Metalcore

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.