Whoever would have thought that, 45 years since The Middle Class released what is considered the first ever hardcore song with Out of Vogue, hardcore as a genre would still be going as strong as it currently is? As punk rock turned to New Wave and ran out of ideas in the late 70s, a group of bands decided to channel the genre’s anarchic spirit into a faster, harder, more aggressive and more uncompromising version of everything that had come before it. Over the years, hardcore has veered into all manner of different musical directions, splintering into various sub-genres of a sub-genre, and with the likes of Code Orange, Turnstile, Zulu, Soul Glo and more still doing their best to keep that musically explorative ideology alive, we can’t see it going anywhere anytime soon. Here are the five albums that have defined hardcore's wild ride so far.
