Best hardcore album

If there was any romanticism left in hardcore punk, it certainly died this year, after two different reincarnations of Black Flag, with entirely different lineups, were announced earlier this year. They both appear to be touring simultaneously , which makes them a lot more similar to L. Guns than they probably ever wanted to be. And neither one features Henry Rollins, which more or less makes this a major disappointment. So, like any good punks, we took a dive back into our hardcore punk records to rediscover why we fell in love with it in the first place, and came out the other end with 10 of our favorite records. Come join us on a journey through some of the most intense punk records ever recorded.

By , the writing was on the wall: Punk rock might have been making headlines, but it wasn't moving units. The industry responded with the skinny tie bands, retroactively labeled New Wave, a safer, more accessible take on the back-to-basics energy of punk. The street reacted by buzzing its collective head, throwing out the fashion designers and putting the musicians in the driver's seat. The result was a rawer, tougher, more stripped down form of punk known as hardcore. See also: The 20 Worst Hipster Bands.

All too often, hardcore punk bands think that playing hardcore is simply playing as loud and fast as you can, with little thought to style or musical construction. This isn't really the case--at least not all the time. Many hardcore bands have played with style and skill, and even some of the best that favor playing really loud and really fast developed their own style of doing it. If you want to get into hardcore punk, it helps to first know those who did it first--and best. Here are 10 albums no self-respecting hardcore fan should be without.

Splintering off from punk-rock in the s, hardcore took the toughest edges of punk and fashioned them into a bludgeoning device. Brighton bunch Dead Swans channelled the confusion of young love and mental illness into heart-rending, ear-splitting audible imperfection on their debut. There are few conversations that are sure to ignite arguments in the modern hardcore community quite like which of the Frank Carter-era Gallows records was superior.