These images reveal an era before audience members captured and documented their hardcore show experience themselves.An era before we were all so comfortable having our photo taken and instantly being able to see images of ourselves on our phones or online. An era with different fashion, different haircuts, different styles, but the same passion, same enthusiasm and the same intensity. They help to document several important steps in Australian hardcore’s history, seeds that were planted then and are still bearing fruit today.

To me, these images also represent an era where fellow creatives like myself cut our teeth, built our foundation to go forward, to go further. Hardcore was our entry, our community, our permission to create something, to just try, to do it ourselves without knowing what we were doing.

—Sam Octigan, Iron Mind