Hardcore punk

Mm-hmm.

I think female-led hardcore band.

Hardcore is the wrong part of that.

It's, it's heavy music.

Yeah.

Yeah, absolutely.

And, like, definitely with the new record that's coming out, I've definitely sort of gone back to like Nu Metal, like I said before Hardcore, like System of a Down.

I mean System of a Down, that album is one of those albums I put on regularly and I have done for years.

It's just something that I can put on and listen from start to finish.

And there wasn't much where my town was, but in Tupelo, there was a big music scene.

So there was a lot of metal music and hardcore music and punk music.

And it was really taken off and that was actually pretty popular for a while.

So by the time I became about 15, I became friends with a guy who he was taking me to shows.

And so I just put all my energy and time into that.

And then it just continued from there.

Then it kind of progressed into more what I love today, which is like hardcore music and being involved in that.

And I was a part of that music scene forever.

Tickets on sale now.

So hardcore punk is a genre that I have never really explored because, as I have said many times on the podcast, my favorite thing is melody.

And normally with hardcore, you don't get a lot of melody.

Not a lot of complex melodies, at least.

I recently went down a hardcore rabbit hole, so I thought I would take you with me.

So I'm starting a new series for the podcast called Rabbit Hole, where I go down a rabbit hole and I take you with me.

So this specific rabbit hole... is 80s hardcore punk cassettes there were a lot of hardcore bands in the 80s that released their music only on homemade cassettes with photocopied covers most of them recorded in basements or garages most of these are not studio recordings obviously But yeah, I went down this rabbit hole using Discogs and YouTube, and it was a fun journey.

So I thought, what better way to explore this than make it a podcast episode? So hardcore punk, you know, they say it originated in the late 70s, but it was really an 80s phenomenon.

The line between punk and metal has always been thin, Iggy and the Stooges' rawness fed early heavy metal acts like Motorhead, whose frontman Lemmy was a self-confessed punk fan, while later bands such as Refused or the early Metallica borrowed the intensity but twisted it into faster, uh, riffs.

Hardcore emerged in part as an answer to punk's creeping commercialization.

Bands stitched together, speed and political edge, to keep the scene from folding under big-label pressure.

Because punk was a DIY movement at its core, it naturally spread into adjacent scenes, from the first skate parks, hosting raw gigs to pop-punk groups like Green Day , all built on the same hand, written flyers and cassette networks.

The album's narrative arc told a bleak, almost dystopian story about a couple stuck between war and addiction.

Even though the recording process was frantic , the result was an album that demanded attention beyond the typical punk crowd.

The concept's success gave the label a credibility boost, proving Hardcore could be artistically ambitious while still sounding raw.

Huska Doo signing to Warner Bros. in 86 surprised many, especially after their last independent release had already sold out at local punk shops.

The new Devilmaster album, Bloody Dreams, is out today on Relapse Records.

We discuss the love of Japanese hardcore punk that led to the formation of Devilmaster, the importance of the Relapse Records store, the imagery behind Bloody Dreams, the impact of Christian nationalism on the band, and more.

Thanks so much for checking out this episode of As the Story Grows.

If you're brand new to the podcast, welcome.

Nice.

let's talk about devil master what was kind of the inspiration and uh reason for starting this band

uh like john recruited all of us originally because we we would all just like uh gush over Japanese hardcore punk and how at the time everyone was only playing DB but like the actual discharge like DB was like which I always thought has no riffs and like everyone was always only worshiping the Japanese DB bands but we wanted to do something that was like the all the metallic inspired street punk sounding bands that dressed up in makeup, like, like zoo and mobs and keys on this.

So that was, that was the only inspiration was to sound like those bands when we first started.

He's like, I have no idea what's

happening in Hardcore.

We're old,

dude.