Richmond Hardcore

You're asking about a city, not a style. C.

satellite and it isn't — the bands there built a sound shot through with country, folk and Southern rock, and the city carries one of the South's oldest punk scenes. What ties Avail to City of Caterpillar isn't tempo, it's address: cheap rent, one club on Grace Street, and everyone playing in each other's bands.

Richmond had hardcore before it had a name for it — White Cross, Honor Role, Death Piggy, Four Walls Falling through the 80s, with Benny's near VCU as an anchor. The hinge was 1990: Avail, formed in Reston in 1987, relocated to Richmond and issued Satiate in 1992.

Tim Barry's account of that first visit — four venues on one street running shows the same night — is the scene's origin story. Twisters at 929 West Grace became the room that broke Avail, Lamb of God and Four Walls Falling.

Inquisition ran 1991–96 and seeded Strike Anywhere, River City High and Ann Beretta. Labels did the rest: Jade Tree and Lookout!

C. — Frodus, Sleepytime Trio, Engine Down.

By 2002 the screamo wing had taken over.

Who: Tim Barry and Beau Beau Butler for Avail, Thomas Barnett carrying Inquisition into Strike Anywhere, Brian Lowit running Lovitt, Chris Boarts Larson documenting it in Slug & Lettuce, Vinyl Conflict on Pine Street holding the archive.

Where: Twisters, later the Nanci Raygun and Strange Matter; Alley Katz; house shows, which Richmond treated as the default, not the fallback. What: gang vocals over a Southern-rock swing, octave chords, lyrics naming actual streets.

How a record gets in: everybody in it lived there, pressed it on an East Coast indie, and toured it in a van until the drums were loose.