Hardcore on vo.rs

With Full Force: East Germany's Extreme-Metal Institution

Tue, 22 Oct 2024 09:00:00 +0000

Alcatraz: Belgium's Hardcore-and-Metal Prison Break

Tue, 10 Sep 2024 09:00:00 +0000

The Wall of Death: A Short History of Pop's Daftest, Best Ritual

Tue, 19 Mar 2024 09:00:00 +0000

Picture the field from above. A band vamps on one riff, the singer walks to the lip of the stage, and a seam opens down the middle of ten thousand people like someone unzipped the crowd. Two walls form, forty feet apart, staring each other down across a strip of bare, trampled grass. There is a countdown. And then, on a cue nobody voted on and everybody understood, both halves sprint at each other and collide. Bodies bounce. Nobody dies. Everybody laughs. Thirty seconds later the field has healed over as if nothing happened, and the song lurches into its next section like a bus finding gear.

That is the wall of death, the most theatrical, most obviously mad piece of choreography in loud music, and one of the very few crowd rituals with a genuine origin story worth telling. It has a borrowed name, a debated inventor, a rough birthday, and a physics all its own. Take it seriously for a minute and it stops looking like meatheads running into each other and starts looking like one of the more sophisticated social contracts you’ll ever watch a stranger honour.

Refused: The Shape of Punk That Actually Came

Tue, 23 Jan 2024 09:00:00 +0000

Resurrection Fest: A Galician Village That Becomes Metal's Capital

Tue, 24 Oct 2023 09:00:00 +0000

Viveiro is a fishing town on the north coast of Galicia, up in the green, rainy, Atlantic corner of Spain that most people never associate with the country at all. It has a medieval old town, an estuary, a few thousand permanent residents, and for one week every summer it becomes one of the biggest metal cities in Europe. Resurrection Fest is the reason, and its rise from a small local hardcore gig to a festival pulling tens of thousands a day is one of the great modern festival stories.

What the Mosh Pit Is Actually For

Sat, 14 Oct 2023 09:00:00 +0000