While going through threads like: "why was band X blacklisted/rejected etc" and "Why was band y accepted" I have come across several genre labels I find quite amusing.
Like the genre: Powerviolence. What the hell is that for a genre label? Violence is always in tandem with Power? Or is there a difference between Power violence and other violence? Like: I beat the shit out of someone so that is Powerviolence and when you only verbally bring him to the ground it's Normal violence?

Another one of my favorites is Shoegaze. I have even written a short lyric for it:
I'm sitting around, I've got nothing to do
I'm bored to death gazing at my shoe
I like to make metal even though I can't
that's why I have called this a shoegaze band.

I guess most of you will understand the meaning of this new topic: try to make some fun out of genre names which sound silly to you. This is not for the faint of heart or people who cannot stand mockery of what they think is sacred. If you belong to that category: please move on. You don't belong here.

I'll pass the flame on to anyone who wants to participate with this last genre to mock:
Grindcore: So here we have a genre that has the label grindcore.
To grind means that something is broken down to a pulp by means of heavy machinery.
Core is the heart of .... well, whatever.
So does that mean that Grindcore is just nothing more than the pulp of the heart of .....what?
Or do they mean that the music doesn't even resemble anything musical since it has been grinded to pulp?


(disclaimer: there are several bands that I like that make music in above mentioned genres so I didn't pick these genres because I don't like them, just because I think the genre label sounds foolish!)

i didn't know shoegaze was supposed to be metal

I heard Shoegaze was named after the musicians staring at their feet while playing live to keep track of their pedals and stuff.

Exactly. And it's a mocking (and stupid) term made up by the English music press... It just happened to catch on the same way that "Emo" did.

I always thought Kalmah calling themselves "swamp metal" was a bit silly, considering what immediately springs to mind to me is heavy-as-fuck and metallic swamp blues, which I'd like a lot more to stock-standard melodeath with lyrics about swamps.

I find genre terms are the worst when bands come up with them themselves (although I am guilty of it myself). Whilst sometimes you end up with death metal and black metal, you also end up with Vanilla Ice calling his music, which he believes to be one half metal, "Molten Hip-Hop".

I am rather ignorant about this particular subject, but Ray, wasn't "emo" an actual label for a particular sub-genre of post punk? Or something to that effect..... As said, I have very little knowledge on the subject at hand.

As for the topic of silly genre names, well, I find "funeral doom metal" to be rather..... Exaggerated. Sure, I like me some Catacombs and Wormphlegm once in a while, but that label is ridiculously over the top. Although to be fair, metal is an over the top style of music by its own merits, so I might be missing the point

Terrorcore always makes me chuckle.

Djent. Because it sounds stupid, though it's fitting because the genre is also stupid. Djent. Named after the sound their wanking guitar noodling makes maybe? Djendjendjendjendjendjennnnnnnnnnttttttt! *shrugs*

To be honest, I don't "know" for certain where it started, But it is my understanding that buzzwords like "Emocore" first appeared in publications as a way to describe bands like Rites of Spring, and apparently some people (namely Ian MacKaye, and probably RoS, too) did not like it... The argument against the term being that the name was stupid because "all Hardcore is intrinsically Emotional" or something to that effect... But it managed to come into popular usage, and now most people accept it as a legitimate term for a stylistic evolution of Hardcore music. There's nothing wrong with that, it's just sort of funny to think about.

Seems like a lot of the "unusual" names for music genres come from music publications, not that this doesn't make sense. If several people read about some new style referred to as "Shoegaze" in a magazine, they're obviously going to collectively begin categorizing similar music under that name.

Of course, some descriptors come directly from musicians themselves. Pretty sure Powerviolence was a term Spazz invented... Probably as a joke too. Still, people adopted it anyway.

Mincecore is obviously a term Agathocles came up with. My understanding is that it was invented specifically as a way to differentiate "old school", politically-oriented and punk-rooted Grindcore from more contemporary, generally apolitical gore-themed Grindcore.

I always heard when referring to music that emo or emocore was just a sub genre of hardcore punk rock. Anything that sounds like this:


The sub genre of that being scremo which sounds like emo with screaming. For some reason every now and then I hear people refer to any harsh vocals in music as scremo and that really doesn't make any sense and I have no idea how that got started.

In the early 90s there was a silly little genre-name bandied about called "Ex-Lax Metal" ("so heavy it makes you shit!"). The only band I can remember using the term was US Doom/Death band Sorrow.

That, to me, is a product of the distillation of so-called "Emo" music into a uniform, homogeneous, and really not-good product, which seems to happen to any genre that ever gets to "the mainstream".

I'm pretty sure one of the earliest bands to ever be called Emo/Emocore/Emoviolence/whatever was RoS, and they sounded nothing like that band, despite their highly introspective lyrics and more musically complex and "emotional" sound.

The bands that embraced this concept of "Emo" refined it further into something even more clearly defined and fully realized.... Emo was becoming it's own legitimate style by this point with bands like Cap'n Jazz in the 90's. It's starting to sound less traditional and even more melodic and decidedly "Emotional" now.

At the same time, Post-Hardcore was developing into various differing styles such as Metalcore and Screamo, which was frequently really chaotic and "emotional" too... You could quite honestly draw some parallels between some of the more "out there" early Screamo and more current DSBM music, especially in terms of vocals (though lyrics are frequently about social issues. They are seldom about being "depressed" or "suicidal")... Amalgamation is probably the best example I have for some of the more unfettered vocals associated with early Screamo.

I couldn't tell you exactly how and when Emo turned into From First To Last, and I honestly don't want to do the research or the listening required to find out where that stylistic evolution really began. All I know is I don't like it.

This concludes my Wikipedia-educated report on TRVE EMO/SKRAMZ that uses the same damn songs I've linked to 500 times. <3

Also, I guess I glossed over the Grindcore part... that was supposedly coined by Mick Harris to describe Napalm Death's guitar sound... so, yes: Loud, oppressive, crushing... grinding, and dark. This makes sense if you consider what the Hatred Surge and Scum-era material sounds like, and the fact that they were influenced by Swans.

You've got to be kidding. That's why djent is called that way?

At last, someone else who understands the original meaning of the term! It was "grind" as in the slow grinding of tectonic plates.

It's named after the sound of really dry, digitally-processed, palm-muted chugging. It literally started from some guitar wankers on a few forums who started blending Meshuggah style polyrhythmic/odd-timed chugging with technical metalcore (Misery Signals-style lead playing) and what grew to define it was that they all used digital production, they plugged their guitars into recording interfaces rather than amps, and processed the signals digitally, opting for the dry tone for atmosphere and to emphasize their choice of rhythms.

Yeah, it's actually called djent for that reason.

Don't think From First to Last classify as "emo" though, just post-hardcore/post-punk (also, this song predates the emo fad). Anyway, they aren't that bad, if you're willing to forgive them for letting the vocalist become Skrillex.

Anyway, funny genre names? All of them, if you think of it (I mean, "progressive metal"? A piece of iron that... progresses?). Can't think of something truly outstanding at the moment (although I'd second the notion that genres invented by bands tend to be the most ridiculous).

No, silly, I was joking....


....Oh. :\

I had no idea it was actually named after that either. that's nuts.

I always got a laugh out of "whalecore." That just sounds hilarious. Probably not even a legitimate genre, but funny as hell anyway.

Don't worry Morrigan. Shit happens Plus I didn't notice the "maybe?" in your post, so yeah

Okay, who's the dumbfuck who coined that term? Seriously.

How legit is the term 'thrashcore'? Wiki says it's something that emerged in the 80s and it apparently has a history. I always found it a bit silly and thought it was another word for 'groove'.

Edit: I found this: http://www.ultimate-guitar.com/columns/ ... metal.html
WTF is ICE METAL? Haha.

Can't remmeber if Spazz came up with the term or not but I'm completely certain that it wasn't meant to be taken too seriously when whoever came up with it started using it. It would be like if people started using "Aleincore" to seriously describe bands like Rings Of Saturn because they jokingly call themselves that.

It's not the digital processing; that's been around before djent. Rather, it's guitar wankers who have finally discovered that the mid-EQ knob can indeed be turned past 12 o'clock and that it makes stuff sound different (read: more br00tel) from the same old scooped shit.

Anyway, the one that gets me the most is life metal, e.g. late Death.

I heard one of my mates use the term 'Aliencore' and I lost my shit.

Aliencore is as much a genre as "Mars Metal" is (Spheres era Pestlience).
It's just a title assigned on a case by case basis to describe exactly what a particular band intended to sound like sonically and thematically.

See Antediluvian and their Cave/Cavernous Death Metal.

Kadenzza has been marketed as "grand sympho orchestral kamikaze metal."


Pretty much. You forgot to add the awkward pauses though, I think it goes more like "Djentdjentdjent..........DJENTDJENTdjentdjent.....djent....djentdjent."

Matt Domino from Infest/Neanderthal coined the term.

It's kind of like Powerviolence. Or is it Powerviolence? I dunno, they are very similar. Come to think of it Powerviolence itself is a pretty strange thing to say you listen to.

I kinda like the genre Natur (a trad/NWOBHM inspired American band) coined for themselves. Simple and not quite pretentious. Gonna get this patch this weekend.

Thanks for the clarification!


also, regarding the name "Natur"...

is that supposed to be like "Nature" or "Nadir"? Or is it supposed to be a play on words combining both as if to imply the lowest point of "Nature", however that is defined? .......or is that a real, non-english word?

PS: Um, also... is their song "Zorched" supposed to be a Chex Quest reference?

I don't think I've seen it published by the band themselves, but I see people saying that Wintersun call their music "extreme majestic technical epic melodic metal". I'd call it "extreme Finnish keyboard metal".

The Lord Aakon Keetreh wrote in one of his demo booklets that his music was it's own genre, called "tlak", the initials of his pseudonym. To his credit, at the time there was very little or no other guitar-based dark ambient so it was hard to describe without much dark ambient even being described as that.

Nature in German

@Zodi: "cheesefest wanking OMG guitarsoloz winter metal"

I know of a guy who started a band and called their style as Crustviolence or Crustcore. They rule though! I guess when the music takes precedence, what's in a name anyway *shrugs*

Djent was coined by Fredrick Thordendal. Apparently it's become a genre with its own Wikipedia article now.

Though I'm with Sybreed's guitarist in thinking that it is more appropriate to call it duck metal. Sounds like a mad duck going "quack quaquack".

I see a difference between many bands calling themselves "Djent" and bands that play a genre inspired by Meshuggah (???? and Coprofago to name a few). In fact, because Meshuggah coined it, they ought to be the only ones called Djent. Periphery shall be known as a Duckcore band.

For one, Meshuggah's style of technical metal is purely metal, while these duckcore bands combine metalcore and whatnot with just a single element of Meshuggah's djent sound - the djent itself, and poorly written djents. At least Meshuggah puts some balls on their djents, to the point where they are probably closer to post-death metal than post-thrash metal.

Speaking of -core bands... I had a laugh at the whole Crabcore thing. But then I started seeing bands in my area mimic everything about it to terrible effect. To the point where one kid ripped his skinny jeans while crabbing around with his guitar playing just one fucking note over and over. So I guess a better name for Crabcore is "Irippedmypantscore"


Is there such a thing as post-death metal in the first place?

Or post-power metal? And what if someone somehow makes a post- genre out of an already post- genre? Like post-post-hardcore. When does it get to the point where one has to get off their lazy arse and come up with a proper name for the genre instead of adding another post- to it?


Probably one of the weirdest genre names I've come across is "Zeuhl". It's a term for a form of progressive rock from the 1970s, such as the band Magma. The word derives from a constructed alien language Kobaïan, and means "Celestial". Furthermore, many bands sign in Kobaïan. It's overall very weird sounding.

I'm pretty sure Periphery coined it dude. Meshuggah had the sound first but they never used Djent to describe their music. Also, lol @ mentioning Crabcore. I guess right around when Deathcore started getting popular, people realized there were way too many genres with -core at the end of it. Crabcore was kind of a take on that and then it took off and we got shit like Crunkcore and Post-Ironic-Beard-Core. Eventually it spread into things that weren't even metal or hardcore, like slowcore. I know there are more too.

Krautrock is a dumb genre name. An attempt to sound way to German and artsy at the same time. Shame too, because the mix of rock and trippy ambiance sounds like a good idea to me. Also Power Pop. Todd Rundgren is a genius musically, but everything else he comes up with is usually pretty awful.

I've heard that used to describe stuff like His Hero is Gone, but I admittedly don't know much of that erm, niche. By the way what's your friends band and do they have any free downloads my broke ass could rip?

Actually it was an interview with Fredrik Thordendal where he said his preferred guitar tone had most of the bottom end scooped out so it made that "djent" noise, also most early djent-ers claimed John Petrucci's was just as (if not more) important to the "djent sound" as Thordendal,
as his guitar tone is just too fucking amazing.


Why do I know all this you ask? well I don't have a seven string guitar/six string bass and the bass knob worn to shit on my best amp because of my good decision making.
(yes I am saying I used to "djent the fuck out")

Um, you do know the term was coined as a term of derision by a music journalist? and not a name that any bands ever applied to themselves? I have never, ever heard of a German person refer to themselves as a Kraut - it's a term of abuse the British use to describe the Germans.

Krautrock is perfectly appropriate. Canterbury scene, the Italian stuff and Krautrock are all very different from eachother.

"Trying to sound too German" You seem to have missed the point.

Not metal, but apparently there's something called lolicore: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ua9zX_7khck (To anyone who listens to this, I'm sorry...) which is pretty damn stupid. By the way, there are WAY to many genres with "core" slapped behind them. Are there even any hardcore influences in that song I linked?