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Chicago hardcore is the hardcore punk scene of Chicago and its surrounding area. Beginning in the 1980s with post-hardcore bands Naked Raygun, Big Black and the Effigies. By the 1990s, the scene had developed two separate sizable scenes: a straight edge metalcore scene including Arma Angelus and Racetraitor; and a thrashcore scene based on the South Side, including Los Crudos and Charles Bronson. During this time Victory Records was founded in the city, which go on to be one of the most prominent record labels in hardcore, releasing albums by seminal metalcore bands Integrity, Hatebreed and All Out War, and then emo and pop-punk groups including Taking Back Sunday, Hawthorne Heights and A Day to Remember. Chicago hardcore experienced a mainstream crossover in the 2000s, when bands originating from the scene, including Rise Against, Fall Out Boy and the Lawrence Arms, received international success.

History

Origins (1980s)

Naked Raygun, Big Black and the Effigies were popular at the emerging of the hardcore scene. These acts have also been seen as important to the development of the post-hardcore genre,^[1] as well as for fusing the hardcore sound with influences from the late 1970s and early 1980s British post-punk scene ^[1]^[2]

During the 1980s, the majority of Chicago hardcore shows were held at Medusa's, at 3275 North Sheffield Avenue. Many of these events were organized by promoter Sean Duffy, who employed physically abusive security and inflated prices. At a Duffy organised event headlined by a number of Revelation Records in the Summer of 1989, the bands were paid insufficiently. After word spread of this, many touring bands refrained from playing the city. In reaction, Ben Weasel started booking shows at Durty Nelly's in Palatine which instead became the centre of the local scene. By the end of the decade, touring bands began playing the area again, instead playing Mcgregor's in Elmhurst.^[3]

Developments (1990s)

Straight edge metalcore

Andy Hurley, drummer for Chicago metalcore bands Arma Angelus and Racetraitor

In 1989, Tony Brummel opened the venue Club Blitz at 417 North Cass Avenue in Westmont. At the time, Brummel was the vocalist of Chicago's first straight edge band Only the Strong, who quickly became prominent figures in the scene and his venue became of the main locations for local bands. Only the Strong soon morphed into Even Score, and Brummel founded Victory Records.^[4] The number of straight edge bands increased significantly by the early 1990s. These bands originally played fast punk-leaning hardcore, however in the following years, this scene became increasingly influenced by Integrity from Cleveland, leading to the embrace of slower tempos and influence from heavy metal by bands including Even Score and Bloodthirst. Perceiving the Brummel and Victory Records scene as unwelcoming, a younger group of bands dissociated themselves from them, however continued playing their metal-influenced style, forming bands including Icepick, Restraint, Corner Stone and Silence.^[5]

By the mid-1990s, Chicago's hardcore scene had waned. The band's most popular band at the time was Everlast, who would often only play to twenty people, and there would sometimes be six months between shows in general. Because of this, Jim Grimes, vocalist for Extinction, and Carey Housen began booking.^[6] By the end of the decade, bands including Arma Angelus, Racetraitor, the Killing Tree and Extinction were fronting this scene and touring nationally,^[7]^[8]

Thrashcore

Running parallel to the straight edge scene, but totally disconnected was bands on the South Side of Chicago including Los Crudos, Charles Bronson, Mob Action and Insult to Injury, who continued the faster, punk-leaning style of hardcore.^[9] One of the few crossovers between this scene and the straight edge metalcore scene was MK-Ultra, who were a prominent metalcore band in their own right and included multiple members of Silence. By mid-1990s, they had seen Los Crudos live, which led them to view the politics of the straight edge scene as shallow. Subsequently, MK-Ultra embraced the influence of the bands from the South Side and begun to play fast, punk-leaning hardcore.^[10]

Mainstream crossover and decline (early 2000s)

Chicago melodic hardcore band Rise Against achieved mainstream success in the 2000s

Rise Against was founded, under the name Transistor Revolt, by former members of Arma Angelus, Yellow Road Priest, Baxter and 88 Fingers Louie, pursuing a more melodic take on hardcore.^[11] Fall Out Boy was formed in 2001 by members of Chicago hardcore groups such as Arma Angelus, Racetraitor, Extinction, and Yellow Road Priest wishing to pursue a more pop-centric and radio friendly sound. Around this same time, former Racetraitor and Killtheslavemaster and future-Fall Out Boy drummer Andy Hurley, along with members of 7 Angels 7 Plagues and Vegan Reich, formed Project Rocket, a similar departure into more accessible music.^[7]

Underground revival (late 2000s–present)

In recent years, the scene has had a wave of heavy, down-tuned hardcore bands come into the national and international spotlight. Harm's Way, No Zodiac, and Weekend Nachos hail from Chicago. Harm's Way is signed to Deathwish Inc.,^[12] and has toured with Backtrack, Expire, and Suburban Scum.^[13] Weekend Nachos, with their powerviolence sound, has been signed to Relapse Records.^[14]

References

^ ^a ^b The Effigies at AllMusic
^ Naked Raygun at AllMusic
^ No Delusions - A Chicago Hardcore Documentary (Documentary). blougaville. Event occurs at 5m20s; 8m40s. Retrieved 2024-06-04. Pat Kelley: In the 1980s, I know Sean Duffy from Last Rites, he put together a lot a lot a lot of the big shows.
Jeff Jelen: That was when Jam Security started working a lot of the shows, the Medusa shows, a lot of those were Jam productions. Anyone gets out of control dancing, they're okay to just start grabbing kids and beating them up and throwing them out.
Clint Billington: There was a flight of stairs you had to walk up to get into the club, and as I'm walking in, a bouncer's literally throwing a kid down the stairs.
Martin Sorrondeguy: Sean Duffy was the guy booking all the shows, and I just got fed up of all the prices getting kind of high for shows...
Jim Grimes: At that time, the promoters were still thinking of it as like "I'm rock and roll. I'm making money. I'm doing this." It wasn't a community thing it was like "show up to my show, I'm taking your money, get out when you're done." The Revelation [Records] bands would not play here anymore because they were ripped off that summer.
Brian Quarles: It spread like wildfire, they were like "don't play Chicago, you'll get ripped off."
Pat Kelley: We wanted a place where local bands could play and it wasn't the hierarchy of who was friends with the promoter to do the shows, we wanted more openess...
Martin Sorrondeguy: Ben Weasel started booking all the shows at Dirty Nelly's and that was the new scene.
Erik Funk: Then after Durty Nelly's, there was Mcgregor's, you'd go see Slapshot there, you'd go see Green Day there.
^ No Delusions - A Chicago Hardcore Documentary (Documentary). blougaville. Event occurs at 11:10. Retrieved 2024-06-04. I definitely think Only the Strong was kinda a breakout point for Chicago, it felt like we had a band that kinda rivaled some of the stuff that was happening in New York. They instantly became Chicago's answer to straight edge, they were the straight edge band, they were the only band doing it. They used the name Only the Strong for a while, after that dissolved they started Even Score... Tony [Brummel] was a hardcore singer, you know, he was micing up the crowd and he was stage diving. He was the catalyst that made stuff kinda happen. You know, starting his house and Club Blitz and doing shows there and that became the real focal point, we have our own club... Club Blitz was basically Tony's house in the western suburbs of Chicago. There wasn't really a network of small time promoters that would do smaller shows so he was one of the first that did that. He made quite a name for himself just doing that, it's where he started his record label Victory Records
^ No Delusions - A Chicago Hardcore Documentary (Documentary). blougaville. Event occurs at 16m20. Retrieved 2024-06-04. All of us, every single band who were used to playing fast, punk rock hardcore like cut those time signatures in half and everyone went slow. We definitely had more the metal influence starting to coming and a lot of kids worshipped the ground that Integrity walked on. That band in general really changed the way a lot of people saw the sound of hardcore... Now, Bloodthirst ripped them off to a T... by probably '91 it had already grown so much, there were already so many hardcore and straight edge kids all of a sudden that they had already started, sort of, eating their own. When I [Neeraj Kane] first started going to shows I felt like people in the scene were very Aryan, not really accepting of new people coming in, it was really cliquey. Just a lot of petty gossip I feel like in the straight edge scene especially. A lot of people filtered of those cliques and those people stayed bandied together to all become friends with each other. All the kids that were my [Chris Gutierrez] age started bands, that were of course looked down upon by Tony and his crew, but we wanted our own thing... A lot of those bands from that time [like Icepick], you play a couple shows and that was it or maybe you had a demo... Couple of the guys from Weedeater went and started Silence, they took what they were doing in Weedeater and made it a little more heavier, kind of what hardcore was turning into... Silence would play, there was another and I remember from that sort of moment was Restraint... My [Neeraj Kane] first band was called Cornerstone. It was generic straight edge friendship.
^ No Delusions - A Chicago Hardcore Documentary (Documentary). blougaville. Event occurs at 22m17s. Retrieved 2024-06-04. Everlast would be sort of the flagship band at that point for the Chicago straight edge scene. You would find about twenty people at an Everlast show and that was the Chicago straight edge scene and that was it, that would be considered a good show... There was a huge low where there was nothing going on here. We travelled to go see shows because there was a drought in Chicago. I would literally have a four, five, six month stretch with nothing... That's where Jim [Grimes] picked up the torch and started doing his own shows. I mean he was responsible with booking a lot of the shows that weren't involved with Victory and big promoters, you know. Carey Housen helped us a lot with that as well.
^ ^a ^b Welch, Ben. Fall Out Boy - Our Lawyer Made Us Change The Name of This Book So We Wouldn't Get Sued.
^ Westerhouse, Andrew (30 April 2003). "Review: The Killing Tree "The Romance of Helen Trent" CD". Aversion Online. Retrieved 6 May 2018.
^ No Delusions - A Chicago Hardcore Documentary (Documentary). blougaville. Event occurs at 27m20s. Retrieved 2024-06-04. A lot of the bands on the south side, I [Bill Smiles] was friends with lots of them, it was a little bit scarier, it was a little bit more real. Los Crudos was around, and Mob Action and Critical Beatdown, who later became Insult to Injury. The scenes were really separate. It seemed ridiculous to me that someone twenty miles away from someone else wouldn't know what the entire scene was, it would be completely different scene there. We had subscenes, in Chicago, you had like this Charles Bronson, Los Crudos scene, you had the vegan straight edge or hardcore scene and they never came together.
^ No Delusions - A Chicago Hardcore Documentary (Documentary). blougaville. Event occurs at 32m. Retrieved 2024-06-04. Frank Hanney: Martin and Los Crudos were like a key that opened up a whole new world for me.
Kirk Syrek: All of these things that I thought I was really into, like, doesn't even matter that much, because this band [Los Crudos] is the real thing.
Jeff Jelen: The whole silence thing, and the whole early MK-Ultra thing, I just think that it wasn't being our true selves.
Frank Hanney: There was absolutely no substance to any of this bull shit, and I was like "We don't want to be a part of any of that anymore" and it just become more about, they play slow, so we're gonna play fast, as fast as we can.
^ Loftus, Johnny. "Rise Against Biography by Johnny Loftus". AllMusic. Retrieved 7 April 2020.
^ "Active Artists". Deathwish, Inc. Archived from the original on 2 May 2015. Retrieved 4 May 2015.
^ "Backtrack, Harms Way, Expire, etc. tour announced". Lambgoat. Lambgoat, LLC. Retrieved 4 May 2015.
^ "Weekend Nachos - Relapse Records: Death Metal, Grindcore, Extreme Metal CDs, DVDs, Vinyl, T-Shirts, Hoodies and merchandise". Relapse Records. Retrieved 4 May 2015.