New York City in the ‘80s and ‘90s is marked, nay, scarred, by a legendary history of hardcore music that includes an axis of bands that asked two important questions: A) how fast and far they could take a genre, and B) how to craft a style that’s as unmistakably New York as servicing someone sexually at the Port Authority Bus Terminal while eating a dollar slice whole. All this while begging a third question, C) ‘the fuck you looking at?
With a sonic makeup that pretty much causes bruising just from listening to it, it’s no wonder that purveyors of the genre and fans alike often find themselves on the receiving end of a flying scissor kick from John Q. Law. Below are 20 NYHC albums that still sound dangerous through visiting glass, especially when visiting that special down-by-law Warzone woman in your life. Fret not, she can change, but these quintessential albums will stay as unforgivingly New York as they always did.
Murphy’s Law “Back with a Bong!”
In the early 21st century, Breaking Bad’s Jesse Pinkman put chili powder in his crystal meth, but try adding mayonnaise to GHB and you’ll learn they assign prison sentences by weight and intent, not by creativity and entrepreneurship. “Back with a Bong!” is a banger/bonger and the silliness of Jimmy G’s lyrics gives you permission to laugh as long as no one else in the visiting area thinks it’s at their expense.
Agnostic Front “Victim in Pain”
The debut studio album from the ‘godfathers of hardcore’ left a future in its wake, yet lasts only fifteen minutes. That duration makes it extremely helpful for clocking your phone calls. When you hear “Society Sucker” for the second time you know it’s time to start wrapping it up and make sure you wipe down the handset for the next guy.
Cro-Mags “The Age of Quarrel”
These guys made a phenomenal album and now years later, to put it mildly, they no longer find each other’s company congenial. There’s a lesson there, probably. You can accomplish great things with your friends, but that doesn’t mean you’ll be friends forever. Plus, you can each write a great autobiography, even if you end up catching ten years for aggravated blimp theft.
Madball “Set It Off”
New York City animal shelters actually give out this CD with every pit bull rescue. Years later, if that pit bull tries convincing you to pull an early morning bank job in Bay Ridge, politely decline, then quickly adopt an even bigger pit bull until the whole problem just goes away. Dogs are man’s best friend but they suck at driving getaway cars. Still looking for one last score? These breakdowns don’t disappoint through plexiglass.
Killing Time “Brightside”
From the opening riffs you know this album will sound good on any format, perhaps sounding better on contraband media the more obsolete it is, so enjoy that dubbed-over cassette that once stored Paul McCartney and Wings’ “Band on the Run.” It now holds an album where every song title could be the title of a graphic prison memoir.
Sick of It All “Scratch the Surface”
Vocalist Lou Koller doesn’t even need to use the phone in the visitation room. The dude’s voice is sharper than the spools of razor wire separating you from a nice hibachi dinner and a 6:30 p.m. showing of Drive-Away Dolls. The sound on this album is so thick you could use it to dampen incoming potential stab wounds. If that fails, you can also use SOIA’s debut album “Blood Sweat and No Tears” to ward off, you guessed it, more stab wounds!
Warzone “Don’t Forget the Struggle, Don’t Forget the Streets”
This album is as NYC as trying to buy weed in Tompkins Square Park from a guy with a mustache and a Giants Starter jacket. Sure, he looked less like a dealer and more like your middle school gym teacher, but you thought he was just doing a normcore thing that brought it all the way around. Now you have at least eighteen months to think about that. If there’s a Warzone woman in your life, as popularized by the album’s conversational opener, you’ll have some unabashed anthems blasting from her iPhone speaker for a couple of minutes at a time.
Sheer Terror “Just Can’t Hate Enough”
A band marked by a frontman that’s as much an entertainer as he is a singer, Paul Bearer (after forty years I get it now) and Sheer Terror are brutal on record and hilarious live. Being funny is important when you’re incarcerated so start writing as many jokes as you can about chess, communal toilets, and not accepting ramen noodle loans from people who claim to be your pal.
Side By Side “You’re Only Young Once” EP
The title alone is sage advice. Avoid becoming a repeat offender. Avoid being in your mid-40s and starting a pyramid scheme that rips off all your cousins and coworkers. This album kicks off like somebody who just figured out the funny guy from the break room just stole their identity.
Merauder “Master Killer”
The perfect album for throwing a weight plate like a frisbee at some guy you barely know because he smokes cigarettes too fast. What a showoff! This album will make the most delicate flowers feel like they can just overhand downward-smack the lunch tray of someone who A) was really looking forward to eating that peach cobbler, and B) was deemed too insane for the most vicious Central American street gangs. Either way, good luck!
Token Entry “From Beneath the Streets”
Everyone knows the value of producing tasty toilet wine (aka ‘juju’) but real Token Entry fans know that true dedication comes from an even-bodied yet cheeky toilet bouillabaisse. Toilets can be used for so many things in prison. You can communicate with them, wash your clothes in them, and their stainless steel composition can act as a makeshift subwoofer for “Think About It.”
Breakdown “‘87 Demo”
This debut sounds like a prison riot distilled into a cassette tape that is then disassembled, melted down, and used to puncture the lung of your cellmate whose biggest crime was humming the 1-877 KarsForKids jingle (well, that, and murdering several crossing guards). Much like “The Wizard of Oz” and “Dark Side of the Moon,” every song somehow magically perfectly lines up with the random sounds of closed fists raining down upon tattooed flesh.
Crumbsuckers “Life of Dreams”
Just like attempted murder can cross over to just plain ol’ regular murder, these guys traversed musical boundaries to create something as formidable as its riffs. That’s resourceful. You too will need to be resourceful so just apply what these guys did with music to everyday life in lockup. Did you know you can light a cigarette with a paperclip, a wad of toilet paper, and a packet of Sweet’n Low?
No Redeeming Social Value “Rocks the Party”
If you’re one of the fortunate ones to have visitors, you’ll appreciate a good laugh as much as a good song. NRSV delivers both. Songs about chicken, skinheads, Fabio, and Olde English malt liquor never disappoint while reminding you of better times, like when you and your friends took turns pretending what it would be like to kiss Fabio.
Crown of Thornz “Train Yard Blues” EP
If there was one release you should anthropomorphize into a cellmate, you can’t go wrong with one fronted by a rascal named Lord Ezec aka Danny Diablo and Crown of Thornz. This album has nothing to lose except some hard-earned dayroom television privileges. From the second “Juggernaut” kicks in it’s a game of attitude and… won’t someone shut that goddamn baby up? Some of us are trying to dry-hump the partition glass.
Rest In Pieces “My Rage”
Tell the yard to put its helmet on because this banger is going to result in some stomping. Fronted by Sick of it All drummer Armand Majidi, this album shows how incestuous the NYHC scene really is, something that can land you behind bars in certain states. P.S. “Balls ‘N’ All” is great to sing when you’re curling water cooler bottles full of sand.
Nausea “Extinction”
Not much female representation on this list so change begins here, and more specifically, with me. Nausea probably aligns more with the crustier side of punk/hc but they appeared on the “New York City Hardcore – The Way It Is” compilation so why not. It’s like wearing your cleanest Knicks jersey with your filthiest patchwork pants. They’re like a crust punk’s buttflap with a Yankees logo on it or Mr. Met spanging on St. Marks Place. Nausea rules, leave me alone, I got a chess game starting in the park.
Gorilla Biscuits “Start Today”
Positivity is what you need inside and there’s an unbridled energy in this album that still sounds timeless though polycarbonate, glass, and acrylic, all the main ingredients in the protective material manufactured by Piedmont Plastics, a leading North American supplier of specialized plastic products, including glazing, for prisons and detention centers. Contact a sales rep to find the product that’s right for you.
Youth of Today “Break Down the Walls”
Man, wouldn’t it be nice to break down these walls? Sure, this band is overwhelmingly associated with positivity and an overall clean blueprint for living, but it also sounds like we should stuff the toilets with our bed sheets until the commissary starts carrying Cool Ranch Doritos. Who’s with me? ATTICA! ATTICA! ATTICA!
Candiria “Beyond Reasonable Doubt”
This band deserves to be on so many lists starting with your visitors list because anyone who sutured this many baffling influences to NYHC have to be decent conversationalists. Talk time is limited so why not chat about applying jazz theory to hardcore and metal and how this album has enough math in it to rewire the electrical and somehow get us on on a passing garbage barge in time for the next Met Gala.