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You know you’re at a hardcore gig, because the singers of hardcore bands at a hardcore gig have between song banter like “this is a hardcore gig” and yell out “HARDCORE!” during instrumental breakdowns.

My excessive use of the word ‘hardcore’ in that opening sentence was just to illustrate the point of how many times you will hear the word ‘hardcore’ when watching and listening to hardcore. It might seem like I’m taking the piss, but I’m really not. Well, not much anyway.

The Persistence Tour rolls into Kentish Town Forum every January and it’s always a pleasure to visit a venue which allows no pass-outs after a certain time despite not selling food and charges £3 per item in the cloakroom and £6 for a can of completely ordinary Guinness.

The two first bands were Countime and Cutthroat. I’ve lumped these two together because they were, I believe, both LA hardcore bands with similar sounds and because my memory has faded as to which order they even played in. £6 Guinness will do that to a person. They both had fast and heavy parts to their songs and sick as fuck breakdowns that were like having a slab of concrete dropped on to your chest while you’re taking a snooze in the afternoon. One of them had a singer who was wearing cargo shorts so large that they looked like a skirt. Or was it a cargo skirt? One of them was heavily influenced by hip hop and their performance saw the word ‘motherfucker’ used almost as much as the word ‘hardcore’.

Next up was Billy Bio, solo project of Billy who was in Biohazard when it was still a functioning outfit – not sure how he came up with the name of this band. He wore one of those call centre headset mics, so he was able to run around like a lunatic and mosh whilst signing and playing. He dived into the crowd, pretended to phone an audience member’s mum and crucially, the band played three Biohazard numbers which were worth the price of admission alone.

Wisdom in Chains followed. More yelling of “HARDCORE!” during instrumental parts of songs. Did Johnny Cash ever shout “FUCK YEAH! COUNTRY AND WESTERN!” during instrumental breaks? Probably not. I don’t doubt that during early Vivaldi recitals that someone would scream “CLASSICAL MUSIC, MOTHERFUCKERS!” though.

Was this the point at which H2O were supposed to play? They played every show on the rest of the European tour, but apparently couldn’t play this one because it was the singer’s son’s birthday. The singer’s son is usually on the tour with them, but not this time. I only found out the night before that they wouldn’t be playing, and I was frankly furious. Toby Morse, the man who claims not to preach about being straight edge whilst doing nothing but preach about being straight edge decided to put his actual family before his hardcore family. He also regularly wears a Coldplay t-shirt. The fucking dick.

And then on to Street Dogs. Woah! Hold on! They’re not hardcore. They’re punk. Ah, the token non-hardcore band at a hardcore gig. They were from Boston, Massachusetts. I know this because they mentioned they were from Boston, Massachusetts several times. There is a law that all bands from Boston, Massachusetts must tell everyone they’re from Boston, Massachusetts constantly. See also famous Boston, Massachusetts bands such as the Mighty Mighty Bosstones and Dropkick Murphys.

Penultimately it was Agnostic Front. Agnostic Front’s Live at CBGB album is legendary because Roger Miret says the word ‘hardcore’ approximately 750 times. Could he beat that total tonight? He probably did in the first ten minutes. The real highlight of an Agnostic Front performance is seeing how drunk/stoned/high original guitarist Vinnie Stigma is and seeing how the other guitarist whose name escapes most people is responsible for holding everything down. Vinnie was clearly off his face and I’m not entirely sure his guitar was even plugged in. Nevertheless, it was an enjoyable 40 minutes of greatest hits.

Gorilla Biscuits were the final band. They were apparently selling some sort of collectible action figure/statue thing at the merch stall, but curiously no actual biscuits. I had a quick glance at the merch, saw every band was selling t-shirts for at least £20 and decided they could all go and fuck themselves. My gig ticket, transport, hotel and refreshments for the trip had already seen costs spiral well into the mid-triple digit area. But how could Gorilla Biscuits play for an hour when they only every recorded about 25 minutes of material? Easy. They also played some of singer Anthony “Civ” Civarelli’s other band’s stuff. His other band was of course the eponymous CIV which in the original line up consisted of 75% of Gorilla Biscuits members. Possibly unnecessary, but who cares? Both bands were/are fucking awesome. They played for somewhere between 45 minutes and an hour and played every song I wanted to hear. Except No Reason Why. But there’s always got to be at least one song you get stiffed out of.

Six hours of music and I felt like the Mr Creosote of hardcore, as if one more short song would see me explode. The crowd spilled out on to the streets of Kentish Town. “HARDCORE!” yelled a lone voice in the distance.