Suggestions
Suggestions
Fastcore is hardcore punk that puts playing fast first, true to the ‘short, fast and loud’ credo. Songs can be tiny: most of the 20 tracks on Charred Atlas’ 2025 release last under 30 seconds and land close to powerviolence and extreme hardcore. The name was more common a couple of decades ago. Nate of Paternity Test uses the word to cover late-1990s to mid-2000s bands that either played fast on purpose or went back to 1980s hardcore, and says fastcore was never a purely American thing.
Stockholm’s Massgrav have played stop-and-go hardcore punk with rock’n’roll mixed in for more than 20 years, and have only got faster since drummer Fenok joined in 2010, without turning into grindcore. Beijing band Struggle Session wrote 33 songs in under ten minutes about a South American tour, one for each city they played. Friends told Pontianak band Commence that they sound closer to fastcore than to powerviolence, and the band sing mostly in Pontianak Malay. Buenos Aires band Talacactus mix fastcore with swinging rock’n’roll and world and indigenous percussion, and the Jodie Faster / Corrupt Vision split fits eight tracks by bands from Lille and Orange County into less than four and a half minutes.