20 best Hardcore list at Fact

So Philip Sherburne did a list of his top 20 US hardcore albums for Fact Magazine:
http://www.factmagazine.co.uk/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1100&Itemid=27

recently. I gave it a once-over, went "huh interesting" like I do with articles about music I don't know too well, and forgot about it, until I visited Chunklet today (ordered a Patton Oswalt album from them that I had to return) and saw their response: http://www.chunklet.com/index.cfm?section=blogs&ID=402&mode=comments

Part of it seems to be the Chunklet guy missing the point that it was a personal list, not intended to be definitive, and being a bit too enthusiastic about enforcing genre/scene boundaries (I feel kind of bad calling him out on this since it looks like he was the guy I dealt with about my order, he got back to me in two minutes and was cool about it), and the second guy ("RJ") is being kind of a cock. I ask as an almost total newcomer to the genre*: did they have any good points or is this just a dick-waving contest? What would you put on a similar list? What is he thinking saying the Germs album sucks?

*I know "I Against I" and Black Flag and Minor Threat but that's it, oh and "Songs About Fucking" which doesn't count according to this guy

I know a bunch of those, and (trivia) my wife dated the drummer for one of those bands back when she was in college, but it's a bad list. Too much that's just way outside the genre, and generally seems like it was written by someone who didn't put much time/thought into it. If he's trying to make a point about hardcore's tendrils (and I don't really see that he is) he'd need to express it better.

It's true that people can go overboard enforcing genre boundries, but this is a good example of a list where it's appropriate to question the author's credentials.

''Pissed Jeans and No Age are introducing a new generation of kids to the pleasures of power chords and breakneck tempos,''
then he goes on to mention in the UK, that we have the Gallows reviving that classic American sound. Thanks.

This lady does not know his stuff.

I was considering going to see Mr Sherburne play last night but my friend didn't fancy it and ultimately I was too tired anyway.

I think singling out individual songs when it specifies 'records' in the title is a bit odd and reductive. It might be the fault of whoever laid it out rather than PS but OTOH if yr that into the genre it should really be a breeze finding 20 actual discs you think are really good and people should own. This also applies to putting Big Black and EHG and Bikini Kill in, which I assume is an attempt to illustrate how HC bled into other areas of underground music and subculture. That's something worth talking about in the intro blurb IMO, as opposed to making if half seem like you got to 17 HC records you thought were worthy and ran out.

Everything else is just a question of individual taste as far as I'm concerned - I like most of those albums, some are hall of fame shit for me and the Chunklet geezer's pal sounds like an insufferable douchebag. Really don't see what grown men get out of waving their cock around like that. Hey I really like Die Kreuzen s/t too, I also realise that almost the whole world gave 0% of a shit about it then or now.

I normally really enjoy the FACT top 20s but I guess this is the one whose subject I've invested a lot more in so it's a fair bet that like African funk collectors do the same narcissism of small diffs shit

That 1st Die Kreuzen album is a top five.

Made even better by it coming out of Milwaukee

the Chunklet geezer's pal

Didn't notice that it was actually one of the dudes from Sex Vid. Sex Vid are a really great band. With someone in them who sounds like an insufferable douchebag

Did they stop doing their 'tracks of the week' thing? It was one of my favorite features. They do pick some weird choices on all of their '2o best' list. I like to think of myself as a krautrock enthusiast and that list left me scratching my head at several points.

Did hardcore really rule suburbia in the 80s?

Xpost
Great ?

Certainly not in England.

About four of us weirdos/marginal men dug it in a half million sized city.The rest of the'alts' were into the Cure and the Exploited

Dude Hull is not half a million peeps.

and the Cure lot had a way better time

Include the posh bits Noods

Hahaha WE DON'T TALK ABOUT SWANLAND

Shouldn't you be in Queens? losing yer phone?;-)

On the Western portion of Long Island

I thought you meant in The Queen's for a minute.

That would be quite awful for one and all.

I was in there last Saturday as it happens.

next time yer , brandish some massive ILM foam hands

fuck chunklet after that $10 creston spiers 7" debacle and the faulty harvey milk lps he wanted us to pay to return and then pay for new ones to be sent out when the idiot didnt test the lps to see they were ok to be sent out.

Those Chunklet guys are idiots, but Phil's list is uh unusual (to say the least). That said it's his word (and list) and he can define it however he wants it, I guess.

Chunklet's still around? Huh.

(This reminds me of a coworker who only listened to hardcore, and any band you had heard of was not hardcore.)

Yeah but I don't know anything about hardcore and even I could have told you that a couple probably aren't hardcore in the strictest sense.

Which the dude pretty much copped to.

everything up to 15 I'm cool with.

16-20 are like these weird post-hardcore broad-genre picks.

would add

DRI 1st or 2nd
1st Die Kreuzen
Minor Threat S/T

and probably some California singles - Weirdos, Dils.

DRI 'Dealing With It' has to be in there

lol why do they say born against was heartbreaking. it's heartbreaking how pissed these dudes were!!!! idk much about hc but even i can see that this list is gay as fukk

Prime Bad Brains and Minor Threat goes without saying.
Angry Samoans first, Big Boys and so on.We've done this before.
I'd put the Nip Drivers 2nd in there -'Oh Blessed Freakshow'. An overlooked classic

Born Against were fucking ace.

^Their song titles alone dripped enough bile to poison a whole continent

10: Endeavor - Constructive Semantics: Nobody cares about Endeavor anymore but they owned. Metallic, a little bit noisy, pissed. Here's a hint about hardcore bands: If they were genuinely pissed, they owned. Daniel will probably say these guys, like, stole his girlfriend or something. Fuck Daniel.
9: Left For Dead - Splitting Heads: Maybe the best Canadian band ever... No one was ever more pissed than these guys. Hard to listen to in the best way imaginable.
8: Shelter - Mantra - So ethical, so melodic, so krishna. After this, Shelter had ska songs. Before this, they weren't sooooooo catchy. Not very pissed but undeniable.
7: One King Down - More Hate Than Fear: A lot of fools champion Earth Crisis as the kings of upstate NY sxe vegan hardcore but a lot of fools didn't chat with Rob Fusco about Magic: The Gathering on AOL Hardcore Music chat. Even without that qualifier, this album covers all the hardcore bases: veganism, straight edge, betrayal. It was the waning days of the 90s and those were seemingly all that east coast kids had to contend with. A porthole to a fascinating and alien world.
6: TIE XLimpwristX - Complete Discography: I love hardcore boys, I love boys hardcore.
6: TIE Minor Threat - Complete Discography: This should be higher but I ran out of room and you're gonna deal with it. This is basically the Da Vinci of hardcore, everyone knows it.
5: Deadguy: Fixation on a Coworker - I am gonna sound like a distro catalog but absolutely essential. Pissed, noisy, Tim Singer. What more is there? This is the best thing Victory Records ever put out easily. Without a damn question actually.
4: What Happens Next? - Stand Fast Armageddon Freedom Fighters: Thrash as fuck. So fast, so posi. Bay area. I circlepitted to these fuckers at one of their last shows. What more can be said? Ex members of Your Mother, future members of Love Songs. Crucial.
3: Born Against - The Rebel Sounds of Shit And Failure: Ayo it's Born Against. Smartest hardcore band of all time, threatened with death by meatheads.
2: Refused - The Shape of Punk To Come: It's the shape of punk to come. The best record, punk or otherwise, to ever come out of Scandinavia. This record actually is what nerds said the Dark Knight was: a revolution in 12 movements. They told me that the classics never got their style but they do, they do.
1: Black Flag - Damaged: The album that changed countless lives, that is still changing lives. Henry Rollins has never sounded more furious, Greg Ginn just got weird after this. On this, the shredding and the anger are equally devastating and it creates one unforgettable experience. See if you can find the keys to your mother's liquor cabinet.

All I'm gonna say here is that I wish that FACT would change the name of the feature, because I intended the list as an entirely subjective thing -- sure, I tried to keep the canon in mind, but I wanted to be clear that this was my personal list, my "20 best." I even tried to stress that yes, I was stretching the definition of "hardcore" (because, growing up, I didn't find it so clear cut). I'm agreed that it's slightly confusing that in some places I selected songs, and in others, records. Probably should have done that differently.

I'm totally down with folks that want to question or challenge individual points, post their alternate lists, whatever. I'm cool with it being an "unusual" list, and I'm well open to seeing the lists that people who are actually *active* in the hardcore scene (which I am not) would come up with. The vitriol and name-calling, though, is just weak.

Also, yeah, I fucked up the Bubba Dupree thing. I apologize to the Void members affected, but anyone getting too upset about that -- deal. I fucked up a fact check.

heh way 2 go u lil nublet

lol shelter lol swami ray cappo

i guess i never really considered DK hardcore

they were definitely part of the hardcore scene in like 1983-84, they were like the gateway drug.

that Nip Drivers record is amazing, true (xpost to Fer)

yeah but i sort of think of DK as transitional...like the stepping stone between 77 shit and hardcore...

btw for the interested...a great mixtape of local twin cities hardcore spanning the years...

Volume One
Formaldehyde Junkies - Violence O.D.
Willful Neglect - Criminal
Husker Du - Deadly Skies
Blind Approach - Apart from the Crowd
Holding On - 35 Minute Rule
Man Afraid - 3-91
Code 13 - Hardcore For the Kids
State of Fear - Regress to Nowhere
Condominium - Hello Tomorrow
The Agenda - Affluenza
Quincy Punx - Darby was a Martyr

http://tchardcorejournal.com/

A quick summary of the chunklet stuf i mentioned earlier can be found at http://board.vivalavinyl.org/?func=topic&id=68320&r=42 check the 16th post (its by brent eyestone)

Since I found this link on FACT, and hardcore is difficult to search for, REVIVE! Apologies if posted elsewhere.

http://www.americanhardcorebook.com/punk24/

"American Hardcore: The History of American Punk Rock 1980-1986"