Some records are a punch in the face, others a burst of sunshine. Start Today, released in 1989, belongs to that rare second category: a hardcore album overflowing with light without ever losing intensity. Gorilla Biscuits captures everything the youth crew wave had to offer at its best, the energy, the melody, the militant positivity, and does it with a freshness that has kept intact, more than thirty years later, its power to electrify.
Melody in the service of urgency
What strikes you immediately is how the band weds speed to hook. Walter Schreifels’s riffs are both nervous and memorable, the choruses explode into irresistible singalongs, and Civ’s voice, warm and raging, invites you to sing along rather than merely endure. Nothing is wasted: every song heads straight for its target, no fat, no pretension, with that economy of means proper to the best hardcore. You come out of the album grinning, heart pounding. The guitars answer each other, interlace and keep relaunching the momentum, giving the whole a feeling of perpetual motion that never settles.
An optimism that refuses naivety
Start Today is a deeply positive record, but never saccharine. It speaks of friendship, personal choices, open mindedness and the will to do better, today, without waiting. That philosophy, carried by the straight edge and youth crew scene, could have sounded like catechism: instead it sounds like an invitation, an outstretched hand. It is that generosity, that absence of cynicism, that sets Gorilla Biscuits apart from so many harder but more closed off bands. In a genre often dominated by anger, choosing joy and openness was itself a radical gesture, and the band owns it with a conviction that makes the positivity credible rather than naive.
Historically, the album holds a central place in the Revelation catalog and in the story of New York hardcore. It showed that you could be melodic without being soft, positive without being naive, accessible without selling out. Generations of melodic hardcore and pop punk bands owe it something, often without knowing it. Live, those choruses turned into moments of communion, dozens of voices shouting the same words back, and the record keeps that collective warmth.
A ray of sunlight that does not fade
Heard today, Start Today keeps a disarming vitality. Its easygoing production, its concision, its unkillable melodies make it a record you can loop endlessly without ever tiring of it. It is one of those rare albums that make you want to live better, to move, to believe a little again. An absolute classic of the genre, as essential for understanding melodic hardcore as it is joyful on every listen. You hit play, and the world suddenly feels easier to breathe in.
