Victim In Pain - Agnostic Front (1984)

80s hardcore is something to behold. Everything is stripped away. What do you need to make a rocking song? Harmonies? Lengthy solos? Nuance? why? You need a beat, a hook, and a lot of anger about something. If that amounts to 48 seconds of material, then you have a 48 second track. There’s no fat here, no room for anything that’s not to the point.

The difference between bands like Agnostic Front and a hundred others of that era is that AF were actually good enough musicians to make it stick together. None of them were super-competent on their instruments at this point, but they were able to take the same raw, aggressive approach that other bands did only they actually make it do what they wanted it to.

That’s not to take anything away from the musicianship. It’s simple, but it’s not simplistic. Even in a 90 second song, you might get several tempo changes, which isn’t easy to do as a unit no matter how experienced you are.

You can hear the beginnings of so much modern extreme music here.

Tracks I liked:

I mean the whole thing is like 15 minutes long. Just spin it.