At the end of June this year thousands of people – from Scotland to Bulgaria, Chile to Singapore – gathered in an industrial estate in Manchester to boot each other in the head. That wasn’t the express purpose, of course, but a common side-effect of attending Outbreak, the hardcore punk festival that has become a flagship event for a genre experiencing an unprecedented moment of mainstream visibility.
Bursting out of the American suburbs in the late 1970s, hardcore was a response to the punk and new wave invasion that had dominated the years prior. Early bands such as Black Flag, Bad Brains and Dead Kennedys distilled the rawness of punk and pushed it to extremes, pioneering a do-it-yourself ethos, and a fast, frantic sound that became the definitive sonic kickback to a decade of Reaganomics and rising conservatism. Though the sound of hardcore has evolved over the decades, spawning various subgenres (screamo, queercore, powerviolence) and acting as the jumping-off point for many of the pop-punk and emo bands that defined the 2000s, that grassroots philosophy has been unwavering. It’s there in the origins of Outbreak, too.
Founded in 2011 by two guys in their mid-teens, purely because they were too young to get into local shows at 18+ venues, Outbreak began as a local DIY event for UK-based hardcore bands.
“I didn’t have a clue what I was doing,” shrugs one of the organisers, who, in the spirit of collectivism that underpins the festival, asks not to be named. “I just really wanted to see these bands. So I thought: if I bring them all together in an all-ages venue, then I’ll get to see them. It was as simple as that.”
The inaugural Outbreak was an all-dayer held at a recreational hall in Sheffield. Since then, it has grown slowly and organically into a full weekend with an international bill and enough demand to fill Manchester’s 10,000 capacity Depot Mayfield – which it did in 2023. This year the festival returned to its 2022 home of Bowlers Exhibition Centre in Manchester, debuting an outdoor stage and a lineup that cast a wide but discerning net across the alternative music landscape. Alongside the traditional hardcore bands that have been in rotation since the festival’s formative years (Have Heart, Harm’s Way, Incendiary) and the newer homegrown acts that have followed in their stead (at least seven of whom are from Glasgow), you’ll find everything from experimental hip-hop (16mm filmstock) to midwest emo (American Football) and indie rock (Soccer Mommy), most of which is accompanied by a lot of stage-diving.
In many ways, Outbreak is evolving in line with hardcore itself, which is undergoing an intense period of change. In 2022, the New York Times declared an American hardcore “renaissance”, citing a slew of bands such as Gulch, Drain and Drug Church, who are made up of hardcore lifers but driving new excitement in the scene. Since then, things have continued to snowball. In 2023, Baltimore hybridists Turnstile received three Grammy nominations. In May, Kentucky hardcore-metal fusionists Knocked Loose overtook Taylor Swift on Spotify’s Viral 50 chart, which measures how frequently songs are shared. The same month, Torrance, California punks Joyce Manor – who swamped Outbreak’s main stage on Sunday – were a musical guest on John Mulaney’s live Netflix show Everybody’s in LA, performing between St Vincent and Warren G.
Perhaps one reason why hardcore is experiencing a particularly enthusiastic resurgence is the growing diversity of the scene. Hardcore has always been inclusive, but its aggressive nature has sometimes attracted unwanted attention. In the mid-80s, there was a serious problem of white supremacists storming shows. The more neo-Nazis turned up, the more anti-fascists turned up to fight back, and a scene founded on social awareness and “positive mental attitude (PMA)” – a phrase popularised by Bad Brains, an all-Black band – spiralled into violence.
A streak of genre purism has also gatekept hardcore by dictating who can express themselves and to what degree, which gave the subculture an overwhelmingly white image. However, a true history of hardcore is one that has always belonged to everyone, whether it’s dub and reggae underpinning punk in the 70s, to the influence of Muslim fusion groups such as Fun-Da-Mental in the 90s, to a more genreless 2010s landscape that saw hip-hop collective Odd Future link up with hardcore act Trash Talk.
Today, hardcore has never been more diverse, both sonically and in the makeup of its participants. Bands including Soul Glo, Zulu and Scowl are splicing in elements of other genres such as blues, funk, jazz, powerpop and soul. The frontman of rising Sydney band Speed plays the flute on stage. There are multiple groups that sing in Arabic. As the definition of what hardcore “is” becomes less rigid, the sound expands, and that creates more points of entry.
This year’s Outbreak lineup boasted an eclectic range of artists, from Moroccan “Harami punk” (Taqbir) and Philadelphian death metal (Scarab) to jazz-rap (redveil). This bill, in turn, drew a crowd that evaded easy categorisation but had a clearly united front. Gen Z kids in clown makeup (fans of California “goth jesters” the Garden) were queueing for pizza with dads sporting Apple watches and jorts. A wheelchair user crowdsurfed during a set by Bristol chain-punks Perp Walk. Almost every artist called for the liberation of Palestine (the singer of Show Me the Body went one step further and offered anyone who disagreed outside for a fight). Whether on stage or in the crowd, these are ultimately people who all share the same DNA of DIY ethics, social justice and musical physicality. That’s hardcore. The sound, then, has increasingly less to do with it. “I don’t call it a hardcore festival any more. I don’t really know how to describe it,” one of the organisers says.
One of the challenges an event like Outbreak now faces is preserving the foundations of hardcore with increasing demand for it. Ultimately, it’s a type of music born from and designed for small spaces and sweaty crowds, with no separation between audience and artist. That means no bouncers. No barriers. The stage, if there is one, belongs to everyone: anyone can climb on it and dive into the crowd. Maintaining those values in a large venue with thousands of people requires a lot of paperwork. The same goes for communicating with parts of the music industry that wouldn’t necessarily be involved with a DIY event, from health and safety teams to venue staff and security. “As the festival has grown, it’s really been about welcoming those people into our team and teaching them what [hardcore] is, how people interact with each other, and why it’s safe even though it looks like chaos.”
Understandably, the ballooning interest in hardcore has made some dyed-in-the-wool fans nervous. The more commercially viable a subculture becomes, the more things get lost in translation. That can have an impact on a scene that most people involved don’t view as entertainment, or something to do after work – but as a way of life. At the same time, the barrier to entry is still, realistically, too high for hardcore to go the way of previous underground subculture turned mainstream phenomena, such as Green Day-era pop-punk or My Chemical Romance-era emo. A few bands, like Turnstile, might go the way of red carpets and Top 40 radio, but we’re not likely to hear Knocked Loose frontman Bryan Garris dog-barking at Wembley stadium any time soon.
For Outbreak, the future lies in preserving what’s already been built. “It realistically can’t get any bigger than it is now, and truthfully I don’t think it ever needs to be,” an organiser says, adding that it should, above all else, be a space for people to freely express themselves. “That’s the main goal: for people to find their place, feel as if they belong somewhere, and connect with people that are like-minded. As long as the festival is still doing that, I don’t see any reason for it to stop.”
The same applies to hardcore at large. It’s been more than 40 years since Bad Brains and Black Flag first kicked down the doors, and their legacy is as moral as it is musical. As long as there are people who feel angry and alienated, there will be a hardcore scene – visible to dozens of people or millions – to mop them up.
Outbreak returns with a one-day event at BEC Arena, Manchester, on 27 October.
• This article was amended on 29 July 2024 because an earlier version referred to the Egyptian death metal band Scarab, when the Philadelphian death metal band called Scarab was meant.
