What is zen hardcore?
When someone first described Monk‘s music as “zen hardcore” I laughed out loud. I grew up in Sudbury blasting Fucked Up, Statues, Regulations, at dangerous volumes. Zen anything felt like a joke. Except for Bush’s “Everything Zen,” that’s a banger track and their Woodstock set lives in my head forever.
Zen hardcore isn’t a concept or a genre. It’s what happens when you’ve done enough therapy and enough sitting to know that screaming still works but now you know why. Hardcore has always been about naming suffering honestly. Buddhism asks what you do with it after. Zen hardcore is the answer we landed on: you don’t transcend it but you drag it into the pit.
Pema Chödrön talks about leaning into the sharp points instead of running from them. That’s always been hardcore’s actual promise that most bands just don’t say it out loud. And the best thing about hardcore is that it can mean different things to different people. Sure, there are common themes, but we all are attracted to this world for different reasons.
The best music scenes I’ve been part of were Adrift Skate Shop in Toronto and the Jubilee Centre in Sudbury. The DIY spots here like The Smell in LA already run on Buddhist principles. Nobody calls it that but people look out for each other. Older folks make space for younger kids. You show up when someone’s struggling. You give them a few bucks, a beer, whatever they need when they’re hard up. Only thing I don’t love is the nitrous gas / whippits shit. Stop that. As a father I can’t believe what I’m seeing.
Buddhism calls that sangha. I call it the only functional community model I’ve ever seen work consistently and that’s why I keep coming back for more, starting with Punksud message board and promoting hundreds of shows in the early-mid 2000s where it all started for me.
When Monk plays a show, it’s both things at once. Performance and presence. I’ve been obsessed with Debord’s Society of the Spectacle (free pdf), with kayfabe and WWE, with the whole architecture of professional wrestling… nothing wrecks me emotionally like watching Undertaker set up a tombstone or Stone Cold hit a stunner on someone who had it coming. That shit is real in the way that matters. The crowd knows it’s constructed and loses their mind anyway. That’s fun to me.
Monk lives in that same tension where we’re putting on a show. This is the show. Life’s a show. We’re also building temporary sangha in a room where people can be wrecked and held at the same time. I saw it at a gig in Tijuana this year. Saw it at a Buddhist center we visited the same tour. Different rituals. Same thing happening. The spectacle and the sacred aren’t opposites at all.
Buddhism uses the term “sangha” to describe the community of practitioners who support each other’s growth. If you’ve ever been part of a tight music scene, you already know what sangha feels or sounds like.
Follow along @monk.losangeles and see what we believe in.