Chicago Hardcore In The First Wave

“In Chicago, none of the bands really sound alike. Every band has a different sound. Really Good.”-Rights of The Accused Interview (Taken from Bullshit Monthly, 1984) 

In reading a lot of old 80s hardcore and punk fanzines, I have been thinking about how local scenes developed in their infancy. While the details vary from city to city, there is a throughline you can follow. Everyone heard Black Flag, and suddenly, punk seemed too tame. Local scenes were transformed. Depending on who you ask, it was for the better or the worse. That is at least the consensus I see across all the various music histories I have read. A lot of information on Chicago during hardcore’s beginnings is scant. Unlike New York or DC, it has not been archived to depth. We don’t have something like the University of Maryland’s punk archive, which allows access to much history. There isn’t some old Blogspot from a decade ago that has uncovered some rarities originally intended as tape to give to a promoter (Rorschach is the one I’m thinking of in this case). I have heard of a couple of Chicago punk zines from the 80s but have been unable to locate any. If someone has a copy or a scan of Steve Albini’s, hit me up.

It makes it so we have to rely upon documentation that looks backward. Occasionally, I’ll find some info, such as the quick interview I took a quote from. But much of the information on early Chicago hardcore and, by extension, punk comes from a documentary called You Weren’t There: A History of Chicago Punk. It chooses a concentrated period, starting in 1977 and ending in 1984. There is a compilation that I recommend finding on YouTube that was released alongside it. The participants in it are representative of that era in that it leans heavily on punk. From my perspective, many of the participants still carry those same feelings of being a little anti-hardcore. The end of the movie has a similar refrain as all these music documentaries have. By 1984, that initial spark of the punk scene was gone and tainted. Everyone began to sound the same. The music was trying to be as fast as possible for its own sake.

While I am quick to ignore that refrain, it can partially explain why Chicago seemed to be a bit later to adopt hardcore than other cities. That is at least the impression I get whenever I come across any Chicago recordings from that time. Our nearby neighbors in Detroit had already made a significant impact, which may be due to other factors. It had a fanzine-turned-record label in Touch and Go, which provided the infrastructure to uplift the local music community. It had a short-lived venue in the Freezer. On the other hand, Chicago had a much-publicized feud between The Effigies and Articles of Faith, highlighting the division between those who were around before hardcore and those who came after.

This original context for Chicago hardcore can help explain some of the “small-town syndrome” I feel as someone who still goes to Chicago hardcore shows. Touring bands will give a passing mention to The Killer and some current ones. Older folks may mention AOF. Maybe Los Crudos and some 90s stuff will get mentioned. If you’re my friend, I may force you to listen to The Repos sometime. The East Coast still dominates the conversation with good reason. You cannot change that touring the midwest is different from other parts of the country, leading to situations where certain cities seem like they live on an island. It can occasionally lead to fruitful scenes, like Springfield, Illinois. It still feels odd for Chicago to be in a situation where I feel we are underdogs.

Thanks to the documentary No Delusions, we have gotten some documentation of Chicago hardcore in recent years. It looks towards the 90s and beyond as its source text. I rewatch pieces anytime I need to remember some Chicago lore. I wanted to take a closer look at what is a very short but essential period. 1980 to 1984 would create the building blocks for Chicago hardcore in years to come. Future years would give us releases from Bhopal Stiffs, Life Sentence, and others later in the decade. Not everything from that limited scope of time forty years ago has necessarily held up. It may be too silly or sophomoric. Early hardcore, too, was tasteless, looking for shock value, which comes with the fact that you are listening to music made by teenagers. I cannot deny that recording quality is the best and is sometimes unlistenable to 2024 ears.

There is some early Chicago hardcore that is worth your time. I still get something from What We Want is Free by Articles of Faith. It is one of the great hardcore debuts, and I can imagine the shift it signaled for Chicago at the time. Below is a sampling of what was happening alongside Articles of Faith, which dominates the history of early Chicago hardcore. And as always, I am not an expert. I am just a guy who loves thinking about how hardcore developed in Chicago and wanted to add my perspective to a conversation I haven’t seen much of beyond the spare few mentions. If a million people salivate over old hardcore ephemera from other cities, why can’t Chicago get a mention?

Articles of Faith

Articles of Faith's arrival in Chicago feels like one of those drawn lines, marking what came before and what was to follow. I imagine not everyone was on board, leading to some divisions I discussed in my little introduction. It was markedly different, moving up the tempo and distinguishing it from other early hardcore in Chicago. There were no post-punk dablings to be found.  The origin of AOF came when Vic Bondi saw Bad Brains while in DC, shifting from Clash-indebted punk to something more aggressive. There are several iterations of this scenario across early hardcore, but Articles of Faith still stand out to me. The debut EP hits the spot between catchiness and playing as fast as possible. It has all the qualities of the best first-wave hardcore. Songs like “Every Day” and “What We Want Is Free” stick to me, all while channeling some need in me to hear music that may be incomprehensible to someone who thinks it just sounds like noise. Articles of Faith would break up in 1985, laying a path for the next generation to carry forward for the rest of the decade and beyond. 

Rights of The Accused

The little info on Rights of The Accused identifies them as a band of teenagers with a jokey bent. The one live recording I found takes place at Cubby Bear. The performance is rough and hard to watch. It does feel like high schoolers who are just beginning to try out their instruments. That is the story with a lot of early hardcore, but it is even less put together than other bands from the time. When it gets into what people would call thrash at the time, I can see the appeal. There is some proficiency, and they know their way around the punk beat. There is one person who does a stagedive. The 1984 EP Innocence is the best version of the band. It is fast, with some semblance of melody. "Faith" is kind of catchy. The lyrics are simple, reading as what a teenage punk kid might send to MRR at age 16. The band would continue for years, abandoning hardcore for metal, following the same trajectory as many hardcore bands during the 80s.

Negative Element

Similar to Rights of The Accused, Negative Element is full of youthful exuberance. A review of their one release from 1983 says: “This is good and sloppy.” It makes demos that come out now seem very pro. But that is part of the appeal of listening to very early forms of hardcore. It just sounds like kids fucking around on their instruments, trying to make something semi-comprehensible. The recordings sound rough and like they were done in someone's garage. The group's energy is best felt on what is not even a song but an interview segment on a hardcore radio show. You can hear at the end of their collected discography.  It is kind of chaotic and hard to track who is talking, which can tell the story of Negative Element. The band is mostly a fun artifact and one that I have fun revisiting every once in a while.

Trial By Fire

The Bandcamp description for Trial By Fire’s posthumous release identifies them as “ one of the first Chicago bands to play thrash style hardcore.” I have no way to confirm that, but it lines up with the general timeline, forming around 1981 and releasing one demo. I imagine the arrival of Trial By Fire was somewhat momentous for Chicago at the time, given that it had Strike Under members who were very important for first-wave punk. In listening to the collection released in 2017, you can feel the tension in the band between wanting just to write fast-as-hell songs to slam to and play something a bit slower and more refined. It seems to be a recurring story of many of the early Chicago hardcore of this period. There were still vestiges of punk in it, looking to find some middle ground between hardcore and punk.

There is a feeling of what could have been when I listen to Trial By Fire, too. Most of the songs on the 2017 collection were never released in the 80s. It makes it more of an archival listen than anything else. All I can do is wonder how different early Chicago hardcore could have been if Trial By Fire had stuck around a bit longer. I do not think it surpasses Articles of Faith. That is an impossible thing to do, in my opinion. But I think it could have connected to people outside of the city, given the amount of interest in hardcore by 1982.

Savage Beliefs

Savage Beliefs is one of the more interesting artifacts from early Chicago hardcore. They released one EP that had more in common with punk. Only a couple of songs in their discography (Shake Your Neighbor’s Hand, Pink Shirt, What’s Left in The Fridge) feel tied to a hardcore lineage. It may be because Savage Beliefs had a member from Goverment Issue, intertwining Chicago and DC together at a pretty important time. But the band seemed pretty uninterested in writing, just ripping hardcore punk. The unreleased tracks on the compilation Alonha Dream released in 2015 strike me more as proto-indie rock and seem more interested in creating catchy lines than projecting aggression. With forty years of hindsight, Savage Beliefs is an example of the desire to move beyond the limited confines that hardcore had already been created in its few short years of existence.

FYA Recap

Watching shows from behind a screen can only give you so much. Footage that looks tame on YouTube feels much different in reality. That sense of danger can never be replicated. You don’t need to shield your arms against some flying arm constantly. Documentation is important, but it is not everything. The videos from a hardcore fest are interspersed between every other bit of information in the feed you’ve curated. Occasionally, footage will stick in my head if it is particularly gnarly looking. 

There are days when I have been overwhelmed by the flow of information coming at me at once. A new release will come out, and everyone is simultaneously saying to listen to it or say it is the best thing ever. It has made the act of discovery exhausting. It leaves me in a position where I am directly at odds with something I love. I love absorbing as much about music as possible, whether it is new or old. On Monday, I found an Instagram page for a Buffalo hardcore zine sharing a demo from a band called No Joke from 1990; it sounds of the time, taking some of the late 80s New York rhythms as inspirations. I don’t know if I will remember it; that doesn’t matter. I am just glad it exists, and there are people out there who feel passionately about something that, according to dumb Spotify metrics, only a few people have listened to in the past month. But it doesn’t change that checking out new music has sometimes left me with a profound emptiness, giving me the same feeling as watching several movies in a day.

FYA served as a reigniting my passion for all things new music. I spent the first week feverishly looking for new music on Bandcamp. There were some releases that I liked. Others made me wish I never heard an instrumental intro ever again. In the airport on my way to Florida, a certain hardcore musician said something to the effect of that FYA is like another show in a good way. If you allow me to be a little “woo-woo,” I felt that the true essence of hardcore was captured. The venue felt closer to a VFW hall with lights on. I didn’t see any advertisements beyond stuff for Trail of Lies and the upcoming Collateral record. The musicians are within your reach. As I left on Sunday, I asked Ben Cook from No Warning about playing Suffer Survive songs. I talked to a member of Restraining Order and quickly bonded over a love of The Replacements. It was the embodiment of a refrain I hear constantly from bands that there is no barrier between the musicians and the audience. It sometimes feels hollow, but FYA was one of the few times the message made sense recently. 

Not everything was perfect about FYA. Playing in an untraditional venue comes with drawbacks. There were moments when I was disinterested in what I was watching. It doesn’t matter. I’ll take the shit that annoys the fuck out of me every day for those highs I felt at various times. Here are a couple of my favorite moments. Some are good; others are fun stories in retrospect that I would like to bury away for decades, only to uncover them to seem cool to some random person when I fully become the old dude in the back complaining about new jacks.

11. Getting Hit Within Seconds of Never Ending Game's Set

Never Ending Game is one of my favorite hardcore bands right now. Most of the time, I have stood and watched them from afar. I did not want to risk getting hit. I thought I had enough distance from the pit, but slowly, the wall of people in front of me began to shrink. Within ten seconds of their first song, I took an elbow to the eye during a side-to-side part. My vision was spotty, and my right eye started tearing up. I got out of the way because I had no idea how bad it was. I didn’t want to risk any other injury. I am smart enough to know I can’t hang with all the burly dancers NEG brings out. It was not fun as it was happening. But, it is part of the allure of heavy and hard music. There will be violent results occasionally.

10. Watching Old Posi Numbers Clips With Eli Enis At The Air BnB 

Watching YouTube videos with your friends is one of life's most intimate experiences and a rite of passage as a hardcore kid. I was so exhausted and still stinging from getting hit during NEG that I skipped Sunami and headed to our Air BnB. I immediately forced Eli to watch sets from Posi Numbers, a hardcore fest in the 2000s. I showed him the Mental/Dumptruck set, which is iconic to me. Eli mentioned how different the moshing looked, which was interesting to me. We then hopped around, watching a Carry On set from 2001 and a Cro-Mags one from 2002. Having the experience of watching old hardcore footage with a friend made me wish I followed through with writing about every Posi Numbers set from 2003.

9. Florida Bands Having Crazy Reactions/Hometown Pride

Part of the fun of going to these fests is seeing people go wild for their local scene. There was plenty of that, ranging from Three Knee Deep at the pre-show to people singing along to Collaterall on day two of the fest. It gave me a lot of respect for South Florida hardcore and has me looking forward to coming back as soon as I can.

8. Getting a Bunch of Merch From All 4 All After Their Set

It is pretty rare that a set drives me to buy merch, but All 4 All’s did that for me. It is the kind of hardcore I am especially into right now. It is two-steppy, energetic and fast. I also found it endearing how much the band cares about their hometown. When I grabbed a zine from their merch booth, they asked if I was in a band and told me to come to Syracuse. That level of enthusiasm made me want to dig deeper and see what Syracuse has to offer. Most people may associate the city with Earth Crisis and the heavier fare of the 90s. But as the band pointed out in an interview with Stronger Than Pride #3, there is much more to be found. It just requires a deeper level of engagement. 

7. Briefly Chatting About Democore with Fortress Records

While grabbing a zine from Fortress Records, I quickly talked to the guy behind the label about democore. Most of what has come out on Fortress seems to be in conversation with stuff like Moshers Delight and IOU Records. He took the comment in good fun, saying he’d like to put out other stuff as well, as he likes all kinds of hardcore. It was a good reminder of the difference between our perceptions as fans versus people making art or trying to make a scene happen. 

6. Singing Along To Behind These Walls by No Warning at 1am

I had never seen No Warning before. The whole aftershow lineup was great, too. XnomadX and Grand Scheme were the openers. It felt a little light on attendance with maybe 75 people there. It made it feel a little more special. The people who were there were very passionate. It also made it possible that I could sing to my favorite No Warning songs with relative ease. On some days, I believe “Behind These Walls” is the greatest hardcore song ever written.  

5. Moshing Into Your Friends

This one is self-explanatory. There is something wonderful about inflicting harm on your friends in a very harmless way. 

4. Balmora and The Continued Growth of Ephyra Records

I am almost tired of how much I have talked about Balmora and Ephyra Records. I cannot help it; it is responsible for some of my favorite music of 2023. I love it so much that Eli and I got to FYA at the doors opening to get merch. All of the big sizes were sold out. I hope it wasn’t some skinny dude under 180 pounds taking it away from me. Balmora’s set felt like a full-on coronation from the hardcore scene. They covered Laid 2 Rest and a Black Dhalia Murder intro. It feels like a band that is a bridge across all the different sub-sections of hardcore. I can’t wait for new music from them.

3. Restraining Order and Their Cover of Step Forward

I have seen Restraining Order many times and will not get sick of it. “What Will You Do” is a perfect song. And it is one of the few bands on the fest where I know the words. What made me love them even more was a cover of Step Forward. I recently got into their first EP in a big way. 

And I got to feel like the cool guy for once when I recognized the cover within seconds.

2. Carrying a Tote Full of Zines and Merch During Trapped Under Ice

This one may have been the most annoying part of the fest. I was set on getting zines at the fest. The label From Within Records had three zines that I got right away. I realized I could not just hold onto them all day, so I spent money on a tote bag. I then proceeded to buy every zine possible. Even with a full tote I was not going to watch TUI from afar. I was relatively close and even at the front for the end. It was worth it, even though I knew someone was probably annoyed at my presence. I was just surprised I did not lose any of my purchases.

1. Ladder Getting Thrown During Suburban Scum

I would be lying if I didn’t put something from the pre-show on this list. Most of the bands playing were not my thing. Heavier hardcore is a small portion of my diet, and I can be picky. I had already seen Suburban Scum in August. But I cannot deny them as a live presence. As the last song came on, the singer started throwing water bottles, and I knew something more substantial was coming. I saw the ladder, and it was within a straight line toward me, and I ducked. I could not passively watch with my arms crossed. It was memorable, and at least now I know what to expect if Suburban Scum plays again. It is another reminder that the kind of music I decide to spend most of my free time with has some element of danger. It is part of the appeal. I walked away without injuries, so now I have a funny anecdote. 

New Music Roundup and Other Things (1/4/24)

Welcome to the first post from my new blog, Between Berwyn and Bryn Mawr. It is a CSTVT reference, but this is not an emo blog. I thought choosing a CSTVT song as a title would be apt because it highlights a cross-section of my interests. Summer Fences was a hodgepodge of influences, combining Midwest emo with stuff like Small Brown Bike and Hot Water Music. Two members met at a Lawrence Arms show at Fireside Bow. I can feel the roots of hardcore at times, too. It is operatic at some points and catchy in other sections. It does represent what I still find myself looking for entering my 30s. Anyway, the blog will have a Chicago bent and will mostly be me rounding up some stuff I checked out every week. Maybe some other ramblings. When I have the energy to do longer writing like I did at Medium, I will try to fit that in. The main idea is off-the-cuff first thoughts. I have been reading a lot of zines lately and have been trying to find a place to try my hand at that kind of writing. Maybe weekly, maybe it will be one post and die right now. Some of the records came out last month, but I think they are still worth your time.

Alga

Alga plays what I would call "meat and potatoes" power pop. It hits all the notes you would expect, from the vocal delivery to a prioritizing melody. A playlist from Alga also bear this out, including Big Star and others on it. I would like to see the project expand beyond the bedroom, though. There is a lot of potential, and I could see more people finding something to enjoy with Alga.

Consensus Madness-2023 Demo

First-wave punk-sounding stuff. In that, it is not aggression for aggression's sake. Maybe there's a little garage rock in there. I dunno, it’s cool. I feel like the people who really liked Snooper last year may find something in this demo. It is always fun when punk is melodic without ever taking a turn towards something annoying. I would like to finally see them live and play a hardcore show I go to. Make some of the hard moshers suffer a little bit.

Soul Vice-2023 Promo

You get what you expect from a band called Soul Vice. I do love naming your band after a song from a demo. It’s New York hardcore through the prism of Trapped Under Ice and that whole family of Baltimore bands. It does have a little more crossover New York hardcore, which I imagine is because the guitarist is also in Blow Your Brains Out. It's a solid promo, but I would like to see it outrun its influences. Some of the riffs on the first song feel a little too familiar if you know what I mean. 

Amino-The Entropy Within Our Hearts

My friend and podcast co-host Eli Enis sent this to me at the end of last year. I could figure out the vibe just by looking at the album art. It was probably going to be melodeath-inspired metalcore. It is a style I am particularly, with Ephyra and that whole expanded universe. It was a kind of music I hated when I was younger. Amino is a little less metalcore, but it still feels like hardcore kids wrote it. It is not nearly as intricate as Slaughter of The Soul. I also am a bit of newbie with melodeath, so I may have the wrong reference points.

Dj Corey-Heat Files 2k24

I don’t necessarily have the vocabulary to talk about DJ Corey. He makes dance music known as footwork, where mostly one phrase is repeated, asking you to focus on the shifting rhythms of the beat. It is a lot of fun, sometimes very silly and sophomoric, where I’m very aware a teenager made it. “Werk This,” in particular, had me smiling like an idiot.

Show Review-Broken Vow/Mile End/Absoulte Truth/Luchador (1/3/24)

I went to my favorite venue in Chicago to see my first show of the year. It was a much preferable place to see a hardcore show than Sub-T downstairs, where Broken Vow played last January. It had been a while since I hit a hardcore show, so I was curious how it would go. There were several faces I did not recognize, along with many familiar strangers. Luchador started off. They are still pretty new, and you could feel some tension between them and the audience. People weren’t moving. It resulted in a funny scenario where the singer got on the dancefloor to show people how to do different dance moves. 

Absolute Truth felt like the real start of the gig. They are true youth crew, with two members wearing Turning Point shirts. They are older, but in a way that comes off as seasoned rather than “washed.” Their set ended with a cover that I could not pick out. Mile End was next, marking a shift towards the harder moshing section at Beat Kitchen. They were standouts from the night, and it felt like a hometown show. People piled on top of each other during the intro. I feel like once they have a record, they may get bigger. Broken Vow was the last band I watched, and they kept the energy up. People went as hard as you would want without any fights breaking out. I was too tired and failed my Chicago hardcore test by skipping Payasa to get home earlier—a great start to the year.  

 In non-new music news, I have been slowly becoming that guy who wants to buy old hardcore and punk ephemera. The problem is so much of it is very expensive. Old zines will sometimes cost 70 dollars. It even gets more costly when I look at posts from the Instagram page Ancient Artifax. I did come across one I am debating purchasing. I typed in Chicago punk flyers and found one from 1988. It was at Casa Aztlan, a hub for artistic creativity. It is now a place for condos. The description says it was the first true southside punk gig in Chicago, and Martin of Los Crudos organized it. It also gives me some insight into Chicago hardcore from that time, which is cool to my historically-minded brain. I should purchase it, right?