ABSTRACT
While the above quotation may sound like the latest descrip-tion of the weapons of mass destruction threatening worldsecurity, it does, in fact, describe something perhaps even more frightening to music lovers: a style of punk music referred to as extreme hardcore. To the mainstream music consumer and ethnomusicologist alike, punk, especially its more extreme, non-commercial varieties, has a reputation for being “bad music” par excellence: a music that seems to go out of its way to be terrible, offensive, unlistenable. To the reviewer who penned the above description, however, the sonic violence of the music is the source of its “goodness,” as can be gathered from his effusive continuation: “It is totally refreshing to hear! One of the year’s ten best seven-inch [records], without a doubt.”3
