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Schmengie
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PostPosted: Tue Aug 13, 2013 11:52 pm 
 

Okay, so this has been on my mind of late, and I'd like to see if you guys can help me out. Basically, I'm trying to figure out what, exactly, "post-hardcore" is. I know that it is an offshoot of hardcore punk, and that, according to Wikipedia, it draws from "post-punk" (which, admittedly, is something I know absolutely nothing about). Up until now, I have always treated it as more of a euphemism for the style of music typically produced by acts belonging to, or sounding like those who belong to, the whole "emo" subculture, what with the emotional, boyish, clean vocals, alternative song structure, and the like. I'm okay with it in regard to certain bands, like Underoath and Norma Jean, more or less because they, at some point in their careers, expanded beyond it into more interesting territory, such as (atmospheric) sludge and/or post-rock/metal.

But then, I have a look at the archives, and see sludge/post-metal bands like Callisto, Cult of Luna, and Generation of Vipers labelled as "post-hardcore" as well, and I get to thinking: either all of these bands are grossly mislabelled (which seems unlikely to me), or I obviously have no understanding of what post-hardcore is, since I can detect none of the elements that I think are attributable to it in the compositions of those acts. And yet, I find that almost all of my favourite sludge/post-metal bands have that label in common. So I'd like to know: what is post-hardcore? What sets it apart from hardcore punk and other alternative-influenced punk genres? Where does it appear in the music of the above bands?

Audio samples welcome.
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GardensofGrief
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PostPosted: Wed Aug 14, 2013 7:18 am 
 

A lot of "Atmospheric Sludge Metal" bands also come with the Post-Hardcore, I'm guessing because of the vocals and the inherent Punk influnce ont he music. To me though Post-Hardcore is subgenre of Punk forming in the late 80's with bands like Fugazi and later Black Flag. Its when Hardcore Punk started to get more Melodic thus Post-Hardcore was formed other early examples of Post-Hardcore: Unwound, Jawbox, Husker Du, Big Black, No Means No. This genre formed around the same time as Metallic Hardcore (the early for of Metalcore) and sometimes they intermingled like Hopesfall and Poison the Well, and eventually there is modern Post-Hardcore which is pretty bastardized imo, bands like Bvb and Escape the Fate are labeled as Post-Hardcore and many Metalcore bands are labeled as Post-Hardcore and to me these bands really aren't what the genre is about and bands like those give the genre a bad name and cause it to be stereotyped. Here are some links as to what I consider Post-Hardcore:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nVCMLWtVN5E
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wQFX6NP8s3E
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ap3L_NCZk4s
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bqj33XWC4Ag
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UBQ47taqrsY
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CjPRTW3aOPs

In summary though Post-Hardcore can be a broad term and be used on a wide variety of bands as you've seen, it can be heavy at times but is not as aggressive as Hardcore Punk and it is not as heavy as Metallic Hardcore or "Metalcore", but it sometimes gets applied to experimental Punk bands or Metal bands with Metal influence.
Hope that Helped!

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Thumbman
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PostPosted: Wed Aug 14, 2013 11:00 am 
 

Honestly, I think a lot of the "post-hardcore" labels that get added to atmospheric sludge bands are incorrect. The term can be applied to a certain heavier (and somewhat metallic) offshoot of hardcore punk, but the post-hardcore I really know is stuff similar to Fugazi.
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iamntbatman
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PostPosted: Wed Aug 14, 2013 2:50 pm 
 

It pretty much just means "hardcore + X", where X is anything else. Sometimes this creates genres there are names for, like hardcore + doom = sludge or hardcore + metal = metalcore, but for the more disparate influences (indie rock, math rock, noise rock) the post-hardcore tag can be useful. Obviously the "immediate" post-hardcore bands like Fugazi and Husker Du are easy to point out but the tag is also good for describing bands like Jawbox, Unwound, Drive Like Jehu, ...And You Will Know Us By the Trail of Dead, At the Drive-In, or even stuff like Slint or Cave In.
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bloodmyst
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PostPosted: Wed Aug 14, 2013 4:36 pm 
 

"Post-hardcore" is a term that has been exhausted, and honestly a lot of bands that are described as "post-hardcore" are for lack of a better term, labelled as such. In my opinion, the genre (if you can call it a real genre) needs to be renamed or at least categorized into a new subgenre to differentiate the original post-hardcore acts from the modern ones because if you listen to each, they sound completely different.

Here's why. When the term was originated, it was used to describe bands like Fugazi and Rites of Spring. This seems reasonable, right? After all, these were hardcore punks that decided to do something other than hardcore.

However, when we look at the bands who descended from Rites of Spring, we see stuff like Texas Is the Reason coming about who started throwing in some pop punk influence and morphing the genre into stuff like Glassjaw.

A decade after this evolution, and you can't really see much of the same in a band like Norma Jean and a band like Fugazi. It basically evolved into something else entirely, which is why I said the "post-hardcore" name needs to be retired.

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Schmengie
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PostPosted: Thu Aug 15, 2013 12:24 am 
 

Curious.

Listening to the above songs, I can actually kind of see where it could potentially translate into the (atmospheric) sludge/post-metal sound that I've been having some trouble reconciling it with. I'm still not sure that it's a label that could be perfectly prescribed to any element of the sound of Cult of Luna, Old Man Gloom, or Generation of Vipers, but then again, I would be even less inclined to label that element as "hardcore punk" or "melodic hardcore". I can't really explain why, except to say that describing Cult of Luna as "hardcore punk" by any measure just seems asinine to me--a statement that I hope gets the point across as-is.

But then, we are also talking about bands that seem to fit far more easily in experimental/progressive/post-rock/metal circles than the general hardcore culture, and it may simply be that there is so much going on in their music that "post-hardcore" is an apt term due chiefly to the incorporation of sludge metal, which, in the most basic terms, is "doom metal combined with hardcore punk".

That, however, raises a few more questions: does the issue truly lay with the definition of post-hardcore, or that of sludge metal?

Based on the songs posted above, it may not be a stretch to think that "modern" post-hardcore (the more alternative, emo-like variant) is an evolution of the more "classic" variant, similar to the idea that "modern" melodic death metal bands are still accepted as melodic death metal bands, even though the recordings of, say, Words of Farewell and Disarmonia Mundi, sound very little like the early outings of Dark Tranquillity and In Flames. No, I am not insinuating that melodeath and post-hardcore have anything to do with each other--merely, that post-hardcore followed the same (broad) principle. Assuming that to be true, could it be stated that there is a "classic" sludge metal, that basically fits its common definition, and a "modern" sludge metal, whose punk element has shifted from hardcore punk to post-hardcore ("classic" and "modern", depending on whether you're talking about Cult of Luna and early Isis, or Norma Jean and later Underoath), and which is nigh-inseparable from post-rock/metal? For that matter, could it still be argued that this hypothetical "modern" sludge is still linked to punk of any kind in the first place, or has the aforementioned post-rock/metal influence replaced it completely? Further, according to Wikipedia, sludge sometimes takes influence from grunge and/or noise. This is a strange claim, until you note that Alice in Chains have been incorporating what feel like grunge-influenced sludge metal riffs into their sound of late. Except, Alice in Chains have never, to my knowledge, been classified as punk anything. Are there any other bands that do this as prolifically? If so, could it be considered yet another hypothetical "fork" in the sludge metal sound, or are Alice in Chains merely a very notable exception?

To be totally honest, Cult of Luna was my gateway to sludge in the first place, and I naturally sought bands of similar atmospheric quality, so admittedly, I have very little knowledge of the genre's pioneers, such as Crowbar and Eyehategod. I'm kind of appealing to those who have heard their music to qualify or reject the above theories as plausible. :P
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iamntbatman
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PostPosted: Thu Aug 15, 2013 12:37 am 
 

Wikipedia isn't exactly the best place to look when it comes to being an authority on these sorts of genres. Specifically, I wouldn't get hung up on any mention of grunge at all, since "grunge" isn't really a musical descriptor at all but rather just a catch-all term for the various rock bands in and around Seattle in the late 80's/early 90's and the bands that took direct influence from them. The Melvins are pretty influential to sludge as a whole, I think, but Alice in Chains I can definitely hear in Acid Bath.

Anyway, I'm not sure when people started tagging post-metal bands on the Archives as post-hardcore; that must've happened after I lost interest in digging deeper into this sort of music. My guess is that sludge purists, i.e. those who like a more strict definition of sludge (doom metal + hardcore) objected to the term being applied to modern post-metal/atmospheric sludge bands like Cult of Luna or Isis or similar bands and thus tried to find a way to differentiate. It's true, stuff like Crowbar or Eyehategod pulls more from older, 80's hardcore, while those modern bands take more from either modern hardcore or post-hardcore. Black Flag and Discharge are to Eyehategod what Converge and Cave In are to Isis.
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Schmengie
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PostPosted: Thu Aug 15, 2013 1:05 am 
 

Mmm. Makes sense. That is actually rather interesting, in part because I got into an argument with someone in a recommendation thread I made about these genres in particular, with him claiming that Isis and Cult of Luna aren't sludge, nor was the music I was asking for. I, of course, vehemently disagree, but what you said does give me some perspective on why it was a point of contention in the first place. Maybe I ought to look into some more "traditional" sludge for context, among other things.
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bloodmyst
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PostPosted: Thu Aug 15, 2013 3:39 pm 
 

iamntbatman wrote:
Wikipedia isn't exactly the best place to look when it comes to being an authority on these sorts of genres.

While sometimes inaccurate (I encourage those who find these inaccuracies to be correct them when discovered), Wikipedia's content, more often than not, is the result of consensus through public, rational discussion from several (sometimes many) different editors. It should be pointed out that since Wikipedia is not a single entity such as Encyclopedia Britannica, inaccurate content cannot typically be attributed to simple cluelessness on the behalf of a single editor. For this reason, coupled with the fact that inaccuracies can be easily corrected, it shouldn't simply be regarded with the same disdain as other non-qualified sources.

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iamntbatman
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PostPosted: Thu Aug 15, 2013 4:24 pm 
 

"Public consensus" about these sorts of thing is often, well, wrong. "Public consensus" would have it that nu-metal is a subgenre of metal, for example. The problem is that, unlike more strictly academic subjects, these sorts of more "popular" pages on Wikipedia don't really have much of a dedicated community of editors keeping a higher standard.
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Schmengie
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PostPosted: Fri Aug 16, 2013 1:27 am 
 

iamntbatman wrote:
"Public consensus" about these sorts of thing is often, well, wrong. "Public consensus" would have it that nu-metal is a subgenre of metal, for example. The problem is that, unlike more strictly academic subjects, these sorts of more "popular" pages on Wikipedia don't really have much of a dedicated community of editors keeping a higher standard.


Literally speaking, nu-metal is a subgenre (or, more appropriately, a fusion genre) of heavy metal in the sense that it combines a holy fuckton of accepted metal genres (or elements thereof) with other, non-metal genres that are more mainstream. I won't sit here and imply that Wikipedia, or the "reliable sources" that it often cites as support are always correct in their assessment. However, to be quite frank, while Encyclopedia Metallum is a database whose owners and users lean far more toward metal purism and probably have a better understanding of the culture, it is difficult to justify the mindset that the collective masses here, with all of their insular bias, represent professional journalism and definition, especially when a lot of them can't even agree with each other on what subgenres certain bands fall in to. As we have just demonstrated, there are some people here who would be very reluctant to regard Cult of Luna and Isis as sludge metal, even though others, along with the majority of professional music publications, define them as such. Hell, I just got done suggesting a genre change to Underoath because of their post- and sludge metal leanings on later albums, not to mention that their early material pretty much had nothing to do with deathcore as it is practised by its most definitive acts (and really, I have no idea why the groove metal label is there at all...). But it won't get changed because it would cause too much of a riot by purists and general Underoath detractors to make any implication that they were the hardcore-influenced death metal band that they were, as agreed upon by everyone else in music journalism.

(I'll agree, though, that Act of Depression was sickeningly preachy, Jesus Christ...)

Similar problems exist for bands like Dir En Grey and Between the Buried and Me, who stopped being metalcore like, two albums ago, yet still aren't on here because "there's still just a hint of J-rock" or some nonsense like that (obviously, that's not applicable to BtBAM, don't worry, I got it :P). It doesn't make sense from an archiving standpoint to accept submissions for being "mostly" metal, or "metal enough" (Killswitch Engage, All That Remains, Devil Sold His Soul...), and then reject another band because their newest album meets the same criteria, and, in Dir En Grey's case, is more metal than literally everything KSE, ATL, and even DSHS have put out. In other words, if Dum Spiro Spero had been their first outing, they'd be on here. The fact that it doesn't get them in because they weren't to standard in the past, or because they retain some of themselves while being at least 80% metal, is utterly asinine, and it is for this reason that MA does not qualify as an authority on music classification. Your statement regarding "public consensus" holds some truth to it, definitely, but don't delude yourself into thinking that MA somehow transcends that. The only difference between the public consensus here and there is...well... the consensus.

That is not to say that we need to start adding every cookie-cutter alternative metal band in existence. I can agree that bands like 10 Years, Breaking Benjamin, Chevelle, and the like, are basically alternative rock bands that know how to distort a guitar now and then, and can put a fry scream on one or two tracks out of every album, but otherwise have no structural resemblance at all to "real" metal (I mean not to sound "tr00" or some shit; I'm just failing to find better terms right now). Conversely, nu metal, though I am turned off by it almost as much as others here (I say "almost", because let's face it, I really kind of like Spineshank), actually does have some real metal elements to it, depending on the act. I wouldn't argue any case for Korn, Limp Bizkit, or Linkin Park, but if it really came down to a serious debate, I'd say that Mushroomhead (sometimes), Slipknot, and Spineshank, if you really think about it, aren't all that far off the mark, whether you like them or not. Really, all they'd need to do is keep away from the alternative mid-pace strumming for more than 70% of a given album and they'd probably be golden. Do I think they'll ever be accepted? Probably not, but at the very least, I feel that they represent the idea that nu metal can be somewhat metal. :P

MA itself is a fucking godsend because it will actually document extremely obscure acts with a thoroughness that you won't find anywhere else (in Wikipedia's case, because it "may not meet Wikipedia's notability guideline for music"). It is especially helpful to a metadata freak like me, and it retains enough open-minded people for me to come on here and ask about a genre so not-metal as post-hardcore. I apologise if I come across like I hate this place or the people in it. I really don't.
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iamntbatman
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PostPosted: Fri Aug 16, 2013 1:39 am 
 

Aaaaaaaaaaaaand you lost me with that post, sorry.
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Schmengie
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PostPosted: Fri Aug 16, 2013 1:45 am 
 

iamntbatman wrote:
Aaaaaaaaaaaaand you lost me with that post, sorry.


It's okay, it happens. I don't know why I say the things I say half the time either, mate. Nu metal is just not an interesting topic to me, but I guess I had a half hour (or however long it took me to write that) to blow.
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MutantClannfear
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PostPosted: Fri Aug 16, 2013 1:51 am 
 

Gatherum wrote:
Literally speaking, nu-metal is a subgenre (or, more appropriately, a fusion genre) of heavy metal in the sense that it combines a holy fuckton of accepted metal genres (or elements thereof) with other, non-metal genres that are more mainstream.

This is misleading; 95% of nu-metal only takes from groove metal as far as metal influences go. There is no death, thrash, doom, etc. in your average nu-metal band. Furthermore, most nu-metal takes the "groove" from groove metal, as opposed to the "metal". I.e., in terms of Pantera, it takes more after "Walk" than "The Great Southern Trendkill". So no, it's not a subgenre of metal, unless you want to say that what Fleshgod Apocalypse are doing is a subgenre of classical. The music is not only based on rock songwriting structures, but even in the sense of looking at your average nu-metal band's influences, maybe 20% of that will come from legitimate groove metal, if not less.

I haven't heard too much of Dir En Grey, but I gather that they are pushing in a more metal direction but still have tinges of nu-metal in their sound alongside it. Between the Buried and Me are not predominantly a metal band because their current formula is maybe 30% metalcore (which is an iffy genre for metalness right off the bat) and then 70% various other things like prog-rock and hardcore. Metal is a plurality in their musical formula, but not the majority - that's the big difference that's keeping them excluded from the site.

The rule that you cite in regards to Dum Spiro Spero essentially comes down to this: the website is concerned with documenting bands that would be thought of, first and foremost, as metal. If a band has a slew of non-metal albums and then releases one album that pushes mildly in a more metal direction, it will be held under more scrutiny in regards to acceptance than if that were their first release. Soulfly are probably the most famous example of this, they became famous as a nu-metal band and thus were withheld from the website until the release of Enslaved because, in the moderators' eyes, starting as a non-metal band and then flirting with metal influences later on did not constitute a "change of heart", as it were. It was only until after they released an album with almost zero nu-metal/hardcore influence (and after the mods decided they had heard enough of Goatfangs' whining, I guess :P) that they were finally accepted.

And I'll just say this about the Cult of Luna situation - I wouldn't call them sludge, for this reason alone: sludge is doom metal + hardcore. I hear hardcore of some form in post-metal bands like Isis, but they don't really have doom metal riffs at all. I'm content with just calling it a heavier form of post-rock, or "post-metal", because the definition of sludge did not ever linearly evolve to describe those bands.
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Schmengie
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PostPosted: Fri Aug 16, 2013 2:41 am 
 

MutantClannfear wrote:
I haven't heard too much of Dir En Grey, but I gather that they are pushing in a more metal direction but still have tinges of nu-metal in their sound alongside it.

[...]

The rule that you cite in regards to Dum Spiro Spero essentially comes down to this: the website is concerned with documenting bands that would be thought of, first and foremost, as metal. If a band has a slew of non-metal albums and then releases one album that pushes mildly in a more metal direction, it will be held under more scrutiny in regards to acceptance than if that were their first release. Soulfly are probably the most famous example of this, they became famous as a nu-metal band and thus were withheld from the website until the release of Enslaved because, in the moderators' eyes, starting as a non-metal band and then flirting with metal influences later on did not constitute a "change of heart", as it were. It was only until after they released an album with almost zero nu-metal/hardcore influence (and after the mods decided they had heard enough of Goatfangs' whining, I guess :P) that they were finally accepted.


That's the thing, though: how much of a "metal majority" does a band have to have in their sound before it ceases to be "J-rock/metalcore/nu-metal with death/doom/progressive metal influences" and, instead, "death/doom/progressive metal with J-rock/metalcore/nu-metal influences"? Putting aside how ridiculous the former sounds, the latter doesn't even accurately describe Dum Spiro Spero because the nu-metal and metalcore, frankly, does not exist in their sound anymore. If you listen hard, you might hear a bit of J-rock, but even then, 90% of that might just be Kyo's characteristic Japanese singing voice playing tricks on your ears. The other 10% is the track, "Vanitas", and that is a stretch. I'm not calling it the musical result of the band offering their cock and balls to Satan himself (if you'll indulge me the stereotype), but I've never been more convinced that an album by a previously non-metal band qualifies that band to be on the archives. I still don't agree with the disparity between accepting first releases vs. rejecting latter-day releases, but even if I personally regard that practice as valid for a moment, Dum Spiro Spero in particular still meets the criteria.

I mean, it's all right: I've already gone through this song and dance in the "Why was band x not accepted/blacklisted" thread, or whatever. I'm not in the business of fighting with the mods when they've already made their verdict, and I'm not saying any of this thinking that this'll change their minds. I would, however, encourage you to give that album a very attentive spin and hear for yourself. You may or may not agree with my assessment, but at the very least, it's some amazing material that I think you'll have a good time with, if you're in to experimental death/doom. :)
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iamntbatman
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PostPosted: Fri Aug 16, 2013 2:49 am 
 

Well if you're under the impression that nu-metal is a valid metal subgenre that is made up of elements from a "fuckton" of other metal genres, then I'm not sure how qualified you are to rate that band's particular metalness (or any band's, really).
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Schmengie
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PostPosted: Fri Aug 16, 2013 2:51 am 
 

iamntbatman wrote:
Well if you're under the impression that nu-metal is a valid metal subgenre that is made up of elements from a "fuckton" of other metal genres, then I'm not sure how qualified you are to rate that band's particular metalness (or any band's, really).


This is exactly what I was referring to.

Frankly, I am not qualifying you with a debate. If you have nothing to offer but the unsupported one-liners of a dry git, then I'm not sure how qualified you are to rate any band's particular metalness either.

"You are wrong because you are wrong." Same shit that most metal elitists come out with. It's not new or edgy, bro.
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MutantClannfear
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PostPosted: Fri Aug 16, 2013 2:56 am 
 

This is the only song I know off the top of my head from Dum Spiro Spero: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bjRU6gaPtS8

Is the rest of the album like this? Because this is mostly a melting pot of J-rock and nu-metal with some tiny splashes of various metal genres mixed in. Where's the death/doom? :???: I'll listen to a couple other songs but I'm not sold yet.
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Schmengie
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PostPosted: Fri Aug 16, 2013 2:58 am 
 

MutantClannfear wrote:
This is the only song I know off the top of my head from Dum Spiro Spero: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bjRU6gaPtS8

Is the rest of the album like this? Because this is mostly a melting pot of J-rock and nu-metal with some tiny splashes of various metal genres mixed in. Where's the death/doom? :???: I'll listen to a couple other songs but I'm not sold yet.


Try "The Blossoming Beelzebub", "Diabolos", and "Decayed Crow". Or, just listen to the whole thing all the way through. That's really the only way to decide, I think.
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Metantoine
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PostPosted: Fri Aug 16, 2013 3:03 am 
 

I heard 2 or 3 Dir En Grey albums, I do even like them but calling them "death/doom" is utterly ridiculous, I'll still check Dum Spiro Spero though. I highly recommend that this thread goes back to its original topic as I (and the other mods as well) are tired of this apologetic crap about rejected bands.

Edit: Dum Spiro Spero is basically nu metal + jpop + djent + mallcore. Nothing metal or "death/doom" lol.
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Schmengie
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PostPosted: Fri Aug 16, 2013 3:14 am 
 

Metantoine wrote:
I heard 2 or 3 Dir En Grey albums, I do even like them but calling them "death/doom" is utterly ridiculous, I'll still check Dum Spiro Spero though. I highly recommend that this thread goes back to its original topic as I (and the other mods as well) are tired of this apologetic crap about rejected bands.


My apologies--it was not my intent for things to go down this road.
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ThePoop wrote:
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I believe it was Confucius who said "Life is merely a series of intervals in which one waits for the next Agalloch album."


Last edited by Schmengie on Fri Aug 16, 2013 4:20 am, edited 1 time in total.
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MutantClannfear
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PostPosted: Fri Aug 16, 2013 3:31 am 
 

I'm not in the mood to listen to a full album of stuff like this right now. I'll just check out the three songs you linked and then a couple of others. Since Metantoine wants the discussion to go back to the original topic, you can PM me if you want to discuss this further.

  • "Ruten No Tou" - nu-metal with soaring J-rock-ish vocals. Goes into really quiet ballad-like sections of quietness; the rest of the time there's chugs and bends, but not much in terms of riffs.
  • "Diabolos" - mostly nu-metal bends and quiet introspective parts with a couple of short melodic death metal riffs and slow groove metal riffs mixed in. I'm not really hearing any doom here at all, and certainly not anything remotely "death/doom" aside from the vocals (which don't determine the genre).
  • "The Blossoming Beezlebub" - arguably death/doom mixed with the sort of dissonance you'd hear from Blut aus Nord. The singing isn't very metal, nor are the occasionally hard rock-like palm-muted riffs, but all-in-all I'd feel pretty comfortable calling this a metal song.
  • "Decayed Crow" - this reminds me of a hybrid of deathcore and nu-metal, but the deathcore is riffier than it usually is in deathcore/nu-metal hybrids (compared to something like Emmure or Attila, at least). Aside from the occasional nu-metal chug, this one's pretty much metal all the way through.
  • "Hageshisa to, Kono Mune no Naka de Karamitsuita Shakunetsu no Yami" - has a lot of melodic death metal riffs but the second half of it is almost entirely nu-metal/vaguely djent-like chugging with more Dir en Grey-type singing.

There are undeniably metal elements here but I dunno, I've listened to at least half the album lengthwise at this point and only two of the six songs I heard sounded definitively based on metal riffs; even those two weren't entirely metal themselves. It's interesting stuff for sure as far as listening goes, but there's still so much nu-metal and soft ballady-ness involved that I wouldn't really say it's as indisputably metal as, say, Soulfly's Enslaved was. *shrug*
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Schmengie
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PostPosted: Fri Aug 16, 2013 4:37 am 
 

Thing is, I think every question I had in regard to post-hardcore was pretty much answered already. Part of my motivation was that I am a metadata freak, and wanted to know what to input as "subgenre" for these bands. :P
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ThePoop wrote:
(snip)

I believe it was Confucius who said "Life is merely a series of intervals in which one waits for the next Agalloch album."

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Dudemanguy
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PostPosted: Fri Aug 16, 2013 11:37 am 
 

Gatherum wrote:
Similar problems exist for bands like Dir En Grey and Between the Buried and Me, who stopped being metalcore like, two albums ago


Eh, I dunno. None of Dir En Grey's eras has really come off as metalcore to me. They're just too damn weird and all over the place.

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GardensofGrief
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PostPosted: Sat Aug 17, 2013 12:47 am 
 

How did a discussion about post-hardcore turn into a discussion about whether Dir En Grey is Metal or not.

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katatonia47
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PostPosted: Sat Aug 17, 2013 2:28 am 
 

I love La Dispute, Touche Amore and Fugazi, besides those, I don't listen to any.
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Schmengie
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PostPosted: Sat Aug 17, 2013 4:49 am 
 

Dudemanguy wrote:
Eh, I dunno. None of Dir En Grey's eras has really come off as metalcore to me. They're just too damn weird and all over the place.


Truthfully, I need to look at their back catalogue again, because I can see where you're coming from: me, I personally don't think that Underoath were much of a metalcore band either, even though everyone else says that they were. They were definitely modern post-hardcore, though, at least in part.

GardensofGrief wrote:
How did a discussion about post-hardcore turn into a discussion about whether Dir En Grey is Metal or not.


Welcome to the internet, the largest conclave of ADHD basement dwellers in existence. :P

katatonia47 wrote:
I love La Dispute, Touche Amore and Fugazi, besides those, I don't listen to any.


Links welcome.
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ThePoop wrote:
(snip)

I believe it was Confucius who said "Life is merely a series of intervals in which one waits for the next Agalloch album."

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yentass
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PostPosted: Sun Aug 18, 2013 9:43 am 
 

dystopia4 wrote:
Honestly, I think a lot of the "post-hardcore" labels that get added to atmospheric sludge bands are incorrect. The term can be applied to a certain heavier (and somewhat metallic) offshoot of hardcore punk, but the post-hardcore I really know is stuff similar to Fugazi.

I agree. It seems to me that the instances where atmospheric sludge is labeled as "post hardcore" are a result of confusing "post metal" with "post hardcore".

iamntbatman wrote:
"Public consensus" about these sorts of thing is often, well, wrong.

...What?! Public concensus is the ONLY raison d'ĂȘtre of a genre, period.
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iamntbatman
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PostPosted: Sun Aug 18, 2013 1:14 pm 
 

I disagree. Public consensus may be the impetus behind coming up with genre descriptors in the first place, but after a term has been used to describe a particular sound it sticks and it no longer becomes reasonable to just use the term willy-nilly to describe whatever you want. As another example, perhaps a little more emotionally removed from the conversation at hand: Lana Del Ray and the term "sadcore." At some point, some music writer somewhere tried to stick this term to her music, perhaps unaware that sadcore was already a thing and that Lana Del Ray sounds nothing at all like it.

Anyway, MutantClannfear already did a good job of explaining nu-metal's musical origins and why it's not really metal despite the name and despite many (most, even) people who listen to it or write about it calling it metal.

I'm also not really sure what motivates people to try so hard to get their favorite pet borderline bands included on the archives. It's like some weird form of validation or something like that, like metal's some sort of exclusive club that they want to be a part of or can't fully appreciate the music unless it gets the stamp of approval on the archives or something. Just appreciate things for what they are!
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TheStormIRide
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PostPosted: Sun Aug 18, 2013 2:05 pm 
 

Gatherum wrote:
Truthfully, I need to look at their back catalogue again, because I can see where you're coming from: me, I personally don't think that Underoath were much of a metalcore band either, even though everyone else says that they were. They were definitely modern post-hardcore, though, at least in part.


Their later material is surely modern post-hardcore, but their first two releases, "Act of Depression" and "Cries of the Past", were definitely metalcore. Thy started veering away into a more modern sound after those two. Whether or not those albums are any good is a completely different discussion.
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Schmengie
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PostPosted: Mon Aug 19, 2013 2:38 am 
 

iamntbatman wrote:
I'm also not really sure what motivates people to try so hard to get their favorite pet borderline bands included on the archives. It's like some weird form of validation or something like that, like metal's some sort of exclusive club that they want to be a part of or can't fully appreciate the music unless it gets the stamp of approval on the archives or something. Just appreciate things for what they are!


I can agree that there are people like this. For my part, though, it is simply a matter of correctness. I felt that that two bands had finally crossed over, and that, as this is a comprehensive database, they should be on here. Obviously, most people disagree with me, but it's not as if I've lost sleep over it, and I still enjoy those acts for what they are, whether they're featured here or not. If they someday make a release that the mods feel qualifies them to be here, then they will be here, but otherwise, it is what it is.

TheStormIRide wrote:
Their later material is surely modern post-hardcore, but their first two releases, "Act of Depression" and "Cries of the Past", were definitely metalcore. Thy started veering away into a more modern sound after those two. Whether or not those albums are any good is a completely different discussion.


Ehhh... barely, if at all. I'll agree that they were never black metal outside of Taylor's rasp (if you're really going to call that a black metal rasp), but they were more death metal back then. They had some hardcore punk/post-hardcore influence, at best.
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ThePoop wrote:
(snip)

I believe it was Confucius who said "Life is merely a series of intervals in which one waits for the next Agalloch album."

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