Spin Magazine has an interesting suggestion in a recent article around the interviews of, among others, Oakland band Ceremony and Canadian hardcore Fucked up, interestingly enough, two bands signed by Matador, a label which was not especially known for its punk tendencies,…but Matador has acts like Belle and Sebastian, Cat Power, The new Pornographers and Perfume Genius on its roster, as well as more recently, bands with a clear hardcore edge.
Thus, the question around all this seems to be, are hardcore-punk bands threatening indie rock’s hold on the cutting edge?
I saw Ceremony a few months ago, and the band has evolved from its raw violent hardcore roots to a more multi-influenced punk sound just before signing to Matador, and they gave me the impression to be a band on the rise, with an incredibly powerful sound.
Frontman Damian Abraham, whose band Fucked Up released its last two full-lengths on Matador, has a name for this, he calls it the ‘hipster-hardcore advent’! This is how he explains it:
‘Certainly, indie rock is at its most banal right now. Nothing against Arcade Fire because they are an unbelievable band, but how many terrible bands that thrive on that sound are we going to have to put up with? So much of indie music is so earnest. There's almost a cynicism in its earnestness because it's so overwrought with fake, over-the-top emotion. I think punk and hardcore is also overwrought with emotion, but it's a lot more honest.’
So is this a for real? Is Fucked Up the new Arcade Fire? To be clear, neither Ceremony nor Fucked Up play pure hardcore, Fucked Up's last operatic ‘David Comes To Life’ was something of another nature, a sort of cross-over…
However, these guys are loyal to their roots, as Ceremony’s Anthony Anzaldo explains:
‘Punk and hardcore are embedded in us. Any influence we have goes through that filter. No matter if it's fucking Nine Inch Nails, it's still going to be filtered through all of this music that's been in us since we were 14.’
Trash Talk is another example, they are good friends with Odd Future and have shared the stage with them, they have been featured in the New York Times and other magazines, and have played SXSW despite the extreme violence of their shows. I saw them opening for Fucked Up, and they scared the hell out of me…. Shit, I was in the pit!! It was funny because they were playing at the El Rey Theater, a place which hosts a lot of indie band shows, but not totally prepared for this earth-shaking chaos.
Trash Talk also released their 'Awake' EP on True Panther Sounds, a Matador imprint, which also carries much softer acts like Girls, Tanlines, Glasse and Teengirl Fantasy!
So is this a new tendency? Is hardcore crossing over? Spin left the last words to Minor Threat-Fugazi frontman Ian MacKaye:
‘I can't see weighing in on the subject, especially as it relates to the many bands and people to whom the term has a more concrete meaning. Genres, especially in their parsings, usually have deep generational and regional connections, so for me the term 'hardcore' was a way of clarifying that our embodiment of punk in 1980 was neither 'new wave' (goofy or fun-loving) nor 'punk rock' (nihilistic or self-destructive), hence the term 'hardcore punk.' As with many concepts, the ensuing cultural game of telephone has found the term evolved, and that's exactly how it should be. Ultimately, all that really matters is that people are creating something that vibrates others into (what I hope would be positive) action, regardless of the moniker. So having said all that, I'll leave the hardcore discussion to the others who have a stake in that particular heading.’
Personally, I don't like boxes but genres are useful to describe music, and if a band is good whatever its attributed genre, and if it makes people vibrate as MacKaye says, it is always a good sign, and the only one I need to appreciate it.