Dude, Hardcore Music is Getting Ridiculous

I never really actually got into hardcore music. But running a recording studio in Atlanta has kept us from being able to ignore it. We’ve got a bunch of high school screamo/hardcore bands located out in the ‘burbs and their parents have money. We need money.

I was recently searching for Atlanta MySpace bands under the “hardcore” genre and started noticing a trend. About half the “hardcore” bands hadn’t logged into their account since 2007. But most of the active bands weren’t just “hardcore,” they had modifying genres like “post-hardcore,” “black metal,” and “mexican regional” (in case you’re wondering if labeling your band something ironic like “mexican regional,” or “polka” is funny, it’s not).

Hardcore had its roots in harder punk music from bands like Minor Threat, Black Flag, and Bad Religion. Minor Threat and other bands in the D.C. area also inspired the “straight edge” movement, which espoused a completely drug and alcohol free lifestyle for fans and musicians. I’m not really sure how playing thrash punk and beating the shit out of each other in the mosh pit goes well with being sober, but apparently it hit a chord with punks (this may also be a factor in the creation of Christian hardcore music, which is otherwise completely baffling).

The ’90s saw hardcore bands start to incorporate elements of heavy metal, death metal (with low guttural “cookie monster” vocals), speed metal, math rock, and even some melodies deriving from emo pioneers like Sunny Day Real Estate. I got into grunge music during this time period, so I’m not really familiar with a lot of the bands that kept the “hardcore” torch burning, but Wikipedia tells me it was groups like Biohazard, Hatebreed, and Strife. I do recall dismissing the genre as a bunch of mindless muffled screaming and its fans as being a bunch of meat heads and/or goth douches.

But in 2008 a friend let me borrow a bunch of hardcore records in preparation for an upcoming project we were recording. These included albums from Underoath, As I Lay Dying, Norma Jean, Converge, Dillinger Escape Plan, and Every Time I Die. I was blown away by the complexity of the music (after coming to grips with “bree-ing” and superfluous double bass hits). I listened to a lot of math rock bands in high school like Don Caballero and Faraquet and this hardcore stuff definitely rivaled those groups in terms of elaborate song structure and technical proficiency. I was also amazed at the seemingly effortless transition between different musical genres. Everything from emo to metal to jazz could all be heard in these songs without sounding out of place.

The complexity of the music and the wide breadth of influences really made me wonder how any of these bands actually had followings. I’d consider some of this stuff unlistenable if not inspired to actually sit through the songs a few times and start to pick out some semblance of a song structure. How could a bunch of suburban teenagers with limited musical knowledge get into this stuff? Was it the heaviness? Or just the fact that some of these acts claimed to be “Christian”?

That mystery still remains in my mind, but regardless, I do know this particular brand of hardcore is dying out. New Christian hardcore bands seem non-existent and it’s only the big staples of the genre like Underoath and Norma Jean that are still making relevant records.

So what’s taking the place of these bands, you ask? Complete and utter absurdity. That’s what.

One of the bands we recorded introduced Rob and me to a few new groups, including The Devil Wears Prada, Chiodos, and Protest the Hero. Dude, this shit is crazy. Seriously, these guys need to be committed.

What do you get when you combine speed metal, death metal, chamber choirs, emocore, trance, fusion, prog-rock, orchestras, math rock, jazz, classic rock, and circus music? Listen to these new “hardcore” bands to find out, if you can stand it.

Maybe I’m just getting old, but I can’t listen to this stuff. It’s too good, too fast, too much. There’s too much epic music crammed into every song, and it just won’t stop. I’m not sure what multiple orgasms feel like, but I can imagine it would start to hurt after about five minutes. These records last a lot longer than five minutes.

My main question to these bands is: Why? Why do you have to blow people’s minds so hard, so consistently. My second question is: How? How do you actually come up with and play this stuff? Does anyone out there have an answer?