Hardcore Is Everything

Hardcore Is Everything: Music, Identities and Ideologies provides a scholarly account of hardcore, as both a musical style and subculture, from a longtime fan and critical observer.

Born as the bastard child of punk rock, hardcore has since become the ultimate rebellion to the status quo. Fast, aggressive and confrontational, hardcore has lived on as a part of the musical underground for over five decades because it refuses to compromise. Hardcore Is Everything starts at the beginning by studying where and how this genre began, and how it became what it is and developed the labels that came to define the genre and what continues to define what being hardcore truly means. The book discusses locality, positionality, and authenticity in hardcore, as well as the various ideological movements within the genre, including Christianity, straight edge, and animal rights activism—even a dive into hardcore's mosh pit culture. Wrestling with the inclusivity and exclusivity of the subculture, Edward Banchs examines the equity, or lack thereof, for women and queer fans, asking why it is that some are meant to feel more welcome than others in a scene that projects openness.

Hardcore Is Everything offers explorations into why both community and identity are central to hardcore, what has kept hardcore relevant for over 50 years, and why this scene will live on for decades to come.