Music Talk Board

(04-30-2014, 05:16 AM)Danjo Wrote: [ -> ]I'm saying they're already a clusterfuck, and it would make a lot more sense if they were based on actual characteristics instead of kind of arbitrarily being assigned in or not in a genre. I want to know why screamo is not a genre characterized by screaming. And emo is not a genre that emo people listen to.

Most of the time it actually is based on actual musical characteristics. The issue I'm seeing here with your complaints over screamo and emo, is that you're associating popular media's definition of these genres, instead of the actual definition of the genres. Emo started out in the very late 80's, and screamo is a subgenre of emo that came out in the 90's that's the aggressive version of emo (yes screaming is involved). So these are established genres with bands that share musical characteristics before the terms got popularly misused in the mid 2000's.

Emo is an offshoot of hardcore punk (or was it post-hardcore?) where it was more melodic, and instead of singing about politics and similar stuff, they decided to sing confessional and personal lyrics, basically like they were reading off their diary. So if you check out Cap'n Jazz, Mineral, and Sunny Day Real Estate, you can see the similarities.

This was the early to mid-90's, then the mid 2000's came in, and the fashion trend "emo" came into definition. The media attached the name to any band that dressed emo, even though pretty much all of these bands had nothing to do with real emo, or sometimes nothing to do with each other. Most of the time it was just a bunch of pop-punk bands with the haircuts and guyliner, so people think bands like Good Charlotte, Fallout Boy, and Paramore are emo, but have nothing to do with real emo.

Screamo is basically suffering the same thing, but now it's with poppy post-hardcore and metalcore bands, that Sam refuse to acknowledge as metalcore, with tons of tattoos, piercings and kind of scene looking. So the media jumps in going "well these guys dress sort of emoish, but they scream and shit, so this is screamo".

Basically you're falling victim to the media's heavy misuse of these terms, and you're viewing them as arbitrary. Screamo is a lot more specific than any band that screams, and emo was well established over a decade before emo kids appeared. Also you're used to a bunch of ignorant people who lump any band with harsh vocals as screamo, when it's far from the case, especially when people call metal bands as screamo.

So yes, they fit what you want of being "based on actual characteristics", you just don't know these characteristics and think we're being arbitrary.

Fair enough.

I don't know how you people have time for all that non-sense though.

(04-30-2014, 06:03 AM)Grungie Wrote: [ -> ]metalcore bands, that Sam refuse to acknowledge as metalcore, with tons of tattoos, piercings and kind of scene looking

I agree with everything you said. To explain this though, the reason I don't consider bands like Killswitch Engage, As I Lay Dying, Asking Alexandria, etc. to be Metalcore is because Metalcore has basically suffered the same sort of mislabeling. As with Emo and Screamo, Metalcore was already an established genre. Metalcore was established in the mid-90s, as a subgenre of Hardcore. (Depending on who you ask, you could get 3 different answers on what band "did it first".) Bands like Botch, Zao, Earth Crisis, etc. were doing Metalcore before the '00s. Metalcore is, at its heart, Hardcore that uses certain metal "stuff" like driving riffs. (The early Metalcore bands were actually playing regular Hardcore on their first few records.) It looks, sounds, and smells like Hardcore though.

Anyway, in the '00s, many bands were influenced by Zao, Botch, and the rest of the '90s Metalcore bands. Some of these bands made Metalcore (see later Converge, Norma Jean, The Chariot). Others made Metal with breakdowns, and the media wrongly called this Metalcore. It's the latter that I have an issue with calling Metalcore, because the latter is NOT Hardcore. Some of the latter bands were Deathcore bands, and others were just slightly heavier versions of the radio-friendly metal of the day.


Btw, one final note, Hardcore stands for "Hardcore Punk". Originally, Hardcore was just faster, more aggressive Punk rock. Of course, it quickly morphed into something more. But I'm just pointing this out, because certain people think Hardcore is a subgenre of Metal, when it's actually its own separate genre (and always has been).

(04-30-2014, 07:14 AM)Danjo Wrote: [ -> ]Fair enough.

I don't know how you people have time for all that non-sense though.

I enjoy learning about stuff I like, it also makes thing easier when discussing those topics with other fans.

@Sam, what do you consider Asking Alexandria and Bring Me the Horizon and similar bands if they're not metalcore.

I dunno, I feel like having a somewhat obscure labeling system where only the "elite" fans of any particular genre or subgenre actually know what bands fall into that category doesn't do much to make anything easier. I like music, but honestly I never think about "What genre is this band?", or even really "What others band does this band sound like?" unless its really obvious. I just listen to a band and if I like it, cool, if not I probably won't listen to them again. If I'm going to describe that band to a friend I'm more likely to just describe the music like "Chill, updbeat, with a lot of synthesizers and atmospheric sounds" as opposed to "Experimental 3rd wave indie-trance-pop" or something.

(04-30-2014, 01:37 PM)Grungie Wrote: [ -> ]@Sam, what do you consider Asking Alexandria and Bring Me the Horizon and similar bands if they're not metalcore.

Metal. Just very basic and "cringey" metal, lol. I'm not one of those guys who calls those bands that don't fit my arbitrary standard "not metal". AA and BMTH are Metal, since they fit the basic characteristics of metal. (Side-note: Breakdowns aren't strictly a Hardcore thing, lol. In fact, Hardcore bands never used breakdowns to the degree that bands like AA and BTMH and such do. I'm not sure how the media got the idea that any band that uses breakdowns is some kind of "-core" band.)

I didn't know they have regular metal anymore. Figured every band in every genre is now labeled as a subgenre. Like there's no more straight up rock or punk bands anymore.

(04-30-2014, 03:15 PM)Grungie Wrote: [ -> ]I didn't know they have regular metal anymore. Figured every band in every genre is now labeled as a subgenre. Like there's no more straight up rock or punk bands anymore.

They do fit into a subgenre. I just don't listen to them (and dislike them), so I don't care where they fit. :lol:

Basically you're just being an ass.

Anyway, I love how I was talking about how I was going to make it a thing to listen to all of my music in my iTunes at least once. I'm doing okay at it, but it's not helping when I'm downloading a handful of shit lately....

I made a playlist of songs with zero plays, about 3047 to go.....

Yes and no.



Most of those type of bands aren't easy to fit into a subgenre, because they take influences from a few different subgenres.

But I also don't care. lol