When hardcore punk rock exploded in the early 1980s with short, loud, fast outbursts of often anti-melodic fury, it appealed to outcasts and middle-class misfits who thought corporate music sucked.
The aural assaults extended a sonic middle finger at disco, new wave, prog rock, classic rock, and keyboard-oriented pop. Adrenaline-addled kids wearing heavy boots stomped around chaotic mosh pits throwing elbows, diving off stages and slamming into each other with abandon. The DIY ethos inspired bands to start their own record labels and book all-ages shows at offbeat venues like union halls and private homes. Devotees published fanzines. By the mid 1980s, pioneers Minor Threat, Bad Brains, Circle Jerks, Dead Kennedys, and Black Flag broke up and hardcore seemed to flash across the sky like a comet and flame out.
Yet over the years, hardcore continued to smolder, fueled in part by despair and ennui in once-prosperous industrial towns like Newburgh, Kingston and Poughkeepsie experiencing hard times. It influenced 1990s grunge rock and old-line groups Bad Religion, Agnostic Front and Social Distortion, who continue to tour. Local punks still churn out inventive riffs and chord patterns filled with angst and aggression. Though some local bands include members in their 50s, new blood is invigorating the hardcore scene and keeping the rebellious spirit of guitar-driven rock and roll alive.
Mike Dietz, 35, who plays bass in Poughkeepsie band RBNX, discovered hardcore through skateboarding. “The radio stuff never did it for me,” he says. “No 12 year-old wants to listen to Hall and Oates. I wanted the angry stuff, especially as a pissed-off kid. It’s still my therapy.”
Outsider is Back
Since 2000, Holly Berchielli has chronicled the local hardcore scene in her zine Outsider, named for a Ramones song and usually issued twice a year. She features bands, photographers, avant-garde visual artists, and cultural simpaticos like skaters, tattooists, and the roller derby in Hyde Park. Issue 34 arrived in June after a five-year hiatus, and she’s already working on the next one.
“At first, I intended to take a year-long break,” she said. Then, COVID derailed the live music scene. As hardcore shows came back and bands released the material they worked on during the pandemic, she decided to publish again.
A lifelong Newburgh resident, Berchielli started the publication when she was in high school. Poems and short stories filled the first issue. Then she started writing about her friends’ hardcore bands, expanded her focus to cover touring groups passing through the valley, and eventually attracted attention across the country and around the world. Hand-delivered circulation is 5,500, and she delays posting the current issue to her black-and-white website to give the print issue a head start.
“You have to track it down—it’s not as good unless it’s in your hands,” Berchielli says. “I like to smell the ink and feel the paper. You can make notes on it. Books and magazines are real, you can hold onto them, unlike web pages. When people tell me they’ve kept all the back issues, it’s such a compliment.”
Over the years, Berchielli has booked and promoted concerts, including the reunion of local rockers Trouble Bound, who headlined a show in July at The Chance in Poughkeepsie. In the past, she hosted bands at pizzerias, tattoo parlors, comic book shops, and a church in New Windsor. Then, she moved the party to the Wherehouse, a vegan restaurant and music venue in Newburgh and a black box theater designed for plays.
“I appreciate a well-crafted pop song, but never connected with boy bands or music that most other young girls liked,” said Berchielli, 39. Dad seasoned her young ears with the Ramones, Nirvana, and Green Day. Exposure to hardcore came by way of edgy friends and relatives. She got hooked after attending her first show at the Planetarium in Newburgh, alone at age 14. “My friends chickened out,” she says. “Feeling the energy at a hardcore show, you’re either all in or you want to run away. There’s no middle ground and I was all in.”
Hardcore Hangs On
Beyond the music, one thread tying things together and keeping the hardcore scene alive is the camaraderie and the comfort of grooving with other nonconformists. Hardcore fans are akin to Grateful Deadheads, but with shorter songs and a different wardrobe.
Poughkeepsie-based photographer Dave “Face” Boccio, 46, has snapped bands since 1992. “My upbringing was rough and I had a lot of anger,” he says. “When I went to my first show, I saw people who came from the same background and they became my real family.”
Another reason for hardcore’s staying power: it plays well with other styles, including surf, ska, reggae, rockabilly, heavy metal, and even funk.
“There are so many subgenres and combinations now—deathcore, metalcore, grindcore, thrashcore—it’s hard to keep track, but a lot of bands that think they’re something else are really hardcore,” says Stephen Keeler, longtime owner of Rock Fantasy record shop in Middletown.
As long as the act works, hardcore accepts a diverse range of influences. John Roy, lead singer of O-RAMA!, comprised of SUNY New Paltz students, also plays trombone, an instrument associated more with marching band than hardcore punk. RBNX guitarist Kyle Behnken earned a degree in classical music performance on upright bass, an influence that reflects in his intricate solos.
Despite the high-level musicianship and inclusiveness, hardcore still retains its menace. “I didn’t pursue college,” says Johnny No-Keys, 42, of Trouble Bound, which recently regrouped after idling for 10 years. “I worked blue-collar jobs and sometimes, you’re treated bad by bosses and different people. I’d get angry quick and kept swallowing stuff until it built up inside and I got to release some frustration writing songs and filling in the rest on guitar.”
Opening for alt metal band Life of Agony and New York City-based hardcore veterans Sick of it All at The Chance in August, RBNX’s final song mixed blistering riffs with grungecore and reggae sludge. When Sick of it All hit their first power chord, the area in front of the stage erupted as if jolted by an electric shock, sending fists, elbows and feet a-flying. Unfazed as moshers whirled about, one woman next to the stage sang along with every single word.
In one way, the scene has changed. Thanks to the threat of lawsuits, stage-diving is now forbidden at larger venues. Midway through the set, an older fan wearing a white t-shirt with the band’s logo jumped onstage to scream a few lyrics into an open microphone. After he leapt back into the crowd, one of the two bouncers on hand warned him that next time, he’d be thrown out. A stern sign is taped on the wall next to the stage door.
“Liability, man,” says the bouncer after the show. “Someone breaks their neck, that’s a million dollars right there.” It’s a lot less punk when the lawyers get involved.
The Scene Endures
After experiencing lulls and waves over the years, the Hudson Valley’s hardcore scene is back on the upswing, says the photographer Boccio. “Mindforce put us on the map, but it’s great to see lots of new, young bands emerging,” he says, referencing acts like Flowers for Burial, Leave it Behind, and Servant of Sorrow.
At least 400 people attended the August concert at the Chance, and shows are again happening at unlikely places, like Balmville Grange in Newburgh, Longview School in Brewster, a house dubbed New Paltz Radio Shack and Quinnz Pinz, a bowling alley in Middletown.
To Dietz, the scene is a backlash and an antidote to bland, digitized pop, rap, and dance music on the radio, just like in punk’s early years. “Most new guitar-driven music is hippies or metal,” he says. “Right now, kids are getting into hardcore as an alternative to the mainstream stuff.”
And there’s “no shortage” of bands in the valley, says Berchielli. “The die-hard bands just kept going, it didn’t matter if only their friends and other band members showed up. It’s not about fame or money, they do it because they have to.”
