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“Fuck the system, they can’t have me, I don’t need society”
-D.R.I., “I Don’t Need Society”
Powerviolence is a ridiculously-named subgenre of extreme hardcore punk, primarily defined by spastic, fizzy song structures and frequent, unpredictable tempo changes. It is alternately nonsensically fast and brutally slow and sludgy, and its aesthetic is defined largely by antisocial tendencies and harsh vocals. It is related to, but sonically distinct from, other niche subgenres such as grindcore and thrashcore/fastcore (although, as will become clear, the three genres were kissing cousins-- it wasn't and really still isn't uncommon to hear metalheads refer to a band as grindcore, punk kids refer to the same band as fastcore, and hardcore kids referring to, again, the same band as powerviolence). It is nerd shit. So let's talk about it.
In the mid-to-late 80s, hardcore was in a state of flux— although some would call it a standstill, it was really a time of rapid evolution and change as the scene began to deliberately distinguish itself from its roots as simply a step forward from punk, and come into its own as a distinct set of sounds and styles that were as vibrant as they were diverse. While there were rapid innovations happening worldwide as post-hardcore, emo, crust punk, youth crew, and other styles were emerging as significant harbingers of the dawn of the 90s and hardcore’s subsequent splintering and subgenrefication, the influence of crossover thrash bands— particularly those from the American coasts, like Agnostic Front, Crumbsuckers, and Cro-Mags from New York, or Suicidal Tendencies, Cryptic Slaughter, and Evildead from California— was becoming overwhelming within the hardcore scene. Thrash metal was born from the commingling of kids who were into Iron Maiden as much as they were into Misfits, and in turn had begotten a group of bands on either side of the metal and punk divides who traded in choppa-choppa riffs, barked vocals about nuclear warfare, and in many cases, grossly 80s production values (who ever thought that gating the drums so heavily was at all a good idea?).
Of course, subcultures like metal and hardcore, which attracted extreme personalities, were fascinated by music that pushed extreme buttons and nudged itself into harder, heavier, and more extreme directions. The early D-beat and crust bands proved to be a formative influence on bands like Hellhammer and Bathory (both proto-black metal), Repulsion (early death metal), and Electro Hippies (a particularly extreme hardcore punk act), who in turn fostered a more extreme and guttural approach that found a foothold in the late-80s British punk scene and led to the rise of grindcore— Napalm Death, Sore Throat, et al. These were bands that were, essentially, crust punk ratcheted up to the nth degree in terms of speed, abrasiveness, and both political and vocal intensity, but they quickly found themselves becoming accepted by the broader metal community, and today grindcore is most often acknowledged as a subset of metal rather than a subset of punk.
This, then leads to the question asked by many in the mid-to-late 80s hardcore scene— just how fast, hard, heavy, and extreme could hardcore punk become without metal influence? Outside of the United States, you had hyper-DIY European bands like Heresy and Lärm who were beginning to define the burgeoning thrashcore/fastcore subgenre and would be a major influence on later American powerviolence bands, not to mention highly influential Japanese hardcore bands like S.O.B. or Lip Cream. But there were quite a few American bands in the early 80s that tried to answer this question— Idaho’s Septic Death and Massachusetts’s Siege are widely recognized as hardcore punk bands that upped the ante on extremity in every way possible, to the point where metal bands regard them as just as, if not more, influential to extreme metal than bands that self-identified as metal themselves. Both bands were building on the foundation of seminal early hardcore punk releases like the first Negative Approach 7”, the Void side of the Faith/Void split, early skate punk bands like JFA, the first Millions of Dead Cops full-length, the first Corrosion of Conformity full-length, Hüsker Dü's Land Speed Record and D.R.I.’s Dirty Rotten EP, which were the fastest and dirtiest-sounding releases in the hardcore scene at the time. Another seminal influence on early extreme hardcore was the Boston hardcore scene, particularly the Jerry's Kids LP (which, as my friend David Anthony noted to me, was pioneering in terms of that guitar/drum lockstep) and the pre-Mighty Mighty Bosstones band Impact Unit (who nailed the signature powerviolence slowdown, and would later be covered by Crossed Out), as well as Deep Wound— although guitarist Lou Barlow and drummer J Mascis would later make waves as the founding bassist and guitarist/vocalist of Dinosaur Jr, respectively, Lou’s uniquely primordial guitar attack and J’s nigh-unparalleled speed and power as a drummer would prove to be a seminal piece of the powerviolence puzzle, as would Charlie Nakajima’s unhinged vocals.
And although some in the powerviolence scene would be loathe to admit it since it's more on the "jock" end, the New York hardcore scene also provided some foundations for powerviolence— in particular, Straight Ahead (who would later evolve into the pioneering death metal act NYC Mayhem) and the adenoidal pre-Youth of Today band Violent Children introduced a few elements to powerviolence’s sonic vocabulary, including wonky time signature changes and slowdowns. Although it hadn’t quite yet evolved into the sleazy, misanthropic approach that would define the dawn of powerviolence (my favorite Violent Children song includes the lyrics “Put down the cigarette and breathe the air/I am straight because I care”), the roots are very clearly there.
“Crossed Out, No Comment, Manpig, Capitalist Casualties, Man Is the Bastard, West Coast powerviolence! Let’s fuckin’ go!” -Man Is the Bastard, “Hispanic Small Man Power”
But influences aren’t what make up the sum total of a genre; there’s always an inflection point, a concentrated point in the scene where a preponderance of bands take on a similar approach and lay down the characteristics that would become inextricably associated with it. In powerviolence’s case, this happened on the West Coast, particularly in Southern California (although, as we will observe, there were certainly bands in Northern California who were essential to the sound’s development, and it would soon proliferate around the country and the world— much to the chagrin of many sad old bastards, who would hold that only a few bands during a few years in a few locations make up the entirety of powerviolence).
Though some might make a case for the pre-Man Is the Bastard band PHC (Pissed Happy Children), the very first band that could be called powerviolence is generally accepted to be Infest, formed in Valencia, California in 1986. Their 1988 album Slaveis the codifying text of powerviolence— as noted in this slightly curmudgeonly writeup from Leah Levinson for Soap Ear, Slave is notable as the genesis of powerviolence in part because it’s easy to delineate the differences between it and something like Napalm Death’s Scum. Although there are some superficial sonic similarities, powerviolence is markedly distinct from grindcore in many ways; whereas early grindcore almost feels self-consciously artsy— actively challenging the audience to sit through the guttural vocals and raw, gurgly production— Infest sounds as if this is the only way they know how to play.
Like Scum, Slave is bass-heavy, but instead of the almost subterranean distortion on that record, Dave Ring’s bass is thick and plucky, providing a near-dancey bounce to the proceedings. The vocals, as well, while certainly snarled and shredded, are a far cry from the inhuman low growls of grind, with Joe Denunzio clearly enunciating to get his point across, the lyrics direct and uncluttered. The two players most in sync on Slave are drummer Chris Clift and guitarist Matt Domino, who demonstrate an unprecedented formalistic mastery of hardcore, even if their playing is relatively rudimentary and unpolished. What comes across is an unadulterated, frenzied sense of utter panic— the breakneck speed turns on a dime into sludgy, almost frustratingly slow breakdowns with no warning, combining aggression and desperation into a unified front. Grindcore is the sound of late-capitalism-as-apocalypse; powerviolence is the outcry of the people just trying to survive said apocalypse.
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-xoxo, Ellie
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