Stoke-on-Trent, UK · d-beat · hardcore punk

Discharge

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Invented an entire drumbeat and a genre named after it — nuclear-dread hardcore stripped to pure noise, and still the loudest warning siren in punk.

Discharge formed in Stoke-on-Trent in 1977, initially assembled by vocalist Terence "Tezz" Roberts and guitarist Royston "Rainy" Wainwright, who then recruited Tezz's younger brother Anthony "Bones" Roberts on lead guitar along with a bassist and drummer. The band's earliest material followed the template set by the Sex Pistols, the Damned and the Clash, playing fairly conventional first-wave British punk.

Within a couple of years the rhythm section turned over, and roadie Kelvin "Cal" Morris took over vocals, pushing Tezz Roberts onto drums and Wainwright onto bass. That reshuffle produced the harder, faster, more nihilistic sound the band became known for: distorted, grinding guitar, screamed vocals without melody and an over-driven bass tone, the tempo climbing until the drum pattern itself became a genre unto itself, the d-beat.

Lyrics turned to anarchism, pacifism and the physical horror of nuclear war, delivered like a shouted political speech over droning, relentless rhythms. Album artwork carried the same charge, using stark black-and-white war photography and imagery such as the "Impaled Dove," adapted from a 1930s anti-war poster, to match the words.

The 1982 album Hear Nothing See Nothing Say Nothing remains the band's best-known record, and their early EPs are still widely cited. Their reach extends into thrash, black metal, crust punk and grindcore, and songs have been covered by Metallica, Anthrax, Machine Head, Sepultura, Soulfly, Prong and Arch Enemy. The group has continued in various lineups since, with founding guitarist Bones a long-standing presence.

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d-beathardcore punk