This Ain't the Summer of Love: Conflict and Crossover in Heavy Metal and Punk - Steven Waksman
Still working on this but it has great and detailed sections on the Runaways, Black Flag, the SST label vibe/the move from Damaged to My War, Iggy & the Stooges... It does get a little ridiculously analytical in places - even for me - and I have a pretty high tolerance for such.
Radio Silence: A Selected Visual History of American Hardcore Music by Nathan Nederostek and Anthony Pappalardo
Lots of great pictures and examples of graphic design, but most of the text is about the music and music scene and not as zeroed-in on visual style as I'd hoped. But there's a great little essay
in here about the Minor Threat "Salad Days" 45 pointing out how the band photos on the back portray the members involved in the culture of being in a DIY hardcore band rather than the spectacle... ie laying out a record cover, practicing in the basement, talking to people at shows..."Crypto Logo Jihad: Black Metal and the Aesthetics of Evil" - Daniel van der Velden
Article about the unreadability of death metal band logos.
PDF here
Also, a while ago I also read this amazing article, "Jews, punk and the Holocaust: from the Velvet Underground to the Ramones – the Jewish-American story" by Jon Stratton which ties the nihilism in early punk and proto-punk (Velvet Underground, Stooges, Ramones, etc) to this generation - Jews and non-Jews - dealing with the Holocaust. "today your love - tommorrow the world..." (Popular Music, 2005, 24)
