Originally Posted by GravitySlips

The problem with 80s hardcore was its insularity. A lot of the bands resisted any temptation to change their approach, instead sticking with the same tired formula - essentially what you said above. Most of the "NY" hardcore bands were bad for this, and a lot of the California bands too. Texas was the most fertile place for interesting variants on the genre - the bands you mention, and of course bigger ones like the Butthole Surfers and Scratch Acid too. They had DRI too, who I don't like, but they definitely created something pretty different with that blast beat crossover whatever.

Many of the bands who did develop away from their hardcore roots - like Black Flag - were met with a lot of hostility from their fans. It was, for the most part, a pretty myopic and insular scene.

However, when you start with such a stripped down template, like the early Bad Brains and Black Flag records, the potential to do interesting things with it is rife. It allowed for some weird music that would never have caught on before. Early Naked Raygun is a prime example... just totally weird punk songs, short and strangely structured, sloppy, funny and brilliant. A bunch of legit weirdoes making interesting music, in spite of not being particularly talented technically. Then they learned to play and became rubbish, which was a shame!

There's a lot to be said for the bands who used hardcore punk and punk in general as a template for doing strange and unique things. There was SO MUCH of that in the 80s, so many bands synthesizing the same influences into something totally unique, but a lot of these bands languish in obscurity now.

I guess when it comes down to it, there were a handful of really great 80s hardcore bands, a lot of boring, awful ones, and a helluva lot of brilliant bands who operated on the fringes of that scene.