Eyyy, +1 for Pennywise. That’s a band I’ve not thought about in some time.

Do you have other recommendations from their catalog? This is the only track of there’s I think I’ve listened to.

Ah, I’m a bit younger (in fact I don’t believe there’s a song on that list that was released after I was born), but I’m a big history geek, and the evolution of genre is a particular fascination of mine, so I have intentionally sought out the music which influenced bands I liked in high school.

I’m sure I’ve missed out on some killer acts from the era, so hopefully someone who was both alive at the time AND paying attention to the scene will appear and give us both an education.

A tangentially related suggestion for you, if you share my fascination with the context around the art we make (though you are probably well aware if you’re an old-head haha), there’s an EXCELLENT documentary about the LA hc punk scene that was released during its zenith (arguably) in 1981. Several of the bands I mention in that list appear. It is called The Decline of Western Civilization, and the most convincing argument I can make to get people to watch it is that the LAPD chief wrote an op-ed demanding theaters not screen it.

Yes, though this is a scenario where I’d argue such a reading is a touch overzealous, and is exactly the sort of overreaction that leads idiots to think that calling Musk’s Nazi salutes what they are is just pearl clutching. The song is about haters who talk mad shit behind your back, but don’t dare say anything to your face. Therefore, “boy” is being used to imply the narrator doesn’t consider these people to be “men”, as they lack some quality (maturity, courage, whatever) necessary to qualify.

Also, the world changed a lot in the decades between the song’s release and 2016. I’m not going to go digging to try and find out exactly how much of a piece of shit Anselmo has been and for how long. Fucker isn’t worth my mental bandwidth, so I’m okay with operating on the assumption that, like many, many folks, he was radicalized over time by the rise of the “alt-right” and becoming wealthy. In either case, it doesn’t change the fact that I’ve got no intention of ever financially supporting his endeavors in the future, despite enjoying some of his output in the past.

Further recommendations for your exploration: any band Ian MacKaye has played in. Even if you don’t care for his work, he has had an outsized impact on the development of American punk / hardcore (even if he’s resisted that attribution). Specific recommendations include:

• Minor Threat - self titled (straight up hc punk)
• Embrace - Building (early emo, when that just meant it was a hardcore song that touched on emotions other than anger)
• Fugazi - Waiting Room, or the 13 Songs album as a whole (post-hardcore, or “hardcore, but we’re not afraid to show off that we’ve learned some music theory”)

Okay, with MacKaye given his due, other “classic punk” recommendations include:

• Agent Orange - Bloodstains
• Bad Brains - I Against I
• Black Flag - Fix Me, TV Party, My War
• Circle Jerks - Wild in the Streets, Live Fast Die Young, World up My Ass
• Dead Kennedys - Nazi Punks Fuck Off, California Über Alles, Holiday in Cambodia
• Germs - Lexicon Devil
• The Clash - Straight to Hell, White Riot, Lost in the Supermarket, and many more.
• Operation Ivy - Sound System
• The Descendents - Suburban Home
• Social Distortion - Story of My Life, Mommy’s Little Monster
• Buzzcocks - Ever Fallen in Love (With Someone You Shouldn’t’ve)?
• Hüsker Dü - Don’t Wanna Know If You Are Lonely, Pink Turns to Blue
• The Replacements - Androgynous, Bastards of Young, Here Comes a Regular, Can’t Hardly Wait, Answering Machine, Alex Chilton
• Minutemen - History Lesson Part 2, Corona

Some slightly deeper cuts, more in the proto-emo space than political punk, but they share a lot of musical DNA and I think some of these tracks are underrated.

• Rites of Spring - For Want Of
• The Hated - Words Come Back
• Dag Nasty - Circles
• Gray Matter - Burn No Bridges
• Soulside - Pearl to Stone
• IGNITION - Previous
• Fire Party - Cake
• Samiam - Tired of Waiting
• Fuel - Cue to You
• Drive Like Jehu - Here Come the Rome Plows

That’s probably enough for now. I hope you find some stuff you like here.

I listened to Siren Song of the Counter Culture all the way through for the first time since probably 2007 a little while ago, and tbh, there’s little on the record I would call filler. Some songs do less for me than others, so I’m not gonna say it meets “All Killer” criteria, but I was surprised by how much I was enjoying the deeper cuts.

In fact, it surfaced an embarrassing memory for me. When “Paper Wings” came on, I was reminded of a little light plagiarism I committed as a shitty 13 year old. We had discussed the use of enjambnent in “The Red Wheelbarrow”, and were told to write a poem with an emphasis on structure as much as meter or rhyme. Being (as mentioned) 13, shitty, and confident that Rise Against was not in my English teacher’s rotation, I basically just copied and pasted lyrics from that song and incorporated odd line breaks and punctuation.

Had I a modicum of self-awareness at the time, I’d like to think I’d have made different choices, but that’s high school, baby!

Oof. Well, I’m disappointed but I refuse to let it ruin my day. I also tend to think that the band saying they had no idea is a stretch, but I empathize with someone who rationalizes away suspected bad behavior of a long term friend. I can’t say with 100% confidence that I wouldn’t do the same, as long as there was enough plausible deniability. If they disavowed him immediately upon it coming to light, well, I guess that’s better than praying for forgiveness and healing or whatever, even if they had thought his behavior was suspect beforehand and not acted on it. Perfect can’t be the enemy of good, and I’m just so fucking tired man…

In all honesty, I have no idea how I came across that song. Despite some of the other selections that are also in that mold, industrial metal isn’t actually a genre I fuck with that much. I’m open to it, especially as I’ve continued to get comfortable in some of the less melodic subgenres, but the actual wave of popularity these bands were riding on missed me as a kid and ive come to it later.

I assume that it must have been included in a video game soundtrack of some kind? In fact, as I’ve been writing this comment, I think it may have been a part of the Brutal Legend soundtrack, and I had all of that stuff on my iPod at the time.

Song do go pretty hard tho, don’t it?

I almost don’t want to know, especially given what someone else shared with me about Pantera’s lead singer; but, given what I’m sure you’ve inferred from my selection, Anti-Flag was very much in my rotation for a couple of years. So, in the interest of doing the bare minimum necessary to claim I haven’t been ostriching the WHOLE time since the election, what revelations have come to light about this guy?

Oh Jesus fucking Christ. Thank you for letting me know, I’ll edit that immediately. The worst part is that I’ve conditioned myself to cope with the news I’ve just received by listening to Pantera.

Probably a lot of obvious choices on here, but I like to think of it as honoring the classics of the genre, and hopefully there are a few entries which are new to folks.

• Crime Mob - Knuck if You Buck (this goes at the start of the playlist, because, in my experience, playing this to a crowd of significant size will result in hands being thrown somewhere, it is a statistical inevitability)
• Godsmack - I Stand Alone
• Pantera - Walk Phil Anselmo is a Nazi shit weasel and I was unaware.
• Limp Bizkit - Rollin
• Rage Against the Machine - Fistful of Steel
• Lil Wayne ft Eminem- Drop the World
• CKY - 96 Quite Bitter Beings
• DMX - X Gon Give It To Ya
• Ludacris - Get Back
• KMFDM - Free Your Hate
• Aesop Rock - None Shall Pass
• Powerman 5000 - When Worlds Collide
• Static-X - Push It
• DJ Shadow ft Run the Jewels - Nobody Speak
• Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds - Red Right Hand
• Slipknot - People=Shit
• Slayer - Raining Blood
• Holy Fuck - Tom Tom
• Danzig - Mother
• Queens of the Stone Age - You Think I Ain’t Worth a Dollar, But I Feel Like A Millionaire (gotta find an edit without the intro tho)
• Mastodon - Blood and Thunder
• Mïngle Härder (formerly Möngöl Hörde) - Blistering Blue Barnacles

Two nautical themed metal/hardcore songs which get me ready to tussle isn’t a lot, but it is weird that it happened twice.

• Rise Against - State of the Union
• Coheed and Cambria - Key Entity Extraction V: Sentry the Defiant (with honorable mention to In Keeping Secrets of Silent Earth:3 and Welcome Home)
• Chevelle - The Red
• Bullet For My Valentine - Waking the Demon
• Eve 6 - Think Twice
• Hole - Violet
• Dead Kennedys - Nazi Punks Fuck Off
• Smashing Pumpkins - Bullet With Butterfly Winds

That seems like enough brainstorming for now. Hope someone finds something they vibe with.