2000s
In the 2000s, queercore club nights and events continued to take place throughout Europe and North America. In Los Angeles' Silver Lake neighbourhood an underground queer music scene was in existence at the monthly queercore club called "The Freak Show" hosted by the leather bar The Gauntlet II for three years, where bands such as Best Revenge, IAMLoved, and Nick Name and The Normals played regularly. In Toronto, the queercore scene thrived for a number of years at the monthly club Vazaleen, or Club V, run by Will Munro, which featured bands from across the U.S.A and Canada, including such legendary performers as Jayne County. The festival Queer Panic was organized by Gordon Gordon of the zine Teen Fag in Seattle, Washington in June 2000. Scutterfest was organized by Rudy Bleu of the zine Scutter in Los Angeles, California in 2001, 2002, and 2003. The Bent Festival was held in Seattle in 2002 and 2003.
The festival Homo-a-go-go was held the summers of 2002, 2004 and 2006 in Olympia, Washington, featuring queer films, zines, performance and musical groups during the week-long event; in 2009 the festival was held in San Francisco. Queeruption, which takes place in a different city each year, has been hosted by Berlin, Rome, New York and London in the past. In 2004 and 2005, a group of queercore bands toured throughout the U.S.; the tour was called Queercore Blitz and was yet another way to connect the like-minded. Queer groups that are flourishing now in the UK are Edinburgh QueerMutiny Queers Without Borders, Queer Mutiny North, Cardiff Queer Mutiny, Queer Mutiny Brighton. A number of these are organised as Queer Mutiny groups. In 2002, Agitprop! Records released a compilation titled Stand Up & Fucking Fight For It, which collected new music from queercore bands. It was the first release from the label, which features many queercore acts in its roster. 16 records is a queercore label that releases albums by such Pacific Northwest bands as Shemo, The Haggard, and Swan Island, as well as the Brazilian band Dominatrix. Other new labels include Queer Control, which features the bands Pariah Piranha, Tough Tough Skin, Nancy Fullforce, Once A Pawn, and others.
In September 2005, Homocore: The Loud and Raucous Rise of Queer Rock by David Ciminelli and Ken Knox was published by Alyson Books. It traced the history the movement in the 1990s in the United States, and included interviews with some of the contemporary musicians who have been inspired by it. Queercore became an increasingly international phenomenon in the early 2000s, with bands such as Low End Models and Rhythm King And Her Friends from Germany, Kids Like Us out of Norway and She Devils, from Argentina. From Toronto, Canada came Kids on TV, whose industrial background offered a new, more electronic direction for queercore. Similar electronic instrumentation was explored by Lesbians on Ecstasy from Montreal. Canada also birthed The Hidden Cameras, an anti-folk band from Toronto and Eekum Seekum, a dark feminist queercore band from Halifax.
The 2000s also brought a new crop of bands to prominence in the United States. The straight edge band Limp Wrist represent a contemporary breed of hardcore punk. Gravy Train!!!!, a raucous electropop band from Oakland, California, known for their sexually explicit lyrics and onstage antics, has released several albums on Kill Rock Stars label. One offshoot of Gravy Train!!!!, Hunx and His Punx, are a power pop act more indebted to girl groups and 1960s garage rock. Three Dollar Bill from Chicago are an eclectic band whose sound ranges from punk to indie rock to metal. Also citing metal as an inspiration are ASSACRE, a one man fantasy metal/spazz noise act from Austin, Texas, and Gay for Johnny Depp, a hardcore band from New York. The Shondes, a four piece rock band from Brooklyn combine riot grrrl punk with classical and traditional Jewish music influences; similarly, Schmekel, an all-transgender, all-Jewish Brooklyn band combines punk rock with klezmer. The Homewreckers are a riot grrrl / pop-punk band, also based in Brooklyn. Your Heart Breaks are a multi-instrumental low-fi band with a fluctuating line-up based in Seattle, Washington. Along with these new bands, queercore pioneers Team Dresch reunited in the mid-2000s for several tours.
In the UK there is a burgeoning queercore scene, fuelled by afore mentioned groups such as Queer Mutiny, the now defunct Homocrime, and record labels such as Local Kid arranging shows and releasing records by bands such as The Corey Orbisons, Sleeping States, Drunk Granny, Little Paper Squares, Husbands, Fake Tan and Lianne Hall. These bands all combine elements of the DIY culture that spurred queercore and the punk sensibility, as seen in two of Manchester's offerings, the lesbian disco-punk band Vile Vile Creatures and solo lo-fi electro-punk-popster Ste McCabe (whose previous band Stephen Nancy were considered a major reference for UK queercore in the early 2000s). Collectives in the North West of England such as Manifesta and Lola and the Cartwheels are currently working hard to promote and organise alternative queer events whilst simultaneously having a strong feminist identity. With each new band, the range of musical genres expands the definition of Queercore.
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