deathcore

The tradition & historical record

Deathcore is an extreme metal fusion genre that combines metalcore with elements of death metal. The style typically includes metalcore breakdowns, death metal guitar riffs, blast beats and vocals that alternate between low growling vocals and high-pitched screams. Lyrics tend to be violent, angry and personal. As a distinct genre, deathcore emerged in the United States in the early 2000s and became popular in the later 2000s. Some of the genre's earliest examples include Antagony, Despised Icon, and the Red Chord. In the mid-2000s, several deathcore bands gained widespread popularity, some of them through promotion on MySpace, including All Shall Perish, Suicide Silence, Through the Eyes of the Dead, Bring Me the Horizon, Job for a Cowboy, Carnifex, Whitechapel and Chelsea Grin. In the 2010s, deathcore bands began experimenting with a range of other genres. The genre has received criticism from longtime fans of heavy metal music, usually for its frequent use of breakdowns. Some musicians classified as deathcore have rejected the label. ¹

A fusion genre, deathcore melds elements of metalcore, hardcore and death metal. It employs fast tempos and focuses on intensity. Deathcore typically features down-tuned guitars, death metal riffs; tremolo picking as well as double bass and blast beat drumming. It is defined by its slower intense sections called breakdowns, which are also a key trait of metalcore. The characteristic deathcore breakdown involves single palm muted notes played repeatedly on low open guitar strings. Like death metal, guitar solos can be employed, but are featured less often by comparison. Vocals in deathcore typically alternate between the death growls found in death metal, and higher-pitched screaming found in metalcore. A vocal style known as "pig squeals" is also sometimes used, which can be performed either by inhaling or exhaling. Sung vocals are rare, but they have been used by a few bands such as All Shall Perish (in the song "Awaken the Dreamers") and Oceano (in the song "Incisions"). Some common lyrical themes are antireligion, psychological pain and body horror. Lyrics in deathcore can also concern personal subjects, occasionally dealing with frustrations, anger and violent themes, and can include misogynistic language. In terms of fashion, deathcore is associated with short hair, baseball caps, earlobe plugs and sportswear, which is similar to metalcore and hardcore fashion, and is atypical from the usual metalhead attire. ¹

The term "deathcore" has had a number of uses in various metal/hardcore scenes far before it was considered an established or recognized genre, with Dom Lawson of Metal Hammer writing: "blending death metal with hardcore was by no means a new thing when Despised Icon emerged." The earliest known use of "deathcore" as a word was by New York band N.Y.C. Mayhem as a self-description for their merger of hardcore punk and thrash metal. In 1996, Nick Terry of Terrorizer magazine publicized: "We're probably going to settle on the term deathcore to describe the likes of Earth Crisis (as well as the more NYHC-ish but still as deathly Merauder)." Embrace the Eternal (1998) by Embodyment, Yesterday Is Time Killed (1999) by Eighteen Visions, and Rain in Endless Fall (1999) by Prayer for Cleansing are early examples of albums that feature a metalcore sound combined with death metal influences. In 2019, music site The New Fury credited Embodyment as "[pioneers] of the deathcore genre" due to their performance on Embrace the Eternal. Decibel magazine wrote that death metal band Suffocation were one of the main inspirations for the genre's emergence, stating "One of Suffocation's trademarks, breakdowns, has spawned an entire metal subgenre: deathcore." Suffocation bassist Derek Boyer says Suffocation "were influenced by many early metal and hardcore bands". Lawson cites death metal bands like Dying Fetus, Suffocation, and Internal Bleeding as being influential on deathcore due to their use of "crushing, mid-paced grooves and breakdowns". ¹

Despite a few earlier metalcore/death metal hybridizations, Antagony and Despised Icon are considered to be the true pioneers of deathcore, though both bands have rejected the label. Antagony founder and frontman Nick Vasallo is credited as being the "father of deathcore" due to his work in the band. The Red Chord is referenced as an early influential source for the genre due to their hybridization of metalcore and death metal sounds, among other genres. New Hampshire band Deadwater Drowning and Californian group All Shall Perish are also seen as notable early entries of the genre. Deadwater Drowning's 2003 EP was remarked as "basically the blueprint for every current deathcore band out today," while All Shall Perish's debut album Hate, Malice, Revenge (2003) "never got tied down to [simply] death metal or metalcore." Music journalist T Coles said, "in a similar fashion to their grindcore ancestors, cultural barriers melted away as kids with earnest interests in various heavy sounds melded ideas together they were earnestly trying to be as ruthlessly heavy as possible, taking elements from everything they liked and pushing them as hard as they could, just as bands [in the 1990s], and a decade before that, had done." In the mid 2000s, deathcore spiked in popularity shortly after Job for a Cowboy released their EP Doom in 2005, which is heavily credited as one of deathcore's most significant and influential releases for the genre. The genre saw an increase in popularity even further when English band Bring Me the Horizon released their deathcore debut full-length Count Your Blessings in 2006. The band were presented the 2006 Kerrang! Award for "Best British Newcomer" shortly after the album's release, though the band abandoned the genre soon thereafter. ¹

San Diego natives Carnifex witnessed success with their first album Dead in My Arms (2007), selling 5,000 copies with little publicity. On top of their non-stop touring, the band's methodical songwriting resulted in Carnifex quickly getting signed to label Victory Records. Suicide Silence's No Time to Bleed (2009) peaked at number 32 on the Billboard 200, number 12 on the Rock Albums Chart and number 6 on the Hard Rock Albums Chart, while their album The Black Crown peaked at number 28 on the Billboard 200, number 7 on the Rock Albums Chart and number 3 on the Hard Rock Albums Chart. Whitechapel album This Is Exile sold 5,900 in copies, which made it enter the Billboard 200 chart at position 118. Their third album A New Era of Corruption sold about 10,600 copies in the United States in its first week of being released and peaked at position number 43 on the Billboard 200 chart. ¹

A variety of deathcore bands experimented with other genres into their music as influence and time progressed. Emmure has been credited to be heavily influenced by nu metal and was described as "the new Limp Bizkit". ¹

The text above is adapted from the Wikipedia article “Deathcore”, available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 licence. ¹

deathcore is fusion genre that combines metalcore and death metal, according to the structured record cited below. This entry was generated automatically from that record and has not yet been reviewed by a person familiar with the tradition. ²

The source record links this tradition to 10 external registers, which can be verified through the citation. ²