Metalcore, The Scourge Of Metal?

Ask any old school heavy metal fan what’s wrong with music today and they will inevitably say “metalcore”. What is metalcore you ask, let me explain. Metalcore is basically heavy metal and hardcore mixed together with equal doses of eye liner, girl pants and angst thrown in for good measure. Is all metalcore bad? No it is not. Some notable metalcore bands are Trivium, Killswitch Engage and As I Lay Dying. My main gripe with this type of music is lack of identity. The market is so flooded with metalcore these days that I couldn’t tell you at any given time whether Im listening to an album by August Burns Red or The Devil Wears Prada. On the surface there’s nothing wrong with the idea of metalcore as it incorporates many of the finer elements of music such as breakdowns, dual guitar harmonies, aggression and lots and lots of that good ol double bass pedal. Let’s go back a few years shall we? In 1995, Swedish metal band At The Gates released the album “Slaughter of the Soul” which is arguably the definitive metalcore album. At the time the sound was fresh and exciting to metal fans because it couldn’t really be pigeon holed in any one genre such as death metal or black metal. It was ground breaking to say the least but ultimately paved the way for many, many copycats. Now in the year 2007 the style has been beaten to death, resurrected and subsequently beaten to death yet again. Bottom line, the sound is not fresh or innovative anymore people. How many staccato break downs, pseudo thrash guitar riffs or wannabe Dave Mustaine guitar “solos” can you hear before you’ve heard them all? Oh and for the record, a lot of people claim that Killswitch Engage are pioneers of metalcore while in all truth, not even considering At The Gates, Germany’s Caliban was here first. Check out Shadow Hearts by Caliban and you will see what real metalcore is supposed to sound like. Here’s the good news, the masses have finally caught on to the bs and it appears that metalcore is on the way out and good old fashioned Metal is on the rise. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy some metalcore as noted above but at this point it’s so stagnant and repetitive I really can’t see anything new being done with the genre. Metalcore, at one time you were exciting and we really had some great times but these days, I think it would be better for the both of us if you moved on. So to all you fan boys out there, stay away from your mommys make up, get a girlfriend, throw on some Megadeth, have a beer and you just may be able to save yourself…maybe.