IAN GLASPER - Trapped in a Scene: UK Hardcore 1985???1989: Frontline Reports from the Hardcore Punk Underground

The second half of the Eighties was pretty much as miserable as the first, and dont let anyone tell you any different. Margaret Thatcher may well have been in welcome decline (soon to be pilloried for introducing the massively unpopular Poll Tax/Community Charge and superseded by her insipid Chancellor Of The Exchequer, John Major) but the Iron Ladys boot-boys werent satisfied with just trouncing the miners, and the Battle of the Bean Field in 1985 ended the Stonehenge free festivals once and for all.

The Cold War was thankfully winding down, but a hundred other conflicts were springing up in its place, so the arms trade remained depressingly buoyant. The Chernobyl nuclear power station melted down, the space shuttle Challenger blew up during take-off, and PC Keith Blakelock was killed by an angry mob during riots on Tottenhams Broadwater Farm estate.

Then the British ferry Herald Of Free Enterprise capsized just off Zeebrugge, Michael Ryan rampaged through Hungerford with a rifle, and there was the usual run of train and plane crashes, most notably the Pan Am Flight 103 exploding over Lockerbie in southwest Scotland, in December 1988, killing over 250 people. Yes indeed, cheery times.

And if things werent bad enough, bland rock music was huge, with the likes of Def Leppard, Bon Jovi, Dire Straits and U2 dominating the charts; Michael Jackson was busy being Bad and 1985s Live Aid provided a very handy sticking plaster for our consciences whilst being watched by 400 million people across 60 countries.

For much the same reasons behind the first and second waves of punk rock then, angry youths vented their frustration at the banality of daily life with guitars, drums and defiant voices. They took their lead from the anarcho punk scene of the early Eighties, that had empowered them with its fiercely DIY stance and compassionate politics, but were also devouring exciting new takes on punk music that were being imported from Europe and America. Faster, harder and infinitely more energetic, hardcore music made the more traditional varieties of punk seem a little pedestrian, and enthusiastic youngsters the length and breadth of the country, now bored with their older brothers record collection, were living for the scene reports from Scandinavia and Italy and Boston that were a regular feature in the popular US hardcore fanzine, Maximum RocknRoll. Its almost obligatory to seek out music your parents wont understand and very few parents could wrap their heads around the likes of Larm or Wretched!

Best of all, these hardcore bands from overseas were tearing across the UK on tour, hurling themselves off stages with gleeful abandon and generally helping knock the last few nails into the coffins of the old guard. Why borrow from the Clash and the Stranglers when you could now aspire to Rattus and Siege?

There was also a revolution happening in metal music, a scene that had previously been fairly taboo for punk rockers (Motorhead being a notable exception to this rule); bands like Metallica and Slayer were drawing influence from the likes of Discharge and GBH, and the door swung both ways, with hardcore bands like COC (aka Corrosion Of Conformity), DRI (Dirty Rotten Imbeciles) and Suicidal Tendencies taking fresh inspiration from them. The punk/metal crossover had good strong legs in the UK too, albeit with a scab on the knee from falling over whilst playing footie outside in the road.

Soon everyone was trading tapes, writing their own fanzines, promoting their own gigs and generally helping to create their own scenes in their own towns. Why travel to London to see your favourite band when you could hire a local hall and bring them to you? Indeed, it was Maximum RocknRoll again that encouraged kids everywhere to book their own fucking lives