Growing up in a working class family on Indianapolis' Southside, I always dreamed that there was something more to adolescence than the mind-numbing sense gratification of drugs and alcohol, the false coolness of smoking cigarettes, the comfortable security of apathy towards world events and the ridiculous posturing of cock rock heavy metal bands like Bon Jovi. In 1988 - at fourteen - I stumbled upon what I believed that "something more" to be - straight-edge hardcore. I had already become well versed in thrash metal and old-school West Coast punk rock like the Dead Kennedys. But, when a spiky-haired, leather jacket-wearing friend of mine since elementary school stumbled upon Revelation Records' New York City Hardcore / The Way It Is compilation, I found my light in the darkness.