Pop Music Review : From 7 Seconds, Dance Songs for the Slam Pit

While you were out: Hardcore punk, while not the most intellectual of rock ‘n’ roll movements, has become squeaky-clean by virtue of being an intellectual movement at all (nasty thugs are more likely to listen to Slayer these days). Hardcore heroes tend to do things like earn science doctorates in their spare time.

One of the most popular wings of hardcore these days is “straight-edge,” whose lyrics tend to advocate no-drugs, no-booze, vegetarianism and clean living, and its subset positive punk (“posi-punk”), which is less dogmatic and more likely to get played on college radio. It’s a bad night for bartenders when a straight-edge band plays.

The premiere posi-punks, Reno’s 7 Seconds, played clean-cut, smiling pop songs for today’s teens at the Whisky on Wednesday, tuneful mainstream ditties that just happened to be written on the hardcore model: louder, bass-driven, aggressively monophonic.

It was dance music like New Kids on the Block’s, only for the slam pit instead of the junior prom. Singer Kevin Seconds sang about how much he loves his sister and how easy it is to hurt people’s feelings; he admonishes stage-divers not to kick people on the way down--he’s been called the Mr. Rogers of hardcore. The music, though loud, was consonant as a Palestrina motet--7 Seconds wouldn’t have wanted want the noise to have upset anybody.