A room big enough for the crowd itself. Music blasting off some crappy equipment in someone’s garage or a random little venue. People dancing, moshing, crowd-killing, singing, connecting, and just having fun. Listening to music that no mainstream media talks about or even dares to play on the radio.
The underground isn’t dead, it’s alive more than ever. Across many local venues, garages, raves, and online communities, new scenes will continue to form around different music that exists outside the mainstream media. Underground is considered more obscure since the community is so small, but it’s thriving and an ever growing community of different scenes.
What separates underground music is straying from the mainstream, it isn’t really about just genre but the trends, meanings, messages portrayed, and the audience. Mainstream is basically the most trendy, popular music for the general public that society accepts. People who make underground music usually have intent or a message they want to convey whether it’s political, social, and emotional problems that the mainstream refuses to talk about.
However, a big misconception is that underground has to be political or countercultural for it to be “underground” but it can just be less obscure, independent and even brutal. The misconception comes from punk music which is political with its lyrics but there are genres of underground that don’t write political lyrics. Some examples of those genres would be goregrind, hardcore, deathcore, screamo, post-hardcore; those genres each focus on different subjects. For example, goregrind tends to have more brutal lyrics while screamo is more emotional.
Many people who are a part of underground music consider themselves “alternative” which is an umbrella term that categorizes people into different subcultures. There’s punks, emos, goth and the list goes on depending on what scene you’re a part of. In a whole, alternative is going against societal norms or anything which can be seen through distinct political views, freedom in expressing one’s self, and even morals.
There are so many scenes and subcultures its ever expanding. You have the texas scene, socal, baltimore, bay area, florida, and etc.
“I got into my local hardcore scene because I felt that I could connect with people who were like me, who shared the love for the music but also had the same ideologies, and political views. But overall my scene made me feel belonged and the music has helped me through the hard times in my life,” explains Daniel Mota, a junior at HP, part of his local hardcore scene.
Although the underground scene is thriving, many issues have arisen. The problem is the people who are pedophiles, rapists, misogynistic, and the list just goes on. These types of people who are just vermin to any community are the reasons why nowadays it may seem like the underground is dying. With many subgenres and scenes there is bound to be many people to have issues going on in the scene. But with social media it’s so much easier for communities to out someone for weird and unacceptable behavior, for example a socal deathcore revival band scythe of grim has recently kicked out the main vocalist after he had come out with very serious allegations that were beyond disgusting.
Social media had one of the biggest impacts on the underground. With it being able to help connect people by posting flyers for local shows. Social media really just connects many different underground subcultures together by spreading awareness.
“I think social media has impacted the scene a lot by spreading word when promoting shows, fundraisers, or like making people aware of good and bad things in the scene. I think people can sometimes get carried away with things on social media so it has its moments when it isn’t the best but overall I think it’s good that we use social media to connect with each other,” says Erek Gracias, who is a solo artist called “PublicSpider” and a part of the band movie dates.
The underground has been so popular with many bands, DJs, and artists hosting local shows for their communities to join in. Every time a community seems to die out the new generation will always carry it on or move to another scene.
An example of a community that was popular but died out was the 2022-2024 socal mincecore scene. Mincecore is a genre that is known for its vocals and mid drum tempo. Mince had its uprising after covid ended where people joined together to listen to bands at local shows hosted by the community. People would gather up to chill, listen to music, mosh, and connect but it wasn’t too long till that scene slowly faded out. Although mince still has a community it’s not as big as it once was and the people who were a part of that community have now left as a whole or migrated to other music scenes.
No matter how many times a scene will “die out” there is always a community that will come together to listen to underground music, whether its local shows or on social media.
The underground isn’t dead. Many people just aren’t exposed to the new communities that are always forming. Whether you like to go to underground raves or local shows, the underground won’t ever die because there will always be new scenes popping up.
By Adrian Reyes, Culture Editor