HARDCORE WEDNESDAY; SICK OF IT ALL

Ok lets roll back the clock almost 30 years to 1992. I was sixteen and still transitioning from metal to punk and looking for anything to satisfy that itch I got from bands like The Damned, Ramones, and Black Flag. I had just found The Exploited's Live in Washington DC, Social Distortion's Somewhere Between Heaven and Hell, Descendants' Liveage, and Bad Religion's Generator. All great. This was pre-internet, of course, and it being East Tennessee and not even Knoxville, it was hard to track things down and know what to get next-so occasionally I found a dud, but more often than not I was getting what I needed. At that point I didn't really know what differentiated "punk" from "hardcore," but I got a lesson the night I scanned through the cassette racks at some chain record store in the Oak Ridge mall and found We Stand Alone by Sick of it All. It sure sounded punk.

The album was an EP, released the previous year and was my introduction to New York Hardcore and for me, to this day, I hold it up as the gold standard of NYHC. It absolutely set me on fire the first time I listened to it on my walkman. It was my skateboarding soundtrack and got me looking for Minor Threat with their incredible cover of "Betray." I'd drive around Kingston, just letting the tape flip over and over. It was hard time for me emotionally and spiritually and the mix of positivity and aggression was good medicine to help me keep my head up. "We Stand Alone" would always electrify me, make the hair on the back of my neck stand on end.

Here it is once again, tales of conformity

By the ones who would be king

We never set out to impress anyone

It's just an outlet, our chance to be heard

At first you said we hated too much

Now you say we just can't hate enough

Now you're screaming that we've changed

We've grown up but our beliefs are still the same

It's still an outlet for anger and strife

But one more thing, it's also our life

(We) We don't need any help (stand alone)

Our beliefs are strong enough to (stand alone)

Our desire's burning deep, in our hearts

It's in ourheads, it's in our souls

(We) We defy your fucking lies (stand alone)

You question our beliefs (stand alone)

Our desire's burning deep, in our hearts

It's in our heads, it's in our souls (stand alone)

The band was formed in 1986, in Queens NY, by high school friends Lou and Pete Koller, Rich Cipriano, and Armand Majidi (the latter two replacing Mark McNeely and David Lamb before the band recorded their self-titled debut album in 1987 for Revelation Records). They played Saturday Matinee shows at the legendary CBGBs and would go on to be one of the biggest, most important, and longest running of all the NYHC bands. Still together and releasing new music to this day. I never owned their original 7", but I went out and found their 1989 debut full length, Blood, Sweat, and No Tears and the second full length, 92's Just Look Around. Through freshmen year of college I listened to a ton of hardcore and straight edge hardcore, and while I found a lot of bands I loved, more often than not, I was getting two or three songs from an album worth adding to a mix tape and the rest being pale imitations of better bands. And no one, not Slapshot, Warzone, Agnostic Front, Earth Crisis, whoever, knocked me out the way Sick of it All did. The only band I listened to/obsessed over more was Black Flag. Now at 44, SOIA and Flag remain two of my favorite bands and still get me fired up when I'm having a shitty day. 

Sick of it All's latest album is 2018's Wake the Sleeping Dragon, and the band hasn't lost a step. I'd say the last ten or so years, the band has gotten even better than their "commercial break through" era Scratch the Surface and Built to Last. Not many bands have that kind of staying power. Last year they were on tour with another band I dearly love, Napalm Death, but sadly I was too broke to go. (I'm not sure if this would have been the first time those two toured together since the 1991 New Titans on the Block Tour which also included Sepultura and Sacred Reich. Can you fucking imagine that lineup in 1991? If I had a time machine...)