Intro

I can't speak to how punk felt when "Firestorm" by Earth Crisis came out. I still hadn't been born, and more than a decade would pass before I first encountered any form of subculture. What I can speak to is how deeply metalcore, propelled by the energy and the ideas in that Earth Crisis EP, changed punk in all its manifestations. As a little teenager obsessed by punk, I tried to keep myself at a distance from this subgenre. As a result, I didn't realize how many of the things I liked about the subculture I had so energetically adopted came from it. The styles of moshing, the structures of the songs of most of my favorite new bands, most merch designs. My reluctance to sit down and listen to a band like Norma Jean has softened through the years, but it wasn't until doing this project that I really reconciled and gained an understanding of metalcore and its history.

So what is this project? Me and my friend Kaust do a podcast about music called Six out of Five. Largely, we discuss the music that people mock. The trick is that people mock everything, so we can just talk about whatever we want. We just finished a season about metalcore. This was actually a very rewarding project since we tracked the history of the genre from its begininnings. Because we had some stuff we didn't get into as deeply as it merited in audio, we thought we needed to expand a bit. And so, this is a zine where we share thoughts on some releases and shows that we didn't discuss so deeply into. I hope you enjoy it.

Before going into the zine, I have to ADVERTISE something to you. Six months ago, Kaust put out "Acts of Random Violence", the first EP of his band Random Acts of Violence. You should go listen to it. This is really good new punk music that does not sound exactly like any other band. There's some electronic elements which set it apart from most of what's happening at the moment, but this is still proudly hardcore music. If I had to compare it to someone I would say names like Home Front, Insumisión, or Incendiary. That's not all, there's a lot of Drug Church in the vocals and lyrics which can only be a great thing. These are wildly different acts that don't really sound like each other. I'm really proud my friend is putting out music that's this cool and original and I think if you're reading this, you should go listen to it. The artwork is great too. You can find the EP on Bandcamp. -Héctor