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Who started Metalcore?
42 Plays1 year ago
In this Metal Chronicles episode, Daria and Laz breakdown and analyse the beginning of the Metalcore sub-genre. Identifying the key players in its inception and how two seemingly different scenes came together to give us one of Metal’s most prominent styles.
You can also watch us on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC7mfJVCp_TzbPNZNMMemJuw
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Transcript
Introduction to Metalcore Origins
00:00:08
Speaker
Hello and welcome back to My Big Metal. My name is Daria. And I'm Laz. And together we're a husband and wife team, both professional musicians who talk all things heavy metal. And today we're bringing you a very exciting episode. I just, okay, when I was preparing for this with you, it just blows my mind you guys. And I'm sure you're going to learn so many new things. So yeah, the episode is on beginnings of metalcore and where it all started.
Defining Metalcore
00:00:38
Speaker
So to begin with, I suggest we define metal core. Just in simple words, what is metal core? Okay, there's, I've tried to dumb it down to like the simplest version. And for me, metal core is extreme metal plus hardcore punk. And that's it. I think you can go a little deeper. You can say extreme metal plus hardcore punk.
00:01:02
Speaker
plus odd time signatures and odd kind of, you know, things like that. But overall, that's the defining thing for metalcore.
Roots in Extreme Metal
00:01:09
Speaker
Okay, so let's go and talk about extreme metal first. So the first component of it. So the beginnings of extreme metal kind of come in the early eighties. You've got two prominent bands, the British band Venom and the Danish band Merciful Faith. And what extreme metal is, is it's kind of combining
00:01:28
Speaker
everything in metal so you've got thrash plus speed plus death plus black plus doom metal see i'd never say oh this is my favorite extreme metal band right i think you could define an album as being extreme metal if it has elements and components of all of those that i said
00:01:46
Speaker
And the best examples, Venom's first two albums, you've got Welcome to Hell 1981, Black Metal 1982, and Merciful Fates Melissa from 1983. Listen to those three albums and you're gonna hear components of everything. You're gonna hear Thrash, you're gonna hear traditional metal, you're gonna hear doom metal. I mean, the second Venom album, Black Metal, was so good and so defining that they named a genre after it, Black Metal. Oh, wicked, really? Is this where that began? Okay, interesting.
00:02:19
Speaker
comes from. Bands like Venom and Merciful Fate combined all those opponents components even though Thrash hadn't really happened yet they were still displaying early tendencies of it and Extreme Mel is all of those things together in one pot.
Hardcore Punk Influence
00:02:34
Speaker
So let's now bring hardcore punk into it. When did that all start? So punk has been going on for a number of years before
00:02:44
Speaker
done a lot of research into punk but i'm pretty sure if the 70s the punk got going you know you've got bands like Sex Pistols, the Ramones, punk i think when you think of punk you think of not very much musical talent and that's not a slight on the bands because punk did start from that it was bad people who couldn't play the more technical music they just got a bass started slamming the strings so i think when you think of punk you think
00:03:07
Speaker
aggressive political raw production not very talented in that sense again no offense just that's what you think what do you think of when you think of punk i just think messy yeah it's kind of all over the place yeah it's all over the place so hardcore punk that just
00:03:24
Speaker
That sounds even messier to me, you know. Well, it's kind of more extreme in all of those senses. You've got more aggressive, they're playing faster, they're probably shouting heavier and screaming. You know, you do have some sort of singing in punk, whereas I think hardcore punk is almost definitely shouting and verging on screaming. So that's where hardcore punk fits into it. Now, the interesting thing is that as genres
00:03:51
Speaker
punk and metal stayed separate. There were two separate entities. You'd have punk bands in the punk scene and you'd have the metal bands in the metal scenes. However, when hardcore punk came about, you had the joining of these two kind of entities. You had hardcore punk bands that were taking influence from heavy metal like Black Sabbath.
00:04:14
Speaker
So two bands that I saw were Black Flag, Bad Brains and Discharge as well. They're taking their hardcore punk music and adding heavy metal elements into it. Okay so that's really really interesting and that really sort of puts things into perspective and this is what... Can I have one more thing? Although the bands were separate, although metal and punk were separate, sometimes throughout the 80s you'd find
00:04:40
Speaker
hardcore punk bands like Corrosion of Conformity, Suicidal Tendencies, they would support and be on the same shows as bands like Metallica and Slayer.
00:04:50
Speaker
So you still kind of, yes, they're both together on one gig, but you just need to know that punk and metal are separate scenes and separate entities. Yeah, that's really interesting, though. This is how subgenres appear. Yeah. Because these bands, I don't know, supported each other or whatever, you know, they appeared on the same gig. And this is how it starts,
Significant Albums in Metalcore Development
00:05:13
Speaker
I think.
00:05:13
Speaker
And actually, there's a really important album, 1986. The band's called Agnostic Front, and the album is Caused for Alarm. Now, this is really interesting because they are a hardcore punk band. But if you listen to this album, you can quite clearly hear thrash metal influences, maybe extreme metal as well. And this is 1986, bear in mind. So Metallica have just gotten going, Slayer have released Rain in Blood. Yet you've got this hardcore punk band.
00:05:41
Speaker
ultimately I think it is hardcore punk the music but you've got punky vocals, punky production and attitude but heavy metal guitars if you like.
Evolving Metalcore Bands
00:05:52
Speaker
Okay so let's now move to the 90s. Yeah so in the 90s you had a lot more music coming out like Agnostic Front, you'd had these bands
00:06:16
Speaker
You have these first bands emerging, you've got bands like Converge, Earth Crisis, Integrity, Judge, Shahi Hrud, and that's where the beginnings of these bands and this new sub-genre started emerging. So let's talk about specific albums slash songs. I think what we're going to do guys, we're going to leave
00:06:38
Speaker
a few songs in the description for you to listen to, okay? So you have a reference, but feel free to check out albums also, of course. Now, the first album I listened to for this episode was the 1995 Earth Crisis album called Destroy the Machines. And you told me that this is supposedly the first Metalcore album. Could you explain that?
Early Metalcore Albums
00:07:04
Speaker
Yeah, I think the first, I think the other one is a year later from Earth Crisis called Gamora's Season Ends and the thing that I find interesting about it and I have seen numerous historians, musicologists and critics identify these as the first metalcore albums and I think I'd agree with that because when I listen to it, it's not punk and it's not metal.
00:07:28
Speaker
In my opinion, it's a mixture of both and I can see why someone would think it's milk You said to me you thought it sounded a lot like Sepultura, which it does. I wouldn't be able to tell the difference. Yeah, and it does sound like Sepultura You know, you've got a thing there's there's not one defining moment that clicks starts this sub genre You know people take influences and I think Earth Crisis did take influence from Sepultura but I'm hearing hardcore punk vocals and
00:07:52
Speaker
and in most modern music in western society the vocals are most important. I know as metalheads we probably don't think that because we love guitar solos and riffs but if you're thinking about the the main focal point of the album and the songs it is the vocals and for me those vocals pretty heavy but they're hardcore punk. Yeah and this is the
00:08:13
Speaker
So the next album that I actually really enjoyed was 1996, Vision of Disorder. I think even from the first moment, the first song element, you can hear. It's just literally the first riff. It sounds grungy. Yeah. And this is what I think is important about discerning it from extreme metal.
00:08:41
Speaker
because if you listen to Merciful Fate and Venom, you're gonna hear and there will be no question that there is, that is metal, black metal, extreme metal, death metal, whatever you wanna call it. But I love here that the first riff of the first song on the album could come from Sound Garden, it could come from Nirvana. And this is what I think is important about metalcore. Now metalcore nowadays, don't worry, we'll get to modern metalcore in another episode a while from now. But an important feature of metalcore is melodies.
00:09:11
Speaker
because although metalcore music can be heavy, I think it needs melodies. Yeah, and I think what's important to say also is that we're not saying that if you listen to a Vision of Disorder album, you'll hear Nirvana.
Transition to Melodic Metalcore
00:09:24
Speaker
You won't. It's about, you know, if you strip some elements, some heaviness, you know, if you strip it, you will hear grunge. Like, this is, this is what, you know, we mean really. Well, grunge began in 1990.
00:09:45
Speaker
So without a doubt, bands like Earth Crisis and Vision of Disorder are gonna take from what's popular. Of course, of course. Because it's just naturally there, you're always hearing it. Yeah, so, and another thing I want to add about Vision of Disorder is, to me,
00:10:02
Speaker
This sounds a lot like today's metalcore, so modern metalcore. Yeah, I think there's certainly some elements of it in the first few songs of that album. You can hear little choruses that sound like it. You can hear some sort of cleaner vocals. But you know, for me, the one that sounds most like modern metalcore is Shai Hulud's first album, Hearts Once Nourished with a Hope and Compassion from 1997. Straight away, I think there's such a gulf between Earth Crisis and Shai Hulud.
00:10:31
Speaker
what we're saying is the earth crisis you can hear how these two genres have come together to create a new sub-genre but what I'm hearing in the parts you said of A Vision of Disorder and Shai Hulud is then evolving this new sub-genre and if you listen to the first few songs of Shai Hulud we'll put the link below, right?
00:10:51
Speaker
It's just so modern metalcore. The production's not as good, obviously, but you hear melodic guitars going on behind the riffs. You hear choruses with expanded chords playing on the guitar. If you listen to Earth Crisis, the guitars are not doing much except playing riffs alongside the bass, whereas on the Shai Humud stuff,
00:11:11
Speaker
they're expanding their chords, they're playing chords over a chorus, which I'd say is more like today's metalcore. Yeah, and I think it's just generating much more melodic. Yeah. That's where this is what really sort of caught me. I was like, yeah, that sounds a lot like today's metalcore. And the other album to mention of these early metalcore albums would be Hate Breathe's Satisfaction is the Death of Desire from 97 as well. Hate Breathe are an interesting one because they're actually one of these bands
00:11:40
Speaker
that have kept going in the metalcore scene. From the early metalcore scene? From the first few bands, they were one of the first few bands and they're still a kind of metalcore band now. The other bands, I mean Earth Crisis, I don't think they're doing much anymore, Vision of Disorder and Coalesce. Listen, my point is that you think of metalcore now and you think Trivium, you think
00:12:01
Speaker
kill, switch, engage, you think unearth, you think those kind of bands and I'm not really hearing coalesce be mentioned or earth crisis however I still hear in hate breed. I think it's called that they're this one band that have just sort of been there at the beginning and kind of moved on with the sub genre as it's gone on.
Conclusion on Metalcore Evolution
00:12:19
Speaker
So thanks for joining us for this very early beginnings of metalcore. I mean we've said it plenty of times and we're aware that
00:12:26
Speaker
We are not saying that this is what metalcore is by definition now. You know, we know what metalcore is now. We said it earlier, your Triviums, your kill switches, early Avenged Sevenfold. They're your metalcore by today's modern standards. But what's interesting and fascinating is how we got there. And I hope that you found it interesting seeing the heritage and the genealogy of metalcore. Honestly, I found it so interesting. Do you remember? It's cool, isn't it? It is. And even this morning, we were just like listening to it again and talking about it.
00:12:55
Speaker
And I just think it is so amazing to study these things. I think what's interesting as well is that I don't, I'm not a fan of punk really. Yeah. Yeah. A branch of punk has been hugely influential in creating a sub genre. That's one of my favorites. So thank you punk. Yeah. There you go. See, this is why it's so,
00:13:21
Speaker
important. So just dissect and look into it. So yeah, thank you so much for being here with us today. Please don't forget to like this video. It means the world to us. Don't forget to leave the comment below as well. Please share your thoughts. Tell us your favorite medical balance.
00:13:37
Speaker
Yeah, I'm interested to know when you guys first heard the term metalcore. You know, if you were there in the mid-90s and part of the punk or the metal scene, when did you first hear that phrase? Because I'm quite interested to know when it came about. Don't forget, we've got a dedicated podcast as well. So if you don't have time to sit and watch the videos, you can listen to them on your commute to work or any other time during the day. So thanks for joining. Have a metal day. Have a lovely day. We will see you very soon.