Post-Hardcore

Post-hardcore is a punk rock music genre that maintains the aggression and intensity of hardcore punk but emphasizes a greater degree of creative expression. It was initially inspired by post-punk and noise rock. Like post-punk, the term has been applied to a broad constellation of groups. Post-hardcore began in the 1980s with bands like Hüsker Dü and Minutemen. The genre expanded in the 1980s and 1990s with releases by bands from cities that had established hardcore scenes, such as Fugazi from Washington, D.C. as well as groups such as Big Black and Jawbox that stuck closer to post-hardcore's noise rock roots. In the early- and mid-2000s, achieved mainstream success with the popularity of bands like My Chemical Romance, Dance Gavin Dance, AFI, Underoath, Hawthorne Heights, Silverstein, The Used, At the Drive-In, Saosin, Alexisonfire, and Senses Fail. In the 2010s, bands like Sleeping with Sirens and Pierce the Veil achieved mainstream success. Meanwhile, bands like Title Fight and La Dispute experienced underground popularity.

Characteristics

Hardcore punk typically features very fast tempos, loud volume, and heavy bass levels, as well as a "do-it-yourself" ethic. Music database ''AllMusic'' stated "These newer bands, termed post-hardcore, often found complex and dynamic ways of blowing off steam that generally went outside the strict hardcore realm of 'loud fast rules'. Additionally, many of these bands' vocalists were just as likely to deliver their lyrics with a whispered croon as they were a maniacal yelp." Allmusic also claims that post-hardcore bands find creative ways to build and release tension rather than "airing their dirty laundry in short, sharp, frenetic bursts". Jeff Terich of Treblezine stated, "Instead of sticking to hardcore's rigid constraints, these artists expanded beyond power chords and gang vocals, incorporating more creative outlets for punk rock energy." British post-punk of the late 1970s and early 1980s has been seen as influential on the musical development of post-hardcore bands. As the genre progressed, some of these groups also experimented with a wide array of influences, including soul, dub, funk, jazz, and dance-punk. It has also been noted that since some post-hardcore bands included members that were rooted in the beginnings of hardcore punk, some of them were able to expand their sound as they became more skilled musicians. During the early 2000s it became common for mainstream “melodic” post-hardcore bands to crossover into other related genres like metalcore, indie rock, screamo, and emo, straddling experimentation and accessibility.

History

Origins (1980s)

Groups such as Saccharine Trust, Naked Raygun, and The Effigies, which were active around the early 1980s, are considered to be forerunners to the post-hardcore genre. Chicago's Naked Raygun, formed in 1981, has been seen as merging post-punk influences of bands such as Wire and Gang of Four with hardcore punk, while author Steven Blush notes the band's use of "oblique lyrics and stark post-punk melodies". Blush, Steven. '' American Hardcore: A Tribal History''. Feral House: 2001. p. 222. Similarly, The Effigies, who also hailed from the Chicago scene, released music influenced by the hardcore of Minor Threat and the British post-punk of bands like The Stranglers, Killing Joke, and The Ruts.

During the early to mid-1980s, the desire to experiment with hardcore's basic template expanded to many musicians that had been associated with the genre or had strong roots in it. Many of these groups also took inspiration from the 1980s noise rock scene pioneered by Sonic Youth. Some bands signed to the independent label Homestead Records, including Squirrel Bait (as well as David Grubbs-related bands Bastro and Bitch Magnet) and Steve Albini's Big Black (just as his subsequent projects Rapeman and Shellac) are also associated with post-hardcore. Big Black, which also featured former Naked Raygun guitarist Santiago Durango, made themselves known for their strict DIY ethic, related to practices such as paying for their own recordings, booking their own shows, handling their own management and publicity, and remaining "stubbornly independent at a time when many independent bands were eagerly reaching out for the major-label brass ring". The band's music, punctuated by the use of a drum machine, has also been seen as influential to industrial rock, while Blush has also described the Albini-fronted project as "an angst-ridden response to the rigid English post-punk of Gang of Four". After the issuing of the "Il Duce" single and between the release of their only two full-length studio albums, Big Black left Homestead for Touch and Go Records, which would later reissue not only their entire discography, but would also be responsible for the release of the complete works of Scratch Acid, an act from Austin, Texas described as post-hardcore, that, according to Stephen Thomas Erlewine, "laid the groundwork for much of the distorted, grinding alternative punk rockers of the '90s".

According to Ryan Cooper of About.com and author Doyle Greene, 1980s hardcore punk band Black Flag is one of the pioneers of for the experimental style the band started playing later on in the 1980s. Post-hardcore bands Minutemen and Hüsker Dü are prominent 1980s post-hardcore bands. Hüsker Dü's 1984 album ''Zen Arcade'' is the band's critical breakthrough. When ''Zen Arcade'' was first released, the album received positive critical reception from ''The New York Times'' and ''Rolling Stone''. Outside the United States, post-hardcore would take shape in the works of the Canadian group Nomeansno, related with Jello Biafra and his independently run label Alternative Tentacles, and that had been active since 1979. The magazine ''Dusted'' noted that the group's 1989's release ''Wrong'' was "one of the most aggressive and powerful opuses in post-hardcore ever made".

The Washington D.C. scene

During the years 1984 and 1985 in the "harDCore" scene, a new movement had "swept over". This movement was led by bands associated with the D.C. independent record label Dischord Records, home in the early 1980s to seminal hardcore bands such as Minor Threat, State of Alert, Void, and Government Issue. According to the Dischord website: "The violence and nihilism that had become identified with punk rock, largely by the media, had begun to take hold in DC and many of the older punks suddenly found themselves repelled and discouraged by their hometown scene", leading to "a time of redefinition". When The Faith put out the EP '' Subject to Change'' in 1983, it marked a critical evolution in the sound of D.C. hardcore and punk music in general. During these years, a new wave of bands started to form, these included Rites of Spring (which featured The Faith former guitarist Eddie Janney), Lunchmeat (later to become Soulside), Gray Matter, Mission Impossible, Dag Nasty and Embrace, the latter featuring former Minor Threat singer and Dischord co-founder Ian MacKaye and former members of The Faith. This movement has been since widely known as the "Revolution Summer". Rites of Spring has been described as the band that "more than led the change", challenging the "macho posturing that had become so prevalent within the punk scene at that point", and "more importantly", defying "musical and stylistic rule". Journalist Steve Huey writes that while the band "strayed from hardcore's typically external concerns of the timenamely, social and political dissenttheir musical attack was no less blistering, and in fact a good deal more challenging and nuanced than the average three-chord speed-blur", a sound that, according to Huey, mapped out "a new direction for hardcore that built on the innovations" brought by Hüsker Dü's ''Zen Arcade''. Other bands have been perceived as taking inspiration from genres such as funk (as in the case of Beefeater) and 1960s pop (such as the example of Gray Matter).

According to Eric Grubbs, a nickname was developed for the new sound, with some considering it "post-harDCore", but another name that floated around the scene was "emo-core".Grubbs, p. 27 The latter, mentioned in skateboarding magazine ''Thrasher'', would come up in discussions around the D.C. area. While some of these bands have been considered contributors to the birth of emo, with Rites of Spring sometimes being named as the first or one of the earliest emo acts, musicians such as the band's former frontman Guy Picciotto and MacKaye himself have voiced their opposition against the term. In the nearby state of Maryland, similar bands that are categorized now as post-hardcore would also emerge, these include Moss Icon and The Hated. The former's music contained, according to Steve Huey, "shifting dynamics, chiming guitar arpeggios, and screaming, crying vocal climaxes", which would prove to be influential to later musicians in spite of the band's unstable existence. This group has also been considered one of the earliest emo acts.

The second half of the 1980s saw the formation of several bands in D.C., which included Shudder to Think, Jawbox, The Nation of Ulysses, and Fugazi, as well as Baltimore's Lungfish. MacKaye described this period as the busiest that the Dischord Records label had ever seen. Most of these acts, along with earlier ones, would contribute to the 1989 compilation ''State of the Union'', a release that documented the new sound of the late 1980s D.C. punk scene. Fugazi gained "an extremely loyal and numerous global following", with reviewer Andy Kellman summarizing the band's influence with the statement: "To many, Fugazi meant as much to them as Bob Dylan did to their parents." It has also been noted that the group's "ever-evolving" sound would signal a more experimental turn in hardcore that paved the way for later Dischord releases. The band, which included MacKaye, Picciotto, and former Rites of Spring drummer Brendan Canty along with bassist Joe Lally, issued in 1989 '' 13 Songs'', a compilation of their earlier self-titled and ''Margin Walker'' EPs, which is now considered a landmark album. Similarly, the band's debut studio album, 1990's ''Repeater'', has also been "generally" regarded as a classic. The group also garnered recognition for their activism, cheaply priced shows and CDs, and their resistance to mainstream outlets. On the other hand, Jawbox had been influenced by "the tradition of Chicago's thriving early-'80s scene", while The Nation of Ulysses are "best remembered for lifting the motor-mouthed revolutionary rhetoric of the MC5" with the incorporation of "elements of R&B (as filtered through the MC5) and avant jazz" combined with "exciting, volatile live gigs", and being the inspiration for "a new crop of bands both locally and abroad".

Expansion (late 1980s and 1990s)

The late 1980s and early 1990s saw the formation and rise to prominence of several bands associated with earlier acts that not only included the examples of Fugazi and Shellac, but also Girls Against Boys (originally a side-project of Brendan Canty and Eli Janney, which would later incorporate members of Soulside), The Jesus Lizard (formed by ex-members of Scratch Acid), Quicksand (fronted by former Youth of Today and Gorilla Biscuits member Walter Schreifels), Rollins Band (led by former Black Flag singer Henry Rollins), Tar (which raised from the ashes of a hardcore outfit named Blatant Dissent), and Slint (containing members of Squirrel Bait). Acts such as Shellac and Louisville's Slint have been considered influential to the development of the genre of math rock, with the former featuring "awkward time signatures and trademark aggression" that has come to characterize "a certain slant" on math rock, while the latter presented "instrumental music seeped in dramatic tension but set to rigid systems of solid-structured guitar patterns and percussive repetition". According to reviewer Jason Arkeny, Slint's "deft, extremist manipulations of volume, tempo, and structure cast them as clear progenitors of the post-rock movement".

AllMusic has noted that younger bands "flowered into post-hardcore after cutting their teeth in high school punk bands". In Washington D.C., new bands such as Hoover (as well as the related The Crownhate Ruin), Circus Lupus, Bluetip, and Smart Went Crazy were added to the Dischord roster. Hoover has been cited by journalist Charles Spano as a band that had "a tremendous impact on post-hardcore music". In New York City, in addition to Quicksand, post-hardcore bands such as Helmet, Unsane, Chavez and Texas Is the Reason emerged. Chicago, which alongside the Midwestern United States has been important to the progression of math rock, also saw the birth of post-hardcore acts such as the examples of Shellac, Tar, Trenchmouth, and the Jade Tree-released group Cap'n Jazz (as well as the subsequent related project Joan of Arc, which also released their work through Jade Tree). Steve Huey argues that the release of Cap'n Jazz's retrospective compilation album ''Analphabetapolothology'' helped spread the band's influence "far beyond their original audience", while also considering the group as influential for the development of emo in the independent music scene. Champaign, also in Illinois, was known for an independent scene that would give way to groups like Hum, Braid and Poster Children

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