I don't think I'm gonna be able to get through this book completely. It's enormous, and the problems I started to feel throughout the book only became more and more prominent as time goes on.

The book’s overall angle on a lot of the more negative parts of hardcore seems to be “we were shitty and it was awesome”. There’s about as much considered reflection in the book as that implies.

Much of the book's insight on issues in punk is painfully sexist and tokenistic, incredibly biased to the point of simply further poisoning an already fetid well as regards fascism and racism in punk. If you ignore the bolded text that contains the author’s commentary, the book becomes a more palatable - there are lots of insightful interviews with major players throughout, although they're mixed in with a more incoherent series with absolutely minor nobodies who appear to be Blush's friends or something. I’m okay with admitted biases, but that doesn’t give you carte blanche to write the entire book through a single lens.

All this said - there's no denying the quality of the good interviews. The various components that made up Black Flag provide particularly interesting context, and the sheer range of interviewees (despite the aforementioned scattershot inclusion criteria) certainly sets a a scene of sorts.

The Feral House style of peppering historical/biographical music content with imagery is rolled out here also, which serves occasionally to illuminate and in other places clutter. Once you hit one of the pages where it's nothing but Blush listing names and dates in rather eye-watering bold text you find yourself pining for pictures.

The second edition adds a section on punk spirituality, quite arbitrarily stapled on in the first few chapters for some reason, feeling completely out of place. It’s a four-page lip service to one of the most fascinating parts of the NY hardcore scene which disappointed me.

Overall, a book that would surely justify its own indulgence as being punk. As long as the indulgence was pre-'86 indulgence, otherwise that isn't punk maaaan.