Metalcore Music
Metal is popular.
That's a fact, as evidenced by the sheer number of outside, non-metal genres that want their type of music - despite not being metal - advertised as being metal, or even better, extreme metal.
Thus, we get "symphonic", "folk metal", "rap metal", "nu metal", and... "metalcore".
What is metalcore you might ask? Let's find out.
In the mid 1990s, soon after both black metal and death metal had peaked, with "Hvis Lyset Tar Oss" and "Onward to Golgotha" respectively, another short-lived genre was on the decline... grunge, and by extension all of punk rock.
You see, punk rock had at that point put all their eggs in the basket of the "extreme" style of grunge, preaching nihilism, individualism and suicide. They thought it was the next big thing to shock parents and get influential teenagers to adopt their lifestyle and buy their products.
And it worked.
For a short while, before grunge and punk rock cannibalized themselves into oblivion - as was their motto and raison d'être.
At that same time, something strange happened in Sweden with the birth of the so-called "melodeath" movement - about as closely related to death metal as 50 Cent.
But, death metal or not, it was different from the rest of extreme metal.
Starting with bands like At the Gates (circa. Slaughter of the Soul), Arch Enemy, In Flames, Necrophobic, Dissection (circa. Reinkaos), The Haunted, Dark Funeral, Meshuggah, Behemoth, Dark Tranquility, etc... this new style was given many names at first.
It's "rock metal". No, it's melodic death metal - later shortened to "melodeath" to keep people from expecting something like what Phantom did on "Withdrawal".
Finally someone came up with "metalcore", and it stuck (mainly as an insult, but whatever).
What is Metalcore?
The record companies were excited with this "new" style.
Musically, it was very similar to the old "hard rock" they were used to producing, but it had that shiny new "heavy metal" badge it could flaunt everywhere. Being simpler and dumber than extreme metal, the metalcore style is accessible to more musicians, in addition to more fans, than the "older" black and death metal genres.
Thematically, metalcore was different. It's everything that rock 'n' roll has always been: loud, angry, and chaotic, perfect to disturb parents, which sells albums. Finally, unlike metal, it doesn't stray into truly dangerous areas of thought. It is more likely to be written from an individual perspective, rather than the anti-individual perspective of black and death metal, and less likely to glorify war, disease and death in the case of death metal, or nationalism, paganism, and god-forbid anti-capitalism, in the case of black metal.
More and more bands started advertising their sound as "metalcore" and, as a few advertising dollars changed hands, a new "genre" was born.
Isn't that great? Where is the problem?
The problem is that the "new" "genre" isn't new, and isn't even a metal genre to begin with.
Metalcore = the First Cosmetic Genre
Metalcore is the first purely cosmetic "genre".
It doesn't exist except as a trojan to bring non-metal, pre-metal in fact - as rock and punk are both much older than extreme metal - music into the scene and pollute the airwaves with this fake metal that doesn't even have the balls to admit that's it's rock 'n' roll.
It's the same rock 'n' roll - with more distortion and harsher vocals - that black and death metal were created to escape from.
It's the same vocally-led, riffless, verse-chorus-verse, boring old rock 'n' roll made more extreme for today's ADHD youth.
Metalcore isn't a "fusion" between heavy metal and punk rock, as is often said.
Metalcore is taking the superficial elements, the aesthetics of extreme metal, and using them to "spice up" the type of music your grand-dad grew up listening to.
Why? Because $.
Because any band can learn metalcore/punk rock in a few days, record an album in 6 hours, and it will at worst sound "okay"... whereas extreme metal artists have tried for their entire lives to create the next "Memento Mori" or the next "Effigy of the Forgotten", and failed.
The choice is simple.
You either believe that heavy metal is its own separate musical genre, in which case you reject metalcore.
Or you believe that metal is not a genre, but an aesthetic, an ice cream topping, that can be applied to any genre - punk/rock/rap/country - to make it "more extreme". In that case, Nightwish is right down that alley.
