Was The Germs' 1979 Album the First Hardcore Punk LP?

5 hours ago7 min read1 comments

In the chaotic, sweat-soaked crucible of late-70s Los Angeles, a musical atom bomb detonated with the release of The Germs' one and only studio album, '(GI)'. The question of whether this 1979 landmark truly stands as the first hardcore punk LP is a debate that still crackles through the underground, a testament to its raw, unassailable power.The Germs, fronted by the incendiary and self-destructive poet Darby Crash, were less a band and more a force of nature, a beautiful disaster captured on wax. Their legend was built on a foundation of notoriously chaotic live shows where technical proficiency was sacrificed at the altar of pure, unfiltered energy, and '(GI)' is the perfect, flawed document of that ethos.Produced by Joan Jett, then fresh from her own punk roots with the Runaways, the album harnesses this chaos without sanitizing it; the guitars of Pat Smear are a relentless, trebly buzzsaw, Lorna Doom's bass provides a pulverizing low-end throb, and Don Bolles' drumming is a frantic, almost tribal assault. Then there's Darby Crash's vocal delivery—not singing, but a guttural, sneering spew of abstract poetry and visceral angst that became a blueprint for a generation of vocalists to come.To call it the 'first' hardcore record requires a careful parsing of punk's rapid evolution. It certainly predates iconic full-lengths from the American hardcore wave like Black Flag's 'Damaged' (1981) or the Dead Kennedys' 'Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables' (1980), and it possesses a ferocity and velocity that separates it from the more rock-oriented or art-damaged punk of its immediate predecessors like the Ramones or The Damned.Tracks like 'Richie Dagger's Crime' and 'Lexicon Devil' aren't just songs; they are 90-second manifestos of alienation and fury, compressing complex ideas into blistering, straightforward attacks. The album's influence is immeasurable, its DNA spliced directly into the work of bands from Minutemen to Nirvana, the latter of which famously brought guitarist Pat Smear into their fold.Yet, purists might point to earlier singles or EPs from other bands as holding the true 'first' title, but '(GI)' stands apart as a complete, cohesive, and fully realized statement of intent. It wasn't just a collection of fast songs; it was a worldview, a scorched-earth policy against the bloated rock and disco of the era.It proved that you didn't need virtuosity to create something profound—you needed passion, danger, and a willingness to burn brightly, even if it meant burning out. The Germs did exactly that, and in doing so, left behind not just an album, but a foundational pillar of hardcore, a scar on the face of music that has never fully healed.

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