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It’s one of music’s great arguments whether great bands are the product of movements or their creators. Put another way: Had Agnostic Front formed at any other time, would it have been as important? Leader of the mid-’80s NYC hardcore movement, Agnostic Front was one of the first to deliver that raw, chugging roar that would characterize East Coast acts from D.R.I. to Murphy’s Law. The band’s charm was in the interplay between singer Roger Miret’s pissed-off agitprop and guitarist Vinnie Stigma’s jagged razor-tinged riffs, delivered in minute-plus bursts of feral ferocity. When hardcore started to verge on thrash in the late ’80s, Agnostic Front threw in with the metalheads. The band’s initial demise was more a whimper than a bang in 1993. Four years later it re-formed, a little older and wiser (and, thanks to Green Day, more fashionable). Then Agnostic Front signed to Epitaph and has proven, across four subsequent albums, to be a durable, consistently exciting old-school punk outfit.
