is currently bigger than Bib ever was, which is interesting.

To read this post in its entirety, please consider contributing to my Patreon, or hit up my Venmo at xyoudontneedmapsx if you’d prefer to show your support with a one-time donation! If you’re interested in a band bio or some freelance writing, email me at xyoudontneedmapsx@gmail.com to hash out the details. If you’d just like to keep up with my dumb life, feel free to follow me on Instagram @ youdontneedmaps. Thank you so much for reading.

-xoxo, Ellie