…and in the words of Frank “The Tank” Ricard from Old School: “That…and some other stuff.”

First, a musical biography and then the site’s raison d’etre, ethos, and operating principles:

First two tapes: Kiss-Destroyer and Chumbawamba-Tubthumping (yes, the latter bought for the title track, but I later found out that Chumbawamba actually had super legit anarcho-squat-punk roots, so I’ve decided to retcon myself as a nine-year-old “real punk.” Saying that, though…

First two CDs: Green Day-Dookie and The Offspring-Smash. So maybe I was (again retconning my taste to reflect those bands’ actual DIY punk roots).

As a 90s kid, I often heard bands on the radio I really liked such as Sublime, Rancid, and Nirvana, though it wouldn’t be until I was a few years older that I’d actually dig into these bands’ discographies. Some other influences on me were a friend’s older brothers turning me on to rap, resulting in nine-year-old me’s subscription to The Source magazine (my mom also had The Fugees’ The Score album she’d often play); another childhood friend turning me on to Rage Against the Machine; many of my family members listened to alternative rock, and that was frequently being played in the car or on family camping trips; and lastly, two kids who walked to the same lady’s house after school to be watched while our parents finished working turned me on to Metallica and The Prodigy, respectively.

First “real show”: Orgy touring in support of Candyass on May 18th, 1999 with my dad at The Asylum in Portland, Maine.

At the tender age of fourteen, with the aforementioned influences being joined by reggae, funk, and nu metal, I told a classmate I was thirsting for something more aggressive. Enter Bad Brains, stage right—and it wasn’t long before I was going down not just the punk and hardcore rabbit hole, but I was getting into post-rock, post-metal, doom metal (shout out local legends Conifer and Ocean), underground hip-hop, and way more. In short, my fetal music taste had been born into the world and was growing up oh so fast! To mix metaphors, the final piece of the puzzle was when I started to get into modern hardcore and metalcore, and from there all “the cores” and adjacent heavy and alternative music.

The number of shows I’ve attended has to be well into the triple digits at this point. I sang (poorly) for a ska-punk band in high school and screamed (decently) for a kind of Gallows and Cancer Bats meets This Is Hell and Killing the Dream hardcore band in college named after the Cro-Mags song “Show You No Mercy.” We played a few shows, usually being shoehorned onto bills dominated by the “quadruple-XL” deathcore bands of the time, and we cut a pair of demos, the second of which I think is actually pretty good.

I wrote for a good-sized now-defunct alternative music interview and review website in college and my first year in grad school, and took a roughly twelve-year writing hiatus (school, work, life, you know) before diving back in with my own review and interview site and YouTube channel for about two years. Another hiatus followed the birth of my daughter, and now here I am, with the third time being, perhaps, the charm, with All the Cores and More going live in November 2025.

This site is not just a glimpse behind the curtain with industry figures and musicians, covering topics ranging from general fandom to “inside baseball,” from inspiration and meaning to business. All the Cores and More exists to signal boost artists and industry people who are doing great work, and also as a creative outlet and means of expression for myself, as a space to share my insights and views, and as hopefully a nexus point of underground music. I don’t score albums for reviews because I don’t believe you can quantify art, and I only feature what and who I like and support. If that sounds good to you, welcome!

-Jacob Oliver, founder/operator/middle-aged hardcore “kid”