Punk: An unexpected safe space

Sometimes, when just the right song comes on, it feels as if the music is writing out your emotions for you. Like ironing out wrinkles in a sheet, it smooths out everything you couldn’t understand alone. The soul of a song attaches to your own and walks you through what you couldn’t have alone; it’s simultaneously beautiful and daunting. Music has a nature of grappling with feelings we can’t name, almost as a message of solidarity, saying, I feel what you feel and you are not alone. 

Punk has risen to this standard time and again with its profound commentary on depression. Both explicitly and implicitly, punk bands have risen to the challenge of using their music as a platform to divulge the hardships of depression. Black Flag made this apparent with their song “Nothing Left Inside,” just as did IDLES with “1049 Gotho,” as well as Suicidal Tendencies with “Suicidal Failure.” Punk is inherently a genre gilded by a facade of masculinity and tough nature. However, through its spitting, cursing, and kicking, it’s violently breaking down stigmas surrounding mental health, welcoming its listeners into a space of support. 

There’s a luring appeal to easily sulk into these emotions, until the burden becomes too heavy to bear. Then it suddenly mimics quicksand; the more you struggle, the more you sink. Punk attaches lyrics to the feelings we don’t have the courage to tap into alone, melting feelings down until they become something moldable. Songs like these force you to stare directly into the eyes of whatever you’re avoiding 

Los Angeles band, Beach Bum’s does just that when they seamlessly grasp the bravery of discussing such a topic repeatedly throughout their album, I Want to Sleep Forever (2018). The first track, “Take the Light Away” is a statement that may be too painfully familiar for some to listen through. It falls short of only two minutes, yet it takes time to stare into the face of exactly what it feels to slip into a lightless state that its simplicity, through lulling vocals with the raw sound of scratching guitar strings, parallels the lack of spirit that couples depression. The last track on the album, “I Want to Sleep Forever” goes into the grim of discovering a friend who has slipped into a similar state. It wrestles with the stark pain of witnessing a friend fall into a spiral of self-destruction so deep it ultimately claims their life.

On stage, Beach Bums’s lead singer and producer, Jonathan Horsley, regularly thrashes and screams shirtless to match the energy of all those moshing before him. In the midst of his chaos, his lyrics still manage to shamelessly bleed into such fragile topics, unveiling an incredibly vulnerable element of their music. 

IDLES, a punk band from Bristol, dives into similar somber topics on their album Brutalism (2017), though in a tone that suggests more of a blatant protest of depression—and its accompanying demons. The sixth track on the album, “1049 Gotho” discusses a friend valiantly opening up about his sense of desolation and thoughts of suicide. The song is a plea for help, while also brashly highlighting the strange sense of indifference that couples depression, leading those impacted by it to act in brazen manners with little regard for consequence or judgement. 

In the darkest pits of depression, where defeat runs rampant, a mentality that reads “nothing matters” often takes hold, thriving off indifference. This seems to be the case in “1049 Gotho” as the lyrics tell of the friend about to sleep with a woman, but he seems to be completely unaroused and goes to “piss in the kitchen sink/ as she slowly undressed.” There is some respect in not caring and acting brashly, but perhaps the vulgar, shameless image of the genre reflects this mentality. And, perhaps, this is where the genre fails us and supports self destruction. 

Punk’s commentary on depression is not some contemporary revelation, but rather a thread of its early makeup. Many of the most notorious earliest punk bands dedicated songs to the bleak impacts of depression, such as the Dead Kennedys, Black Flag, and Misfits. One of them to be directly impacted was early punk band Germs whose vocalist lost his life at only 22 years old. Darby Crash and his girlfriend, Casey Cola, planned their tragic suicide pact for the night of December 7, 1980 with an intentional heroin overdose. Cola survived; Crash did not. His lyrics never explicitly told of what pain may have driven him to such an end, so we will never truly know what demons lied within his talented mind. But maybe he sent some sort of preview through his songs that praised slipping away into heroin, in songs such as “We Must Bleed,” or tucking away from the world, in songs like “My Tunnel.” 

Crash’s fate left a scar on the punk scene that may never fade. He may not have spoken directly on his depression, but he showed us the plain truth of it. As time lapses, punk has become more keen to openly discussing the realities of depression. When it seems like the pain knows no bound, they stand up to say that it, in fact, does. 

Using music to discuss depression provides reassurance that you are not in a vacuum of your own distress. There are countless others facing the same challenges, and countless people arriving at the means to overcome them. Depression can swell in the shadows of places that sometimes seem the most desolate, but by creating a conversation around it, we can know that it is not as secluded as it may appear. Punk rises to this challenge to let us know that we are not alone. It perfectly juxtaposes the genre’s image, while abiding by all of its core messages. To be punk is to not give a fuck and to be unabashedly yourself. Ignoring the association of emasculation of addressing stigmatized feelings is the most punk act of all.

Article by Natalie Gott

Design by Natalie Kemper