Time Machine time: It’s back in they day and you are hanging out in Trenton at City Gardens wating for Quicksand to play. How do you kill that time in between bands? You could play pinball or try to scam on chicks. Nah! That’s stuff too jock-ish. You need something to read and Norm Arenas’ Anti-Matter fanzine was the shit to cop at a hardcore show back then.

Fast-forward back to now - Fun Vampire homeboy O.B. recently got a copy of the Revelation Records released Anti-Matter Anthology: A 1990’s Post-Punk & Hardcore Reader book. He let us review it.

Norm Arenas is a New York hardcore kid that was a member of the fabled Youth Crew. He published the fanzine Crucified and he played in a bunch of different hardcore bands – most notably 108 and Shelter.

When his time with Shelter ended, Arenas went on to be the leader of the band that helped launch 8 million terrible nu-emo bands - Texas Is The Reason. Once TITR broke up he kicked around in one or two other bands and then moved to Chicago to become a house music DJ and label head. A few years ago, to the surprise of almost no one (even Crucified Fanzine readers) Norman Arenas dropped his last name in favor of the last name Brannon and came out of the closet.

He now lives in NYC. His new book, Anti-Matter Anthology: A 1990’s Post-Punk & Hardcore Reader compiles interviews from all issues of Anti-Matter plus some of Norm’s writings from the magazine Alternative Press.

Unlike the then current punk standard of cut and paste, high contrast, late night Kinko’s mash-ups, Anti-Matter was professionally laid out with clear photography and elegant typography. But, what really set Anti-Matter apart from other fanzines of the day were its band interviews - that is where Anti-Matter really shined.

As the Anti-Matter fanzine founder, publisher, designer and writer Norm Arenas chucked both played out rock critic staples (What are your influences? or What is your favorite place to play?) and the equally trite punk rock equivalents (What do you think about hardline? or What is your opinion on riot grrl?) for a style similar to that of Kent McClard’s No Answers fanzine. He turned the emo up to 11 and queried hardcore band members about all sorts of personal issues not often touched upon in fanzines or lyrics in the violent and macho New York / New Jersey hardcore scene.

Anti Matter’s hardcore was not about mosh-pits, mohawks, & blast beats - it was about how people felt and why they were compelled to make punk rock.

Of course, it’s almost 2008 - after years and years of watered downed, manufactured bullshit emo is there a need to revisit a zine that dared to ask What makes the singer from Judge cry and tales of a straight-edge icon getting high and seeing Morrissey? 

Actually, yes! Norman Brannon’s Anti-Matter Anthology: A 1990’s Post-Punk & Hardcore Reader is an important document of the scene at a particular moment in time. The years have reduced what Norm pioneered to an asymmetrical haircut and an all over print hoodie. Reactionary punks have eradicated discussion of genuine emotion as pussy emo shit but the interviews with big names (Elliot Smith, J. Robbins, Rage Against The Machine) and smaller bands that the youth of today might not be familiar with (Mouthpiece, Garden Variety) prove that good writing about music doesn’t always have to be about music.

The only real criticism that I have for the book is minor. The subject matter lacks context. I was going to shows back when these zines were coming out and, to some small extent, I felt like I was part of the East Coast hardcore scene - so I get 99% of the references in the book. The less initiated might not get as much out of the book.

Anti-Matter Anthology: A 1990’s Post-Punk & Hardcore Reader is beacon to a past where one could be emotional without being a sniveling caricature and a time when hardcore seamlessly embraced feelings other than hate. There is nothing corny about that.