They created a sludgier tone that paved the way for bands like Green River and the Melvins to really explore this sound further and spawn what we now know as grunge music.
10 Minute Warning were another early Seattle punk band to slow down in terms of the tempo of their music. They brought this kind of dirty, heavier post-punk sound to their debut EP in 1984. General consensus though, is that it was probably the U-Men in 1984.
This fusion of styles evolved organically and gradually – meaning it’s tough to pin down the first band to do this sort of thing. Chris Cornell nailed it when he described his band Soundgarden as misfits: ‘too metal for the punk kids, too punk for the metal kids’. The Seattle sound is, at its most basic level, a fusion of metal and punk music. (Singer Henry Rollins’ book, Get In The Van is essential reading on this topic.) As a result, 1984 was the most prolific year of the band's career: they rehearsed, wrote and recorded three full length albums – My War (March), Family Man (September), Slip it in (December) – and performed in excess of 170 shows across the US and Europe. Black Flag did this, and pushed this idea to its limits. The only way for serious numbers to hear your music was to get out and give it to them. My War was released at a time when music had to spread physically in the underground. Earlier bands such as Black Sabbath, the MC5 and the Stooges began to influence their songwriting, as the band made a conscious effort to veer away from the relentless pace that had become their hallmark. Ranging from the doom metal of bands like Saint Vitus, to more experimental hardcore of bands like Flipper and Fang, the inspiration for this style came from artists beyond just their contemporaries.
The focus of the music went from being about playing harder and faster than ever to a sludgier, darker sound which reflected a wider pool of influences than any hardcore record gone before. My War changed the game in the hardcore world on its release.
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