It’s been 35 plus years since their Lower East Side NYC inception, but astoundingly Agnostic Front are still just as vital as the thriving punk movement they helped create. It’s befitting that another worldwide movement, Record Store Day, now in its 11th year, has chosen The Godfathers Of Hardcore, filmmaker Ian McFarland’s powerful documentary about AF, as its Official Film for 2018.

For those of you unfamiliar with NYC Hardcore, Agnostic Front were a viper’s tongue of resonant energy. Crested by the distinctive voice of Roger Miret and revved on by guitarist, Vinnie Stigma, the band can be seen/heard as a defining timbre of angst, disillusionment and existential struggle. From CBGB hardcore matinees to stages around the globe, AF were the educators for young fans of the genre. And possibly more than any other subset of punk rock, those kids would stick around.

Now, as illustrated in McFarland’s already celebrated film, one can identify a whole new generation of hardcore fans, all of whom recognize Agnostic Front as one of its most seminal trailblazers, however, the film also portrays the profound and nuanced friendship of its 2 most enduring members…

Miret, a Cuban refugee from an abusive home, and Stigma, a second gen NYC Italian found common ground in the visceral expression of punk rock. While AF claimed legendary status fairly early on in their trajectory, Vinnie and Roger’s long history proved complicated, leaning on each other through a variety of challenges that ranged from incarceration to serious health issues. Much of the courage, conflict, reflection and resolve between the two compadres is at the center of The Godfathers of Hardcore, as is the music, additionally rounded out by Aaron Drake’s brilliant score and contributions from contemporaries such as The Stimulators, Iron Cross and Reagan Youth, among others.

The film’s score, composed by the aforementioned Aaron Drake, is pressed on vinyl by Wargod Collective, in a gatefold package, complete with a poster and will be released as a Record Store Day exclusive on April 21.

Instead of taking the easy way out and throwing together a collection of Agnostic Front songs for the soundtrack, director Ian McFarland instead enlisted Aaron Drake to score the film. The results are beautifully haunting compositions. McFarland comments “I really wanted to do something different than what people would expect when watching this film. I decided early on that I wanted to try something unique and I could not be happier with the result of that decision.”

Drake adds that there was still a level of inspiration taken from Agnostic Front’s output when scoring the film, noting “Even though Ian, smartly, didn’t want to use the band’s music in a typical way, I thought it could be a starting point for the score. So I put on my nerd glasses and did some slightly esoteric pre-compositional work using Schenkerian analysis. After analyzing “Victim in Pain,” I found the harmonic structure in the chorus popping up in a lot of other songs. I thought it should play an equal role in the score so it’s in virtually every cue in some way, like the motifs for ‘Writing the Future’ and ‘Mamá.'”

Check out the Track Sampler for the release below:

And watch the teaser for the doco below: