Made by people who had been living in squats and on the street on the Lower East Side, and the founding text of New York hardcore. It is also, incidentally, one of the heaviest records anybody released in 1986, which is why it appears in a thrash history at all.
The Lower East Side
New York in the mid 1980s, and specifically the blocks around Avenue A, was not a place anybody chose to live. The hardcore scene there was made of people with genuinely difficult lives, and the music that came out of it has a weight that suburban hardcore does not.
Harley Flanagan had been the drummer in the Stimulators as a child, had been homeless, and formed Cro-Mags out of that environment. John Joseph came from a similar background. Both later became Hare Krishna devotees, which gives the record a spiritual dimension that sits oddly and effectively alongside the violence.
What the record does
It is a hardcore record with metal riffs played by people from the hardcore side, which is a different animal from a metal record with a hardcore beat.
That distinction matters. When a thrash band adds hardcore elements, the result is a metal song with a bounce in it. When a hardcore band adds metal guitar, the result is a hardcore song that has become physically heavier without changing what it is for. The Age of Quarrel is entirely the second thing.
The riffs are simple, repeated and enormous. The tempos change constantly. And the whole record is built for a room rather than for a listener, which is why it has been the template for New York hardcore ever since.
Best Wishes
The 1989 follow up is considerably more metal, with longer songs, more elaborate arrangements and Flanagan taking the vocal. It divided the audience at the time and has been reassessed upwards steadily since, which is a familiar pattern for second albums in this branch of the genre.
| The Age of Quarrel | Best Wishes | |
|---|---|---|
| Year | 1986 | 1989 |
| Vocal | John Joseph | Harley Flanagan |
| What it is | Hardcore, made heavy | Metal, made by a hardcore band |
| Reception then | Immediate and lasting | Divisive |
| Reception now | Foundational | Steadily reassessed upwards |
Why thrash listeners should hear it
Because it is the clearest available demonstration of what the other side of the trade sounded like, and because it is heavy in a way that very few thrash records manage.
Thrash heaviness is a function of speed and precision. The heaviness on this record is a function of weight and repetition, which is a different mechanism entirely, and hearing both makes it much easier to understand what each genre was actually doing.
It also explains a great deal about what came after. Every heavy band with a breakdown in it, every metalcore group, and a substantial part of modern hardcore is standing on this record rather than on anything from California.
What happened to the band
Extensively and publicly documented, and mostly not about music. There have been line up disputes, competing versions of the band, legal action and an incident at a New York show in 2012 that ended in criminal charges.
Flanagan has since been recording under the Cro-Mags name and touring, and the early material is played by more than one configuration of former members. None of that changes what was recorded in 1986.
The culture that carried this music out of the cities and into the American interior is covered in Skateboarding and Thrash, and the wider account is in Crossover: Where Thrash Met Hardcore.
The demo
A substantial part of this record's reputation was built before the record existed. The 1985 demo, usually called the Age of Quarrel demo, circulated widely on the tape network and is regarded by a significant minority as the better version of the material.
It is rawer, faster in places and has a different drum sound, and the argument between the demo and the album is one of the oldest in New York hardcore. Both are now easily available, which has if anything intensified it.
The Krishna question
Worth addressing, because it is unusual and it is genuinely part of the record. Both John Joseph and Harley Flanagan became Hare Krishna devotees, and the lyrics carry that alongside the street level violence and hostility.
That combination looks incoherent from outside and made complete sense in context: these were people who had been through genuinely bad circumstances and had found something that got them out of it. The spiritual material is not decoration and it is not a pose, and it opened a line into hardcore that Shelter and the whole Krishnacore strand later followed.
Why it belongs next to the thrash records
Because heaviness is not one thing, and this record demonstrates the alternative mechanism better than anything else from the period.
A thrash record achieves weight through speed and precision: everything arrives on time and there is a lot of it. This achieves weight through repetition and space: a simple figure, played fewer times than you expect, with the arrangement leaving room around it. Put The Age of Quarrel next to Reign in Blood and you have the two available answers to the same question.
What New York hardcore took from it
Almost everything. The template that Agnostic Front, Sick of It All, Madball and thirty years of bands afterwards have worked from is on this record: the mid tempo heavy riff, the gang vocal, the breakdown, and a lyrical register that is about survival rather than about politics.
It also fixed the sound of a scene. New York hardcore is identifiable within two bars in a way that hardcore from most other cities is not, and the identifying features were largely established here.
The reach goes further than that. Every metalcore band with a breakdown is standing on this, and a substantial part of what the 1990s called metallic hardcore is a direct extension of it.
Sources and notes
Years and labels refer to original pressings. Biographical details follow the band members' published accounts.
