“Suburban Annihilation: The California Hardcore Explosion” Compilation Announced

Futurismo present their new anthology series: Altered Vision, beginning with Suburban Annihilation: The California Hardcore Explosion / From The City To The Beach: 1978-1983. This aggressive collection draws from California’s rich history of punk, more specifically hardcore: a new sound that eschewed melody for intensity, a sound that took punk harder and faster, a sound intrinsically American. Whilst hardcore was also burning over on the East Coast, it was in California that it had ignited and sprawled, a sonic punch in the face that raged socio-political disdain and total abandonment for commercialism, fuelled by a crumbling American Dream and the collapse of family values.

Suburban Annihilation takes you from the major cities, to the coastal towns, to the SoCal suburbs, showcasing some the most important bands of the West Coast. Blasting off with the Adolescents’ I Hate Children, it heads from the year zero of The Middle Class’s Out Of Vogue to the surf punk of Agent Orange’s Bloodstains, from the blues tinged outlaw of The Gun Club’s She’s Like Heroin To Me to the classic anti-anthems: Live Fast Die Young by the Circle Jerks and the hardcore staple California Über Alles by the Dead Kennedys. Also present are so many other bands integral to the era: T.S.O.L, Wasted Youth, Germs, Social Distortion, Suicidal Tendencies, Negative Trend, Flipper, and many more.

Though the music was designed to repel, this historical document has been lovingly designed to remind us that this genre created some of the most immediate and acutely realised music ever produced. Making this collection of choice cuts essential for long time fans of hardcore and punk, just as those new and inquisitive about one of the most angry and pissed off genres to have given birth in America. This double album comes in a choice of limited edition coloured vinyl, it has a tracklist co-curated by Henry Rollins, it contains liner notes by Lisa Fancher of Frontier, a bio by award winning author Benjamin Myers and it also contains a booklet featuring an array of images by the legendary punk photographer Edward Colver.