Music: An American Werewolf in America.

I'm not hip enough to the symbolic economies that regulate the balkanization of popular music to actually know, but I'm going to theorize that every cultural movement instantly produces a mirror image to counter it. Unlike a physical shift, these opposite forces are rarely equal. Case in point: The rise of post-sincere corporate pop, epitomized by figures like Lady Gaga, to something like a national style has, oddly, coincided with the resurgence hardcore punk. The latter's sudden shot in the arm has hardly raised it to the level of significance of the former. It's hard to imagine, no matter how far this trend might go, that sponsors will ever scramble to pony up cash for product placements in a ten-minute short film featuring Toronto's Fucked Up. (Whereas LG's "scandalous" video features three direct pay-to-play placements and at least two placements that are the result of corporate connections between her label and other corporate entities.) Still, this unexpected boom in hardcore sounds might be the best thing Gaga LLC did for music.

Today's twin blast of of hardcore comes from the All American Werewolves, a nicely ragged unit from Lexington, Kentucky. The first tune is "The Devil Rolls On;" the second is "Alligator." Neither feature autotuned vocals or conspicuous Miracle Whip placements.