HEART ATTACK interview from Flipside #42...

Here is an interview with NY's early hardcore band HEART ATTACK from Flipside #42, 1984. It was done between the excellent 'Keep Your Distance' 12" (which has the aptly titled song 'English Cunts' on), which was recently posted over on Good Bad Music, and the not-amazing 'Subliminal Seduction' 12" (which sort of sounds like early 7 SECONDS with sloppy drumming, but not as good as that description would suggest. Still pretty cool though).

HEART ATTACK arguably put out the first NYHC 7" ('God Is Dead'), but remain a fairly underappreciated band if you ask me. In this interview they definitely come across as fairly "progressive", not unlike mid period TOXIC REASONS, speaking about having no barriers between countries, "pledging allegiance to love", the treatment of Native Americans... ideas more akin with 60s hippie counterculture than punk nihilism. Like many bands of the time they display a sort of delusional belief that playing in a punk band could really change the world (which is understandable when taken in context, if you consider early hardcore as a kind of "movement"... then new and exciting, now just another Myspace genre). While perhaps naive, bands like HEART ATTACK had admirable good intentions, and these sorts of ideas definitely add to the whole early hardcore vibe, whether it was a frustrated desire to improve the world, or destroy it... It's also interesting that they were so outspokenly critical of the church, something heard less and less from bands from around this area, atleast from the mid-80s onwards.

Another thing to note is the cool Dischord Records ad on the 2nd page of the interview. I don't think I've mentioned before how much I love SCREAM: 'Still Screaming'!