The music under this tag describes the initial experimental ethos that spawned the post-hardcore movement in it's beginnings, including precursors and earliest figures of this movement which are some the following: Big Black, Flipper, Wipers and Hüsker Dü. It also includes artists that continued those same ethos and expansion in sound through the 90's, early 2000's and the 2010's.

This tag falls in association with the Washington DC scene and independent record labels Dischord Records, Touch and Go, Amphetamine Reptile, SST, Gravity Records, Kill Rock Stars, and Homestead amongst others. Bands under this tag usually take and took inspiration from the original hardcore punk movement with bands such as: Bad Brains, Minor Threat and Black Flag as well as genres like psychedelia, art rock, post-punk among many others.

It has nothing to do with the more popular genres mistaken for post-hardcore, those including metalcore, pop-punk, post-grunge, alternative metal or melodic hardcore.