MELEE

 

The thing that made MELEE cool is that they were so decidedly not cool. They seemed to sit at the perpetual kids' table while the USDIY scene subdivided itself and anointed royalty in the early '00s. Meanwhile, they delivered consistently ferocious raw hardcore every bit as fast as the th/en vouge Y2K thrashcore explosion, harnessed the political (and sonic) rage of CRUDOS and made the shit sound like they owned it.  Were they game changers.....? Perhaps not. But this demo, along with the EPs and splits that followed over their brief existence, have aged extremely well. Unpretentious, honest hardcore. 

MELEE