Bad Brains, "Re-Ignition"
Greatest hardcore band during the 80s has been a common argument through the years. A lot of the time, it comes down to a preference between the east coast (Minor Threat), the west coast (Black Flag or the Dead Kennedys), or the midwest (Hüsker Dü). I know I first encountered this argument on Usenet in 1991, and it hasn't really stopped. But if you asked for the best hardcore album, there was often an extra one that people would mention. I Against I didn't exactly fit the mold of those other bands, and given how many other genres get blended in here, I'm not sure it totally qualifies as a hardcore album. Kind of the same way I'm not sure that the Minutemen qualify. Nevertheless, it's a hell of an album, and I can understand why people put it in the company of so many other classics from the 80s.
Old Wounds, "Your God vs. Their God"
Because I apparently hate myself, I try to go and sample genres I'm not super fond of periodically just to see if my tastes have changed. I've never been a metalcore (the combination of metal and hardcore) guy, despite the fact that it seems like something I should really enjoy. I mean, hell, that Bad Brains song up there is kind of that exact combination! Nonetheless, metalcore usually doesn't do anything for me. So I picked up Old Wounds's 2018 album Glow to see if that still holds. This isn't bad, it just doesn't light any fire in my brain.
Full of Hell, "Armory of Obsidian Glass"
Loud one today so far! Full of Hell's 2019 Weeping Choir was one of the best metal releases that year, a rough set of songs that finds them adding a lot of influences to their grindcore. The result is a varied walk around the landscape of modern metal, but always furious.
Eight Bells, "Yellowed Wallpaper"
Keeping it loud, although we've wandered over towards post rock at this point. Post rock can sometimes feel pretty bloodless and/or pointlessly discursive when it gets too self-indulgent. There's sometimes an absence of focus on anything other than crescendo, a build up that feels false because it's only building up because the script says it should. That's not Eight Bells at all, there's a real arc to this stuff, and their two albums are among the best of the genre.
Lambchop, "My Face Your Ass"
Let the dulcet tones of Kurt Wagner take you out today. This is the best song on Thriller, one of the highlights of their catalog. That's the good stuff, folks.