2012 has come and gone and we’re still not dead yet. You can log into the 24/7 smiling face, pictures of your friends drunk and/or naked, click “like”. The gray-faced man in a suit who hates you is still alive too, but now he isn’t always wearing a suit, and he’s smiling, 24/7. He likes what you like, sees what you see, hears what you hear. So where does punk go when the underground’s all tidily arranged on a shared screen? Does it roll over and play dead? Shrug? Smile? There’s another man, this one with a microphone jammed halfway down his throat, cord coiled carotid-tight around his neck, dangling his body off the edge of the stage, screaming words that ache. Another is methodically destroying his guitar with his hands while his feet twist tail-ends of the signal into electro-rubber-echo nightmares. Two others are so precisely abusing a bass guitar and a drum kit at such a frenetic pace it’s hard to believe these sorry objects will last more than a few more seconds, but then you realize it’s over. A minute or so, tops. They stare out at you, maybe say thanks. Spit. Breathe. And then they begin again. This will happen for maybe fifteen minutes, altogether. You are not alone. The gray-faced man is not here. There’s the screen, but then there’s this. 2013, and punk is not dead. No more dead than the rest of us.
—Zack Wentz