This week I’ve had straight edge hardcore on my brain. Last week I picked up a small collection that included most of the early Revelation 7”s, and rather than taking them right to the store to be priced, I brought them home to give them a spin. (Related note: if anyone needs a 2nd press black vinyl Warzone 7” and wants to trade me something more in my wheelhouse, hit me up.) I’m sure I’ve mentioned it in the newsletter many times, but like a lot of folks out there, the straight edge scene was my introduction to DIY hardcore. I started going to gigs in 1995, just as the youth crew revival hit. All the East Coast youth crew revival bands of the time played Virginia, and I definitely got swept up in the energy. My relationship to that stuff is pretty ambivalent now… once I started digging more into early 80s hardcore I found a lot of stuff that was more to my taste musically, and once I discovered the more political / punkier corners of the hardcore scene I felt more at home socially too. I still have some fondness for straight edge hardcore, though, the same way you might have a fondness for the local pizza joint in the town you grew up in. It may not be the best thing ever, but it’s part of who I am, and revisiting it brings me back to a more innocent time.
I’m tempted to go through these records and give my thoughts on each of them, but I have a slightly different direction in mind for this week’s staff pick. Still, I’ll share a few thoughts. First, for a label that is (justly) renowned for its strong branding, Rev’s early releases are kind of a mess from a production standpoint… certainly it’s part of their charm, but those early 7”s are not slick AT ALL (at least in their original pressings). The design and layout work is super rough around the edges, the print quality is pretty poor (low quality paper, off-center prints, misaligned cuts, etc.), and the actual sound of the records was pretty bad too. I don’t hate the songs on the Warzone 7”, but the recording and/or pressing makes it almost unlistenable. While not on Rev proper, there was a first press Judge 7” on Schism in the collection, and that looked and sounded pretty dodgy too. There wasn’t a Together comp in the collection, but we’ve had those come through the shop before, and I remember some serious fidelity issues on that too. Rev stepped things up for the Sick of It All 7”, which sounds considerably better and also looks good with a spot color pocket sleeve and cool photography. Sadly, though, the first SOIA 7” has never done it for me musically. As for the Gorilla Biscuits 7”, it still feels pretty magical to me. Returning to it with a lot more hardcore listening under my belt, I’m struck by how much Victim in Pain I hear in the band’s sound, but even at this early stage Gorilla Biscuits was overflowing with their unique charisma. Side by Side is the real gem of the early Rev catalog I think… the lyrics are undeniably corny, but the band is fucking blistering.
I’d been listening to and thinking about these 7”s, and then earlier today I was driving around town listening to the latest episode of the 185 Miles South podcast, where Zack talked about going to see the Earth Crisis / Judge / Integrity tour last month. It seemed like he enjoyed the show, but he mentioned the bands seemed like shadows of their former selves. He also mentioned that Porcell gave a long speech about straight edge before playing “Straight Edge Revenge” by Project X, which prompted Zack to pose the question (I’m paraphrasing here, so apologies if I’m not 100% accurate), “is it OK these bands are hypocrites?” I thought that was a really interesting question. My take (that no one asked for) is that, from my perspective, these Gorilla Biscuits / Judge / Youth of Today / etc. reunion shows that seem to happen pretty much every weekend these days have seemed, for many years now, like hollow, low-effort cash-ins. Aside from seeing Youth of Today play a set at Chaos in Tejas, I haven’t actually gone to see any of these bands play, and I’m sure it’s fun, but I feel like I’m always hearing stories about cobbled-together lineups, sloppy playing, and other half-assery. (I bet no one forgets to print the merch, though!) Clearly none of these bands have any interest in writing new material or being any kind of living creative entity… it’s like an ultra-niche version of the old nostalgia circuit shows where they’d bring out a parade of one-hit wonders to deliver a shaky version of their hit song to a half-interested audience. Dark shit. That these bands, as part of creating this simulacrum, proselytize straight edge from the stage when they (or at least most of them) clearly don’t give a fuck about it is, to me, just another symptom of the hollowness of the entire enterprise.
(I want to make it clear, by the way, that I have the utmost respect for Revelation as a label. They are a huge and important part of today’s hardcore scene. They directly support Sorry State in ways I am eternally grateful for, and they do the same for many other labels and bands. If some of their generosity is funded by selling colored vinyl on behalf of some old sellouts, that’s a tradeoff I’m perfectly comfortable with.)
Now that I’ve introduced the topic of corny and false straight edge, it’s time to get to my staff pick for this week… the corniest and falsest straight edge record of them all:
No For an Answer: You Laugh E.P. 7” (Revelation, 1988)
Where do I even start with this one? When you look at You Laugh in the context of Revelation’s discography, it feels like a total misstep. As I noted above, I think Rev got off to a rocky start, but the Gorilla Biscuits and Side by Side 7”s (Rev 4 and 5) are cornerstones of Revelation’s identity. And then when the label moved to putting out LPs—The Way It Is comp, Youth of Today’s Break Down the Walls, Bold’s Speak Out (Rev 7, 8, and 9)—they were firing on all cylinders, leveling up considerably in their design, production, and presentation. They had more or less perfected the Rev aesthetic by the time they put out the Gorilla Biscuits and Judge LPs (Rev 12 and 15), arguably the two best-known and most universally loved records on the label. But then sitting in the middle of that run is Rev 6, this fuckin’ stinker.
Now, I can’t say I hate this No For an Answer record. It has its charms. The layout is pretty classic, and the stickers of cool early 80s punk bands on the guitar on the cover pique my interest. The drumming is sloppy as fuck, but in kind of a cool way… it sounds like the drummer is playing as fast as he can, and even though he’s barely hanging onto that fast beat, he still works in some rhythmic accents that increase the intensity. The band sounds upbeat and alive. The guitarist doesn’t have much in the way of cool riffage, but the way he buzzsaws through the fast parts definitely helps keep the energy level high. The songs are dead simple, but they’re performed with passion and intensity, as hardcore should be.
The lyrics, though… oof. “Without Reason,” a song against drunk driving, has a flatness and lack of detail that reminds me of those pamphlets religious nuts hand out on the street. The EP’s title track is a tirade against casual sex, and it’s similarly one-dimensional, accusatory, and self-righteous. “Just Say No” has always been the most offensive to me, though. It’s crazy that in 1998, when Reagan was still in office, a band would take Nancy Reagan’s anti-drug slogan and appropriate it as a gang chorus. It’s like if a straight edge band today implored us, deadly earnest and with their crew backing them up, to “make America great again.” And there’s also “About Face,” which is an anti-sellout song. Here’s the first verse:
Where once stood convictions in things you would say,
There now stand restrictions your mind sold away.
You once were a symbol of true strength and heart,
But now you’re a warning of where the sickness starts.
You stood there and preached independence and faith,
You talked of commitment then made an about face.
I mean, obviously this is just gobbledygook (“restrictions your mind sold away?”), but it’s also absurd to me that someone who—judging by the lack of detail and nuance in the lyrics—has almost no life experience is calling out someone else for the choices they’ve made. Straight edge has always been judgmental as fuck (one of the biggest bands is literally called Judge!), with countless songs about sellouts and backstabbers, which invites a certain amount of schadenfreude when the self-righteous narrator inevitably cannot live up to their own standards. There’s also this ubiquitous language of oaths and commitment—being “true ’til death”—which is always going to ring hollow when that shit (again, inevitably) falls to the wayside. If you’re over 40 and straight edge—hell, over 30!—then respect. If you’re less than 5 years out from living with your parents, I don’t want to hear about your oaths and commitments. Even if you get them tattooed on you, like the singer for No For an Answer, who devotes one side of the record’s insert to showing off that he has “POISON FREE” tattooed in giant black block letters on his forearm. Take a wild guess whether he’s straight edge today.
I don’t mean to pick on No For an Answer or their singer… they were just kids, and more people love their record than will ever love anything I’ve played on. Also, in reading more about their singer’s story as I’ve been writing this, I learned he grew up with addict parents and that his aversion to substance abuse came from a very real place. I guess I’m just reflecting on those feelings of insincerity and hollowness Zack mentioned on the podcast. Those are things I’ve always felt were part of the ambient energy of straight edge hardcore, basically baked into the genre in all its youth crew-derived incarnations. NFAA’s lyrics are an egregious example, but they’re hardly atypical. That doesn’t mean the music isn’t good, and it doesn’t mean people shouldn’t enjoy it. There are far worse ways you could spend your time and money. But if you’re looking for these bands to feel as meaningful as they did 35 years ago, you’re begging for disappointment.
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