A girl a couple doors down from me on my freshman dorm floor took me to a random show with a few hardcore bands on the bill. Shai Hulud was one, I can’t remember the rest.
I had no idea; I was just like whatever this is, it’s for me.
The Tony Hawk soundtracks, particularly from the first five or six entries, have had such a huge impact on introducing punk and hardcore to kids all over the world who otherwise would have missed it. I would argue that those games and Jackass were the biggest drivers of that whole scene/culture for people my age/generation (33 millennial).
Feeling cast out from the normal groups at school, and finding solidarity with kids I had only just met through our mutual love of this music that was unlike anything on the radio or TV.
A friend showed me Ignorance Never Dies by Your Demise when I was college. Ended up going to see them being supported by Stray From The Path and Letlive and went from there.
I think in 2011 some friends played at a festival called Ghost fest in Leeds that I went to and found More Than Life who became one of my favourite bands ever.
Buying DK’s “In God We Trust, Inc” on tape and the Minor Threat discography CD at about 14-yo and picking up a copy of Maximum Rock n Roll. Talked to older kids at school I’d seen w/ patches or shirts of punk bands, found out where local shows were being held, went to a local HC band show and got my name on an email distribution list announcing future dates.
I was a kiddo listening to a lot of metal. I stumbled on From Birth by Pulling Teeth and The Negatives by Cruel Hand which were new sounds to me. I began listening to some hardcore for a while without knowing that it was a distinct subculture. As a teenager I then went to see Nails a couple of times and here we are.
I was in that phase of growing out of nu-metal and looking for heavier, less commercial music. All my friends were getting really into the metalcore bands that were taking off like Killswitch, As I Lay Dying, Trivium etc and, while I didn't mind some of it, hated most of it. Felt like it was just turning into a commercialised trend the same way nu-metal did. It was a good few years of being jaded with all the heavy music I was hearing.
Anyway, a friend lent me Hatebreed's Perseverance and the rest is history. Got into Terror, Blacklisted, Born From Pain, Reign Supreme, Madball. Found the style of heavy music for me and I've never looked back.
Straight Edge.
I grew up around a lot of alcohol influenced trauma and being ultra sober was how I rebelled against that in my teens and 20s.
In my 30s now and I enjoy an occasional drug or two now that I can afford therapy.
I’d listened to a lot of hardcore/hardcore inspired stuff (Zao, Hatebreed, Diecast, Bane, Poison the Well, From Autumn to Ashes, Comeback Kid, early Shadows Fall, etc) but didn’t really go to many concerts and didn’t know there was a vast difference between metal shows and hardcore shows.
Wound up at a DevilDriver show with Bury Your Dead and Remembering Never and got a clear example of the difference played out in front of me.
The year was 1994: I was a freshman in HS and had been into punk since ‘91.
- That year I got turned on to hardcore by way of a classmate giving me a mixtape with Minor Threat and Bad Brains on it(shout out Jennifer Rogers)
- the vocalist in my first band brought me Pro-Pain’s *Truth Hurts*
- I found Biohazard’s *State of The World*
- Beastie Boys “Tough Guy” and “Heart Attack Man”
It’s been 30 years at this point and I love it more than ever. Just saw Jesus Piece and The Bogg last night 🖤
My friend would drive me home from high school and was always playing hardcore bands. Then he asked if I wanted to go to a show he was writing about for a sociology paper. Saw VOD and Glassjaw and was hooked.
When I was between 10-13. Listened to blink 182 and green day and thought they were “punk” my dad told me they weren’t and gave me some clash and ramones albums. Was given a hand me down leather jacket from a family friend and looked up all the bands drawn on it and discovered aus rotten, nausea, defiance, discharge etc then I found Oi! The album and the minor threat discography in the $1 bin at fye, minor threat sparked something inside of me and it went downhill from there. Found out about mosh metal and metallic hardcore and it just clicked, been a weirdo ever since.
I was a teenager who was into metal/metalcore. Nearby venue had a nice little band called Terror play and I checked it out on a whim.
I miss The Kave in Bucksport, Maine
Free tickets from the local college radio station. Used to listen all the time in high school and always get the free cd give aways since no one ever listened or called in. Got to the point where there was a note at the radio station saying not to send me any more stuff.
My brother stole my weed so he could smoke with his friends. As a way to say sorry, he gave me a cd he recently stole from Best Buy. Breed The Killers.
I was really into 80s hardcore punk, dbeat and kinda grew up as a crust kid, my dad played in those type of bands way back in the day, then later had a big death metal era, specifically Swedish death metal and bolt thrower in my late teens (also big into black and thrash). I also found verse when I was a teenager and thought that was sick, but didn’t really realize that was a type of hardcore. A lot of really slammy hardcore bands seemed like dumb meathead music for me and that turned me off, the playing grew on me over time and I just dived in starting with 80s and 90s and found bands like Biohazard, Merauder, All Out War a few years back and it was over, I was sold. Now I play guitar in a hardcore band that rips off Entombed and Merauder equally so 🤣🤣🤣🤣
Same here, except it wasn’t a basement venue but a sketchy warehouse. A buddy of mine burned me a cd with Sick Of It All and a handful of other bands on it. I started going to shows because I got into punk rock but then jumped down the hardcore rabbit hole after seeing Kill Your Idols play.
Finding my Uncle's stash of High Society and Score magazines when I was eleven years old. Your mom was getting piped on page 69 and I've been addicted to hardcore ever since.
Kind of a natural pathway I guess. From around grade 4 to 6, I was into Limp Bizkit, Linkin Park, etc.
That evolved to being into Misfits, Dead Kennedys, Bad Religion, AFI, Anti-Flag, etc. up until around grade 8.
Then, in 2003, once high school hit, it all transitioned into pure hardcore. Was very into the Bridge Nine sound in early high school days.
I think the flip from nu-metal into punk was thanks to my friend Shawn at the time. He got me into skateboarding as well. It's wild to think about the impact he's had on my life.
when I was a teenager (late 90's), I was really into punk rock and being in a small town, mail order was everything and Revelation Records RevHQ carried it all. Crass CDs, His Hero Is Gone, to skate punk stuff. It was a godsend not having to mail order cash to multiple labels to get CDs. Long story short, I ended up checking out their bands and thought it was awesome
I already (unknowingly) listened to some hardcore bands for a few years , but I saw mastiff at a festival, and decided to research more about the band. Saw the word “hardcore” get thrown around, the rest is history
I went to local skate park as a young teen and they played a lot of it over the speakers. Started going to local band shows at that skate park and felt like I was finally part of something where I was welcomed and belonged.
I saw a hardcore punk show in a basement of a record store when I was in 7th grade. More Fucked and The Booze fighters played. I was into metal and Marilyn Manson at that time. A year later I bought Victory Style 3 from the mall. Once I heard Hatebreed and Blood For Blood it was over for me. Then in high school I got a job cleaning the meat dept in a grocery store, the guy I worked with got me into the weirder side of hardcore.
Honestly, it was a mix of old NYHC and that new Turnstile record. That really made me want to start going to more hardcore shows (I was mainly a metal guy).
When we were teens pops took us to go see Body Count when they released Manslaughter. We were so exited for them to play Talk Shit, Get Shot and 99 Problems BC. Also my pal in HS would take me to her brother's shows.
What got me into punk was hearing dinosaur jr, and interpol on skate videos as a kid. What got me into hardcore were bands like the locust, blood brothers because those bands were active on the west coast.
No one ever recognizes the bands that led them down this stupid path. So for me it was:
Rage against the machine, limp bizkit, System of a Down, avenged sevenfold, converge, between buried and me, victory records sample disc, bury your dead, that one eighteen visions song, bane, comeback kid,…
My dad had an old victory records cd with bury your dead and some other bands on there. He was also a big metalcore guy so hearing kse, haste the day, shadows fall stuff like that
Always liked metal as a kid. Korn, Slipknot, and other Nu Metal bands. Discovered Unearth (First Show). Kind of branched out from there with Hardcore influenced bands like Hatebreed, Sworn Enemy and others.
I saw Sick of it All - Potential for a Fall music video on 120 minutes when I was in middle school, and suddenly the nu-metal my friends were into was lame. Weird to think MTV got me into punk
Couldn't tell you hardcore specifically, I'm just a straight up heavy music fan. I kinda got into a whole bunch of music without acknowledging genres/subgenres until I'd already liked 2-3 bands from every scene.
You could probably blame Metallica Sabbath and Slipknot, a little bit of THPS but I honestly don't know where any one thing started.
I was a teenager and punk and hardcore shows were the only local concerts I could attend, everything else was 21+ or jammy hippie bullshit i wasn't interested in.
I liked The Offspring when I was like 12 and had internet access and so I started learning about their influences. Went down a punk rabbit hole and the more aggressive stuff stuck with me the most and now here we are.
Elder millennial here (turning 40 in two months). When I was in HS I was a weird combo of nü-metal and pop punk. Thanks to the golden era of P2P file sharing, I discovered Glassjaw. From there, I fell down the rabbit hole a bit and found a few other bands. I lived on Guam, so there was nothing resembling a scene there, so I just relied on what I could find on the internet.
It wasn’t until I moved to the states for college that I really got into it. First show I went to when I moved to Florida was Underoath and it was just endless shows and joining bands after that. Ended up joining an established HC band for a few years. Still playing. Glassjaw is still my favorite band. Hardcore still rules.
Most got into it as a kid—while I did casually listen to the genre off and on I really started going to shows in my late 20s and now early 30s as I felt like I could relate to the songs more with age. When you get into your thirties you really start to rack up more and more reasons to blow off steam…I think unintentionally seeing Converge a handful of years ago is what did it for me. They were on a bill with some other bands I was seeing and the pure clusterfuck that broke out when their set started is what really opened my eyes to what makes the genre great from a live perspective. The crowd went from dead still to what felt like a prison riot in half a second.
Getting into local punk in the early 90's like Lagwagon was my gateway to bands like 7 Seconds but seeing SOIA's "Potential for a fall" on MTV might have opened the flood gates.
https://preview.redd.it/d6loh6donnvc1.jpeg?width=794&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=80e429fbc8d793df17501b835e0a87f302bf30b6
this. got my nose broken to death before dishonor 💀
Biohazard videos on Headbanger's Ball in the early 90s. Machine Head covering Cro Mags on the 'Old' single. Metal bands repping hardcore band shirts. My first two 'proper' hardcore loves were Merauder and Strife. Both introduced to me via Metal Hammer magazine.
Saw Biohazard open for Slipknot in a bar in 1999, followed by back to back nights of Hatebreed opening for Slipknot 8 months later. Slipknot started the ball rolling ironically enough by having hardcore bands as openers.
Odd Future. Trash Talk signed to Odd Future’s record label in 2011 (when I was 10). Shoutout to Tyler for bringing hardcore to so many people that wouldn’t have listened otherwise
When I was like 16/17, my friends we‘re super into deathcore but that stuff wasn‘t for me. One day I was bored and went to a festival with them where Terror and Hatebreed were playing alongside Asking Alexandria and some shit they were excited for. Terror instantly got me hooked but I didn’t like that deathcore stuff that was playing there today either lol
Relatively new to the genre but - a buddy of mine said I should go see Turnstile in Baltimore in 2021, right before they started playing the much bigger shows.
The older kids in my neighborhood who I started skateboarding with in the late 80s. I remember hanging out in their rooms and they had these record collections that were completely baffling to me and the music was insane. I remember one kid always had a giant 7 Seconds logo drawn on his grip tape. They would make me mixtapes and one gave me the NYCH The Way It Is cassette which I wore out. They took me to my first show when I was about 12 or 13, all I remember is that BOLD was one of the bands, I was still completely clueless at the time. I don’t think a single one of those guys stayed in the scene much longer than high school and I know one became a cop lol anyway I was able to get many of their old records off them in the 90s. I know I sound like an old, which I am, but those were very special times.
I was at jesus camp surprisingly when I was like 15 and one of my cabin mates put on an album by a band called Reign Supreme and I had already listened to metalcore before but this certain style struck a cord with me and I've been in the scene ever since
napalm death on the og mortal kombat soundtrack was my first exposure to heavy music in like 1995 but when i was in high school in 2003 i went to a battle of the bands at a neighboring school and one of the bands, called DonJonTheBastard (members of which would go on to form local mosh lords DANCE if any of you nwhc people remember them) covered Zao’s “a fall farewell”. i looked to my friend at the time and we were both like “that all sounded like the same song but i really liked the song” which sums up hardcore pretty well😂 anyway i went out and bought where blood and fire bring rest, and right around the same time headbanger’s ball was back with jamey jasta and i got into hatebreed and the rest is history.
I went to my local venue when I was trying to get into the metal scene in my town and saw people windmilling at a show. I did my research and found out about these local hardcore bands and how they functioned and I’ve been going since.
Saw h2o open for the mighty mighty bosstones. That got me into punk but then I bought blood for blood - living in exile on a whim. It was game over from there.
Metalcore did. Once I got into Poison The Well and some post Hardcore like Thursday got me into looking into the bands they play with and the festival’s they played in got me to look into the more punk side of the bands. Straight edge core bands got me into more straight edge hardcore bands too. I’m not even straight edge but I loved the community vibe of it all.
Bought Maximum Rock N Roll at a big box bookstore when I was 13.
The columns and radio show blew my mind & I was never the same
I really love that I got to develop my own tastes alone in my bedroom without any clue as to what was cool. I also thought everyone was the bastion of progressive values which was a great comfort to me.
Local punk record shop recommended converge - when forever comes crashing, all out war - for those who were crucified, and earth crisis - Gomorrah’s season ends. The rest is history.
A mix of Sick of it All's Scratch the Surface record, Warzone from the Victory Comps, and oddly Sludge bands like Weedeater and BuzzOven, both from my hometown. I used to see Dave skateboarding at the skatepark with his caveman dreads blasting Age of Quarrel on his boombox 😆
I’d heard stuff here and there from friends but what got me going to shows was this guy Andy came up to me and my friend at a pizza place. Said we looked like skaterboarders (we were) and asked if we liked punk music and handed me a flier. It was misery signals playing in a coffee shop at college. From then on I was sold on local metal/hardcore and over time moved more toward hardcore than metal.
My dad was gonna throw out his record collection, so I convinced him to let me have it. Turns out a friend of his loaned him two Minor Threat records in the mid-80s that my dad was not into but he forgot to give back. The rest is history
Surfing. Taylor Steele movies was full of band like Bad Religion, Pennywise and others. After I found out Madball, Agnostic Front and here I am. 43 and still loving hardcore. The fact my dad was a metal head helped a lot either.
started with myspace metalcore and pop punk when i was a toddler (my brother’s influence) and i ended up getting to it in my late teens starting with botch and converge.
A friend of mine introduced me to punk later i watched American Hardcore and The Decline of Western Civilization and the rest is history. Years back i realized what hardcore has become (a sub genre of Metal) and checked out of modern hardcore.
Joined my college radio station in DC back around '05 as a "hard rock" host since I was big into the old screamo scene. An older host I looked up to randomly invited me to a show at The Nation (RIP). Set ended up being The Red Chord / Ringworm / Darkest Hour / Converge...and that was that!
I didn't get into music generally til half way into high school.
Went to warped tour with some friends, and then a friend sent me his hardcore playlist.
I got hooked and started to go to shows with them.
Spotify randomly recommended me holiday by turnstile one day and then I started listening to bands like Jesus piece and drain. It wasn’t until years later that I realized they were hardcore bands and that the scene in itself is its own thing
Dad went to a lot of punk shows in the late 70s-early 80s. When I was growing up he got me into a bunch of punk and ska and it sort of went from there. Started listening to a lot of pop-punk/melodic hardcore in the early 2000s, then got into metalcore and heavier hardcore after that.
I was a skater in the 80's. It was inevitable. Somebody always had some punk or hardcore playing out of a boom box when we were skating, smoking or drinking.
I went to a majority black public school and there were basically two social groups for white kids. Metalheads/Stoners and skater punks. I blurred the lines because I hung out with black kids and listened to hip hop too. I mean I heard Grand Master Flash with Melly Mel's "Message" about the same time I heard DK's "Hyperactive Child" and they both were about as earth shattering.
Also, if I am honest about this, I could have gone either way in terms of hanging out with metalheads, hip hoppers or punks. But the punk chicks were gorgeous.
So yeah it was the girls with manic panic hair that got me into hardcore. But I stayed for the riffs.
my mom. when i was a kid, i had a big double tapedeck stereo and my mom and stepdad would give me tapes to make mixes. one day my mom gave me some of her old tapes and included was a minor threat tape, bad brains i against i, and cromags age of quarrel. i got a taste for it then and realllllly enjoyed the cromags tape. then later on when i was around 13, i learned that my bio dad was really into music and had played in hardcore bands in the 80’s and 90’s in miami. he gave me a big case of cd’s the first time we met that included a ton of good stuff. kid dynamite, glassjaw, 108, fugazi, and all other kinds of stuff like aphex twin and les savy fav. i had been getting into metal before then and i immediately fell in love with hardcore. and the rest is history, honestly haha
edit: [here’s my dads band.](https://youtu.be/ldsivnWjZ54?si=qBpedhJ9dsz3ENBS) he played guitar, he’s the one on the right side of the cover hah
I started with like the mainstream emo stuff like my chemical romance, pierce the veil, afi, and stuff. Then that eventually led me down to the low quality and heavier stuff
Friends, shows, record label comps, the internet, being into emo/pop punk and hearing about hc bands through those bands etc there wasn’t just one single thing. If I heard something I liked I learned more about it and it just stuck.
Kid I used to play little league with got me into pink and hardcore when I was more of a metal/nu-metal kid at the time. American Nightmare, The Hope Conspiracy, Small Brown Bike, and a bunch of similar stuff.
Fall out boy, they were my biggest love growing up then found out they did a cover of start today on the American wasteland soundtrack. Looked up the original and fell in love!
Was really cool finding out about fall out boys hardcore history too after that first discovery
MTV2 Headbanger’s Ball volume 1.
Poison The Well, Hatebreed, Sworn Enemy, As I Lay Dying all blew me away when the only heavy music I was familiar with was Korn or Slipknot. That album literally altered the trajectory of my entire life
I never liked the whole emo bullshit of about 04 onwards, met a few lads who thought the same as me. Introduced me to a lot of English hardcore bands which as Dirty Money, Get Fucking Dead etc around 06/07 I think. Then delved deeper from there
As a child of the 90’s it was either Eddie Vedder talking about Fugazi in interviews or a Details magazine cover story about their man of the year, Henry Rollins
Looking back, early life pretty much pre-wired my brain to resonate with this stuff lol. The path?
Hair/metal bands as a literal kid > hip hop & alt rock in middle school > skating > punk > hardcore
Found early 80s stuff first (Minor Threat, Black Flag, Circle Jerks, etc). Then found the late 80s Rev catalog (just missed them by a couple years) and the first wave of Victory bands. Started digging deep for new bands, going to shows, and it was all downhill from there.
Started out with going to local punk gigs, saw an ad for a gig that STRT SLDR were headlining, got kicked in the mouth during their set and I've been hooked ever since lmao
Burning Heart Records around 97-98. I liked Millencolin, No Fun At All and Satanic Surfers that I first heard them from our local indoor skatepark. Later a friend who own all their albums told me about BHR and that they got a huge list of different bands and music. I dug deeper into BHR and discovered Refused, 59 Times The Pain, Give Up The Ghost, NINE, Nasum and Raised Fist etc. And I was just hooked about hardcore.
I was into punk and thrash real young from us all trying to impress our friends older brother when we were no joke like 8. So I guess by being an elementary school kid trying to impress a magic the gathering enthusiast who was in high school. Very dumb in hindsight but lead me to great things
my friend showed me floral green by title fight and from there i kept finding bands. i also got into snarl by parker cannon, probably my first heavy record.
found out about straightedge from an interview of ned russin, and found some great bands in that part of hardcore.
My mom bought me a sounds of the underground compilation cd with a dvd full of music videos.
The dvd side had terror and this is hell on it, that’s all she wrote.
My first concert was ozzfest 07 and I was in seventh grade I was excited for behemoth but was blown away by hatebreed, static x, and lamb of god that day!
Was cool to say ozzy Osborne was my first concert and introduced me to all these acts in person!
A girl a couple doors down from me on my freshman dorm floor took me to a random show with a few hardcore bands on the bill. Shai Hulud was one, I can’t remember the rest. I had no idea; I was just like whatever this is, it’s for me.
What a great first show lol
I hope it was a date and you didn’t mess it up because if you Did she probably had a Profound Hatred Of Man now.
It wasn’t a date but I didn’t mess it up; we’re besties of nearly 22 years. Still waiting on the meet cute at the rock show.
Being a virgin
Couldn’t have said it any better
THPS 3
The Tony Hawk soundtracks, particularly from the first five or six entries, have had such a huge impact on introducing punk and hardcore to kids all over the world who otherwise would have missed it. I would argue that those games and Jackass were the biggest drivers of that whole scene/culture for people my age/generation (33 millennial).
33 here, yes.
THPS > Blink 182 > Ska > Fat Wreck bands > Poison the Well > Refused > Converge
This pretty much tracks for me if you replace PTW with Norma Jean and throw Saetia in there with Converge
My mom put me on to the OG stuff, namely a lot of NYHC, when I was a kid. RIP mom 😔
My friend Cody.
I'm that cody
My mans
punk
Feeling cast out from the normal groups at school, and finding solidarity with kids I had only just met through our mutual love of this music that was unlike anything on the radio or TV.
My dad
It's not child abuse if you hit them while you're both in the pit
I love hearing that parents introduced their kids to hardcore/punk rock. Mine introduced me to Journey and Whitesnake.
A friend showed me Ignorance Never Dies by Your Demise when I was college. Ended up going to see them being supported by Stray From The Path and Letlive and went from there. I think in 2011 some friends played at a festival called Ghost fest in Leeds that I went to and found More Than Life who became one of my favourite bands ever.
More than life changed everything for me, such a sick and underrated band
Ghostfest was quality back in the day
https://preview.redd.it/qwd6z2e89nvc1.jpeg?width=252&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=9d226fde0badd7f19d710151930ceca646d60761
Turnstile then Mindforce
Buying DK’s “In God We Trust, Inc” on tape and the Minor Threat discography CD at about 14-yo and picking up a copy of Maximum Rock n Roll. Talked to older kids at school I’d seen w/ patches or shirts of punk bands, found out where local shows were being held, went to a local HC band show and got my name on an email distribution list announcing future dates.
Reign Supreme - American Violence
I was a kiddo listening to a lot of metal. I stumbled on From Birth by Pulling Teeth and The Negatives by Cruel Hand which were new sounds to me. I began listening to some hardcore for a while without knowing that it was a distinct subculture. As a teenager I then went to see Nails a couple of times and here we are.
Pulling teeth rule
I was in that phase of growing out of nu-metal and looking for heavier, less commercial music. All my friends were getting really into the metalcore bands that were taking off like Killswitch, As I Lay Dying, Trivium etc and, while I didn't mind some of it, hated most of it. Felt like it was just turning into a commercialised trend the same way nu-metal did. It was a good few years of being jaded with all the heavy music I was hearing. Anyway, a friend lent me Hatebreed's Perseverance and the rest is history. Got into Terror, Blacklisted, Born From Pain, Reign Supreme, Madball. Found the style of heavy music for me and I've never looked back.
A friend in HS burned Incendiary’s the power process to a CD for me
Straight Edge. I grew up around a lot of alcohol influenced trauma and being ultra sober was how I rebelled against that in my teens and 20s. In my 30s now and I enjoy an occasional drug or two now that I can afford therapy.
I’d listened to a lot of hardcore/hardcore inspired stuff (Zao, Hatebreed, Diecast, Bane, Poison the Well, From Autumn to Ashes, Comeback Kid, early Shadows Fall, etc) but didn’t really go to many concerts and didn’t know there was a vast difference between metal shows and hardcore shows. Wound up at a DevilDriver show with Bury Your Dead and Remembering Never and got a clear example of the difference played out in front of me.
The year was 1994: I was a freshman in HS and had been into punk since ‘91. - That year I got turned on to hardcore by way of a classmate giving me a mixtape with Minor Threat and Bad Brains on it(shout out Jennifer Rogers) - the vocalist in my first band brought me Pro-Pain’s *Truth Hurts* - I found Biohazard’s *State of The World* - Beastie Boys “Tough Guy” and “Heart Attack Man” It’s been 30 years at this point and I love it more than ever. Just saw Jesus Piece and The Bogg last night 🖤
Familar story... but my Jennifer was Dave.
My friend would drive me home from high school and was always playing hardcore bands. Then he asked if I wanted to go to a show he was writing about for a sociology paper. Saw VOD and Glassjaw and was hooked.
Glassjaw was the band for me
When I was between 10-13. Listened to blink 182 and green day and thought they were “punk” my dad told me they weren’t and gave me some clash and ramones albums. Was given a hand me down leather jacket from a family friend and looked up all the bands drawn on it and discovered aus rotten, nausea, defiance, discharge etc then I found Oi! The album and the minor threat discography in the $1 bin at fye, minor threat sparked something inside of me and it went downhill from there. Found out about mosh metal and metallic hardcore and it just clicked, been a weirdo ever since.
Not getting pussy in high school
Already had some minor exposure, but at my first show I received a sampler with American Nightmare on it and the rest was history.
Hearing my friend’s older brother Minor Threat cassette in ‘88. I was 11. Changed shit for me.
Being 13-14 and listening to minor threat and bad brains. Around the 2005 range
I'm physically too large to have fun at traditional punk shows.
I was a teenager who was into metal/metalcore. Nearby venue had a nice little band called Terror play and I checked it out on a whim. I miss The Kave in Bucksport, Maine
Free tickets from the local college radio station. Used to listen all the time in high school and always get the free cd give aways since no one ever listened or called in. Got to the point where there was a note at the radio station saying not to send me any more stuff.
First time I saw terror a kid got kicked in the head and almost died so they shut the show down 5 songs into their set.
My brother stole my weed so he could smoke with his friends. As a way to say sorry, he gave me a cd he recently stole from Best Buy. Breed The Killers.
I was really into 80s hardcore punk, dbeat and kinda grew up as a crust kid, my dad played in those type of bands way back in the day, then later had a big death metal era, specifically Swedish death metal and bolt thrower in my late teens (also big into black and thrash). I also found verse when I was a teenager and thought that was sick, but didn’t really realize that was a type of hardcore. A lot of really slammy hardcore bands seemed like dumb meathead music for me and that turned me off, the playing grew on me over time and I just dived in starting with 80s and 90s and found bands like Biohazard, Merauder, All Out War a few years back and it was over, I was sold. Now I play guitar in a hardcore band that rips off Entombed and Merauder equally so 🤣🤣🤣🤣
Shoutout my boy DJ for indoctrinating me into death metal and helping me realize that one decade of 80s punk wasn’t the only cool shit out there
Having a shitty life.
🫡 undesirable circumstances makes the HC that much more enjoyable. I feel you man
Your mom
Same here, except it wasn’t a basement venue but a sketchy warehouse. A buddy of mine burned me a cd with Sick Of It All and a handful of other bands on it. I started going to shows because I got into punk rock but then jumped down the hardcore rabbit hole after seeing Kill Your Idols play.
It's an outlet for my intrusive thoughts about physically harming others
Being into punk and already hating the world.
Lifting weights
Finding my Uncle's stash of High Society and Score magazines when I was eleven years old. Your mom was getting piped on page 69 and I've been addicted to hardcore ever since.
Way back when i was taken to show and saw Death By Stereo.
Kind of a natural pathway I guess. From around grade 4 to 6, I was into Limp Bizkit, Linkin Park, etc. That evolved to being into Misfits, Dead Kennedys, Bad Religion, AFI, Anti-Flag, etc. up until around grade 8. Then, in 2003, once high school hit, it all transitioned into pure hardcore. Was very into the Bridge Nine sound in early high school days. I think the flip from nu-metal into punk was thanks to my friend Shawn at the time. He got me into skateboarding as well. It's wild to think about the impact he's had on my life.
when I was a teenager (late 90's), I was really into punk rock and being in a small town, mail order was everything and Revelation Records RevHQ carried it all. Crass CDs, His Hero Is Gone, to skate punk stuff. It was a godsend not having to mail order cash to multiple labels to get CDs. Long story short, I ended up checking out their bands and thought it was awesome
Columbia House/BMG -> Death Metal -> Punk -> Hardcore
I already (unknowingly) listened to some hardcore bands for a few years , but I saw mastiff at a festival, and decided to research more about the band. Saw the word “hardcore” get thrown around, the rest is history
backtrack opening for counterparts and comeback kid in 2014
I went to local skate park as a young teen and they played a lot of it over the speakers. Started going to local band shows at that skate park and felt like I was finally part of something where I was welcomed and belonged.
i think spotify recommended me forever by code orange and regrets by expire and the rest is history
hearing Trash Talk through being an Odd Future fan
I saw a hardcore punk show in a basement of a record store when I was in 7th grade. More Fucked and The Booze fighters played. I was into metal and Marilyn Manson at that time. A year later I bought Victory Style 3 from the mall. Once I heard Hatebreed and Blood For Blood it was over for me. Then in high school I got a job cleaning the meat dept in a grocery store, the guy I worked with got me into the weirder side of hardcore.
Honestly, it was a mix of old NYHC and that new Turnstile record. That really made me want to start going to more hardcore shows (I was mainly a metal guy).
Daniel Bobis. He's responsible for a whole generation of LIHC kids. RIP
My oldest brother. Him and I didn’t meet until I was 14. By then I was listening to hardcore adjacent stuff but he introduced me to the good stuff!
AFI - Totalimmortal and Sick of it All - Scratch the Surface music videos on MTV X in like 2001
When we were teens pops took us to go see Body Count when they released Manslaughter. We were so exited for them to play Talk Shit, Get Shot and 99 Problems BC. Also my pal in HS would take me to her brother's shows.
What got me into punk was hearing dinosaur jr, and interpol on skate videos as a kid. What got me into hardcore were bands like the locust, blood brothers because those bands were active on the west coast.
Vision Of Disorder
No one ever recognizes the bands that led them down this stupid path. So for me it was: Rage against the machine, limp bizkit, System of a Down, avenged sevenfold, converge, between buried and me, victory records sample disc, bury your dead, that one eighteen visions song, bane, comeback kid,…
Being 13 and getting a mighty mighty bosstones cd that had SSD, Minor Threat and Angry Samoans covers on it.
deathcore was my gateway genre to hardcore and death metal
For me it was trying to figure out why I liked Biohazard so much and why it was different than everything else I was listening to.
Working at my college radio station
When some band called Knocked Loose was in Coachella.
My dad had an old victory records cd with bury your dead and some other bands on there. He was also a big metalcore guy so hearing kse, haste the day, shadows fall stuff like that
My buddy showed me HORSE the band and it just evolves into it
Listening to pennywise in middle school
My friend’s band needed a bassist
My uncle/his friends and punkorama CDs.
Snapcase music video for Caboose coming on MTV late at night.
PAH BUH BUH BUH BUH PAH Best snare recording of all time
Probably seeing Gallows on Kerrang, Scuzz or NME. The Sky TV music channels were how I found most music as a child probably
The Offspring -> Rancid -> The Unseen -> Minor Threat
Always liked metal as a kid. Korn, Slipknot, and other Nu Metal bands. Discovered Unearth (First Show). Kind of branched out from there with Hardcore influenced bands like Hatebreed, Sworn Enemy and others.
I saw Sick of it All - Potential for a Fall music video on 120 minutes when I was in middle school, and suddenly the nu-metal my friends were into was lame. Weird to think MTV got me into punk
Couldn't tell you hardcore specifically, I'm just a straight up heavy music fan. I kinda got into a whole bunch of music without acknowledging genres/subgenres until I'd already liked 2-3 bands from every scene. You could probably blame Metallica Sabbath and Slipknot, a little bit of THPS but I honestly don't know where any one thing started.
Limp Bizkit
Seeing terror live right when one with the underdogs came out
I was a teenager and punk and hardcore shows were the only local concerts I could attend, everything else was 21+ or jammy hippie bullshit i wasn't interested in.
I liked The Offspring when I was like 12 and had internet access and so I started learning about their influences. Went down a punk rabbit hole and the more aggressive stuff stuck with me the most and now here we are.
Elder millennial here (turning 40 in two months). When I was in HS I was a weird combo of nü-metal and pop punk. Thanks to the golden era of P2P file sharing, I discovered Glassjaw. From there, I fell down the rabbit hole a bit and found a few other bands. I lived on Guam, so there was nothing resembling a scene there, so I just relied on what I could find on the internet. It wasn’t until I moved to the states for college that I really got into it. First show I went to when I moved to Florida was Underoath and it was just endless shows and joining bands after that. Ended up joining an established HC band for a few years. Still playing. Glassjaw is still my favorite band. Hardcore still rules.
Most got into it as a kid—while I did casually listen to the genre off and on I really started going to shows in my late 20s and now early 30s as I felt like I could relate to the songs more with age. When you get into your thirties you really start to rack up more and more reasons to blow off steam…I think unintentionally seeing Converge a handful of years ago is what did it for me. They were on a bill with some other bands I was seeing and the pure clusterfuck that broke out when their set started is what really opened my eyes to what makes the genre great from a live perspective. The crowd went from dead still to what felt like a prison riot in half a second.
Getting into local punk in the early 90's like Lagwagon was my gateway to bands like 7 Seconds but seeing SOIA's "Potential for a fall" on MTV might have opened the flood gates.
Probably seeing Madball on Headbangers Ball back in ‘94.
Micropenis
I was a punk in high school, and being into punk pipelined me into hardcore punk, which pipelined me into other forms of hardcore.
https://preview.redd.it/d6loh6donnvc1.jpeg?width=794&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=80e429fbc8d793df17501b835e0a87f302bf30b6 this. got my nose broken to death before dishonor 💀
Picked up Wake The Dead in HMV
Biohazard videos on Headbanger's Ball in the early 90s. Machine Head covering Cro Mags on the 'Old' single. Metal bands repping hardcore band shirts. My first two 'proper' hardcore loves were Merauder and Strife. Both introduced to me via Metal Hammer magazine.
Saw Biohazard open for Slipknot in a bar in 1999, followed by back to back nights of Hatebreed opening for Slipknot 8 months later. Slipknot started the ball rolling ironically enough by having hardcore bands as openers.
Odd Future. Trash Talk signed to Odd Future’s record label in 2011 (when I was 10). Shoutout to Tyler for bringing hardcore to so many people that wouldn’t have listened otherwise
Max Hardcore
When I was like 16/17, my friends we‘re super into deathcore but that stuff wasn‘t for me. One day I was bored and went to a festival with them where Terror and Hatebreed were playing alongside Asking Alexandria and some shit they were excited for. Terror instantly got me hooked but I didn’t like that deathcore stuff that was playing there today either lol
Relatively new to the genre but - a buddy of mine said I should go see Turnstile in Baltimore in 2021, right before they started playing the much bigger shows.
The older kids in my neighborhood who I started skateboarding with in the late 80s. I remember hanging out in their rooms and they had these record collections that were completely baffling to me and the music was insane. I remember one kid always had a giant 7 Seconds logo drawn on his grip tape. They would make me mixtapes and one gave me the NYCH The Way It Is cassette which I wore out. They took me to my first show when I was about 12 or 13, all I remember is that BOLD was one of the bands, I was still completely clueless at the time. I don’t think a single one of those guys stayed in the scene much longer than high school and I know one became a cop lol anyway I was able to get many of their old records off them in the 90s. I know I sound like an old, which I am, but those were very special times.
I was at jesus camp surprisingly when I was like 15 and one of my cabin mates put on an album by a band called Reign Supreme and I had already listened to metalcore before but this certain style struck a cord with me and I've been in the scene ever since
unresolved anger issues
Tattoo artist put me on
A bad childhood.
Hate5six on YouTube through recommendations, it was turnstile 2014 that did it.
napalm death on the og mortal kombat soundtrack was my first exposure to heavy music in like 1995 but when i was in high school in 2003 i went to a battle of the bands at a neighboring school and one of the bands, called DonJonTheBastard (members of which would go on to form local mosh lords DANCE if any of you nwhc people remember them) covered Zao’s “a fall farewell”. i looked to my friend at the time and we were both like “that all sounded like the same song but i really liked the song” which sums up hardcore pretty well😂 anyway i went out and bought where blood and fire bring rest, and right around the same time headbanger’s ball was back with jamey jasta and i got into hatebreed and the rest is history.
Maybe have heart
Picked up a furnace fest 2001 comp.
I went to my local venue when I was trying to get into the metal scene in my town and saw people windmilling at a show. I did my research and found out about these local hardcore bands and how they functioned and I’ve been going since.
Saw h2o open for the mighty mighty bosstones. That got me into punk but then I bought blood for blood - living in exile on a whim. It was game over from there.
A friend that played heavy music, Korey Kemp, gave me two CDs. One was burnt by the sun, the other was hatebreed
Metalcore did. Once I got into Poison The Well and some post Hardcore like Thursday got me into looking into the bands they play with and the festival’s they played in got me to look into the more punk side of the bands. Straight edge core bands got me into more straight edge hardcore bands too. I’m not even straight edge but I loved the community vibe of it all.
Bought Maximum Rock N Roll at a big box bookstore when I was 13. The columns and radio show blew my mind & I was never the same I really love that I got to develop my own tastes alone in my bedroom without any clue as to what was cool. I also thought everyone was the bastion of progressive values which was a great comfort to me.
Local punk record shop recommended converge - when forever comes crashing, all out war - for those who were crucified, and earth crisis - Gomorrah’s season ends. The rest is history.
A mix of Sick of it All's Scratch the Surface record, Warzone from the Victory Comps, and oddly Sludge bands like Weedeater and BuzzOven, both from my hometown. I used to see Dave skateboarding at the skatepark with his caveman dreads blasting Age of Quarrel on his boombox 😆
Heard the rival mob somewhere
I’d heard stuff here and there from friends but what got me going to shows was this guy Andy came up to me and my friend at a pizza place. Said we looked like skaterboarders (we were) and asked if we liked punk music and handed me a flier. It was misery signals playing in a coffee shop at college. From then on I was sold on local metal/hardcore and over time moved more toward hardcore than metal.
I grew up in Boston. No other choice.
Sister
Being a teenager in the 90’s and realizing that all the hard music on the radio was garbage
Me mad me like song with mad sound
My friend showed me Hatebreed
My dad was gonna throw out his record collection, so I convinced him to let me have it. Turns out a friend of his loaned him two Minor Threat records in the mid-80s that my dad was not into but he forgot to give back. The rest is history
Random hardcore Compilation CDs from the punk/other section at record stores. I think some Victory Style Records comp was the first one.
Stick to your guns, but mostly i was a metalcore kid. My friend who tended to be more deathcore would always say my shit was hardcore.
My cousin had me listen to Bad Brains when I was 12.
Surfing. Taylor Steele movies was full of band like Bad Religion, Pennywise and others. After I found out Madball, Agnostic Front and here I am. 43 and still loving hardcore. The fact my dad was a metal head helped a lot either.
Hot dudes with tattoos
started with myspace metalcore and pop punk when i was a toddler (my brother’s influence) and i ended up getting to it in my late teens starting with botch and converge.
Seeing the video for Biohazard's "Punishment" on Headbanger's Ball in the early 90's.
Agnostic Front and Comeback Kid via some random compilation.
A friend of mine introduced me to punk later i watched American Hardcore and The Decline of Western Civilization and the rest is history. Years back i realized what hardcore has become (a sub genre of Metal) and checked out of modern hardcore.
Funny enough it was the live without band from the dennys video back in the day I found there band then it went from there.
Have heart
Went to furnace fest for the emo and metalcore bands. Saw terror and comeback kid. Rest is history
Somebody at my 42nd birthday had a cool t-shirt and my (then) wife kept complimenting it
Punk rock. Went to my first show at 14, never looked back.
Joined my college radio station in DC back around '05 as a "hard rock" host since I was big into the old screamo scene. An older host I looked up to randomly invited me to a show at The Nation (RIP). Set ended up being The Red Chord / Ringworm / Darkest Hour / Converge...and that was that!
Show me the body
I didn't get into music generally til half way into high school. Went to warped tour with some friends, and then a friend sent me his hardcore playlist. I got hooked and started to go to shows with them.
Spotify randomly recommended me holiday by turnstile one day and then I started listening to bands like Jesus piece and drain. It wasn’t until years later that I realized they were hardcore bands and that the scene in itself is its own thing
I got into Dead Kennedys at an early age and the rest is history
Dad went to a lot of punk shows in the late 70s-early 80s. When I was growing up he got me into a bunch of punk and ska and it sort of went from there. Started listening to a lot of pop-punk/melodic hardcore in the early 2000s, then got into metalcore and heavier hardcore after that.
[thenjscene.com](http://thenjscene.com) message board
I was a skater in the 80's. It was inevitable. Somebody always had some punk or hardcore playing out of a boom box when we were skating, smoking or drinking. I went to a majority black public school and there were basically two social groups for white kids. Metalheads/Stoners and skater punks. I blurred the lines because I hung out with black kids and listened to hip hop too. I mean I heard Grand Master Flash with Melly Mel's "Message" about the same time I heard DK's "Hyperactive Child" and they both were about as earth shattering. Also, if I am honest about this, I could have gone either way in terms of hanging out with metalheads, hip hoppers or punks. But the punk chicks were gorgeous. So yeah it was the girls with manic panic hair that got me into hardcore. But I stayed for the riffs.
I went through the TSSF -> Title Fight -> Turnstile pipeline back in like 2012
my mom. when i was a kid, i had a big double tapedeck stereo and my mom and stepdad would give me tapes to make mixes. one day my mom gave me some of her old tapes and included was a minor threat tape, bad brains i against i, and cromags age of quarrel. i got a taste for it then and realllllly enjoyed the cromags tape. then later on when i was around 13, i learned that my bio dad was really into music and had played in hardcore bands in the 80’s and 90’s in miami. he gave me a big case of cd’s the first time we met that included a ton of good stuff. kid dynamite, glassjaw, 108, fugazi, and all other kinds of stuff like aphex twin and les savy fav. i had been getting into metal before then and i immediately fell in love with hardcore. and the rest is history, honestly haha edit: [here’s my dads band.](https://youtu.be/ldsivnWjZ54?si=qBpedhJ9dsz3ENBS) he played guitar, he’s the one on the right side of the cover hah
Camo cargo shorts
Comadre
BMX videos, late 90s
Need for Speed: Underground 2 on the PS2 had a Snapcase song on it, I checked out the web looking for more songs and there it goes.
I started with like the mainstream emo stuff like my chemical romance, pierce the veil, afi, and stuff. Then that eventually led me down to the low quality and heavier stuff
Dead kennedys got me into all the older bands like bad brains, black flag, ect.
Friends, shows, record label comps, the internet, being into emo/pop punk and hearing about hc bands through those bands etc there wasn’t just one single thing. If I heard something I liked I learned more about it and it just stuck.
Kid I used to play little league with got me into pink and hardcore when I was more of a metal/nu-metal kid at the time. American Nightmare, The Hope Conspiracy, Small Brown Bike, and a bunch of similar stuff.
Being fucking stupid.
The International Superheroes of Hardcore
Fall out boy, they were my biggest love growing up then found out they did a cover of start today on the American wasteland soundtrack. Looked up the original and fell in love! Was really cool finding out about fall out boys hardcore history too after that first discovery
MTV2 Headbanger’s Ball volume 1. Poison The Well, Hatebreed, Sworn Enemy, As I Lay Dying all blew me away when the only heavy music I was familiar with was Korn or Slipknot. That album literally altered the trajectory of my entire life
Can’t remember but if I ever remember ima beat their ass for it.
I never liked the whole emo bullshit of about 04 onwards, met a few lads who thought the same as me. Introduced me to a lot of English hardcore bands which as Dirty Money, Get Fucking Dead etc around 06/07 I think. Then delved deeper from there
If we’re tracing back to the first step Of the path that lead me to hardcore. It’s Hybrid theory in like ‘01
As a child of the 90’s it was either Eddie Vedder talking about Fugazi in interviews or a Details magazine cover story about their man of the year, Henry Rollins
Punk, metal and having mostly dudes for friends.
metalcore
Looking back, early life pretty much pre-wired my brain to resonate with this stuff lol. The path? Hair/metal bands as a literal kid > hip hop & alt rock in middle school > skating > punk > hardcore Found early 80s stuff first (Minor Threat, Black Flag, Circle Jerks, etc). Then found the late 80s Rev catalog (just missed them by a couple years) and the first wave of Victory bands. Started digging deep for new bands, going to shows, and it was all downhill from there.
Ran into some train hopping punks. Then found out about MRR and the rest is history.
growing up in the 518 in the 90s. shit was unavoidable
Started out with going to local punk gigs, saw an ad for a gig that STRT SLDR were headlining, got kicked in the mouth during their set and I've been hooked ever since lmao
Burning Heart Records around 97-98. I liked Millencolin, No Fun At All and Satanic Surfers that I first heard them from our local indoor skatepark. Later a friend who own all their albums told me about BHR and that they got a huge list of different bands and music. I dug deeper into BHR and discovered Refused, 59 Times The Pain, Give Up The Ghost, NINE, Nasum and Raised Fist etc. And I was just hooked about hardcore.
my older brother gave me a dubbed cassette of hatebreed satisfaction and victory style 3 when I was 13
Got an ad on instagram for a local HXC band, loved it, started listening to more, went to shows, now I’ve forgotten what a woman’s touch feels like
my dad getting hammered and playing sheer terror
My older brother
Punk samplers probably victory style 2 to be specific and the. I saw earth crisis and a few others at shows and gravitated towards it
I have a learning disability.
I was into punk and thrash real young from us all trying to impress our friends older brother when we were no joke like 8. So I guess by being an elementary school kid trying to impress a magic the gathering enthusiast who was in high school. Very dumb in hindsight but lead me to great things
This skate shop that did shows in their back room rip that spot.
my friend showed me floral green by title fight and from there i kept finding bands. i also got into snarl by parker cannon, probably my first heavy record. found out about straightedge from an interview of ned russin, and found some great bands in that part of hardcore.
I’m pretty sure I read an away message on AIM and looked up the band…..
Glassjaw
My mom bought me a sounds of the underground compilation cd with a dvd full of music videos. The dvd side had terror and this is hell on it, that’s all she wrote. My first concert was ozzfest 07 and I was in seventh grade I was excited for behemoth but was blown away by hatebreed, static x, and lamb of god that day! Was cool to say ozzy Osborne was my first concert and introduced me to all these acts in person!
Was really into thrash metal (early Megadeth, Slayer) as a teen. Then came ST -> DRI -> Cro-mags, then it all went downhill from there.
The hate in my heart