Punk’s Popularity Anxieties and the Introspective Aggression of So-Cal Punk

Abstract

With the rise of the alternative music industry and the mainstream success of a few punk bands in the 1990s, the underground punk scene engaged in a vituperative debate over staying DIY versus “selling out.” Amid this debate, those promoting a discourse of DIY purity insisted on excising commercially successful bands from the punk scene, while others embraced the diversity of punk music or questioned the importance of DIY purity. One style that found some commercial success, So-Cal punk, combined 1980s hardcore punk with melodic vocals, intricate palm-muted guitar rhythms, octave-chord lead guitar parts, and more polished recordings and spoke to the postmodern existential dilemmas of disaffected suburban youth. The music of NOFX’s The Decline exemplifies So-Cal punk style and offers a critique of the decline of American society.