In Birmingham’s punk underground, hardcore is queer

On an industrial estate in the semi-gentrified landscapes of Digbeth in Birmingham, scores of queer punks are packed into a small, unassuming art gallery and music venue named Centrala. The rambunctious crowd moves like a single organism, undulating from left to right, before slamming straight into each other. Their eyes are fixated on the local band on stage, Luxury Nan Smell, who encourage the audience to scream out the lyrics to the band’s song, ​‘Fucked Up Nasty Man,’ with slick, plastered grins on their faces. 

Tonight is Punks 4 Pride, the third iteration of an alternative pride celebration held on the same night as Birmingham Pride. Punks 4 Pride aims to create a space for queer punks who desire more than the maudlin, mainstream pop they’re usually offered at LGBTQ+ events. Outside the venue I speak to an audience member, Beckett, who explains that these gigs are for people in the queer community who feel like outsiders. ​“The Pride that’s going on there, it isn’t for all of us,” says Beckett. ​“It’s very white, it’s very straight, it’s very cisgender. It doesn’t compare to the atmosphere we’re seeing here.” 

As the night goes on, it becomes clear that this is not your usual punk show. Every act on stage speaks of the community that exists here. Local punk band Good Cop tells the crowd: ​“Everyone in here – you’re loved and you’re one of us. I want this to be a moment of group catharsis.” Alongside the calls for unity is a repeated message of thanks from the bands to a shy, bespectacled girl in the crowd – 29-year-old Lexi Bushell, the founder of the 0121 Queercore. She’s the organiser of the night and many other queer centred punk shows in the city.

While Bushell’s flowers are certainly due, there’s more to this burgeoning and radical music scene than just one person. Mimicking the brash energy of hardcore shows and the political urgency of the early 1990s riot grrrl movement, a new and vibrant scene called queercore is taking over in tiny venues across Birmingham. The spaces it creates allows the community to have a voice, at a time when queer identity is increasingly under threat – no more evidenced than the UK Supreme Court’s ruling in April that the legal definition of a woman is based on biological sex.

Although queercore is thriving in Birmingham, it did not start in the city. The genre (originally called homocore) began as an offshoot of the punk rock scene in the mid ​’80s, popularised by the influential Toronto-based zine J.D’s. There was no homogenous sound in queercore, but rather the movement encompassed an array of genres, from the hardcore punk of Chicago-based Latino band Los Crudos to the power pop hooks of San Francisco’s Pansy Division. But rather than pure sonics, what united the scene was the community that it gave queer youth – away from the machismo and queerphobia typically found in punk circles and the hyper-capitalist attitudes of mainstream society – using DIY culture as their outlet. It was a reality not far from the environment that has led to its re-emergence in Birmingham today. 

As Birmingham was beginning to open up from the pandemic lockdowns, Bushell – a born and bred Brummie – found herself drawn to the hardcore punk shows that she grew up with in the early 2010s, and began seeing more young people going to them. It gave her the encouragement to form all-trans punk band Transistrrr, but Bushell quickly began to feel out of place in the hardcore scene. ​“They were all mostly older, white guys talking about their experiences and being boisterous,” explains Bushell. ​“As a queer woman myself, I felt: ​‘Hey, I don’t feel like my voice is represented onstage when they’re joking about drinking beer and chatting up girls.’ There was a sea of change coming.”

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It began with the formation of the Outcast Stomp collective in 2023 – a group of likeminded queer outcasts, musicians, and music fans – who wanted to platform LGBTQ+ bands and their allies. The collective decided to host the first Punks 4 Pride event that year, also as a protest against the city’s official Pride’s corporate sponsors, which included HSBC and Mondelez. Both companies are on the BDS Movement list for their investments in arms or businesses in occupied Palestine. 

Original collective member and former member of Transistrrr, 25-year-old Jessica Claire, explains that leftist politics were a major driver of how they organised the shows. The group often donated profits from large shows to likeminded charities, including Transgender Action Block (a trans liberation activist group) and the Palestine Red Crescent Society (a humanitarian aid group), as well as design wall hangings that reflected their politics to display at shows. Claire describes the collective’s presentation of their politics as ​“very explicit”, explaining: ​“A big black banner that we made for the first [Punks 4 Pride] said ​‘Fuck HSBC’. The one that went up at other shows says ​‘the future is queer’ with a hammer and sickle for the Q.” 

The collective got a healthy turn out for the first Punks 4 Pride event, spurring them on to continue putting on gigs. Eventually they became popular enough to host queercore bands from other cities, such as London’s Gender Warfare, and were able to collaborate with local experimental music festival Supersonic Festival. 

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For Bushell and other promoters, their queercore shows are organised to create safe spaces that feel radically different to other gig experiences. Instead of charging for tickets, gigs are often donation entry to make the space accessible to all, while people share tools and information through zines. ​“Avoiding artists being too elevated amongst the crowd is a big thing,” says Bushell. ​“We often have bands playing on the same floor level with the crowd. Those hierarchies being broken down in the shows and the stages bleed out towards the things that people will go away from these shows doing.” 

After attending a queercore show, it’s easy to understand why they have such a devout following. In a society where LGBTQ+ identity is under constant attack, queercore shows give audiences a space for catharsis, but also collectiveness. ​“It is forward, loud, punchy, hard punk music that allows you to express yourself and claim your space among like-minded individuals,” says Vulpi T. Punx, an original member of Outcast Stomp who performs in the queercore band Blythe Blade. “[It allows you] to dance and to get your emotions out, and get sweaty, because it’s not just the violence, it’s not the unchecked rage. It’s queer joy.” 

Although the Outcast Stomp collective disbanded in 2024, the queercore scene did not grind to a halt. If anything, the scene flourished as former collective members started running their own queercore nights (Bushell set up 0121 Collective and Punx founded Vixens Den Promotions), started playing in bands in the scene (Claire has become a popular artist on the scene locally), and even inspired queercore fans to start putting on their own shows.

18-year-old Kat Hunt’s first punk show was at an Outcast Stomp gig. ​“I went because I had a mutual friend going,” says Hunt. ​“The moment I got there, I felt a sense of acceptance, love, and a community that I’d never felt anywhere else. Instantly, I was attached.” Hunt quickly found themselves enmeshed in queercore, forming Blythe Blade with Punx and putting on their own shows under the name Pink Noize in March 2025. ​“We’ve done two shows and I’ve got two in the coming months, but I think it’s really been taken on by the community as a part of the scene,” says Hunt. 

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Although at its core, Birmingham queercore is a tightknit group, who often play in each other’s bands and hang out socially, the insistence on removing the barrier between audience and artist gives curious visitors an open welcome. ​“Although we’ve had a few bands, it definitely feels like the scene in Birmingham has grown out of what was very little,” says Bushell. ​“We’re now seeing new bands being drawn in and new bands forming, and that’s come as a result of this community finding its feet and coming together.”

The strides that the scene has made has not gone unnoticed outside of Birmingham. ​“It’s definitely something that people talk about,” says Hunt, ​“I’ve seen on social media that people from all around the country are talking about coming to the shows in Birmingham. We’re becoming a big scene nationally, as well as in Birmingham.” 

While there was a time when international bands would often skip Birmingham on their UK tours, Bushell explains that more bands have been getting in touch with her directly to come and play, having seen the strength of the queercore crowd. ​“At the minute it’s is very underground, and those that find it are very grateful that they have,” says Bushell. ​“But I can definitely see it help reclaim Birmingham as being a place worth going to if you’re a musician.”

So why is this happening here, and not in, say, Manchester or London? Many of the promoters I speak to cite the local venues, specifically Centrala, who have welcomed the queercore scene and don’t charge promoters to put on shows at the space. It’s a deal that would be hard to find in other large cities. ​“If it wasn’t for those venues working with us, as very inexperienced people that didn’t have a clue what we were doing, we wouldn’t have had the chance to figure out how to do this and how to make this work long term,” Bushell explains. She also cites the transphobia she and others had experienced among local hardcore circles, which has inadvertently helped solidify the queercore movement. ​“It’s created this rift that has helped to build queer hardcore up in a way that maybe hasn’t been seen in other cities, because other cities don’t have that divide.”

Despite having only existed for a few years, Birmingham’s queercore scene is already looking beyond the city’s boundaries. Thanks to a Discord channel with over 300 members, queer bands can connect with promoters and collectives across the country. ​“It’s only up from here,” Bushell says. ​“I hope we see a more unified national scene, that more people take this mentality of, if you build it they will come. And if no one’s building it you can do it. It’s not that hard.”

Stephanie Phillips is a Midlands-based journalist and musician in Black femme punk band Big Joanie. Follow her on Instagram.

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