Burning Fight was an interesting book for me to crack open simply because I have no vested interest in the nineties hardcore scene. To others and myself the hardcore scene in the nineties fell prey to gangs, tough guy cliques and worst of all post-hardcore or metalcore. I had largely written that time in hardcore as a watered down version of something that once mattered. After reading Burning Fight I was forced to re-examine my opinion of what the nineties hardcore scene was truly about.
Burning Fight author Brian Peterson has done a wonderful job of showing how the music and ideology of nineties hardcore was a lot more important than most people give it credit for. This book is a comprehensive look at the hardcore scene from the point of view of the bands that drove it. Peterson has succeeded with Burning Fight on three important levels that raise the book far above a simple history lesson.
First off Peterson keeps his personal feelings towards nineties hardcore out of the book. Nobody undergoes a writing project of this magnitude unless they are truly in love with the topic and Peterson knows the reader can sense that. Instead of pushing a personal agenda he creates a comfortable stage and allows the bands to tell their tale while himself remaining objective. To really inform people about something you can’t talk down to them or make them feel as if they “missed out” on something. None of that happens in Burning Fight and I give full credit to Peterson’s writing ability on that.
The second success with Burning Fight is the choice of bands. Peterson grabs bands from every social clique within the hardcore scene. From the straight edge idealism of Shelter and Vegan Reich to the completely off the deep end experimentation of Coalesce, Rorschach and Deadguy, nobody is left out. By giving equal time to all the bands that played under the umbrella of nineties hardcore Burning Fight compels you to read the entire book to get a full understanding of the scene.
This will have even the most seasoned hardcore scenester reading cover to cover instead of skipping around to the bands they like. As for the uninitiated, they’ll find each band’s story uniquely interesting. Look at this way, when I’m sitting there fascinated by the section on a band I can’t stand like Earth Crisis it tells me that the whole of this book has become more important than the pieces. I even learned things about bands I fancied myself a huge fans of such as Burn, Damnation AD, and Avail.
The third and maybe most important success is that Burning Fight is a completely accessible book whether you’re a hardcore fan or not. Starting with the opening chapters Peterson delves deeper into the ideology and politics of hardcore and really explains where those involved in the scene were coming from. By doing this Peterson pulls back the veil from hardcore and allows the reader to enter into the world without feeling foolish. One of the pitfalls of writing a boutique book about a niche topic is that people can feel alienated from it but Peterson sidesteps that nicely.
Burning Fight is a completely accessible book filled with interesting stories and details about an era of music from the bands that were it’s life’s blood. Without being pretentious, preachy or boring Peterson casts a bright light on a long hidden era of music. Burning Fight belongs alongside other great books on underground music such as Please Kill Me, This Band Could Be Your Life and We Got The Neutron Bomb.
