Powerviolence

Ignoring the stupid name, powerviolence was one of the most vicious and aggressive musical movements ever on this side of the world. It was basically hardcore sped up to the point of retardation with heavily barked vocals, and it's calling card: absurd stop-on-a-dime tempo shifts with heavy sludgy guitars. Not to mention, it was a fucking short little movement. From the time that the word "powerviolence" started popping up on posters to the time most of the west-coast originators started calling it quits is a time frame of maybe three years. Nevertheless, in the digital age many kids, including myself, have begun rediscovering these bands and downloading the old vinyl.

Despite its distinct name, powerviolence bands often get thrown into the same trifecta of fast hardcore that grindcore and thrashcore both occupy and rightly so at times. The line between the three can be extraordinarily thin and bands like Despise You and Spazz didn't help things by pretty much crossing into all three territories during a single 7" spin. But who gives a fuck right? If it makes me wanna headbang, mosh, and just generally go crazy who cares what others call it. It's really just the OCD bookkeeper in me that demands that bands fit into neat little slots and folders on my computer.

So what's the point of this post? Well besides giving myself a nice writing exercise, I decided to make a top 5 list of my favorite PV records and must listens, because people should know about this shit. It was pretty much pure hate and angst put in audio form and it's fun as hell to listen to.

5. Charles Bronson - Youth Attack!


Let's kick things off with one of my all time favorites. Not a whole lot of politics or anger here, just straight up fun, and hilarious sample intros. Not much in the way of sludge or odd timing breakdowns here either, but what they lack in technicality they more than make up for in sheer fun. Sure the emoviolence kids would take their discography CD up to the northeast and lead to a whole lot of wimpy shit in the late nineties, but one could hardly pin that on CB. Youth Attack! is the obvious standout record as Bronson started off as a fairly bland straight up hardcore band and later morphed into one of the best powerviolence bands ever with this one single hilarious release.

4. Despise You - Westside Horizons


On the complete opposite end of the PV spectrum would be the so-unbearably-depressive-that-listening-to-their-albums-pretty-much-counts-as-a-suicide-attempt, Despise You and their compilation album Westside Horizons. Being the poser blasphemer that I am, I got into Despise You way too fucking late. I first started listening to PV last year and took up Despise just a few months ago, but that alone should let you know that these guys (and gal) were damned good at what they did to turn me around in such a short time. Through putting pure hate onto bloodstained vinyl, these guys perfected the sludgy breakdown and did a number of other songs that bounced back and forth between sludge and grindcore, two genres that are so impossibly different from each other it boggles the mind to think that Despise actually mixed the two. That alone makes Despised You one of the most interesting hardcore bands to listen to, period.

3. Lack of Interest - Take Another Step


Okay, so let's drop the technicality and the gimmicks. Let's do some straight up powerviolence that doesn't go all over the place. Either of Lack of Interest's albums (the other being Trapped Inside) fit the bill quite nicely, and the kicker? They're still doing shows, so if you happen to live in Cali check these guys out. But to the actual review, not a whole lot to report here. Like I said, it's straightforward powerviolence, but there are some stand out tracks like Glutton, Another Step, and Two Parts Put Together that really get my blood pumping.

2. Infest - No Man's Salve


And now to the granddaddy's of powerviolence. Being one of the originators of powerviolence in general, Infest have an extremely solid catalog, but the honeyhole of tracks would have to be No Man's Slave. Cold Inside, Sick Machine, and Punchline are three of my all time favorite tracks in all of hardcore and the rest of setlist is solid as a fucking rock too. To be fair, it's almost all fast-as-fuck hardcore with little sludge or metal influence to be found. It's like these guys just wanted to drop the fancy tricks from California hardcore, crank up the fuzz, and see how fast they could play, which is pretty much what hardcore bands were doing before they called it hardcore back in '79. But Infest made their name in 1990 by helping to remake hardcore which, for all intents and purposes, was dead at the time. You can't go wrong with some real innovators and Infest were just that.

1. No Comment - 87-93


I was just going to put No Comment's Downsided here for the top slot, but it's way too short to put in the top slot on good conscience. The whole thing (not counting the two minute long final song Curtains) clocks in at four and a half minutes. That's ten songs in under five minutes. That should pretty much tell you that these guys are going for broke and damn did it pay off. Hacked Into Chunks, Lament, and Soiled by Hate are some of the finest songs the genre has to offer, but the compilation has tons of other great songs. Farmer Hitler John and Modern Moses take a step down the artsy path but still retain their powerviolence sound and aggression. Many of the songs on the compilation execute the tale tale signs of PV flawlessly and Andrew Beattie's vocals bark out the lyrics with as much precision as the music will allow. Not to mention, the live tracks also included in the album which are of pretty decent quality. No Comment will, no doubt, keep popping up in your most played section if you are a true fan of powerviolence.