Love it or hate it, hardcore is bigger than it's ever been, and it's not going anywhere. One of the reasons it's bigger than it's ever been is because we live in an inherently violent, abusive, humiliating system. People are tired of it. They're looking for release in that pit, and they find it. And that release very well can be revolutionary.
A lot of people who are halfway-house fans of hardcore music probably look at the culture and go, damn, why is it so fucking violent? Why are these dudes so vicious? You've got people getting hit in the face, intentionally hitting other people in the face. Everybody's getting hit in the fucking mouth at these shows. I've seen arms broken in the pit. This shit's crazy. There's the guy up on stage with a gun in his hand, not giving a fuck, chanting about shooting motherfuckers who won't get in the pit. What the hell is going on?
Well, it's cathartic, isn't it? It's cathartic to watch people actually express the violence that is fundamental to our society. A lot of it is for shock value. A lot of it is theatrics. A lot of it is camp. The people doing it will never admit this, but it's an obviously cathartic release. It's camp. The guy with the gun on stage chanting about shooting motherfuckers who don't get in the pit—he's not actually going to shoot them. It's part of the fucking show. But it's cathartic because this entire society is built on violence.
And I'm not talking about getting your shit rocked in the pit or getting crowd-killed. I'm talking about your fucking mother dying fifteen years early because UnitedHealthcare decided to deny her life-saving treatment just to pad their executives' bonuses. That's violence. That's the kind of violence there is no release for, because it's systemic. It's accepted. It's allowed. Our society has decided your mother has to die so the executives can make more money. The president says your brother has to die in Iran because we can't switch to green energy—we have to bomb schoolchildren to protect the oil economy. Not for us, not for the people who show up to the shows, but for the executives. In a hardcore pit, the violence is consensual. Under capitalism, the violence is non-consensual and legally mandated. You will be brutalized, and there is no back to stand in, and under the ideal capitalist society, no one is going to pick you up when you fall. Contrast that to the fact that we're all brothers in that fucking pit.
We see violence broadcast to us every day. The president shares horrendous videos that, in a previous era, would have only been found on the now-defunct site Liveleak, using them on his Twitter to rally support for the pogroms they're committing against brown people. In the community I live in alone, dozens of families have been ripped apart by ICE. Is that not violence? But it's the sort of violence that's acceptable and allowed. Sure, you can be against it—but you're not against the system, are you? You're not against the system that creates the violence; you're just against how the violence is performed. Can we do it with a little more decorum so I can get back to brunch? Can you play your music a little quieter so I can enjoy my mimosas?
It's the same logic. The same sense of "why are you disrupting the optics?" "We're not against rap, we're not against rappers. We're against those thugs." It's the same thing in hardcore. They don't want to see the gun on the flyer, but they'll vote for and support the policies that create situations like Parkland or Uvalde. Those acts of violence are normalized, instrumentalized, and treated as part and parcel of life. In this country, a school shooting is really no different from a tornado. It's not something we could stop. It's not a reflection of our society. It's just a natural disaster—a tragedy, sure, but there's nothing we can do about it.
And then we're shocked—shocked—when certain groups of people, looking for any way to cope with the constant violence of the system they live in, find themselves in the pit crowd-killing a motherfucker. When people say, "I wish they would just tone it down a little bit," do they talk about the system the same fucking way? "You don't have to put the guns on the flyers. Why does every hardcore flyer have some dude in a ski mask with guns? These people think they're guerrillas, it's crazy." (Shit, they might just end up being guerillas, the way history is moving.) This shit isn't supposed to appeal to everyone. It's the language of the outsider. It's supposed to look a little crazy. But what's crazy, really? It's not crazy that our community members are being abducted by ICE. That's just something we can "reform" and "vote away." Same logic.
So when you see footage come out of these pits, when you see bands fucking rant, when you see the brutality of the music—know that the brutality of the music is a reflection of the brutality of the system that produced it. It is a reflection of the lack of any real outlet for young people to process the abuse they're under. I can go on my phone right now, scroll three reels, and see a video of a bomb being dropped on a child. That bomb was made here. It might have been made in the town you're in right now. But that violence is acceptable because it's systemic. Meanwhile, a venue gets two hundred people in it and they have to shut shit down. Think about that.
Like I said, in the pit, we're all brothers. The violence is consensual. You agree to be at the show. You agree to stand in the fucking front. You agree not to stay in the fucking back, and you're gonna get crowd-killed for it. You're gonna get fucking hit. It is what it is. You're here for it. And what's cool is it's mixed gender. You got queer folk. You got straight folk. You got women, men, whoever the fuck. All types of bodies in the pit. And so you have a system of being and living in a society that forces patriarchal violence upon women. I mean, in this state, they think of women as nothing more than incubators because you cannot get an abortion here. And yet, those women are in the pit, hitting motherfuckers in the head, showing that in this place of violence, we're all equal. We're all equal in the fucking pit. And that's the beauty of it. Because everywhere else in society, there is hierarchy. Your boss is in control of you. Your health insurance representative gets to decide on whether you live or die. The cop that pulls you over could murder you with absolute immunity. The ICE agent can take your fucking parents. Everywhere you look, there's hierarchy. But in the pit, there's no hierarchy. Just fists, just energy. And that can be revolutionary.
And this isn't to say everyone in the hardcore scene is woke, or that there isn't a strong reactionary element running through any subculture. This isn't to say going to a hardcore show is some revolutionary act. But when you see people taking rubber bullets to the face at a protest, when you see that twenty-three-year-old charge the police, getting the fuck beat out of him with a baton, and he doesn't give a fuck—he's got the skateboard, he's doing whatever he has to do to get out of there, to make his peace, to make his statement, to stand up to authority—I guarantee you that dude is a monster in the hardcore pit. I guarantee it. The guy who lost his eye to an ICE rubber bullet and still skated to the protest is a fucking animal in the pit. Because where else would you find somebody like that? At brunch, drinking mimosas? Absolutely not.
Love it or hate it, hardcore is bigger than it's ever been, and it's not going anywhere. One of the reasons it's bigger than it's ever been is because we live in an inherently violent, abusive, humiliating system. People are tired of it. They're looking for release in that pit, and they find it. And that release very well can be revolutionary.
