Embrace at Food for Thought in July 1985. From left to right are Chris Bald, Ian MacKaye, and Mike Hampton. Band's drummer, Ivor Hanson, is out of frame.
Embrace was a short-lived American hardcore band from Washington, D.C., active from the summer of 1985 to the spring of 1986.[6] Along with Rites of Spring, and Beefeater, it was one of the mainstay acts of the 1985 Revolution Summer movement,[7] and was one of the first bands to be dubbed in the press as emotional hardcore,[6][8] though the members had rejected the term since its creation.[8][9][10] The band included lead vocalist Ian MacKaye of the defunct hardcore punk act Minor Threat and three former members of his brother Alec's band, the Faith: guitarist Michael Hampton, drummer Ivor Hanson, and bassist Chris Bald.[6][9] Hampton and Hanson had also previously played together in S.O.A.[11] The band played their first show on July 28, 1985, at Food for Thought, a former restaurant and music venue located on Washington, D.C.'s Dupont Circle;[12][13][14] their ninth and final show was held at the 9:30 Club in March 1986.[15][16][17] The only recording released by the quartet was their posthumous 1987 self-titled album, Embrace,[6] being influenced by the Faith EP Subject to Change.[9][18]
Following the breakup of Embrace,[16] MacKaye and ex-Minor Threat drummer, Jeff Nelson, tried turning their recent one-off musical experiment in England, dubbed "Egg Hunt", into an actual band,[19] but the project never made it past the rehearsal stage.[20][21][22] Hampton, for his part, teamed up with former members of Rites of Spring to form the short-lived post-hardcore outfit One Last Wish, while Bald moved on to the band Ignition. MacKaye eventually directed his energy and creativity toward the forming of Fugazi in 1987,[20][22][23] and Ivor Hanson would pair up with Hampton again in 1988 for Manifesto.[24]
During the band's formative years, some fans started referring to them and fellow innovators Rites of Spring as emocore (emotive hardcore) bands, a term MacKaye publicly disagreed with.[8][10]
^Andersen, Mark; Jenkins, Mark (Soft Skull Press, 2001). Dance of Days: Two Decades of Punk in the Nation's Capital. Fourth ed., 2009. Akashic Books. ISBN9781933354996. p. 165.
^Andersen, Mark; Jenkins, Mark (Soft Skull Press, 2001). Dance of Days: Two Decades of Punk in the Nation's Capital. Fourth ed., 2009. Akashic Books. ISBN9781933354996. p. 183.
