By the time you’ve seen your hundredth hardcore show, the edges start to blur. But there’s always that one band—your first taste of something so jarring, so completely outside of what you thought punk was, that it fries your brain a little.
For Justin Pearson, that moment came early. “I recall seeing Infest when I was fourteen and thinking it was the most insane thing ever,” he says. “I was a newer human and had not yet seen the shit that I have stumbled upon over the last four decades.” He revisited the band years later in his thirties—“major let down.” Not because they’d changed, but because he had. The bar had moved. Way up.
Now, after decades of pushing boundaries with Swing Kids, The Locust, Retox, Dead Cross, and Deaf Club—not to mention running the Three One G label—Pearson has assembled his personal list of the ten most “weird” and “crazy” hardcore punk bands ever. But don’t expect any nostalgia-core or genre worship. “Just to be clear here,” he adds, “my weird and crazy standards are really jacked up… the things I find interesting, which almost always are weird and crazy, are things that a lot of people may not agree with, or even wrap their heads around.”
What follows is his personal top five. Some are friends. Some are legends. Some are hard to define at all. All of them broke the rules, pushing limits—sonically, structurally, ethically. Pearson has spent decades doing exactly that, most famously with Swing Kids, who are once again in focus with a freshly remastered Anthology LP and cassette repress.
Formed in the mid-’90s, Swing Kids carved their sound from obscure punk, social politics, and jazz-influenced rhythms. The lineup—Pearson on vocals, Jose Palafox on drums, John Brady on bass, and Eric Allen on guitar—burned bright and fast. Later shows brought in Jimmy Lavalle on second guitar. Tragedy followed when Allen, also of Unbroken, took his own life.
More than a decade later, the band regrouped for two charity shows in Allen’s memory. “Funerals,” they called them. “The band’s spirit will live on,” and the final 7” Fake Teeth captured that closing moment. Now, all the band’s material—original EP, the El Camino Car Crash track, their version of Joy Division’s “Warsaw,” the Spanakorzo split, and those final songs—has been remastered and released as a single collection.
And while the Anthology marks a full-circle moment for Swing Kids, Pearson’s list channels that same spirit of disruption. Read the full list to see which bands cracked his brain open.
Words by Justin Pearson:
HIRS Collective:
I think starting off with this band makes sense. Maybe years ago before Gabe Serbian passed he linked me up with Jenna from HIRS to sing on a track. That track bloomed into an amazing friendship. So the odd part about this selection is that I have a pretty insane drummer standard.
The people I have been lucky enough to play with has set a pretty fucked up bar. And as a bassist, I am fixated on percussion. I went to see HIRS perform, and knew it was a two piece, which consisted of vocals and guitar with backing tracks. I was already on my way to head home when I arrived.
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Ok, well, this band fucked all that drummer standard stuff up for me. Hands down, HIRS was and is one of the raddest modern hanrdcore bands right now.
Performance, swag, aesthetic, delivery, and fuckin’ stage presence. A two piece like that, ripping that hard, makes me feel bad for regular bands. Plus, they are lovingly down to scrap for all our oppressed siblings in this world.
WARSAWWASRAW:
While we are at it, let’s stay on this two piece thing. When I first met and saw WWR, they were an incredible five-piece band.
They had an EP out that was ripping, which had two vocalists, one bass, one guitar, and a drummer. Well, they downsized to a three piece, which was one vocalist, one guitarist, and a drummer.
Super sick still, and yes, better than the five-piece line up. Ok, well fuck me sideways and call me a potato…. the damn band downsized again, this time to a two piece.
Now I don’t want to name names, but two-piece WWR rips harder than four and five piece bands in ways that the physics of hardcore should not allow.
The Sensitizer LP is hands down one of the most ripping LPs ever made, and I bet 99% of the people who are actually reading this have never heard that album. Sucks for those people.
Fuck Money
I have no idea if Fuck Money is punk, or hardcore.
But I do know that they are ethically punk, and probably more punk than most of the bands who willingly label themselves punk.
But they are the ones on my list that embrace the weird part, and in such a weirdly beautiful way.
They are the kind of band that I have to study with precision, and one that manages to remain a mystery, because let’s be honest, most punk and hardcore bands are fairly predictable.
I’ve toured with them and each night looked forward to trying to figure them out. But the one thing I figured out was, they are beautiful people making beautiful art.
>> See what’s next for Fuck Money here.
Stress Positions:
This band easily encompases all the points mentioned in my previous choices.
This was the second band released on Three One G that was a band that I had not met in person or seen live, which is rare and frightening.
Three One G is family, and well, up to now on this list, they are all part of the Three One G family. When I first saw Stress Positions live, not only did I fall in love with them as people, but as players.
Seeing a ripping hardcore band with no weak links is what all hardcore should be. Seeing a band like Stress Positions should make you want to stop playing hardcore or go try a love more than you currently are. If Stress Positions are the future’s standard of hardcore, the genre may actually be saved.
Drive Like Jehu:
This pick is me loving saying fuck you to this world I live in.
The band may not be considered punk or hardcore, and I assume they don’t consider themselves that, but they checked all the boxes for me when I was sixteen or whatever terrible age I was trying to survive.
Try to prove me wrong, because the band is jarring, brutal, precise, innovative, and has some of the coolest humans in it. Viva Rick Froberg, as that guy has part of his existence living on in me.
And heck, John Reis is one of the raddest guitar players I know. His JCM 800 is the holy grail of punk in my opinion.
