Harley Flanagan

got to bring them up.

You know, Harley Flanagan definitely was the forefather of hardcore music and punk.

And

he'll tell you that, too.

It's very thrash metal or hardcore, right? When the bass is introing and it's that aggressive kind of...

I mean, Harley Flanagan is another example of this.

I mean, he's a great bass player.

He's fucking great.

Just because I think I was seeing, you know.

Harley Flanagan? Yeah, he was definitely there.

I definitely

learned how to play.

Studded vest jackets.

I mean, Harley Flanagan had a swastika tattoo.

He has covered it up, but people still love the Cro-Mags.

Yeah.

It's been reworked and rejigged and brought back all as part of it.

Because, yeah, was it Wired for Chaos, the documentary about Harley Flanagan and all the bits and bobs that he was doing? um and he chose to you know there was a fresh new song was released brand new as part of it and he got as many people from the original stuff back together to redo the bits and bobs um yeah 40 years of quarrel go give it a spin go check it out it's

yeah

so so so so so so so good it's going to be out on november the 30th via black to black um and that is the current first taste of how noisy this record is going to be Another band dropping some bits and bobs in November is Comeback Kid.

It was this aggressive, unpolished vocal delivery that helped set a precedent for the hardcore metal crossover we would see from the 1990s onward.

Harley Flanagan didn’t just play bass.

He was the backbone behind the brutal riff structure, especially on tracks like We Gotta Know, where the thrash-style chords collide with a hardcore punch.

His use of palm-muted breakdowns and a relentless four-note run created an unstoppable momentum that felt almost predatory, like a dog chasing its prey.

If you think punk was all about shouting against a cheap cassette in an abandoned basement, then you're missing the real meat of what the Cro-Mags were cooking up.

Harley Flanagan, who started drumming with his aunt's band The Stimulators at 11 and later co-founded both the Cro-Mags in 1981 and Murphy's Law in 1982, was a kid who could swing a bass like a shotgun and also had an ear for that raw, stripped-down New York hardcore aesthetic that had grown out of CBGB's smoky backroom gigs.

Seven-inch tours across the East Coast and a network of DIY promoters who were more willing to give you a spot in a warehouse than to hand over your rights to a major label.

By the time he met guitarist Paris Mayhew, bassist Harley was already known for throwing down riffs that cut through any club PA system, whether it was an old Marshall 50 or a cheap Fender 59.

But what made The Age of Quarrel different was that it carried the social consciousness of New York's punk scene with its own kind of lyrical aggression, while also bringing that thrash edge to a level of production quality that had never been attempted by any other hardcore group up until that point.

But before you get ahead of yourself, remember that The Age of Quarrel wasn't an isolated project.

The Cro-Mags lineup was made up of Harley Flanagan on bass and later vocals, guitarist Paris Mayhew, drummer Mackie Jason, and vocalist John Joseph, who at the time was a 20-year-old with a background in both the New York hardcore underground and the Hare Krishna community that had started to seep into parts of the scene as Krishna Corps.

John's presence gave the band an ideological anchor because he was vocal about his devotion, and this spirituality actually found its way onto the record's cover art and lyrical references.