A variety of punk rock originating in the US in the early '80s. It involves shouted vocals (as opposed to growled) with a fast, aggressive tempo and a guitar sound featuring quick chord changes. Minor Threat, Bad Brains, SSD, and the Circle Jerks are known for this style. By 1986, a new style of hardcore came out of the New York scene. The NYHC scene added mosh breakdowns to mix, but the music retained its fast aggressive nature. This spawned the youth crew scene, a positive straight edge scene featuring such bands as Youth of Today, Chain of Strength, and the Gorilla Biscuits. Judge is a notable band from this era that added some metal style to their riffs. In the 90s hardcore took many different direction, bands like Lifetime and Turning Point took the late '80s sound (particularly the melodic approach pioneered by the Gorilla Biscuits) and added a softer sung vocals and the lyrical approach of DC bands like the Rites of Spring and Dag Nasty. Other bands like Earth Crisis mixed hardcore with death metal growls and slow brutal guitars. Today many bands continue to play the early '80s fast, thrashy style as well as the so-called '88 or youth crew style, while still others have taken the sound of bands like Earth Crisis farther and mixed in more metal elements such as double bass drumming. Hardcore refers to all of these styles, though metalcore is best used to identify bands like Throwdown or Converge (who don't really sound anything alike but both mix metal and hardcore). Finally, some bands like Bane, With Honor, and Comeback Kid are mixing positive youth crew style hardcore with more complex metal riffing without straying into the beatdown, double bass drumming style of metalcore. People talking about old-school hardcore should be referring to one of the hardcore sounds that developed in the '80s, regardless of when the band formed.
early '80s: Minor Threat, Government Issue, Black Flag, SSD, Jerry's Kids, Youth Brigade, Bad Brains, Agnostic Front, JFA

late '80s/'88 style: Youth of Today, Cro-Mags, Uniform Choice, Chain of Strength, Bold, Gorilla Biscuits, early Turning Point

emo-influenced hardcore: Lifetime, Falling Forward, later Turning Point

early metalcore: Earth Crisis, Strife

modern metalcore: Throwdown, Unearth, Adamantium, Converge

modern youth crew/old-school bands: Ten Yard Fight, In My Eyes, Champion, Give Up the Ghost (formerly called American Nightmare), Black Sheep Squadron, the Spark, Trial

by Robert Murdoch August 13, 2006
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A genre of porn, usually involving both men and women, banging each other. Usually looks like a bunch of apes in mating season. A related offshoot of this is bukkake.

This title was based off the definition of hardcore as something that is intense or very strong.
OMG! HARDCORE PORN!

Hardcore porn involves ugly stick-women being boned until they break apart.

man 1 : what kind of porn is that?
man 2 : It's hardcore! Lots of endless fucking action!
by withoutname July 28, 2005
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in the music sense, a form of underground music that takes music to extremes. started in the early 80`s with bands like minor threat and black flag. i like to call this classic hardcore. then in the late 80`s there were many hardline, "positive" straightedge bands like chain of strength and gorilla biscuits. i like to call this oldchool hardcore. then in the early 90`s straigtedge became rediculous, and the bands got more metallic, with bands like Earth Crisis and Strife. I just call this hardcore. Then all throughout the 90s there were those hardcore bands with the scary, grindy sound, like converge, dillenger escape plan, or discordence axis. Then there were some bands like 10 yard fight who tried to re-create the hardcore sound of the late 80`s, a few were ok but most really sucked. This developed into what some people call "posi" hardcore. These days, you have your choice of shitty mosh hardcore, or screamo, or emo-core. Now hardcore is just a melting pot of all the sounds in one. its one big emotional, positive/negative, noisy vomit. its ok i guess. i liked how it was better in the late 90s early 00s.
quality hardcore bands: converge, bane, shai hulud, american nightmare, minor threat, gorilla biscuits, ten yard fight, joshua fit for battle, the now, 18 visions, forstella ford, hot cross, pg.99, discordence axis
by mike December 24, 2003
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short for hardcore punk,a genre of music derived from punk rock,but faster and heavier.
there's a difference between metalcore and hardcore. metalcore bands are Norma Jean,Converge,Botch,Between the Buried and Me,As I Lay Dying, Unearth,and Killswitch Engage.
Hardcore bands sing generally about anarchism,capitalism,the government,war,the hardcore lifestyle,and being straight edge;not all hardcore band are straightedgers.
Hardcore bands:circle jerks,ss decontrol,gbh,black flag,minor threat,bad brains,dead kennedys,7 seconds,gang green,beastie boys (early),negative fx,discharge,anti-nowhere league,exploited,u.s. chaos,GISM,chaos uk,picture frame seduction,and many more
"I fuckin love G.I.S.M, man...hardcore punk til i Die."
by goose86 September 18, 2007
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When one takes an already dangerous activity to an illogical extreme, often ignoring danger, pain and the potential for marked agony.
When Laura overshot that jump by 5 feet and smashed into that tree with her shoulder it was fucking hardcore. I would have her children even though I'm sure she would mercilessly beat me.
by xthagx June 1, 2007
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A more extreme version of a dare. Rules:

1. You can't turn down a hardcore. It's just unacceptable.

2. You can't overuse a hardcore. It must be reserved for very special occasions.

3. You can't hardcore someone to do something that you yourself would not do, i.e. you can't hardcore someone to jump off a nine-story building.
If you were hardcore, you would walk up to that guy over there and tell him you saw his picture in the dictionary next to "sexy."
by Shannon L.W. December 30, 2005
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Harcore is not about fashion. Harcore is not about who can be the most "scene". Hardcore is about the music. I'm not sure where the confusion in what hardcore is started, but it has always been about the music. Here's a little history on the music.

Hardcore stems from the early punk movements in the mid-70s made notable by bands like The Ramones, The Clash, The Damned, and the Sex Pistols. Most of the fast paced, straight-forward sound that is hardcore can be heard in early punk. As more and more styles of the punk sound formed each year moving towards the mid-to late 70s. A newer sound of bands like The Misfits, The Exploited, GBH, and Black Flag would lead the move away from the sounds of this early punk.

This new style involved a faster, more technical drum beat and simplistic bass lines. Moving into the 80's the term hardcore is often credited by the band D.O.A. due to the title of their album Hardcore '81. As was seen in the origninal punk movement, this new sub-genre had the same do it yourself attitude. This attitude is the resounding theme of all hardcore music. The overall image of harcore was different, bringing the simplistic look of t-shirts and jeans to the table.

Founders of the Early Hardcore sounds can be heard played by the bands Black Flag, Bad Brains, Minor threat, The Mob, D.O.A., Middle Class, and Dead Kennedy's.

This new style of music became associated with violence due to the inlaid aggresive element to the sound. This aggression laid the ground works for slam dancing and stage diving found at most shows during these times due to the relatively small venues and easy access to the stage, which was not usually seen in most mainstream rock shows.

This early harcore sound had a major influence on forming genres of music such as, Thrash and speed metal, and later on the seattle grunge sound of the late 80s.

Moving towards the 90s hardcore began to branch off into many styles and sub-genres. The hardcore sound had two main branches the punk based sound of the 80s and a newer metal influenced sound, which later is the basis of most of todays metalcore bands such as Unearth, or It Dies Today. The late 80s and early 90s punk based harcore sound can be heard influenced by Agnostic Front, Sick of It All, Cro-Mags, Murphys Law, and Gorilla Biscuits. The metal influenced version of hardcore can be heard in the musical stylings of the bands Madball, Biohazard, and a more recent example Hatebreed.

I have used many of the obvious examples of what the hardcore sound is and was. There are many bands today that still have the traditionaly hardcore sound. Most of what todays youth actually call hardcore is a more diverse metal influenced subgenre of the original sound. It is imprortant to understand the roots of something that seems to be exploited to todays teenagers.
More recent hardcore of the late 90s and today. Examples include some of my favorites:
Comback Kid, Blood for Blood, Blacklisted, Integrity(formed in the 80s and still putting out records), Lifetime, and Rise Against. There are 1000s that I can rattle off.
by Mudacris September 24, 2006
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