25 @ 25 #8: Cro-Mags, "Age Of Quarrel"

The Cro-Mags were one of the flagship bands mixing metal and hardcore in New York. They were Krishnas (or some of them were, anyway), but they were also violent thugs who'd attack almost anybody who disagreed with them about anything. And their debut album, The Age of Quarrel, was one of the most vicious, uncompromising records of the time. For the most part it's a hardcore album, full of short, fast songs. But even those have shredtastic guitar solos (unlike most hardcore bands, Cro-Mags had two guitarists, Parris Mayhew and Doug Holland) wedged into the middle, and the rhythms (courtesy of bassist Harley Flanagan and drummer Mackie, who later joined Bad Brains) are more intricate and metallic than the bam-bam-bam of '80-83 hardcore. And then there are the slow-burning epics. "Seekers of the Truth" was a full four minutes long—an eternity in hardcore—and it was built around a crawling doom riff and a throbbing bass line, as vocalist John Joseph howled and snarled. "Malfunction" and "Life of My Own" are equally slowed-down and powerful. But even their fast songs ("World Peace," "Street Justice," "Hard Times") had more visceral impact than much of what was being played in New York at the time. Despite their name, the Cro-Mags represented an evolutionary step in hardcore, not a regression.

The East Coast metal community embraced them; the band opened for Motörhead at an infamous NYC show in 1985, and their second album, 1989's Best Wishes, was more of a crossover thrash album than a hardcore disc. I remember the skins and other hardcore kids I knew being turned off by that move, and by the early '90s, the Cro-Mags' status had diminished quite a bit in favor of bands that recorded and toured more often, and had fewer lineup changes. I still have The Age of Quarrel in my iPod, though, and I find myself listening to it with surprising regularity.

Here's the video for "We Gotta Know":