After a brief hiatus in 1982, they returned as a five-piece with their sole LP in 1983, Out Of Step, saw the band expanding on the minute-long bursts of aggression they first produced. Early on in their career they released two EP's, both of which have become staples in the hardcore punk entry canon. Joining them was also Lyle Preslar (State of Alert, Samhain) and Brian Baker (Dag Nasty, Bad Religion). The two aforementioned people also co-founded Dischord Records, a seminal DC punk label that released all of Minor Threat's music, as well as a slew of other notable artists. They were formed by vocalist Ian MacKaye and drummer Jeff Nelson after their former band The Teen Idles broke up. So to just give you a quick overview, Minor Threat were a four-piece (and for a time five-piece) hardcore punk band from Washington, DC that began in 1980. I don't want to delve too much into their history, since it's 2019 we have the internet, you don't need my third-person iteration of it. Or something like that, this is long-winded, indulgent and boring so I'll cut it off here. As dumb and cliche as it might sound, at the time music like this made me less alone, and have really stuck with me and shaped who I am today. After them it was Rites Of Spring, and that underground scene just opened up so many avenues of hardcore, punk, indie, alternative, whatever genre you want to name that lead me to pretty much all the bands I still love now. This band clicked in ways nothing had before, and provided a sense of purpose and community that I was able to take with me through all the musical phases that followed. Even going back now, shouting along to every word in every line to myself is an incredible (albeit embarrassing) experience. Their youth-driven rebellion, anthemic songs and lyrics stuck out to me more than almost anything I had ever heard as being intensely personally relatable, which is the perfect things a kid in his earliest teen years needed to hear. Though all the hardcore mainstays of the 80's were massive influences (Black Flag in particular), Minor Threat stood out as a band that I just "got". From my still-undying love of The Stooges and into the UK/New York bands of the 70's, it became my near-exclusive genre for a while, and that's what lead me to hardcore. After running through all the major classic rock and metal bands I could get my hands on, punk rock is the sound that began to really stand out to me. Not for a lack of talking points, as there is an infinite amount of things that could be said about this well-documented band, and they have had more of a personal and profound effect on me than most artists I can think to name. Since day one of this blog I have been averse to posting this band, because as cliche as it sounds, I didn't know what to say.
They are one of the sorely missed bands not yet posted here, and were monumental in my personal discovery of all things punk/hardcore/indie related. When trying to come up with a band to close out this "chapter" with, it just made more and more sense to use Minor Threat as a bookend this decade. It's weird to think of how much time has passed since its inception and existence for the better half of the 2010s. This is the last post of 2019, and the last post of the decade.
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