Back in the mid-80s, when hardcore was first attempting to distance itself from “punk” in a substantial way, the big noise was crossover thrash. There were a ton of bands who basically heard the first few records by DRI and COC and thought, “We can do that, too!”

Unfortunately, since metal is terrible and hardcore kids by and large cannot play their instruments, the vast majority of crossover was overwhelmingly bad. There were a few gems (Cryptic Slaughter’s Convicted and Money Talks, The Accüsed’s The Return of Martha Splatterhead) but overall, what was left behind from that era is basically limp speed-metal (Gang Green’s Older… Budweiser) or flaccid AC/DC rip-offs (SSD’s How We Rock and Break It Up).

This shit sounds like if everyone in Danzig had broken fingers and Glenn was replaced by Fozzy Bear

There was one good thing to come out of crossover though, and that was the NYHC scene. Before crossover happened, the New York scene was mostly composed of third-rate punk bands like the Mad and the Stimulators. Some of them, like Even Worse, quite literally couldn’t play their instruments. The best bands were the ones who cut through the bullshit and played as fast as possible, aiming straight for the throat, like Agnostic Front and the Beastie Boys. However, once crossover hit with the Cro-Mags (Age of Quarrel is quite possibly the most important hardcore record ever made), everything changed. The Beasties went to hip-hop, Agnostic Front went full metal and had Pete Steele ghostwriting for them, and everyone was trying to sound metal as fuck. This is how we got super, super sick bands like Judge, Madball, the whole youth crew scene, and even some great crust punk like Nausea.

Which brings me to NYC Mayhem (or just Mayhem, as they were known back then). NYC Mayhem were around even a little bit before Cro-Mags released their demo, and they were probably the fastest hardcore band at the time, if you discounted DRI. I never hear anyone talk about them anymore, which is odd because the dudes in that band went on to form Straight Ahead and Youth of Today, which you would think would make them prime prizes for old record collector farts. Quite the contrary; you can get this bootleg for like $10, and the insert barely even talks about NYC Mayhem, instead focusing more on Straight Ahead.

This Violence demo is fucking sick, and is probably their best production.

NYC Mayhem, believe it or not, were probably the first band to push hardcore in a more death metal direction, a full year before Repulsion recorded Horrified and definitely way before Napalm Death, Terrorizer, and all those super-dated grind bands. NYC Mayhem basically played super-simplistic Reign In Blood-style riffs but ratcheted the tempo up to fucking unbelievable levels. Seriously, listen to the demo I embedded; from literally the first notes you can tell that NYCM were on some next-level shit. They were only around for a year and the majority of their material is so poorly produced it makes early SST sound like Def Jam, but they’re definitely one of the most sonically important bands of the mid-80s.

This is the scrapped demo for the We Stand EP. Some of these songs ended up being sanded-down and reworked for the Straight Ahead 7″.

Listening to this band now, it’s crazy that these songwriters went on to pen songs for Straight Ahead (proto-Infest skate thrash) and Youth of Today (the cornerstone of all youth crew), both of which are much more compositionally simplistic. NYC Mayhem weren’t mind-blowingly proficient by any means– quite the opposite, in fact, as you can hear the drums and bass struggling to match up to the guitar in every track– but they definitely had some ambitious aspirations, which you can hear in the fluctuating song structures and the super-disjointed solos (yeah, there’s a ton of Kerry King worship). I wouldn’t be surprised to find out that these guys were in the same tape-trading communities as the early Floridian death metal bands, especially looking at the vocal work on their earliest demos, which was much more hissy and “metallic,” before mutating into a much more hardcore yell/shout.

Of interest to fellow fucking weirdos like me, NYC Mayhem were one of the earliest practitioners of the blast beat (I think the Beastie Boys and Asocial were the only ones to beat them out), using it for pretty much the entirety of every song. This is especially impressive when you consider that the drummer is also doing the vocals. Also, lol @ them taking like a five-minute break between every song.

In any case, NYC Mayhem are ridiculously underrated despite being subtly influential. I definitely see them as the most extreme hardcore band of the mid-80s (without including all those weird, anti-hardcore bands like Flipper and No Trend), and their fusion of thrashy, wicked fast hardcore with primordial thrash and death metal totally blows away any of their more popular peers from New York or Boston. If you’re looking to score cred with ancient, greying hardcore dudes, make sure to name-drop NYC Mayhem in the same breath as Violent Children, Flag of Democracy, and The Fartz!

You Don’t Need Maps spotlights hardcore bands on his blog, makes jokes about them on his Twitter, and answers your weird questions about blackened skramz on his Tumblr. Feel free to angrily message him snarky corrections about minor factual errors to assert your hxc dominance.