HEAVY MUSIC HISTORY: Riot, Riot, Upstart – Agnostic Front
Every fan of the genre has their favourite early hardcore band, the formative years have a distinctive aesthetic to the sound. Rough, fast, loud, the basic prerequisites for a hardcore album 40 years ago. In 1984 AGNOSTIC FRONT pressed their material to vinyl for the first time and eternalised themselves as hardcore cornerstones for the rest of time. Just over 15 years later in September 1999 they released their sixth album Riot, Riot, Upstart, one that doesn’t always receive its flowers and flies deep under the radar of significance in their discography.
Historically, AGNOSTIC FRONT aren’t the most politically driven band – for a hardcore band at least – it’s never been their selling point, politics had its time and place to enter their music. Seemingly, apart from one journalist Tim Yohannan who ruffled feathers by dictating what was and wasn’t punk, wanted to control the perfect image of the subculture and burn down what didn’t compliment that image during AGNOSTIC FRONT’s height. So much so that he compared the band to British fascist group National Front.
Riot, Riot, Upstart released months before the turn of the millennium September 21 1999. A year prior they released Something’s Gotta Give — arguably their magnum opus — so it was an uphill battle for the prior to be received as well as the latter. With that said, Riot, Riot, Upstart has you in a headlock, or Rudy Guliani in one, with Police State from the very first second. Fast and to the point, the blistering speed sends the simple but loud messages that the politician with a complicated history with hair dye has always been trash.
For a hardcore band that often blends in to oi punk tropes, you’d expect them to be so much more on the nose, especially after half of the opening tracks lyrics are “Guliani, Guliani, Guliani, fuck you!” But once that whirlwind of an opener subsides Riot, Riot Upstart begins to focus on how the decisions at the top affects those at the bottom. On Sit And Watch vocalist Roger Miret sings, “My rent cheque two weeks late, whatever happened to the working man? He just does not get paid.” Or on Blood, Death & Taxes where he sings “I’m not looking for compensation, I want some justice, tell you what they want from me, blood, death and taxes.”
They string a serious narrative of financial and civil unrest from a working class perspective, a stark contrast in comparison to what shows like Friends sold, an American dream. A happy go lucky, always lands on their feet in the end storyline. Sickness highlights the lack of grip on reality in the form of an oi hardcore anthem, tied in with the nihilistic approach of Shadows where a cohesive youth generation seems like a figment of imagination.
In true hardcore fashion, they take aim at the vanity that occupies even “underground” subcultures like punk and hardcore on Rock Star. Poking fun at those that use the space as a popularity tool, is there anything more conceited, arrogant, or egotistical than the archetype of frontman of a rock band, especially when depicted in visual media. Everyone has at least once stood in a crowd at a gig and glared past beaming lights to look at a guy standing in front of a microphone and in turn viscerally shuddered at the sheer cringe and slimy energy that he exudes.
From that one song alone you get to look at how a subculture and genre has changed over the span of two decades. Thanks to the internet hardcore has become a global affair, whether it’s sitting at home in England and watching someone getting clocked by a spin kick at a show in New York, or if it’s the abundance of overseas tours that the US are blessed with leaving everyone else equal parts jealous and bitter. Globalisation means that you can vicariously experience a show through the lens of HATE5SIX or a festival sprinkling uploads of sets over the course of a year.
Riot, Riot, Upstart might not be the hardest hitting record in the AGNOSTIC FRONT discography, but what it does best is offer a window into 1999 New York where wages were declining and the gap of social mobility only gaped into a wider ravine. It didn’t have a specific hit, it lacked the wow factor that 20 years later we’ve become so accustomed to, but as an overall piece of work, it puts so many records to shame in how it captures the zeitgeist of 1999. Using its combination of upfront barking tracks and collectively anecdotal lyrics it out works meathead hardcore and punk.
If it’s a testament to anything, Riot, Riot, Upstart proves how important it is for you to go back and indulge different eras of hardcore. Whether you want to obsess over BAD BRAINS, make sure that everyone knows that you think CONVERGE are the best thing to happen to guitar music since pedals, or hand fold and distribute a zine about your favourite venue of punk’s past turned retail shop. Do it to take satisfaction about the longevity of the genre and truly appreciate what’s developing throughout it now. Is the record AGNOSTIC FRONT’s flagship record? Not by any means, but it’s as valuable as a 100 year old time capsule and is a lesson in how to truly capture a generation of music and people that we don’t quite have right now.
Riot, Riot Upstart was originally released on September 7th, 1999 via Epitaph Records.
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