Youth crew

Youth crew is a music subculture of hardcore punk attributed to bands who were primarily active during the early to mid-1980s particularly during the New York hardcore scene of the late eighties. Youth crew is distinguished from other hardcore and punk scenes by its optimism and moralist outlook. The original youth crew bands and fans were predominantly straight edge and vegetarian advocates.

Early musical influences included Minor Threat, Bad Brains, Negative Approach, Cro-Mags, and Agnostic Front. While some youth crew music is similar to melodic hardcore, other styles can be very thrash metal influenced and also includes breakdowns intended for the hardcore dancing style associated with live performances.Youth of Today was a very thrashy youth crew band, with abrasive vocals and fast songs too short to include a lot of melody (similar to early Agnostic Front, and contrasting with the other big New York City youth crew bands such as Gorilla Biscuits). Later youth crew bands took increasing influence from heavy metal.