Anecdotally speaking, 1977 is usually accepted as ground zero for punk rock. It was the year the genre truly exploded as it achieved mainstream notoriety and the likes of The Clash, Sex Pistols and The Damned each released their debut albums, kickstarting a youth movement that saw bands burst into life just about anywhere there were kids to form them. Conversely, by 1980 the genre had been declared dead; the media had moved on, the genres of post-punk and new wave had mutated away from its source DNA and its biggest champions had either split or were said to be past their creative peak. Except, that doesn't really account for what happened after 1980. Punk might have lost its mainstream spotlight, but the genre had gone to ground, getting a whole lot faster, angrier and more political as a new wave of punk artists arose to make the scene their own and coin a whole new school for the genre: hardcore. Where new wave co-opted punk's commercial appeal, hardcore p