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Tuesday, May 17, 2011
Upcoming Rorschach Reunion!
Posted by Brian Cook on Tue, May 17, 2011 at 11:41 PM
When speaking of the most influential hardcore bands of all time, folks usually fall back on the early staples—Bad Brains, Discharge, Black Flag, Minor Threat, and so on. The game-changing bands that followed in their wake typically nudged the genre’s loud-fast-rules into other territories, often times compromising the original intensity and urgency of their forefathers. It's unlikely you'll hear of New Jersey’s Rorschach being placed on the same pedestal as the aforementioned acts, yet they’re one of the few post-’82 bands to take hardcore to creative new extremes. While their first album, Remain Sedate, was a solid continuation of the punk/metal hybrid set forth by bands like Siege and Septic Death, their follow-up album, Protestant, created a whole new standard for both technical ability and sonic ugliness. The album abandons the power chord thrash of their earlier work in favor of dissonant plucked riffs and sophisticated instrument interplay. Rorschach took death metal’s dexterity and Voivod's dark prog and filtered it into a hardcore context. The band dissolved in ’93, but they inspired a whole new generation of hardcore bands to dig deeper into darker territory while pushing for stronger musicianship. They might not have spawned as many bootleg t-shirts and bad tattoos as Henry, H.R., and Ian, but their influence is still pervasive, manifesting itself in modern hardcore bands like Owen Heart and Converge as well as heavyweights like Mastodon and Dillinger Escape Plan.
Rorschach did a few reunion dates in 2009 and 2010, mostly in the NYC area. But now they’ve announced a show at El Corazon on August 19th with Heiress and Great Falls. I couldn’t be more excited. Now if we could just get His Hero Is Gone to add a Seattle date after their June 4th reunion at ABC No Rio…
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@2 Discharge might not be on the same level in terms of American hardcore (though the whole anarcho/crust/dbeat scene is likely to contest that statement), but internationally, the scope of their influence is arguably more apparent than that of any of the other bands mentioned
6
@4 Really? Internationally? More than the Black Flag? Don't think so, but have it your way. If you wanted to pick an influential British HC band I would have thought GBH would have been the one. But then again, I also think Discharge isn't that great and like GBH better. I bought Hear Nothing, See Nothing, Say Nothing when it came out, I'll have to give it a listen since I haven't in probably 17 or 18 years.
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@6
there's too many bands from Japan, Finland, Sweden, South America, Portland, etc, to name that were obviously influenced by Discharge over any other American or British hardcore band. it's actually pretty crazy to think about...I couldn't stand "d-beat" up until a few years ago, but once you get into it, you realize what a huge international impact Discharge had.
there's too many bands from Japan, Finland, Sweden, South America, Portland, etc, to name that were obviously influenced by Discharge over any other American or British hardcore band. it's actually pretty crazy to think about...I couldn't stand "d-beat" up until a few years ago, but once you get into it, you realize what a huge international impact Discharge had.
10
bad reporting! Pretty sure that the His Hero is Gone reunion was an April Fool's joke.
Besides, ABC has GO! booked that day.
Besides, ABC has GO! booked that day.
14
@6, it doesn't matter if you listen to Hear Nothing or not (I do all the time and I've had it since it came out), you can't deny Discharge has been a hugely influential band. They weren't as catchy as those other bands, but they pretty much helped spawn thousands of crust and doom bands. Look how many bands practically took their name or used their design style for their album covers.
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