Five criminally underrated punk/hardcore albums

By Jason Schreurs

We all have our favourite punk and hardcore albums, and if we quickly rattled off our top five or top ten albums of all time, there’d surely be some crossover on our lists. Minor Threat’s Discography, Black Flag’s My War, Bad Religion’s No Control or, for some of us, Against the Grain, Fugazi Repeater, Nomeansno’s Wrong, Propagandhi’s Less Talk, More Rock, Against Me!’s Reinventing Axl Rose, or perhaps select albums by Drive Like Jehu, Rocket from the Crypt, NOFX, Dead Kennedys, The Accused, D.R.I., Converge, Norma Jean, Pig Destroyer, Hot Water Music, Gorilla Biscuits, Quicksand… and the list goes on and on.

But what about those dark-horse albums that each of us would slot into our list of all-time favourite albums, but very few others would? Maybe it’s an album that has a special emotional attachment to it, based on geography, or memories, or personal reasons? Or maybe it’s totally just a guilty pleasure. How else to explain that I’ve often listed Everclear’s Sparkle and Fade as one of my favourite albums ever?

If only we could have access to lists of the five all-time dark-horse albums from everyone with good taste in music. Or from each member of the aforementioned bands that we all love and respect (okay, maybe not the members of Everclear). Seriously though, what hidden gems would we find with this kind of information at our fingertips?

So, in the spirit of sharing this kind of information, here are my five all-time dark-horse picks for you to check out:

Poison Idea - Feel the Darkness (American Leather Records), 1990
This band’s whole discography is blazing hardcore/punk, but it was on Feel the Darkness that the Portland train wreck known as Poison Idea found perfection. From the pacing of the album (two-minute punk crossover shit-fits sandwiched around five and six-minute slow burners) to its pure catchiness, this album is one of the few that sounds just as amazing as it did way back on that day that I first bought it (incidentally, Feel the Darkness was one of the first three albums I ever bought on compact disc in the fall of 1990). Probably cost me $40 or some bullshit, but it was worth every penny and more. “Alan’s on Fire,” a four-minute opus about a boy who takes the ultimate revenge on his family by setting himself afire, is one of the most harrowing songs, musically and lyrically, ever written. A song so goddamned good it’s been covered by Machine Head and Pulling Teeth, and probably countless others along the way.

Waxwing - One for the Ride (Second Nature Recordings), 2000
The big deal in emo around this time was Seattle’s Sunny Day Real Estate. By 2000, Sunny Day were finishing up a six-year, four-album run with their underwhelming swan song, The Rising Tide. But in the same city another band was taking the sound that Sunny Day Real Estate were known for and making it even better. Yes, Seattle foursome Waxwing’s second album, One for the Ride, a emotional triumph in all regards, would make my top list of albums before anything by Sunny Day (who, if we’re keeping score, would still make my top 50 with at least two of their albums). One for the Ride, though, is song after song of soaring melodies from singer/guitarist Rocky Votolato (who went on to write stellar solo material), darkly familiar family tales, and some of the best “emo” music ever made.

Shotmaker - Mouse Ear: Forget-Me-Not (Troubleman Unlimited), 1996
Man, I can barely talk about this album without getting all riled up. The oddly named Mouse Ear: Forget-Me-Not, Ottawa, Ontario rhythmic hardcore band Shotmaker’s second and last album, features 10 songs that play best as one whole piece of music. An almost uncomfortably prominent bass guitar (love when bands do that, see: Nomeansno, Rancid, Motorhead) drives these songs through the kinds of peaks and valleys that feel almost painful to listen to. The screams of the band’s three members pierce through what is essentially the best album ever written in the emotional hardcore genre. Sure, a few bands and albums come pretty damn close (Hoover, Torches to Rome, Sparkmarker), but none have the staying power of Mouse Ear.

Render Useless - Discography (Clue #2 Records), 1998
Remember that geographical attachment I talked about before? There’s a lot of that in Render Useless, an emotional hardcore band from Victoria, BC that I had the pleasure of seeing live countless times while living there. But there’s also a lot of the personal attachment, this being the first band I remember seeing where I actually knew the people in the band and was able to see the minds behind the band, as it were. For some, Render Useless’ discography might be a lot to sift through (see that 73-minute YouTube clip below), but for me the whole thing is golden, and always brings memories flooding back of the all-ages hardcore shows I frequented in my youth (and still frequent to this day). Also, the last four songs the band recorded before breaking up are on this discography. Stick those on repeat and you’ve got spastic, jangly, screamy hardcore perfection.

Sounds Like Violence - With Blood on My Hands (Deep Elm Records), 2007
Talk about your dark horses. Not many people have even heard of this Swedish band, never mind sticking them on their list of top all-time albums. Sounds Like Violence’s second album, With Blood on My Hands, is their pinnacle of three releases: dark, bitter, sarcastic, sometimes nightmarish emotional indie rock/melodic hardcore that’s a lot more fun than it sounds, even when their singer/guitarist (who, honestly, I couldn’t tell you the name of without Googling it) is saying depressing shit like “My heart’s leaking blood / I really liked it when you cheated on me / We used to tear each other apart / I was in deep pain right from the start” (from “Nothing,” see link below). Probably the best album ever made that was heard by so few people.