Radio Silence

Radio Silence: A Selected Visual History of American Hardcore Music is a massive visual document of American hardcore culture, originally published in 2008 and now restored and expanded by Revelation Records Publishing.

Created by designer Nathan Nedorostek and writer/musician Anthony Pappalardo, Radio Silence focuses on the years when hardcore developed its own unmistakable visual language through flyers, record sleeves, photographs, T-shirts, fanzines, handwritten letters, and DIY artwork. Rather than treating hardcore as a footnote between first-wave punk and alternative rock, the book documents the culture on its own terms.

The 2025 Expanded Edition has been rebuilt from the original source files and adds 34 pages of rare and previously unpublished material, including imagery connected to Black Flag, Dead Kennedys, The Germs, SS Decontrol, Die Kreuzen, Youth of Today, Minor Threat and many more.

Across 256 pages, the book combines hundreds of photographs, illustrations, records, shirts, flyers, zines, and other artifacts with firsthand contributions from people including Jeff Nelson, Dave Smalley, Walter Schreifels, Cynthia Connolly, Pat Dubar, Gus Peña, Rusty Moore, and Gavin Oglesby, plus an essay by Mark Owens.

For anyone interested in the history, design, and physical culture of American hardcore, Radio Silence is one of the most comprehensive visual archives of the scene.