San Diego Post-Hardcore

You're asking about a five-year window in one city where hardcore stopped being about discipline and started being about collapse. Same tempos, same basements — but the vocals shredded, the guitars went dissonant and angular, and the songs refused to resolve.

It is also a label story: Gravity Records developed the "San Diego sound" — post-hardcore with loose, chaotic musicianship and vocals, and the records look as hand-made as they sound.

San Diego, 1991 onward. Gravity Records was founded in 1991 by Matt Anderson of Heroin, first to release his own band and then other local groups.

Gravity's first catalog number was Heroin's 1992 7-inch; some later white-label pressings had photographs glued to the labels. Heroin is the band generally cited as pioneering screamo or inspiring its earliest acts, alongside Antioch Arrow and Swing Kids.

Aaron Montaigne later credited the bands' influences to Revolution Summer-era DC, the Birthday Party, and the vocal style of San Francisco's Fuel. A second label followed: Justin Pearson's Three One G, named after the chorus of Joy Division's "Warsaw," opened in 1994 with an Unbroken single.

The sound then jumped coasts, developed in the late 1990s by Pg. 99, Orchid and Saetia.

Who: Anderson at Gravity, Montaigne fronting Antioch Arrow after drumming had passed between him and Ron Avila in Heroin, Pearson, Brady, Palafox and Eric Allen in Swing Kids, Mario Rubalcaba drumming Clikatat Ikatowi between 411, Rocket From The Crypt and Hot Snakes.

Rooms: the Che Café and whatever basement would take an all-ages bill. What: short records, odd time signatures, angular guitar leaning on octaves and dissonance, shouted vocals.

How a record gets in: the sleeve is handled. Antioch Arrow's debut came in spray-painted chipboard with art lifted from the poster for The Man with the Golden Arm, and a secret run of translucent red copies.