Future of Yesterday. A Glimpse into Today’s sXe and Hardcore Culture

The film doesn’t dwell on the emergence of straight edge out of the early 1980s US punk scene, which took its name from Minor Threat’s 45-second song about abstaining from drugs. Instead, it emphasises the persistence and timelessness of the genre, with its DIY approach and anti-capitalist stance. The band I was in, living in Brighton in my early twenties, came halfway between Minor Threat and the two featured here – Blinded and One – but shared a commitment to independent production and venues, and to writing songs that questioned authority and stood against oppression. Back in the early 2000s, we wrote songs about the War on Terror, the anti-globalisation movement and homophobic legislation, some of us wearing dresses or make-up to reaffirm our commitment to personal freedom as we performed in front of projections of revolutionary cinema. The grinding hardcore punk we made wasn’t always cheerful, but it had some optimism, confronting social issues and calling for a world free from imperialism and prejudice – demands that, despite our best efforts, remain as necessary as ever.

Blinded and One have got far further than we did, building an audience through analogue and digital means. They make cassettes to sell at their gigs, as well as appearing in this film, with its title taken from a demo tape that Blinded play on a portable stereo as they load their car for a gig. It’s the communal playing that Wagner and de Burca portray here, capturing a scene that has found a new generation, more open to women than in days past, and equally politicised, as it’s harder than ever for young people to make music, when benefits have been slashed, rents in cities have soared and rehearsal spaces are scarce. The first song we hear paints a bleak picture of 21st century urban life, with “Late-night workers getting off their shift / The bitter taste of coffee is their only gift”, and the profound sense of alienation comes through in the grinding guitars and the screaming vocals. But Blinded have created a space where they and their fans can escape all that. Even as they sing about the difficulties of social interaction, feeling trapped by another person’s gaze, the crowd turns the sensation of ‘being in a crowded room alone’ into something liberatory. Men and women join the mosh pit, gleefully bouncing into and onto each other, while a queer couple share a genderless kiss in an unguarded space – at the moment, as it was in my time, the bands might be made up mostly of straight white men, but they are creating a space for change, and are clearly allies in the struggle against misogyny, homophobia and racism.