Have you heard of Taylor Swift’s new album? Of course you have! What about any music from Title fight? If not, that’s because they are an Underground Band.
Many people think of underground music as a subgenre in many categories. There is Underground, Rap, Hip Hop, and Metal, but many say that the main genres that make underground music are Dark Trap, Punk, and Hardcore. These genres are always unafraid to talk about political views, mental health, and actual events that happen in the world. Punk and Hardcore were the most political genre of all, bands like T.S.O.L (The Sounds of Liberty), Suicidal Tendencies, Dying Fetus etc, all made songs talking about our government, explains how corrupt we are, and how all of us should take actions if we are living poorly.
That was back then though. Those bands made their peak years in the 80’s and 90’s, when Ronald Regean and George Bush were president. Of course like every American they had their political views about them because we have never had a perfect president. In the times that we are living in now, where is the music that covers these topics?
In the 2020’s there was a massive rise in the Hardcore/punk scene. Sunami became big, Drain made its debut, and Kublai Khan tx was almost set to tour. Hardcore music is only based on Underground, when fans think of hardcore they think of starting from the dirt bottom.
Since the 2020 – 2025. The US has been through many historical events. There have been ICE raids everywhere in the US, a black american was lynched in Missippi, the Black Lives Matter movement, The No Kings Protest, and many school shootings. Back then these genres were always praised because they used music to let out the emotion of the people about these events, but now what they talk about is stomping someone because they’re not from the Bay area.
Underground music is losing its spark, and one of the main reasons can possibly be because of the Music Industry. The music industry does not want to hear anything political, If they do they completely take out the band from their contract and they lose money. So of course, these bands would do what they say.
Once a band makes it big, they lose their name as “underground” and now turn into “mainstream”. The media says that once a band turns mainstream you have lost the band you truly know. A given example can be the band Green Day, before their fame they would make a lot of music about the topic of the American government. They had songs like “American Idiot” , “ Holiday”, and “St. Jimmy”. These songs were very empowering to people as they would play them in protests, social media posts, and tribute shows. They recently came out with a new album called “Saviors”, and that album was upsetting with how they had one political song and the rest were about different topics like love or hatred. Green Day had published their album in the year 2024. There were many events like the upcoming election and the war in Gaza that the US was aiding, but nothing was still brought up in these songs.
There is still some hope in the scene. There are other bands like ZULU who are most known for making hardcore songs about racism against black people and police brutality. There is also another band named Dystopia, this band went viral for making a song based on how corrupt our government is. But will two bands make the cut?
There is this new underground genre called Mincecore, or slam. These bands are founded in the SoCal area like La Mirada, Orange County, or even farther like Indio. But these bands don’t talk about topics like the political system like every punk band would, they would talk about topics like, Family Guy, Hello Kitty, or blood and gore. The bands that are making the underground scene look ‘edgy’ is ‘Slamily guy’, ‘Larval Therapy’ and ‘MxMxM’. The album covers for these bands would always have gory images and sanrio characters trying to make the images look silly or fun to look at.
This must be the most decline punk has ever been since the 2020s. If “underground” music wants to be declared as a silly or angsty genre for people to listen to then the whole scene of underground music is dead.
Written by Alexander Damian, Cultural Editor