The Age of Quarrel

I like a lot of oldschool hardcore punk, back when it was about being fast, not giving a fuck good, guitar playing NOT fashions, breakdowns, and blastbeats. The one thing about most New York hardcore bands of the old days is that they all sound the fucking same (I.E. Sick Of It All, Madball, Agnostic Front) but these guys brought some originality to the table with this masterpiece.

Their social-political views are right to the point backed up with some damn good guitar playing and a lot of intensity. Pissed off bands with a point to express always have good music and this is one of those bands. This is the album that is a soundtrack to a massive riot or fist fight. The rage and fury on this album are so intense its amazing they actually could capture it on an album.

Now to pick the album apart. The album starts off with a monster of a song entitled "We gotta know" when I heard this song the first time I wanted to just stand up and punch someone in the fucking face. The lyrics and the solo presented in this song are so kick ass. This album reaches its climax in the first ten seconds and it never has a falling action. The fury just keeps hitting you harder and harder as the songs "World Peace" and "Show you No Mercy" melt away what you may have once thought of being the most aggressive crossover you ever heard. When this album rolls through you will be sitting there chanting along with lines like "SHOW YOU NO MERCY AT ALL" and "STREET JUSTICE" over and over again even when the songs end you will be bagging for more madness.

I recommend this album to people who love bands like D.R.I., Wehrmacht, Cryptic Slaughter, early Corrosion of Conformity and early Suicidal Tendencies though the Cro-mags are not even close to being able to be lumped together with any of those bands. I don't recommend this album to people who think hardcore was never good, people who think punk is a pop form of music, and people who believe bands that wear more makeup and girl clothes than have talent are good.

For those of you unfamiliar with the hardcore punk landscape of the USA in the middle eighties, let me summarize. On the west coast, a very leftist, feminist, almost hippie attitude formed the sub-cultural values of the scene, with most bands fostering a socio-political attitude in kind. In the middle states, a very weird and almost free for all sound was present that saw bands mix punk, psychedelic forms, metal and alternative rock into new forms with little regard for political ideas. On the east coast, specifically New York and Washington D.C., a harder, more blue collar vision was present, with band striking a generally right wing pose without being explicitly supportive of specific party or political ties. It’s here that we find the Cro-Mags among the NYC scene’s best and hardest bands.


Sharing stages with Agnostic Front, War Zone, Murphy’s Law, Sick Of It All and plenty more, the band honed a sharp, metallic sound underpinned by a super tight bass/drum assault and precise delivery of non-negotiable riffs. Their debut is bursting at the seams with anthems of survival, street life, personal strength and struggle, the songs generally short and sharp expressions of those concerns. But when the slamming riffs of “We Gotta Know”, “Show You No Mercy,” “Street Justice,” “Hard Times,” and the awesome “World Peace” descend on you, their meaning will be apparent without dissecting the lyrics. Topped by the odd but compelling vocals of John Joseph, the band’s rumbling and pointed sound is evocative of a clenched, unyielding fist, scarred but still strong and determined.


Doubtless one of the cornerstones of the NYC hardcore sound, this album was huge in metal circles as well, and remains an essential artifact. The fortunes of the Cro-Mags may have varied both musically and reputation-wise from here, but this is the shit, plain and simple.

There is little more that one can say about the legacy of the Cro-Mags. Harley, John and the rest of these NYC street-stalkers may have single-handedly defined the entire crossover movement with this powerful statement of violence, survival and the seeking of the truth. The production is beefy but not with analog attraction, the guitars are simple but thrash when they need to and the vocals are a snarling pit of sarcasm and spite that manage to be both biting and somewhat melodic all at once. A throbbing morass of muscle, rage and talented musicianship brought metal away from it's rather annoying pretense and brought hardcore out of what was becoming a mind-numbing simplicity. The Cro-Mags have few equals...

There are few filler tracks on this double-time pit smasher but a few key highlights that will have you spinning this again and again include the ultra-catchy "We Gotta Know", the hardcore epic "Seekers of the Truth" and the heavy handed "World Peace". It's hard to pick a favorite on this record though as it was stacked with the best material that anyone who wished to play this style could deliver. Listen through it one hundred times and pick your own favorites as there is much to choose from of great value.

The Cro-Mags may have fallen apart right after the first two records (with a good song popping up here and there on the releases that were hashed out afterwards) but this and "Best Wishes" remain their most powerful statements. Few bands had as much violent chemistry and the Cro-Mags and it comes pouring through on this record. This is an undeniable classic from one of the most important bands to grace the hardcore AND metal scenes...

Buy or die!!!

...or download the entire fucking thing at http://www.cromags.com.

Quite possibly the greatest crossover album ever... better than anything by DRI, certainly better than that half-silly SOD album, this one is chock full of punk rock aggression and metal riffage. There's no bullshit to be found on this one. No stupid death growls for the sake of death growls. No melodic shit where melodic shit doesn't belong. No silly breakdowns where the lead singer goes into assrape mode... this is PVNK AS FVCK, in a way that bands like I am Crying in the Corner can never EVER be. And at the same time, this is metal... straight-up New York crossover a la Nuclear Assault. Not quite as distorted or frenetic as that band, this one comes at you with a calculated rage, precisely as brutal as is necessary.

This is basically a punk album, except with metal riffs. The attitude is all punk - the vocals, and the lyrical approach as well. This, however, isn't the happy ultraliberal idealism of the Dead Kennedys - here, the truth is flat-out: "world peace can't be done!". Stick that in your bank.

Most of the songs are pretty short, though fortunately none manage to be under one minute (Survival on the Streets comes close), and fortunately none suffer from the half-a-song problem of SOD. All of these songs are complete, from the superfast and to the point "Don't Tread on Me", to the more "epic" (heh) "Searchers of the Truth", which has a full-on metal intro. The highlight is probably the opener, "We Gotta Know", which is most similar to Nuclear Assault's "Rise from the Ashes" in overall structure, without ever becoming quite that screamy or incoherent. John Joseph's vocals are some of the best in the business at what they are - perfect barking without a single touch of stomachache and assrape, getting furious and emotional without melodrama - closest comparison is a lower-pitched Keith Deen (Holy Terror) - punk rock without the modernist angst that sank punk rock.

The production is excellent, highlighting the guitar-drum interplay very nicely. The songs are short, to the point, and well-thought-out. The whole thing is only like 33 minutes, but it's complete as an album. Well worth hearing. No pretense, no bullshit, just fucken ROCK.

Oh yea and it's free for download on www.cromags.com - what more do ya need?

DAMN...I am surprised that nobody has reviewed this yet! Here I am then, to rectify this error.

This was the first album aside from S.O.D.'s insane classic "Speak English or Die" to introduce me to the concept of "crossover". For those of you young'uns out there unfamiliar with this idea, picture this: a ravening, snarling monster with the best and most lethal atrributes of metal and old school hardcore punk that lashes out at all in sight indiscriminately and kills all in its path--THIS was crossover, spawned in NYC and baptized in volume and mosh pit-spilled blood. This was the wave that started blurring the lines between two until then disparate styles that had more in common than they realized--until this happened, you could get KILLED at a hardcore show if you had long hair, and skinheads were not a welcome sight at metal shows either. And the Cro-Mags were at the forefront of this new style as its most merciless practitioners.

Practically every song on this monumental album is brass knuckles to the head, a boot in the crotch, a scathing blast of fury that doesn't let up for a second. The first three songs ("We Gotta Know", "World Peace", and "Show You No Mercy") roar by at 90mph and trample you viciously, only for you to be scooped up off the floor by the slow, pulsating metallic throb of "Malfunction". John Joseph's powerful screaming vocals on this one really command attention with his opening howl of "I Just!!!! Can't!!! Get Through To YooooououuuuuuOWWW!!!!" sending chills down my spine to this day. But then "Street Justice" and "Survival of the Streets" knock you right back down again. "Hard Times" delivers its frantic message of trying to maintain a grip on one's sanity in the city with the last salvo of "Cro-Mag! SKINHEAD!!! Break Out!!! NOOOOOOOOWWWWWWW!!!!!" really ramming it home.

The rest of this album is equally brutal, and not in the cheesey death metal manner, either--we're talking sincere rage and frustration, the hallmarks of good real hardcore punk that lifted metal out of the gutter lyrically, so to speak. Hard to believe that they were such nice Hare Krishna boys, eh. Forget the bullshit masquerading as "metalcore" these days, that is crap made by either stupid jocks with downtuned guitars and sub-Sabbath riffs or pretentious "screamo" types like Killswitch Engage. This is the real deal, and they never quite topped this album, rather like Slayer never topped "Reign In Blood". You need this album, that is all, end of discussion, case closed.