I'm a big fan of a lot of genres of metal and punk to a lesser extent, including many related genres like grindcore, crust-punk, D-Beat, Sludge, etc and only very recently have I become aware of power-violence and fastcore/thrashcore as genres and I'm trying to learn more about them.

From what I've read and listened to it seems like power-violence evolved and grew out of fastcore/thrashcore which itself evolved out of hardcore, crust and D-beat and the only early fastcore band that I am well aquainted with is Siege and their Drop Dead album from 84' or so which is some great stuff.

As I have read, the idea behind fastcore/thrashcore was simply to make hardcore punk as fast as possible without adding many metallic elements and then that continued on with the creation of Power-Violence by Man is the Bastard in 1989.

So far the bands I know of and listen to that play in these genres are: Siege, Man is the Bastard, Flesh Parade, Charles Bronson, Greber, Morser, Column of Heaven, The Locust, Benumb, Robocop and Detroit.

At least those are the bands I have in my collection that I already listen to though I have heard of other important PV bands like: Capitalist Casualties, No Comment, Crossed Out, Manpig, His Hero is Gone, etc


I am trying to really nail down what this style is all about so here are my questions:



1) I still don't really know what the difference is between fastcore and power-violence so could someone explain to me what their differences are in terms of sound??


2) Does anyone know of any other early fastcore/thrashcore bands that existed before 1989 like Siege?

3) what in your opinion really sets fastcore/thrashcore and power-violence aside and make these genres different from grindcore, D-Beat, Crust Punk, etc??

They seem to have a lot in common with them but to have less metal, a lot more prominent bass and the vocals are often a different style that is kind of hard for me to explain.

For example, when I listen to a few of Benumb's tracks or Man is the Bastard's stuff their singer sounds like...the best way I can put is "an angry sweaty business man yelling about his day" more than a pissed off crust punk LOL.

It's more frantic, more haphazard and less "polished" than grindcore from what I have heard.

However, I like it.


For years when I was in college there were a couple "punks" who I can see now were power-violence fans but I could never nail them down.

One of them wore "His Hero is Gone" shirts and played bass, the other was a drummer who listened to the Locust.

As a metal head I always thought "what scene are these guys into? They're not metal heads or typical punks or even crusties".

So, now I see that this is probably the scene they were into.

I'm curious to understand more about what this style is all about and see if I can get more into it.

first off the band Grief is the band that coined the term power violence.

second... Flesh Parade, Column of Heaven, Benumb, His Hero is Gone, Capitalist Casualties, and def. the Locust are not powerviolence.

I can't comment on No Comment and Crossed Out but as far as I recall they aren't considered that as well.

This question would probably better suited in these threads:
viewtopic.php?f=11&t=70471
viewtopic.php?f=11&t=48969

Hmmm, well after looking some of those up, especially Benumb, a lot of people refer to them as power-violence and an article I read states that Column of Heaven refer to themselves as being part of the Canadian PV scene.

I definitely hear a lot of that sound in Benumb, and an article I read on PV stated Capitalist Casualties as one of the first and most important PV bands so I'm gonna have to doubt you a bit on that one, but I'll post about this in the threads you linked.

Also, I've read several articles that state that the Man is the Bastard song H.M.S.P is the one that coined the term power violence.

go on and doubt me Benumb is close to PV but is normally considered grind, but that is splitting hairs, but that is all this is. CC is punk more than anything else. But one thing, reading articles isn't really the best way to learn about pv.

Hear's the quote I found on several sites:

Power Violence is a musical genre combining hardcore punk and grindcore. Characterized by intense speed and radical tempo changes. Blast beats one moment to slow sludgy music the next.

Man is the Bastard officially coined the term Power Violence in their song Hispanic Small Man Power (H.S.M.P)
"Crossed Out, No Comment, Manpig, Capitalist Causalities, Man is the Bastard West Coast Power Violence. Lets fucking go! KICK ASS!!!"


I've read several sites which all claim that quote as being the defining point for the PV genre and where the scene started so I have to assume those bands are PV even if maybe Benumb might not be.

I'm going off my own experience touring in a grind band and playing with grind and PV bands and being now in pv bands and having friends in both. We all sorta just went with what the scene and our friends around gave as knowledge, not much internet sluthing.

^^^

Well I reposted it in one of the punk threads so I'll see what people think.

The most common quote that I've already read on so many sites regarding it is simply that that one MiTB song is where the term was coined and the genre started so I don't know whether or not ideas regarding it have changed but usually something like that doesn't spread around to so many different unrelated sites if there is no basis...not to mention the term "Power-violence" and those particle bands being mentioned by name in that song is pretty strong evidence.

But I'll read what fans of the genre think out of curiosity.

The thread was called 'teach me more...' But it seems like you're not willing to listen to someone who might actually know something about the subject youre asking about.

I don't know, kids these days.

Actually he seems to know very little.



Man is the Bastard coined the term powerviolence.

Capitalist Casualties, No Comment and Crossed Out are basically the very definition of powerviolence. Saying anything else is pure delusion. (see what I did there?) Hell 80% of powerviolence bands these days just do a bad rehash of Crossed Out.

~

Powerviolence started off simply as a scene chock full of weird dudes who listened to Youth of Today and Meat Shits. In some ways it was a reaction against how metallic grindcore was, but back in the day it really wasn't a specific sound, so much as just a collection of speedfreaks and other undesirables. To paraphrase Andrew Nolan, bassist of Column of Heaven/The Endless Blockade/etc., it's come to be a parody (in the actual sense of the word. Hardcore is fast, pv is faster. Hardcore has slow parts, pv goes full sludge. Hardcore has short songs, pv goes even shorter.

This is an old article but insanely insightful as it was written from someone who was there back in the day.

Column of heaven and Benumb are power violence clearly even.

The difference between fastcore and powerviolence is that fastcore just goes fast while powerviolence more often goes for the slow drudgy parts. Compare say Reproach with Iron Lung.

I'm not a kid.

I knew those few details were correct, even despite not knowing much more.

I'm not claiming to know more than those few details though.

That one article above looks really good so I'm gonna read that later on when I have the time.

Thanks for the info guys.

Moved, as this isn't a metal topic.

you should also check out Spazz, Lack of Interest and Infest.

West Side Horizons and Downsided. These are your instructors in the way of powerful violence. Anything less would be uncivilized.

Also the Crossed Out/Man is the Bastard split.

You guys are missing the geographical and temporal aspects of the whole thing.
Thrashcore/fastcore appeared first, in the US (D.R.I in 1983 and Siege in 1984). Basically, hardcore played really fast, brief songs and ocasional blast beats.
Then, appeared powerviolence in the west coast (Infest in 1986, No Comment in 1987, etc.). Now, this genre mixed sludge, hardcore and grindcore. Instead of being always fast, PV is spastic.

Grindcore, on the other hand, was born out of the UK crust scene incorporating thrashcore elements.

So, in a way, we have:

Hardcore punk (North America/UK late 70's)

Anarcho punk (UK late 70's)

Crust punk (UK early 80's)

Grindcore (UK mid 80's) (with major influences of thrashcore)
Crustcore (UK late 80's)
Thrashcore (US early 80's)

Powerviolence (US late 80's) (with sludge and grindcore elements)

uhhh.....so i see you have no idea what you are talking about then.

This is a bit off-topic, but I've always kind of wondered about this term. It seems to have a number of distinctly different uses.

I've seen it refer to:

• Crust + hardcore punk (sometimes for those d-beaty Scandinavian hardcore bands, "Råpunk" I believe that's called)
• Early crusty grind (like early ENT, i.e. synonymous with "crustgrind")
• Just another term for crust punk in general

So is there any "dominating" meaning of the term? Something considered the most correct by experienced fans of the style? Be aware that my knowledge of punk history has some serious gaps.

There was Deep Wound (pre-Dinosaur Jr.), Lärm and others I don't recall right now.

I would say you are correct in all your guesses. I personally use it for barely/non metallic crust punk (emphasis on the core part, so to speak), but the others are just as common.



D.R.I. fits, yeah, I know their crossover phase is way more popular.

I'm not as particular about genres as some people but for 80's bands, Anti-Cimex from Sweden were, in 1983- faster, harsher, more intense, and more brutal than any metal band would be for at least three or four more years. You could call them proto-grindcore or thrashcore or just plain hardcore I guess. Septic Death was another ultra-blindinly fast, aggro band from the mid-80s I should mention. When I think of the term "power-violence" though, I typically think of bands with more of a Napalm Death or Extreme Noise Terror influence combined with more slow to midpace breakdowns, like Spazz or Plutocracy for instance, whereas most of the early-mid 80s stuff was fast all the way through.

Great info guys.

So, what would you guys say the major differences are, both in terms of sound and instrumentation as well as ideology, the seperate power-violence and fastcore from genres like grindcore, crust punk, sludge and D-beat??

From what I've heard power violence and grindcore have a lot in common so why are classic grindcore bands like Napalm Death and Terrorizer considered Metal while Power-Violence and fastcore bands like Man is the Bastard, Siege, Column of Heaven etc Not considered to be metal at all?

It seems to me like power-violence has much more prominent bass riffs and a different vocal style in many cases in comparison to grindcore and I've heard people say that PV and Fastcore are attempts at making the heaviest music possible WITHOUT having any metal in it.

I guess the idea is supposed to be that Power Violence and Fastcore are still firmly rooted in Punk but what do you think really makes them so different?

I've also noted that some newer Power Violence bands like Column of Heaven incorporate a lot of Power Electronics (another genre I know nothing about) and they also have just A LITTLE bit in common with some Sludge bands like EyehateGod to my ear..(though really not all that much).

I'm really digging them though and would like to hear of more bands like them.

Also, what genres would people consider bands like Agoraphobic Nosebleed, The Locust and Deadguy to be a part of?? (I'm not even sure if anyone here knows of Deadguy, they're not great but I like a couple of their tracks).

Those bands seem to have something in common with Power-Violence to me as well.

This thread made me revisit some of my favourite bands (heck, all their discographies together are like 2 hours or so), just to discover xBrainiax disbanded in 2013
Now I'm sad.

Fastcore is hardcore played at ridiculous high tempos, anything following that rule is labelled as such. Powerviolence mixes fastcore, grindcore and sludge metal, and is mostly spastic (instead of focusing on higher tempos, it focuses on extreme tempo changes). Both were a kind of response to metal as punks thought their genre was becoming too diluted with the former.
Grindcore, on the other hand, embraced the metal sound.
Crust punk is an offshot of anarcho punk with a heavy bias towards speed/thrash metal. D-beat, as far as I know, is just a way of playing crust punk in the veins of Discharge.

As everything related to punk, the instrumentation and structure is really bare bones. Trios are really common, duos not being rare either.
About ideology, all them have a heavy bias towards social and environmental issues, more so than hardcore in my opinion.


Napalm Death is really associated with early death metal and Terrorizer is likely one of the earliest deathgrind bands. Their sounds owe too much to metal. Also, they kinda look like metalheads too.
In the others the metal elements are way less evident. Also, keep in mind those categorizations are anachronistic: at the time, people probably never thought too much about what was metal and what wasn't, everyone playing heavy rock music was likely to get labelled as a metalhead.


In a way, that's true. Fastcore is mostly devoid of metal, and it's possible to make PV without any metal elements too. The vocals aren't really important, but if growls are present chances are you are going to be labelled as grindcore.


They are subgenres of hardcore. They appeared at a time extremity begun to become the norm in the metal underground, so they followed suit.


Powerviolence has a lot in common with sludge metal. Powerviolence is known to have either audio samples from movies OR sludge metal passages as interludes between tracks.


Agoraphobic Nosebleed dabbled into several genres. At the start, they played grindcore. Latter, with all the electronic and industrial elements, cybergrind. But they also have speedcore and hardcore (the electronic genres) releases. Noise and ambient are often also present.


The Locust is one of my favourites, watch their live perfomances. In my opinion they play mostly thrashcore with noisecore elements. Their vocals set them apart, though.




Never heard of them, sorry, but I'll check.

^^^

Good shit man.

Now even more questions are branching off of this cause you mentioned more genres that I know very little about but I don't know how to multi-quote so I will just space my questions and statements out:

I've heard of cyber grind but I don't really know much about it, is that just like industrial grindcore? Shit like The Berzerker? Just grind mixed with industrial? If so I am a big fan of them.

I know Almost Nothing about the electronic genres of speedcore and Hardcore...can you name some bands/artists from these styles?

Also, would you consider thrashcore and speedcore to be the same thing? Wikipedia suggests that they are.

As far as Noise, Noisecore and Power Electronics would you consider these to be 3 seperate genres and if so, could you name a few important bands from each?

I've never been able to get into shit like Merzbow because they just seem like...well...straight up "noise" to me lol...but I kind of want to see if there are more accessible noise, noisecore and Power Electronics bands out there.

I REALLY like the noise and industrial/electronic elements used by bands like The Locust, Column of Heaven, Agoraphobic Nosebleed, The Berzerker (hell I also like industrial like Ministry)....but I can't really understand music that is nothing but pure static like some Merzbow releases.

Also, since I have recently gotten interested in Power Violence, Power Electronics and Noisecore I find Column of Heaven and their mix of styles to be really interesting and kind of got to wondering whether or not the ideology between Power Violence and Power Electronics bands might be similar since they are two genres that try to create the heaviest possible music outside of the metal realm.

Not really sure where I am going with that...just became curious about whether or not the two musical scenes have any crossover in terms of their mentalities that might have led a band like CoH to incorporate both.


I also did notice how much the Column of Heaven album "Holy Things are For the Holy" has connections to Sludge like EyeHateGod. Some similar riffs, some similar vocals and of course the samples and serial killer themes.


Oh, and here is some Deadguy stuff so see what you think. I never listened to them much but I kind of dig a few tracks and I think they are some form of hardcore or Power Violence so see what genre you think they fall into. I personally think they might have influenced The Dillinger Escape Plan who also sound to me like they might have a bit of connection to PV or Fastcore:

http://youtu.be/KSLshVtNsY8

http://youtu.be/wPhCjKebuAg

http://youtu.be/86i8Dx61V8M

Deadguy sounds like mathcore to me. Will post about the other queries as soon as possible.

I'd like to add that the first 2 napalm death albums are rather unmetallic. Swans also had a very significant influence on early UK grind.

Kängpunk is basically swedish crust/d-beat. Think mob 47 to even much later stuff. While DooM and such were definitely influenced by kängpunk they were definitely crustier. Modern crust often take heavily from kängpunk in the wake of wolfbrigade and tragedy.

So is Kangpunk stuff like Skit System, Martyrdod and Knivad?

If so I love that shit.

I also agree that Napalm Death's first few albums, especially Scum, are not very metallic.

Scum is pretty much just an oldschool crusty grindcore album.

And what exactly is mathcore?

What are a few examples of Mathcore bands?

Mathcore is Converge, The Dillinger Escape Plan, Botch etc. It's rooted in metalcore, adding abrupt tempo changes and exotic time signatures and, in general, is quite technical.

i am not familiar with knivad but the first 2 are. Although Martyrdöd are quite distinct. In general eventually the swedish scene became more melodic too.

Noise is a blanket terms that covers a lot of things. like wierdo jazz improv stuff is noise, but not in the sense you want. power electronics originated with stuff like whitehouse and sutcliffe jugend, who were one of the many branches of the english industrial scene in the 80s, it falls under the noise umbrella but is more structured than say harsh noise. often has vocals. noisecore is basically a punk band making noise music, e.g this


power violence and power electronics aren't related, they just both have power in the name. im really not sure why you're looking for more 'acessible' stuff in a genre that does its best to be inaccessible

just a sidenote but u seem to be looking a genres in a really weird way, like you're checking wikipedia and asking for like an itemised list of what x genre is. that's a really dumb way to think of it. some dudes make some music, other dudes think hey thats cool and make music that is similar in some way. then later on someone looks at these people in hindsight and calls the stuff they made a genre. thats how it works. scenes are the thing to look at. find a band, look who was in the band. who were they talking to? were they in other bands? you gotta explore scenes organically otherwise you'll have no context for where the music came from and you'll look silly if u talk about it. thats why a guy in this thread called you a kid, because you sounded like one.

I can relate a lot to that kind of anxiety when exploring genres. We always want to get right to the best bands/releases.

You know, not tryna knock on ya here Idolsofchagrin, but I kind of get the impression that a lot of metal guys are accustomed to knowing all this minutiae in metal and as such feel compelled to apply this same attitude IMMEDIATELY to other genres they explore later on. I mean, how long did you have to listen to metal to get it all right? I dunno about you but it took me years and years to get to a point where I feel relatively confident in my judgments (maybe I shouldn't be a mod on this site, lol) and even now I still like hearing input from friends with trusted taste. So, really, it's fine if you're still figuring stuff out and get it wrong a few times, man, just keep listening to stuff and digesting it and you'll get it eventually.

I think the key distinction between powerviolence and other punk genres is that its goal is extremity in and of itself, as theposega pointed out. Regular hardcore/crust/grind is fast and brutal with slow pummeling parts but powerviolence does that dynamic to the exclusivity of anything else. As Yayattasa pointed out, powerviolence/fastcore (they're close to same thing, kinda splitting hairs sometimes) bands are oftentimes devoid of metal influences except for their slow parts where they go full-on sludge and might incorporate metallic riffing. Also, yeah, noise/power electronics are a totally different off-shoot of music unrelated to powerviolence--instead it's mostly deriving from underground industrial and more experimental classical/academic styles. That said, there are a lot of nifty ways in which metal, punk, and industrial/experimental cross over and intersect with each other.

And as a last remark, if you can find a way to go to a good powerviolence show, preferably in a shitty dive bar or in someone's basement, I strongly recommend it. I think these kinds of styles work much better in a live setting than sitting at home listening to records. SeeingGetting pulverized by bands like Iron Lung and xBrainiax is an experience.

I actually have no idea what you mean when you say this or why you are saying I sounded like a kid LOL.

I know that genres come about in a kind of hap hazard way and just start off with bands experimenting with different sounds and then later bands with similar sounds are associated with them by fans and never said otherwise.

When I ask for lists of bands that are in a certain genre I only do it so I will know what kind of sound people are referring to when they mention that genre by name and that's really all it is.

For example, one poster mentioned "cybergrind" so I asked him to name a couple bands that are cybergrind because I wanted to understand what kind of sound that label is a reference to.

That's all it is.

Would you want to go around thinking that when someone talks about death metal they are in fact referencing black metal?

Wouldn't you want to be know the difference?

It's no different than anything else.

I sometimes like to look at interesting paintings as well for example and I like Surrealist art.

If I see a Salvador Dali painting I would want to be aware that that is in fact Surrealist art and not abstract art because then if someone starts talking about Abstract art I won't say that Salvador Dali is an Abstract painter and I will know what they are talking about and won't be confused.

That's all it is and that's the only reason I ask for examples of certain genres.

So I started hearing about Power-Violence and I wanted to know what kind of sound people were referring to with that label just out of pure curiosity and when I checked out some PV bands I realized I liked the style so then I wanted to know where the scene came from, how it evolved, what bands were associated with the label, what part of the country or world they came from, etc because I was interested.

It's totally cool with me if you think the way I ask about genres is dumb and I'm not bothered by it and your totally entitled to your opinion of course but I just have entirely no idea what you mean about my questions being childish LOL.

I pretty much assume that everyone wants to know what labels refer to for the same reason that they would like to be aware that the word "spoon" does not reference a sharp object that you cut steak with because then if they ever ask someone to hand them a spoon they will not be confused when someone Doesn't hand them a knife LOL.

I'm also not quite sure I understand what you are saying at the beginning of this post.

I just like to know what kind of bands certain labels reference so when I hear a certain sound I can say "oh, that's what people mean when they talk about Power Electronics or whatever".

And yeah it did take me a while before I could generally tell the difference between different metal genres when I heard them.

It's been so long now that I've been into metal (almost exactly 20 years actually) that I don't really remember when I discovered the difference between black and death metal for example.

So what are a few examples of Crust-Core bands?

Is that shit like Extreme Noise Terror?

As I said before, it varies depending on the definition of crustcore. Going by my definition ("barely/non metallic crust punk"), yeah, Extreme Noise Terror fits. Going by the crust+grindcore definition, too.

Get some Disgust (UK) in your life, son!

bump an old thread, as I was looking to see how this board thought about Benumb. This is a weird thread. I love labels, but when they're thrown around like they are here, they distort and become meaningless.

I have only just seen this, and I am not well versed in this type of music, but I highly recommend a fantastic group called Crom. They're the LA group that released a record called The Cocaine Wars. One for fans of Schwarzeneggers Conan the Barbarian in particular.