“Liberation’s Crusade Has Begun”

Abstract

Chapter Five explores the interweaving of music, Hindu religious beliefs, and activism motivated by rage in the context of hardcore punk rock. In this chapter, I describe the unlikely convergence of hardcore punk rock, Krishna Consciousness, and animal rights in youth subcultural spaces in order to understand how the aural and spiritual worlds created by some bands shaped the emergence of radical animal rights. At times these music scenes nurtured the idea of other species as sacred beings and sparked outrage at their use and abuse by humans. Bands made fans into activists who brought the intensity of hardcore to direct actions in forests, at animal testing labs and mink farms, and against hunting and factory farming.