Hey heavy metal fans! This week we are going to be talking
about another “-core” subgenre called deathcore. This style of heavy metal is essentially
the combination of metalcore and death metal. Deathcore is often thought
of by many fans as simply a more extreme version of metalcore.
Musically speaking, deathcore features blast beats and death
metal riffing, with guitarists tuning their guitars to give them a heavier and
more aggressive sound. Deathcore vocalists almost always use screaming and
growling vocals. Clean vocals are very uncommon, and are usually only done in
very small passages if at all. Similarly to metalcore, deathcore’s music
thrives on breakdowns, and it is the main instrumental focus of their music.
Deathcore is a very dark and aggressive subgenre that many fans worship for its
hardcore mentality and its death metal themed instrumentation.
The death metal band Suffocation is often cited as the main
inspiration for deathcore. More so than most death metal bands, Suffocation placed
an emphasis on breakdowns. As metalcore bands emerged, many of them looked to Suffocation
for inspiration, taking their extreme mentality and combining it with
traditional metalcore music to create deathcore.
Similar to metalcore, deathcore’s reception by traditional
heavy metal fans has not been positive. Many older metalheads denounce deathcore
as an unoriginal, uninspired and generic subgenre of heavy metal. Likewise,
critical reception to deathcore has not been very positive either. There aren’t
very many deathcore bands whose albums receive consistently positive reviews.
Critics commonly find that many deathcore bands aren’t very original and often
jump on the bandwagon of the few more innovative deathcore groups.
Among the most successful and positively received
deathcore bands are Suicide Silence, Bring Me the Horizon, Despised Icon, Whitechapel,
Emmure, Born of Osiris and Veil of Maya. These groups are the leaders of the
current deathcore movement, and continue to achieve great success today.
Hello, metalheads! This week we are going to talk about one
of metalcore’s distant cousins known as mathcore. Similar to metalcore,
mathcore combines heavy metal with hardcore punk. The difference between the
two subgenres is that mathcore relies more on the harshness of hardcore punk as
well as peculiar time signatures in order to create complex rhythms and musical
sequences. For those who have listened to math rock bands such as Slint,
Shellac, Don Caballero and Chavez, it may be easier to think of mathcore as
the combination of math rock, hardcore punk, and heavy metal.
Mathcore was initially pioneered in the 1990s with bands
such as Converge, Cave In and Botch helping to shape the basis of the
subgenre. The term “mathcore” wasn’t really coined until The Dillinger Escape
Plan released their debut album, Calculating Infinity, in 1997. This record was
considered to be a very focused avant-garde metal album that was more
distinguished than some of mathcore’s earlier releases, therefore requiring the
invention of a new subgenre name. The Dillinger Escape Plan continues to
experience great success today and is still one of the most popular bands in
the subgenre.
The popularity of mathcore has increased greatly since the
1990s, and in the 2000s a new wave of mathcore groups appeared. One of the most
popular mathcore groups of this new wave was Norma Jean, who made mathcore sound
a bit more commercial by containing sequences of metalcore within their music.
Other notable mathcore bands of the 2000s include The Number Twelve Looks Like
You, Car Bomb and Daughters.
One more obscure mathcore band that needs to be talked about
is the group SikTh. SikTh combined progressive metal with mathcore in order to
create a very unique style of heavy metal. There has been a very recent wave of
bands that have taken major influence from SikTh’s two records, subsequently
bringing them into the spotlight of mainstream heavy metal after SikTh’s
break-up in 2008. SikTh is regarded as a very important mathcore band because they are influencing many new bands today, the majority of
which are pioneering a new subgenre called djent, which we will talk about in a
few weeks.
Generally speaking, mathcore is a highly acclaimed
subgenre of heavy metal. Critics are particularly appreciative of the pioneers
of the subgenre, with Converge specifically receiving extraordinary reviews.
Similarly, fans of heavy metal also appreciate the creativity and complexity of
mathcore, allowing mathcore to thrive in the underground of heavy metal today.
Alright metalheads, it is time for the long overdue blog
post about metalcore. This subgenre has risen to success particularly during
the last ten years or so, and has caused quite a bit of controversy in the
heavy metal community. Popular bands such as Avenged Sevenfold, Killswitch
Engage, Bullet for My Valentine, Shadows Fall, Trivium and All That Remains
all fall into the metalcore subgenre.
For those who do not know, metalcore is the combination of
extreme metal and hardcore punk. Metalcore music revolves around breakdowns,
which are slow but powerful passages that often entice metalheads to jump into
a mosh pit.
Metalcore was a subgenre that many people saw coming before
it actually rose to popularity. Thrash, groove and death metal bands of the
1980s and 1990s all experimented with combining hardcore punk and heavy
metal before the genres of music became fused together permanently. The legendary
thrash metal band Slayer even released an entire album of hardcore punk cover
songs during the 1990s. Sepultura is often credited with laying down the framework for the subgenre.
During the 1990s, mathcore bands started to sprout up. We
will be covering mathcore in depth next week. It was an important
precursor to metalcore. Mathcore bands such as Converge, The Dillinger Escape
Plan and Botch all placed a heavier reliance on breakdowns, which would
greatly shape the development of metalcore to come.
By the mid-2000s, metalcore started to really take shape.
The subgenre rose to popularity just as nu metal started to fade into obscurity.
Killswitch Engage was one of the most notable pioneers at this time, often
being credited as the first commercially accessible metalcore band. This very
commercialized style of metalcore is also known as melodic metalcore, and it
places a greater emphasis on melody rather than breakdowns. Adam Dutkiewicz,
the guitarist of Killswitch Engage, is extremely important to the metalcore
subgenre, as he has produced many of the subgenre’s most successful records.
Around the time that Killswitch Engage released their
landmark record, The End of Heartache, other metalcore bands started to achieve
a great amount of success as well. Shadows Fall released The War Within, which
debuted at number 20 on the Billboard chart. All That Remains also experienced an unexpected amount of success with their 2006 record, The Fall of
Ideals. Rising to even greater success than other bands in the subgenre was
Avenged Sevenfold, who released their album City of Evil in 2005 and suddenly
became one of the most popular heavy metal bands in the US.
Soon after the commercial rise of metalcore, heavier bands
such as The Devil Wears Prada and As I Lay Dying also began to experience some
commercial recognition. Metalcore also began to become popular outside the US
during the late 2000s, which allowed the Welsh band Bullet for My Valentine to gain international fame.
Beyond the melodic metalcore scene, there are also several
other types of metalcore. There is a large sector of metalcore bands whose sound revolves around a punk ideology, often taking part in Warped Tour and experiencing a fair amount of popularity. These bands include
the likes of Every Time I Die, Underoath, A Day To Remember, Escape the Fate, Alexisonfire and The Word Alive. Similarly, there is a large Christian metalcore scene that
has sprouted up with As I Lay Dying and The Devil Wears Prada taking the lead.
The popularity of metalcore has been met with a very
mixed reception. Many traditional metalheads have expressed their unhappiness
with the subgenre, claiming that the focus on breakdowns often detracts from the
music’s creativity. Displeasure with the subgenre’s subculture has
often been expressed, with many older metalheads stereotyping metalcore fans as
a group of angsty teenagers without much musical knowledge.
Nevertheless, metalcore still remains at the center of
mainstream heavy metal today, though melodic metalcore particularly seems to be
slowly losing momentum. With the onset of the 2010s, there is no certain trend
in heavy metal, but that makes the genre all the more diverse and exciting.
