006: TGHC And Me

The Context
I was never a tough kid. In high school, I was often the kind, nice kid who sat in the corner/side of the class, made idle smalltalk when it was time and who didn't have too many friends and was an easy target for the bigger hallway predators. To say that my teenagers years were drama-free would be a blantant falsehood, but I didn't have it as bad as many people do, relatively. Even while living through my angsty trials and tribulations I recognized this fact and was grateful for what I had, but once in a while I'd enter a phase of downward emotional feeling, a period of intense self-loathing as I learned to cope with my feelings of being pushed into adulthood, into a world I was (and still am, to a degree) unsure of, and of being forced to make decisions that impacted my future.

Unable to outwardly deal with those emotions, I often listened to music that would allow me to vent without saying a word, to release anger from my body, a form of abstract meditation that found me nodding in time to kick drum blasts and the chugga-chugga of the primal guitar riffs as they slowed down long enough for a breakdown. It allowed me some degree of inner peace, an odd sense of calmness that washed over me much like the rain you can imagine hearing in Enya songs. (Disclosure: Yes, I've heard multipke Enya songs and I don't really care what you make of that. I do believe that there's no such thing as a guilty pleasure if you truly love it.)

The First Contact

The opening salvo from Hatebreed's 2002 tough-guy hardcore pseudo opus Perseverance immediately drew me in as I heard it that summer. The track was entitled 'Proven' and Jamey Jasta spat relentless. "You wanna see me fail? You'll never get your chance," Jasta posited. I was lovestruck from the onset. I had previously heard the album's first single 'I Will Be Heard' and found it highly enjoyable, but it wasn't until I heard 'Proven' that I truly understood the power of the music, its direct approach and the muscular instrumentation that had been lacking from first-wave hardcore records. The better production made the listening experience more palatable, though for the record I still count Black Flag's Damaged in my top 5 records ever, despite its technical shortgivings.

The music's direct approach attached to it a certain amount of danger to the music; there was no room to speak about unicorns and old towns, no need to mention the joys of cocaine dealing and acquiring carnal knowledge. These were tunes armed with a sense of immediate purpose, they were songs meant for a survivalist's ear, one who aspired to thrive and continue to live another day. Such lofty ideals like sex and money were pushed under the rug and the basics (social justice, fairness, anti-racist sentiments) were expounded upon, rehearsed and then recorded in quick succession. These sorts of qualities appealed to someone with a sense of danger like me, who enjoyed the sense of purpose in listening to the music created and who (somewhat) understood its messages and bought into them more easily then I would other forms of music, whose intentions and motives I often questionned more. What did fuck is Cedrix Bixler singing about on 'Pattern Against User'? was a far more recurring statement in my pubescent mind than I wonder who Scott Vogel is discussing on 'Don't Need Your Help'.

Feeding The Urge

I soon scoured the internet on my shitty dial-up connection, hoping to find more of this music. This was the age before the prominence of Google and Wikipedia, where search engines were hit and miss. I relied upon a variety of websites to keep me informed and educated about bands that I might like and that's how I fell in with bands like Madball, Agnostic Front, Integrity and Terror.

Madball's brand of New York hardcore definitely appealed to me. A precursor to the proper tough guy hardcore movement, it represented simplistic lyrics that first branched out of the Black Flag/Minor Threat school of using as little metaphors as possible in their lyrics. 'Police Story'? 'Screaming At A Wall'? 'Rise Above'? These all sound like straight-ahead anthems and their lyrics were rather self-explanatory. Madball had songs like 'Set It Off' and 'Pride' (which included lines like 'All grown up I gotta do for myself/I refuse to depend on anyone else") and most songs lasted less than 2 minutes, a collection of orally-charged shotgun blasts of buzzsaw guitar and breakdowns which expounded upon the ills that singer Freddy Cricien saw.

These bands, in a live setting, are formidable creatures, able to whip up a small hall into a strange sort of cult-like frenzy. I once attended a Hatebreed show where a circle pit broke out, while a series of hardcore dancers spinkicked their way to glory in the middle. The scene looked like a strange Broadway musical narrated by a deranged, sandpaper-voiced protagonist who needed to spit out some venom at an unknown target, courteously summed up by the 'you' pronoun.

The Giant Pink Elephant In The Tough Guy Hardcore Room

The one true constant in the subset of tough guy hardcore music is the ever-present second-person pronoun. "You" becomes a catch-all for the vocalist to aim all of his/her venom at, to place blame upon. In a genre where metaphors are usually kept to a minimum, the apparition of the "you" becomes near-metaphorical when one considers the fact that "you" could mean anyone: the singer's mother, the singer's ex-girlfriend, the singer's old valet who fucked up his pimped-out '67 Oldsmobile. It becomes a catch-all that could be interpreted any number of ways, even when the context of the song's analyzed. This is the great contradiction in hardcore music, the one great deceit: in a simplistic musical genre, the very foundation upon which it is based (the hatred of the other) is in actuality a much more complex arrangement when one considers the fact that the pronoun used is vague enough to imply multiple meanings, based upon different readings by the listener. This makes exploring the genre that much more harder sometimes.

The Pulpit

But it's not at all about wordplay. Much like most punk rock, tough guy hardcore music is about having an ample amount of heart. To display this on one's sleeve and have fans love you for it is the hallmark of a truly great tough guy hardcore band. The bands involved in this subgenre keep it simple for a reason: it appeals to listeners, the meaning of its lyrics are easily discerned and chantable. Putting out records is just an excuse to tour and to connect with other fans and the band in a direct manner, to share in an event. There's a reason why tough guy hardcore frontment love to go off on rants in-between songs (looking at you in particular, Mr. Vogel): the message implied in the songs is made clear in these long-winded speeches, meant to wind up the crowd much in the same way preachers might preach about hellstone and damnation. These messages, though, are a lot more basic: believe in yourself and all obstacles can be surmounted. The belief in the self is paramount in all songs by tough guy hardcore songs. To give into others blindly is tantamount to treason – you have to be able to find it in yourself to move forward and beyond your problems.

That's why so many people buy into this kind of music, I think: the message of salvation in the self is more fulfilling in 2 minutes worth of TGxHCx than it is by sitting in a pew on a Sunday. It's like attending the coolest church on earth, but its tenets are simple: rock and ye shall be rocked. Push and ye shall be pushed. Believe and ye shall be filled with pride in the self. And that's all anyone can ever ask for.