How did Metalcore begin?
Metalcore became its own genre in the early 2000's but it originally started out in the early 1980's as a punk sub-genre in which mixed hardcore punk and metal but the Metalcore bands that started it all off mainly leaned towards more punk than metal. Bands such as Black Flag were one of the main contributors when metalcore was starting because they were a punk band that also were inspired and admired Black Sabbath, and so did many bands such as "Discharge" and "The Exploited", both took inspiration from heavy metal.
Metalcore Genre
In the early 2000's metalcore emerged as its own genre after getting more popular and metalcore specific labels started emerge such as Century Media and Metal Blade, but also labels that had been around before such as Rise Records started to sign metalcore bands as their popularity increased. By 2004 metalcore had been getting an increasingly bigger fan base and bands such as "Killswitch Engage" debuted at number 21 on the billboard album chart with "The End of Heartache". I have placed a review and a single off of that album below.
http://www.sputnikmusic.com/review/3615/Killswitch-Engage-The-End-of-Heartache/
Rose of Sharyn-Killswitch Engage
Metalcore has evolved over the years to incorporate different genres into it and making it more marketable and different. Using elements of electronic music into metalcore has meant that the listeners can be expanded and making bands more "mainstream". Asking Alexandria are a perfect example of this, their first album "Stand Up and Scream" had lots of electronic influences in it including one song completely electronic called "hiatus". Now i won't say that Asking Alexandria were the first band to include electronic music into metalcore because i could be wrong, but i would argue that they were the first band to make it big with using synths in metalcore, even though their most recent albums they are straying away from the "electronicore" style they can be classed as, they have achieved great success through using a unique style, they have recently headlined the Brixton academy in London, which not many metalcore bands have done.
Characteristics
The characteristics you would associate with metalcore are; Screaming, Breakdowns and guitars with a drop tuning. A lot of bands now use clean vocals in their songs, usually in the bridge or the chorus of a song, Bands have been using a clean singer as well since metalcore became popular, bands such as Killswitch engage and The Devil Wears Prada have been using clean singers for as long as they have been around.
Breakdowns are a useful tool in a metalcore bands arsenal because its what can make a crowd go wild during a gig because when a breakdown starts, this is when moshers really enjoy themselves.
Predecessors
Metalcores obvious origins can be traced back to punk and metal but i will try and trace metalcore all the way back to the 1950's thanks to the evolution of music.
Metal is one of the main reasons for Metalcore, some punk bands were influenced by Black sabbath, who are the originators of Metal.
Metals influence would have been from psychedelic rock because of the experimental sounds and the use of distortion, which is heavily used in metal.
Bands such as Pink Floyd helped move the psychedelic genre and were many metal bands influences.
Rock n Roll
Metalcore can be traced back even as far as the years when rock and roll was at its peak, bands such as The Beatles, The Rolling stones, were very big influences on psychedelic rock and even before The Beatles, Rock n Roll was big through the movements of Elvis Presley.
The Beatles- Love Me Do
Elvis Presley- Suspicious minds
Rhythm And Blues
Rhythm and Blues is the main Influence behind most music genre's today, without it we would not have most of our favourite artists.
Production
When it comes to producing a metalcore album is very much like producing a normal record but obviously bands like to different things for their own record, some bands may choose to use some use of effects that artists would use in electronic music, such as glitching when they make the vocals stutter. Distortion is the big one in terms of techniques because 99% off all albums from metalcore will have used distortion.
In conclusion metalcore is becoming one of the most popular genres in the world and its fan base is ever growing and it will do for a long time.
Formats
The formats for listening to music over the years has changed drastically over the years from Vinyl to CD and from CD to mp3 and now we have formats such as Youtube and VEVO. The first format that people could listen to music was the "Wax Cylinder" which was invented by Thomas Edison and after that was invented the Radio quickly became a must have for families to listen to music which used Vinyl records to play music on, these two formats quickly came to dominate the world of music format wise until a new advancement was created. This is where Cassette tapes come into the world and people quickly decided to start using tapes because unlike Vinyl records they were small and compact and people were able to listen to it whilst out and about which is something Vinyl could never do.
After the Cassette tape the internet was invented in 1973 but it wasn't until much later that we were able to stream music on the internet.
Then came the CD in 1982 which was more capable than a Cassette because it could hold a lot more songs on it and it was able to be rewound without having to manually rewind the tape in the Cassette, the CD is still used to this day and still popular but the invention of the Mp3 file has rendered the CD less popular in recent days, Mp3 has made listening to music and sharing music easier than ever and with the internet already around and the creation of programs such as Napster and iTunes helped with the advancements in formats. With many phones ability to be able to put and play music and a phone has led to most phones becoming more than phones, you can have apps that help you find music and apps such as YouTube which is now the new MTV because i don't know about everyone else but i certainly go on YouTube to look up new music. And there you have it Wax Cylinder to YouTube a massive advancements in Formats and there will probably be many more new formats to come over the years to come.
No comments:
Post a Comment