Discharge: The Hardest of the Hardcore

There have been bands faster than Discharge. There have been bands who played at higher volumes. There have been bands that have played at a greater intensity for a longer period of time than Discharge. 

There have been bands whose lyrics were more explicit, or whose presentation was more extreme. But none of that matters. Because no one was more hardcore than Discharge. Ever.

No one was as pissed off as Discharge. I don’t know what it is that set these guys off (besides war, that is), but the entire hardcore punk genre was downright jolly in comparison. 

THERMONUCLEAR FUSION

Discharge didn’t invent punk-metal fusion, they just perfected it. In their original incarnation, Discharge simply played the most brutal metal-tinged punk ever heard. Plenty of bands followed in their wake, but no one did it more convincingly. 

Their early recordings are crude, almost catchy, and sported riffs that sound like the shock wave of a H-bomb blasting through an unsuspecting city.

The band were almost zen in their approach: tritone-crazed riffs atop the most brutal beats accompanying the rawest singer imaginable (the Orc-like Kelvin "Cal" Morris), who was screaming the bluntest lyrics ever written in a voice that sounds like a guitar played through an old Ampeg with a busted speaker cone.

Take “Two Monstrous Nuclear Stockpiles,” for instance. Here are the song’s lyrics in their entirety: Should East and West be ever divided/ Resigned to living, living in fear 

Here are the lyrics to one of their catchiest choruses, “A Trail of Destruction": A trail of destruction/Death and destruction  

Or check out the lyrics to the toe-tapper, "Maimed and Slaughtered": Horrific, disturbing visions of war fill my eyes/ Among the maimed and slaughtered, my body lies

The graphics matched the music: the cover of their 12” EP Why is festooned with explicit photos of victims of war. The inside photo of their landmark first album, Hear Nothing, See Nothing, Say Nothing, was equally grisly. 

I remember a DJ on a college station (WPRB, out of Princeton) once commenting on a Discharge song he just played: “That was Discharge with ‘War Sucks’ from the album, War is Bad.” He was kidding, of course, but not by much. And I think Discharge would probably have appreciated the sentiment.

Of course, lots of people missed the point entirely and thought the panoply of violence that Discharge depicted was cool and not meant to shock one out of complacency. And we all know how that turned out.

The band's bath was never smooth. After Hear Nothing and 1982's State Violence, State Control EP,  drummer Terence "Tezz" Roberts and guitarist Anthony "Bones" Roberts split to form Broken Bones, a more traditional, GBH-styled hardcore outfit. 

Discharge then changed gears and hired a guitarist who actually called himself "Pooch" and obviously liked Motley Crue’s "Livewire" quite a whole lot. Hence, the new lineup recorded a number of tracks that expanded upon that song’s riff in a number of inventive ways. 

Tracks like “Born to Die in the Gutter,” “The Price of Silence,” and “Warning (Her Majesty’s Government can be Hazardous to your Health)” were brutal in comparison to the chart fares of the time, but they were downright cuddly in comparison to Discharge’s earlier work. 

Cal took to singing in a (very) rough approximation of Rob Halford, and his lyrics stepped back from the nuclear war motif, concerning themselves with more immediate problems like homelessness, unemployment, and the suppression of dissent.

Unfortunately, further lineup changes soon dulled the band's attack until Discharge became a brand name for just another cheeseball/mullet-wielding Eighties metal band.

Luckily, the story didn't end there: the classic lineup reformed in 2001 and released an absolute monster of an album the following year. But singer Calvin Morris grew tired of the no-hope hardcore touring circuit, so he split and was replaced by an inferior ringer in 2006. That lineup soldiered on for a decade, but didn't do Discharge's very messsy legacy any favors.

But after that formation dissolved in 2015, the Roberts brothers formed a new five-man Discharge the following year with an American shouter named JJ Janiak, and the band has continued to tear it up ever since, doing their history proud. 

THE LEGACY

The legions of bands inspired by Discharge could fill a small city, with metal legends like Metallica, Megadeth, Slayer and Anthrax citing the Stoke stormers as an influence. Internet music nerds even coined a new term, D-Beat, to label all the bands who lifted Discharge's distinctive hammering, which is nearly more a 2/4 beat than a standard 4/4 beat. 

Even The Clash nicked a variation on the D-Beat on the choruses to "Dirty Punk." Ironically, given Discharge opened for The Clash on the UK leg of their tour for London Calling, the latter's conscious repudiation of their punk roots - and bands like Discharge.

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