Fear

Along with Black Flag and the Circle Jerks, Fear helped define the sound and style of L.A. hardcore. Although they actually formed during the first wave of punk back in 1977, Fear didn't release an album until five years later with 1982's defining The Record, by which time they'd honed a blistering, thrashy attack that, for all its fury, was surprisingly tight and sometimes even intricate, with tough metal influences and occasional detours into complex time signatures. Which is to say that, musically, the band wasn't as crude as frontman Lee Ving's outrageous, humorously offen...