A thesis by Thomas Peters

In this study I seek to trace the development of Hardcore Punk in the South African context between 1999 and 2006 by using the evolution of its longest running exponent, Crossingpoint, as my framework. I will pursue the impact of social change on the lyrical content, and international trends on the music. In order to achieve this, I will use the bands published recordings as the starting point.
Formed in late November 1998, the band played their first show in early January 1999-SPCA benefit concert at Jaime’s nightclub-the only venue in Durban, save for the Winston Pub, which catered for alternative music at the time. The original line up, consisting of brothers Wesley and Brandon van Eeden on vocals and guitar respectively, backed by founding bass player Kurt Grung and drummer Greg Reynolds, performed songs that remained in the bands repertoire for at least the next three to four years, including ‘See Through’, ‘I’ve got a Conscience’ and ‘Proud to Be’, to what appears to be, on the available video footage, a very receptive audience. The performance seemed hurried, with very short breaks between songs, but the action onstage reminds of rather different styles of music-Wesley Van Eeden behaved a little like an emcee, and Brandon Van Eeden and Grung seemed to be skanking at times. The message the band sought to convey at the time revolved around social consciousness and abstinence “from all that is evil and unjust”, as ran the headline of the second incarnation of their website, accessed March 11th 2001.
According to Van Eeden, bands that existed before Crossingpoint in the local scene were dealing for the most part with racism; at the time an important social issue, but the “usual punk junk” of rebellion, civil disobedience and identity. The scene itself was a tight-knit environment, with a strong community element, where bands generally sung about the same things, and held the same beliefs. A large part of the performance schedule at the time was benefit shows-concerts for charitable causes such as beauty without cruelty and Falcon, as well as the one or two small scale Marijuana legalization awareness events. Bands did not place as much emphasis on the lyrical element of their music, but focused more on the musical and atmospheric components-the opposite of what is happening locally at present, but wholly in line with contemporary American trends. Important bands at the time before Crossingpoint’s existence were Power Age, who were South Africa’s primary hardcore export for many years, as well as Crush and SOD, which stood for ‘Surf or Die’-a response to the tensions between the Johannesburg and Durban scenes-which merits another study on its own entirely.
Crossingpoint’s current incarnation still consists of the same instrumentation, but with only one original member, Brandon Van Eeden, alongside singer Ray Douglas, drummer Richard Phipson and bass player JP. While the line up has undoubtedly changed dramatically, through two singers (and one ‘session vocalist’), four bass players and eight drummers, according to Brandon, the influences have remained the same, and as a result, if through some miracle the original line-up was still in existence, the band would be highly likely to sound the way it does today-especially given than the music itself was always written by Van Eeden, and the lyrics by the respective singers. In Crossingpoint’s existence, their ‘public image’ has undergone one substantial change-from the ‘faceless noise’ of the late 1990’s to the “Ray, Ross, Richard & Brandon” of recent times, the band decided to generate a concrete identity in late-2005, when Douglas and Phipson joined the band and Wesley Van Eeden left, seeing as though the identity would be significantly affected by the change of vocalists. Instead of renaming the band and starting out from the beginning, the band chose to make use of the previous faceless entity and present themselves for the first time as ‘Crossingpoint’. Because the members of the band, for the first time, all felt like friends, rather than band members, it was decided that, for the first time, the band ‘felt’ right-and, as stands to reason, when the social aspect of a band is functional, the output becomes significantly increased.
The bands current message has departed from the earlier social issues to a more individual set of problems, dealing with personal improvement and change-ascribed entirely to Douglas’s lyrics. The music has also changed significantly over the past eight years, from slow, ‘power-chord’ driven songs, that sound like earlier Power Age recordings with the addition of shouted vocals, have come fast paced, discordant, brutal melodic assaults that ‘send the message home’ harder than the original approach could.
The first release of the band, 1999’s “The Path Less Traveled” EP, featured five tracks with strong references to the band’s political and social leanings; “I’ve got a conscience”, “Burn the Flames of Injustice”, “See Through [the lies]“, “Unite” and “Last Change”. On sale for R30 after their shows, the disc was true punk DIY in every way-home recorded on an analogue 4-track machine and burnt onto CD-R, it bears testament to the end of an era in Durban and South Africa’s hardcore scene. As the only functioning hardcore band in Durban at the time, Crossingpoint held up a tradition set out by their international influences, Minor Threat, Snapcase, and all the other Victory Records bands of 1990’s.

The Track “I’ve got a conscience”, track 01 on the CD, in the vein of Earth Crisis’ (A significant band in the hardcore scene) first Victory Records release, “Firestorm”, begins with a long bass & drums introduction over 16 bars, joined by guitar wails from the eighth bar, and continuing throughout the first verse, marked by change in the guitar riff, and the addition of vocals, right until the chorus. The song deals with social issues; media control and the resultant decline of social morality. “Everywhere I look / I see it / the filth of this world / killing me/ I try to ignore / but it keeps coming back to me / dammit, I’ve got a conscience”. The general tempo of the song is slower than most of the material available at the time-intentional, according to Van Eeden, since it ‘sounded heavier’ that way, and most likely, because the band couldn’t play fast enough anyway.
The next release, 2001’s “Disaster Strikes”, track 02 on the CD, recorded for the Burn/Splashy Fen compilation CD, revolves around environmental issues, and lyrically resembles another Earth Crisis track, “Deliverance”, off their 1995 “Destroy the Machines” album. The track sounds radically different from the earlier material, with a sharp change in tempo (to 140 bpm) and ‘sound density’. Featuring a long sampler introduction that is meant to illustrate burning forests and dying animals, the song launches into an attack on multinational corporations that exploit natural resources for profit and leave the earth scarred. Singer Wesley Van Eeden paints a grim picture of the results of such rampant profiteering, “Slowly but surely / thirst will overcome / but next time there will be / none for everyone.” Musically, the track consists primarily of power chords1, as did “I’ve got a conscience”, except for a rising scale at the conclusion of verses and the chorus’ “We will survive!” for emphatic purposes. The music and text function in a polyrhythmic manner, with words squeezed into rhythms that defy conventional speech patterns at some sections. The track also features a breakdown (as transcribed for percussion in the footnote2) that for many years was an audience favorite, and has since found its way, albeit in a different meter, into their most recent release, “Snakes in our Laps”. As with

“The Path Less Traveled”, this track was entirely DIY and recorded by Brandon Van Eeden in the band’s rehearsal space. The tracks are all literally ‘bathed’ in reverb and feature incredibly ‘low’ bottom end. Remarkably, the Snare drum receive prominence in the mix over the Kick drum-traditionally ‘driving’ the rhythm-which disappears into the background.
‘Upgrade”, track 03 on the CD, was recorded in 2002 for inclusion in the final “New Breed” compilation CD put out by local record label Witchdoctor records, with a new Bass Player in Ross Turpin. The track is considerably slower than “Disaster Strikes” – 100 bpm – but makes up for it by making use of at least eighth notes throughout. With it’s rousing introduction3, rhythmically transcribed below, the song deals with individuality-”we all are different / from the outside / but we have the same feelings / that we all try to hide.” Also a DIY recording, as are all of the band’s releases, the track makes use of a different percussion sound entirely-partially due to drummer changes, and partially due to experiments with different sounds. Further, the song marks the introduction of electronic effects to the actual performance, videlicet guitar effects such as phase shifters, as an addition to the usual distorted guitar. The musical aspect of the song is altered from previous released by a distancing from ‘chord-based riffs’ to the inclusion of guitar melodies.

Crossingpoint independently released their first, self-titled, full-length album in 2004, again recorded DIY but professionally packaged by CD-T and available only in ‘digipak’ form for a mere R50 from every distro (~small scale punk rock distribution agency) in South Africa. The Album features eight tracks, some of which from the earliest days of the band, such as “Move!” and “Upgrade”, and others that were relatively new, like “The Icebergs” and “Physical Equipment”. “Move!”, track 04 on the CD, best reflects the band at that specific instance, since it was old material, co-written for example by founding bass player Grung, but performed by new members, and thus adapted in parallel with the band’s musical progress. The track deal with the fast pace of society, and rouses the listener to “Stop moving and start thinking!” and “Stop dreaming and start living, follow your heart while it’s still beating!” The music is largely ‘riff-based’, as opposed to consisting of power chord-progressions, and places more emphasis in the mix on the musical rather than vocal aspect. The tempo of the track is
again at 140bpm, and the guitar sound is marked with electronic effects-reverb, vibrato and a slight delay. Generally, the self-titled album is characterized by electronic elements, specifically the use of analogue synthesizers by Wesley Van Eeden, which carried over into the first recording of the following track.

“Like Ethiopia, Only Better Dressed” was recorded in the transitional period of the band’s existence-when in late 2005 Wesley had left, and a new singer couldn’t be found in time. Van Eeden needed a finished demo to take to the USA with him and hand out at shows there, so Will Edgcumbe, singer for The Rising End, another Durban-based hardcore band, was called to take on session vocal duties. He brought with him lyrics to the two songs he recorded with the band, “Like Ethiopia, Only Better Dressed”, and “We Are Slowly Bing Replaced by Replicas of Ourselves”. The titles alone reflect an international change in hardcore practice, where bands were no longer content with one-word titles for their songs and chose to express their titles with complete phrases; Norma Jean’s 2002 “Bless The Martyr, Kiss The Child” album, a heavy influence on Crossingpoint, and the hardcore movement in general, features song titles such as “Sometimes its our Mistakes that Make for the Greatest Ideas” and “Pretty Soon, I don’t know What, but Something is Going to Happen”. The song, “Ethiopia…”, track 05 on the CD, was written by Edgcumbe while employed by the weight-loss company Weigh-Less, and focuses on society’s obsession with physical appearance, and the media’s glorification thereof. In the song, Edgcumbe speaks about the influence of fashion on identity, and how individual identity is lost in attaining a social identity. The track has since been re-recorded, in the 2006 version, with Douglas’ voice, but the instrumentation has remained the same. The instrumentation itself is markedly different from all previous recordings-as a result of exposure to American bands like Converge and Norma Jean, the band’s style changed from the previous hardcore/metalcore to something resembling almost mathcore, complete with dissonances, specifically minor 2nd chords, and technical riffs-although metrically remaining fairly constant in simple time. This track was the first step from social issues on a large scale, and an approach to more ‘youth-oriented’ issues-notably the ‘appearance’ issue.
The first song the band recorded with Douglas and Phipson, “Snakes in Our Laps” was released in mid 2006 on a benefit compilation for the Tango trust, “Artists against Animal Abuse”. Its introduction closely resembles Norma Jean’s “The Shotgun Message”, in terms its rhythm and dissonant chord used,
although this is unintentional. Douglas’ explanation of the song is that we make ‘pet snakes’ of the negative things in our lives, and instead of removing these we allow them to dominate us. The song’s message is about personal change and control of one’s own destiny, and “Set[ting] our selves free on eagle’s wings”. The tempo is again at a slower 100bpm, and for the first time in the band’s recorded existence, the music and lyrics seem to have been written for each other-in all likelihood a result of the more ‘social’ climate within the band. Phipson’s singing voice is also for the first time properly exploited4, as is the double-bass pedal, with the inclusion of triplets on both feet. Genre-wise, “Snakes” can be defined as an amalgamation of post-hardcore, mathcore and tough guy-hardcore, encompassing sung vocals, moments of discordant technicality and the focus on self-determination and mental strength-generally, a world away from “I’ve got a conscience”.

Essentially, Crossingpoint’s music evolved alongside international hardcore practice, but shifted across its subgenres, experimenting with each of their relative merits, from the militant stance of the earliest performances, and the slow riffs respondent to 1980’s hardcore, to the genre-defying socially-based performance of recent times, the lyrics, when intelligible, always jar their audience’s minds and leave them with something to think about. As quoted sans source on the band’s website, www.crossingpoint.co.za, “It’s hard to go to a crossingpoint show and leave unchanged. Whether you’re screaming your lungs out with the band or following their lyrics on their lyric sheets handed out before each show, theirs is a power and a passion that few bands achieve.”