“Modern metalcore is such a tease. For every killer band like While She Sleeps, there’s a dozen more that leave me unmoved. Nonetheless, I always hold out hope that a new metalcore band will show up and blow my balls off, and that’s exactly why I grabbed Primitive from the promo bin.” Madballz.
“The Grymm Grab Bag… Dungeons & Dragons-esque item of mystery and deception. The bag has blessed me with many musical gifts and bitten my sorry ass in equal measure over the years. Like the sorry cat-guy that I am, I should know better than to stick my grubby, unwashed paw into its gaping maw. This week, I have pulled out Songs of Future Wars, the debut album by one-man death metal act Stormland.” Gundam style.
“Five years ago, another metal blog referred to As I Lay Dying’s Awakened as “the world’s first retro-metalcore album.” While that same not-to-be-named blog was also recently guilty of authoring one of the most idiotic self-serving shitposts I’ve ever read, in the case of Awakened they were actually right. With its melodic Gothenburg riffs, gang vocals, soaring clean choruses, and pummeling breakdowns, the record hearkened back to mid-00s metalcore at a time when the rest of the scene was too busy being balls deep in whatever Periphery was doing.” Old core, new core. At this point, what does it matter?
“A funny thing happened to metalcore in the last six years or so. After the Killswitch Engages and As I Lay Dyings of the world spent years churning out Gothenburg riffs and tough-guy breakdowns like cheap beers at a frat party, metalcore bands finally listened to Periphery and started latching on to this new thing called ‘djent.'” Metalcore through the ages.
“Pennsylvania’s Zao needs no further introduction. One of metalcore’s pioneering bands influenced a huge swath of groups, mainstream and underground, with their chaotic riffing, pummeling rhythms, honest, heart-wrenching lyrics and venomous screaming of Dan Weyandt. And while the band endured quite the past, Zao continue to walk to the beat of their own drum while inviting the fans to come along.” December sucks for new releases, until it doesn’t.
“I love seeing bands progress beyond their infant stages, taking their influences and branching out into worlds unknown. Germany’s Heaven Shall Burn are not one of those bands you think of when you picture the word “progress.” They’ve taken their signature sound from 2004’s landmark Antigone, refined their attack, and proceeded to beat us over the head with variations of their trademark brand of metalcore/death metal/whatever it is the cool kids are calling them these days.” AMG: Voice of the cool kids since 2009.
“Nostalgia is a dragon that almost always eludes our grasp, because we’ve grown and the things we used to love are still essentially the same. While some things like Super Mario 64 will never lose their appeal, others will. So it was with Nothing Lies Beyond, a band so sonically entrenched in the days of 2005-2009 that I was basically transported back to my high school years.” Sounds of a playground…rising!
“I’m sure by now you all know that your favorite artists don’t exactly live the lives they write about. Slayer’s Tom Araya is a devout Catholic and a proud family man. Similarly, W.A.S.P.’s Blackie Lawless gave up fucking like a beast for Jesus. Glenn Danzig loves his cats and Morbid Angel’s Trey Azagthoth is a gamer and a Sailor Moon fanatic. In other words, it’s not all that often you encounter a musician (or band) that lives up to the extreme lyrics they pen. They’re just regular, mundane human beings like you and me.” How disappointing….
“Unearth are among the last of their kind. The New Wave of American Heavy Metal – if there ever was such a thing – has crashed, receded, and carried away a flotsam of recycled Gothenburg riffs, open string drop-D breakdowns, and post-Pantera toughguy groove. Bands not dissolved in the fizz of waning popularity and ill-conceived murder-for-hire plots have either distilled themselves into Top 40 radio rock (Avenged Sevenfold) or continue struggling to recreate the glory of their heyday (Killswitch Engage). Unearth stand alone….” So much for progress and evolution.
“Madam X rarely wanders down the road of hardcore or metalcore since dealing with mallrats and emo’s is troublesome (where to hide the bodies and all…). Once in a while though, venturing out into the unknown pays off and you stumble across an album with a little more imagination and progression (cast your mind back if you will to 2011’s Digital Veil delivered by Travis Richter’s The Human Abstract). Now jump back to 2009 to the release of Lexington, Kentucky based Beyond the Shore’s first EP precursor (The Arctic Front). While the album bore some small resemblance to Parkway Drive, it sounded juvenile and lacked the intensity of say “Dark Days.” Four years later Beyond the Shore haven’t been working on a funeral doom album. No, instead they’ve been working on getting into Metal Blade Records (home to As I Lay Dying and a host of other big names) good graces, honing their sound and gathering some interesting elements to add to their music.” Is our Madam X warming up to metalcore?? Say it ain’t so, X!! Oops, there I go using genres as pejoratives…
