Five under-appreciated DC hardcore bands

Artificial Peace (photo: Cynthia Connolly)

By Mike Seale

Fugazi, Rites of Spring, Minor Threat and even Void have all now gotten their due, to some extent; they’ve even become the few token Washington, DC hardcore bands appreciated by the punks and alternative types who are generally disinterested in that scene. But there was a wealth of great bands in that city during the ’80s and ’90s, as you’ll see below, and many of them have been unfortunately overshadowed.

Red C
The Flex Your Head compilation was the quintessential early DC hardcore compilation, and Red C always stood out amongst all the great bands and tracks on there. Not only because their sound was a little different, a little punkier and quirkier, but because the songs were so good. Thurston Moore of Sonic Youth recently described what particularly attracted him to DC hardcore on the Dischord Records website, saying, “It wasn’t just about the thrash and the speed and the sound, though those were all cool elements of it. It was this kind of raw style of songwriting that I really liked.” And Red C was an example of that. If only they had more songs recorded, and with all the demos Dischord has put out lately, let’s hope a Red C tape will see the light of day. According to Dischord, the band did record at least one demo, but sadly any tapes were lost after band member Toni died of pneumonia in the mid-’80s.

Artificial Peace
Another band that caught my attention on Flex Your Head was Artificial Peace, not only because of the songwriting but this time because of a bit of a technical edge or tightness that’s reminiscent of Minor Threat. Luckily, a longer recording session of theirs did surface and get an official Dischord release recently. Ian Mackaye of Dischord said it wasn’t released at the time because the label was poor in the early ’80s and Artificial Peace only lasted a year. “Artificial Peace may well be an obscure band,” said Mackaye, “but their effect on the DC scene was significant and played a sure role in the evolution of the music.”

Fury
These guys were an incarnation of the great DC hardcore band Swiz, but featuring Chris Thomson of Ignition and Circus Lupus on vocals. They only put out one 7” record, but it was as much of a rager as their band name would suggest. The record was re-released by Jade Tree Records in 2002.

Skull Kontrol
A weirdly unrecognized late ’90s DC supergroup fronted by Chris Thomson, but also featuring Kim Thompson of the Delta 72 and my favourite hardcore drummer, Brooks Headley of Born Against and Universal Order of Armageddon. Skull Kontrol were a punkier, rawer and better version of earlier Chris Thomson band The Monorchid, and it’s hard to understand why they weren’t more popular. Maybe because of the general decline of hardcore and atypical punk at the time. Headley and Skull Kontrol guitarist Andy Coronado went on to form the similarly obscure yet excellent Wrangler Brutes, along with Born Against singer Sam McPheeters.

Ignition
Sure, Ignition’s importance is now recognized by current hardcore heavyweights like Paint it Black, but in their day they were unfairly overshadowed by singer Alec Mackaye’s brother’s band, Fugazi, like his earlier band, Faith, was by Minor Threat. Ignition was more straightforward than Fugazi, more political, rougher. It was strange that the bands that most closely represented, symbolized and synthesized DC hardcore were seemingly ignored by everyone outside of a tiny few.