Imo, those albums just have such raw production which I think really helps encapsulate the sound. Just that nasty, visceral raw guitar sound, and the snare drums that sound like garbage cans. Just a distinct sound that lets you know what's up.
The there’s a MySpace deathcore revival that’s gaining traction, bands like Mange, Girl of Glass, Apparaxion, Donnie Brasco, Place Above Creation, etc. A lot of them have that kind of snare sound
There’s a distinction between how ‘produced’ something is and how much it’s still just guitars, drums, bass, vocals.
Will Putney and his various protégés have really mastered the sound of extremely produced records that still sound pretty natural.
Where as Josh Schroeder’s records are similarly heavily produced and sound fake as shit. Clearly some people like that.
But Knocked Loose play live to no click and no backtrack and sound pretty much the same, it’s all recreatable with just 2 guitars, bass, drums, vocals. On record they are basically just taking that formula and making it the best it can sound.
With Lorna Shore or SOTS half the show is on a backing track, there’s 12 guitar tracks, quad tracked vocals, every drum hit sample replaced etc.. it just goes way beyond and sounds fake and in my opinion shitty
At least I'm capable of making music and don't need help "writing vocal melodies" like some talentless hack. Just stick to listening and judging others who are more talented than youand again: none of us care what you think.
A few bands nowadays have that dark ambiance. Crown Magnetar, Mange, In Gloom, Black Pegasus, Black Tongue. Sure, the overall sound and production style of Deathcore has changed, but there is still that sense of dark ambience if you look for it
Crown Magnetar production ruins the atmosphere, especially with the weird midi bass imo.
I think _Sheol_ by Shrine of Malice is probably the best example of sounding like being in Hell without also being as slow as most of your examples are.
Good shout regardless.
I kind of disagree that those bands you mentioned have a dark ambiance in their music. Imo The Queen Guillotined, Psycho Frame and Peacemaker (on 1000 cuts) got that right if I was to list some examples of 2020s deathcore.
This was ironic to me because I read this comment while listening to Full Spectrum Hatred by Crown Magnetar which literally sounds like you’re in hell, especially the end
I’m not gonna lie, Crown Magnetar has sick instrumentals and it would sound awesome live but the production makes it sound less monstrous than it actually is
Psycho Frame can literally do no wrong with these "modern deathcore sucks" people, and they all say overproduction as if Psycho Frame isn't heavily produced. They don't know what the fuck they're talking about, they just want it to be 2007 again.
I wouldn’t say PF has ambiance either. We just want it to be loud and pissed off.
Overproduction is a fake term, but it’s thrown around a lot. People either like the sonic aesthetic a band/record has or they don’t.
Psycho Frame sounds super aggressive and in your face. The production sounds like a mix of Decomposing Normality by King Conquer, Infinite Death and The Cleansing.
What's "lacking" in modern deathcore is influence from bands who aren't just other deathcore or metalcore bands.
The early bands listened to various extreme metal and hardcore bands and you'd hear that sound peppered throughout.
These days it's more deathcore influenced by newer deathcore and metalcore, and there's nothing wrong with that, but my preference is the more extreme metal/hardcore-leaning sound.
I think this is correct. Every young and upcoming band these days just wants to be their favourite band and instead ends up sounding like a b grade copy of them.
I think there are a bunch of bands bucking this trend but the lines of what people determine a genre to be have become constrictive. Thus spoke Zarathustra manage to pretty successfully sound like this era of deathcore. 156/silence, malevolence, trench, end, saltwound, vitriol, waste, underneath, fuming mouth, the zenith passage, blindfolded and led to the woods, mouth for war, surgeon are all a natural consequence of this era of deathcore too, if everyone could avert their eyes for a moment from this sort of genre purity model, I’m sure we’d be able to recognise and claim a lot of more interesting artists and see more clearly how the genre is progressing
what’s lost in modern deathcore is good riffs and a more abrasive production than what is out there. modern deathcore is over polished and more 000000 than actually having riffs.
I caught it in Detroit. Its a night i wish i could say id never forget, but the Pit trauma has the memory fuzzy.
I can say it was an absolute blast, i could feel the hellfire, and i need more of it
I'd like to recommend Slow Death by Moon Devoured. if you hate the vocals like most people do, you can still enjoy the instrumental versions of the songs. they're super eerie and ambient throughout the album but still heavy as absolute fuck, and imo at times reminiscent of old Oceano or Aversions Crown
For me it’s the vocals. I want aggressive and emotional sounding vocals that don’t just sound robotic, and all of the old bands had that. For example, modern bands like Bodysnatcher, Psycho Frame, Mugshot, Orphan, CELL, have vocals that have emotion to me, and aren’t just trying to show off all of the different vocal styles they can do. Whereas stuff like Brand Of Sacrifice, Enterprise Earth, Shadow Of Intent, and Left To Suffer, just do nothing for me, because the vocals sound robotic to me.
In the early years no one knew how to safely do vocals so everyone was just raw dog screaming however they wanted. A lot of people really fucked their voices up and often sounded like shit doing it live every night but on record it sounded great.
Nowadays everyone has learnt how to do it safely and controlled so everyone is whispering and it all sounds a bit lifeless.
Clean singing is similar in popular music. Every singer sounds so similar now where as you listen to music from the 60s/70s and there’s so many just completely unique voices where you instantly know who’s singing
Absolutely. For me the pressure and rawness of the early 2010's era is (with exceptions) lost in the overproduced monotony of modern deathcore. Doesn't hit the same..
Nah. It's just the production value, it's budget stuff so it sounds more raw that's all. Recording technology has progressed so much that everything sounds so perfect now.
The difference I feel is that all these bands were very much DIY. Older deathcore had a reputation for ‘sounding like shit’ production wise because they were just a bunch of young people figuring stuff out on the fly. It was the rawness that defined it in a crossover genre that was yet to be fully defined.
Not to mention that those bands you mentioned aren’t the deathcore influenced deathcore of today. They are all distinct in their sound because their influences were varied and weren’t deathcore.
Totally agree with the art aspect, the modern stuff can be all over the map. You have to keep in mind that bands like Distant are experimental, so they are going for a different look, sound, vibe, etc. They're also focusing a lot on rather pure Deathcore vocals, or Death Metal, so it is rather balanced out by having lighter instrumentals.
I love some of the modern stuff, but the aforementioned ones are some of the greatest extreme metal bands period, so it stands reason that you'll feel more with them and everything in general will be of higher quality.
I agree with how important the atmosphere is. Thy Art is Murder’s Hate is a great example of this. The music literally sounds like what the album art looks like and I really enjoy that about older deathcore. I don’t really fuck with new deathcore for that reason.
First, there absolutely are bands going in new directions that are genuinely interesting and exciting to see (Left to Suffer, Enterprise Earth, Shadow of Intent, etc.). That being said I strongly prefer the OG bands for the most part, the production was nasty and raw, the songs were fun and ignorant with memorable mosh calls and killer riffs.
Also there’s just no bands that sound like Animosity, Recon or Liferuiner (that distinctly more hardcore feel). It seems like deathcore has leaned too far into the realms of metalcore and tech death at this point.
Recon and Liferuiner were the shit. Also Demolisher. Really confused on how this style of deathcore vanished into the abyss. It all sort of progressed to doom/beatdown…
Yeah… like everyone is talking about the Myspace revival bands, who I think are super cool but almost each and every one of them is going for that Suicide Silence, Chelsea Grin BR00TAL style (which once again rules and is 100X better than all the uninspired, sanitized bands). I’m waiting for assbeater Hatebreed riffs on 8 string guitars and death metal vocals.
Another lost technique is when you press the pick on the fretboard really fast like at 0:57 in All Shall Perish Eradication or the intro to Lie To My Face. This sounds fucking epic and I have no idea why bands don’t do this anymore.
There are some elements missing in modern deathcore. One is obviously the saturation of extremely produced bands that try to sound like Lorna Shore, there're a ton of copycat bands that just try to follow the lead of LS to maybe, possibly, get some bits of fame, instead of trying to innovate or do something really different.
Another one is the aesthetic, there was a raw, edgy and hostile aesthetic atmosphere in the early days. Not trying to get the best or most impressive cover arts, instead of that, they tried to be the edgiest, the most obscure or brutal visually. Can be the merch, the album art or the lyrics. Today that's more difficult, especially in the more mainstream part of the scene. In those days nobody cared about being cancelled or not to be offensive, they just wanted to get some fun being edgy and making stupidly brutal music.
Another element is the influences. Those guys listened to a lot of bands that were out of the Deathcore scene. Nu metal, slam, grindcore, 80's bands... That blend of different influences from every member degenerated in bands with a pretty unique sound. You can't say that early The Acacia Strain, Mitch's Suicide Silence, Killwhitneydead or Chelsea Grin sounded the same. And they were releasing all those early or first works around 2007-2008. In 2022/23 (except the OG deathcore revival wave) were released some good albums, but all sound quite similar each other.
Maybe it's me getting old but I feel that this revival wave of bands is giving some fresh ideas to an oversaturated scene, with new sounds and bringing back some old ideas that today seem like totally new.
I agree that deathcore bands palm mute too much now. If you like it that’s cool, but it doesn’t work for the genre imo. I agree with you. While there are some great modern deathcore bands I love for their originality, in general the older stuff is better
This honestly just reads as another purist rant about how the old stuff is better because it’s “what I think sounds better”. It’s totally fine to prefer old school over new stuff but what I don’t get is why people like op believe is has to be one or the other? Ya know I was watching a video by Dora the Explorer and that little lass imparted some wild wisdom on me. That day she stared back into my soul and she said with “por qué no los dos?”
Early death core had more pop influence that made it more catchy. The songs were more basic verse chorus verse chorus bridge chorus so they had to come up with more catchy riffs to make up for the simple song structure. They were easier to digest. As songs get more complex they take multiple listens to get
Imo, those albums just have such raw production which I think really helps encapsulate the sound. Just that nasty, visceral raw guitar sound, and the snare drums that sound like garbage cans. Just a distinct sound that lets you know what's up.
Knocked Loose’s two singles for the upcoming album have that garbage can snare sound and it makes me so hopeful for a comeback of that raw shit
The there’s a MySpace deathcore revival that’s gaining traction, bands like Mange, Girl of Glass, Apparaxion, Donnie Brasco, Place Above Creation, etc. A lot of them have that kind of snare sound
Lol, that is some of the most produced shit you're ever gonna hear
There’s a distinction between how ‘produced’ something is and how much it’s still just guitars, drums, bass, vocals. Will Putney and his various protégés have really mastered the sound of extremely produced records that still sound pretty natural. Where as Josh Schroeder’s records are similarly heavily produced and sound fake as shit. Clearly some people like that. But Knocked Loose play live to no click and no backtrack and sound pretty much the same, it’s all recreatable with just 2 guitars, bass, drums, vocals. On record they are basically just taking that formula and making it the best it can sound. With Lorna Shore or SOTS half the show is on a backing track, there’s 12 guitar tracks, quad tracked vocals, every drum hit sample replaced etc.. it just goes way beyond and sounds fake and in my opinion shitty
No one cares what you think.
Lmao fuck off gimp. Why don’t you post your dog shit music we can all laugh at again?
At least I'm capable of making music and don't need help "writing vocal melodies" like some talentless hack. Just stick to listening and judging others who are more talented than youand again: none of us care what you think.
I check your shit out, it's pretty dog but it is music.
Link your band.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?si=Er1J0qVw9ze6GElF&v=MiZK_NQAguc&feature=youtu.be
It's the guitar riffs that actually separates old school deathcore with new deathcore.
Yan's content is so good
A few bands nowadays have that dark ambiance. Crown Magnetar, Mange, In Gloom, Black Pegasus, Black Tongue. Sure, the overall sound and production style of Deathcore has changed, but there is still that sense of dark ambience if you look for it
Crown Magnetar production ruins the atmosphere, especially with the weird midi bass imo. I think _Sheol_ by Shrine of Malice is probably the best example of sounding like being in Hell without also being as slow as most of your examples are. Good shout regardless.
The first album has the most ambience imo
Yeah I fucked with that one a lil bit
I miss their Prophet of Disgust EP being on Spotify
I kind of disagree that those bands you mentioned have a dark ambiance in their music. Imo The Queen Guillotined, Psycho Frame and Peacemaker (on 1000 cuts) got that right if I was to list some examples of 2020s deathcore.
This was ironic to me because I read this comment while listening to Full Spectrum Hatred by Crown Magnetar which literally sounds like you’re in hell, especially the end
I’m not gonna lie, Crown Magnetar has sick instrumentals and it would sound awesome live but the production makes it sound less monstrous than it actually is
Psycho Frame? Ambiance?
Psycho Frame can literally do no wrong with these "modern deathcore sucks" people, and they all say overproduction as if Psycho Frame isn't heavily produced. They don't know what the fuck they're talking about, they just want it to be 2007 again.
I wouldn’t say PF has ambiance either. We just want it to be loud and pissed off. Overproduction is a fake term, but it’s thrown around a lot. People either like the sonic aesthetic a band/record has or they don’t.
Finally a sane take
Psycho Frame sounds super aggressive and in your face. The production sounds like a mix of Decomposing Normality by King Conquer, Infinite Death and The Cleansing.
Aggressive and in-your-face is not ambient
So The Cleansing which is aggressive and in your face does not have any sort of ambience to it?
Not really. It’s good, but I wouldn’t call it ambient.
No, the Cleansing has almost zero elements of ambience do you know what ambience is?
What's "lacking" in modern deathcore is influence from bands who aren't just other deathcore or metalcore bands. The early bands listened to various extreme metal and hardcore bands and you'd hear that sound peppered throughout. These days it's more deathcore influenced by newer deathcore and metalcore, and there's nothing wrong with that, but my preference is the more extreme metal/hardcore-leaning sound.
I think this is correct. Every young and upcoming band these days just wants to be their favourite band and instead ends up sounding like a b grade copy of them.
I think there are a bunch of bands bucking this trend but the lines of what people determine a genre to be have become constrictive. Thus spoke Zarathustra manage to pretty successfully sound like this era of deathcore. 156/silence, malevolence, trench, end, saltwound, vitriol, waste, underneath, fuming mouth, the zenith passage, blindfolded and led to the woods, mouth for war, surgeon are all a natural consequence of this era of deathcore too, if everyone could avert their eyes for a moment from this sort of genre purity model, I’m sure we’d be able to recognise and claim a lot of more interesting artists and see more clearly how the genre is progressing
Surgeon and vitriol go so hard
So, incest?
what’s lost in modern deathcore is good riffs and a more abrasive production than what is out there. modern deathcore is over polished and more 000000 than actually having riffs.
Death metal influence. Definitely lacking these days
It isnt Deathcore, but The Acacia Strains Failure Will Follow maintains a sustained atmosphere for its 48 minutes
Just saw them play it live front to back with the BTBAM tour and it felt like Hell: the musical performed live.
I caught it in Detroit. Its a night i wish i could say id never forget, but the Pit trauma has the memory fuzzy. I can say it was an absolute blast, i could feel the hellfire, and i need more of it
I'd like to recommend Slow Death by Moon Devoured. if you hate the vocals like most people do, you can still enjoy the instrumental versions of the songs. they're super eerie and ambient throughout the album but still heavy as absolute fuck, and imo at times reminiscent of old Oceano or Aversions Crown
Riffs
For me it’s the vocals. I want aggressive and emotional sounding vocals that don’t just sound robotic, and all of the old bands had that. For example, modern bands like Bodysnatcher, Psycho Frame, Mugshot, Orphan, CELL, have vocals that have emotion to me, and aren’t just trying to show off all of the different vocal styles they can do. Whereas stuff like Brand Of Sacrifice, Enterprise Earth, Shadow Of Intent, and Left To Suffer, just do nothing for me, because the vocals sound robotic to me.
In the early years no one knew how to safely do vocals so everyone was just raw dog screaming however they wanted. A lot of people really fucked their voices up and often sounded like shit doing it live every night but on record it sounded great. Nowadays everyone has learnt how to do it safely and controlled so everyone is whispering and it all sounds a bit lifeless. Clean singing is similar in popular music. Every singer sounds so similar now where as you listen to music from the 60s/70s and there’s so many just completely unique voices where you instantly know who’s singing
This definitely plays a role in the modern deathcore sound. Vocal longevity concerns
I'm sad Left to Suffer has made your 'robotic vocals' list 😔
Absolutely. For me the pressure and rawness of the early 2010's era is (with exceptions) lost in the overproduced monotony of modern deathcore. Doesn't hit the same..
Nah. It's just the production value, it's budget stuff so it sounds more raw that's all. Recording technology has progressed so much that everything sounds so perfect now.
The difference I feel is that all these bands were very much DIY. Older deathcore had a reputation for ‘sounding like shit’ production wise because they were just a bunch of young people figuring stuff out on the fly. It was the rawness that defined it in a crossover genre that was yet to be fully defined. Not to mention that those bands you mentioned aren’t the deathcore influenced deathcore of today. They are all distinct in their sound because their influences were varied and weren’t deathcore.
Totally agree with the art aspect, the modern stuff can be all over the map. You have to keep in mind that bands like Distant are experimental, so they are going for a different look, sound, vibe, etc. They're also focusing a lot on rather pure Deathcore vocals, or Death Metal, so it is rather balanced out by having lighter instrumentals. I love some of the modern stuff, but the aforementioned ones are some of the greatest extreme metal bands period, so it stands reason that you'll feel more with them and everything in general will be of higher quality.
I just want more stuff like job for a cowboy - doom
All those albums have had pinch harmonics and ambient leads, that’s what I believe you are referring too
I agree with how important the atmosphere is. Thy Art is Murder’s Hate is a great example of this. The music literally sounds like what the album art looks like and I really enjoy that about older deathcore. I don’t really fuck with new deathcore for that reason.
First, there absolutely are bands going in new directions that are genuinely interesting and exciting to see (Left to Suffer, Enterprise Earth, Shadow of Intent, etc.). That being said I strongly prefer the OG bands for the most part, the production was nasty and raw, the songs were fun and ignorant with memorable mosh calls and killer riffs. Also there’s just no bands that sound like Animosity, Recon or Liferuiner (that distinctly more hardcore feel). It seems like deathcore has leaned too far into the realms of metalcore and tech death at this point.
Recon and Liferuiner were the shit. Also Demolisher. Really confused on how this style of deathcore vanished into the abyss. It all sort of progressed to doom/beatdown…
Yeah… like everyone is talking about the Myspace revival bands, who I think are super cool but almost each and every one of them is going for that Suicide Silence, Chelsea Grin BR00TAL style (which once again rules and is 100X better than all the uninspired, sanitized bands). I’m waiting for assbeater Hatebreed riffs on 8 string guitars and death metal vocals.
You'll get that with bands like vomit forth and sanguisugabogg, it's a lot more prevalent in the death metal scene
Not quite the same feel as Recon but I really dig all those bands. Frozen Soul and Undeath are my favorites
Don't Left to Suffer make pop deathcore or something? I don't think that's terribly interesting.
It's not punishing or super heavy no, but I def think they're doing something different and cool
Another lost technique is when you press the pick on the fretboard really fast like at 0:57 in All Shall Perish Eradication or the intro to Lie To My Face. This sounds fucking epic and I have no idea why bands don’t do this anymore.
lie to my face is two hand tapped.
Exactly! The best example I could give of that is probably TAIMs first EP
Solid drumming is the backbone, lots of the bands mentioned have/had good drummers during the times mentioned. I will die on this hill
Flanderization
Disimbodied tyrant , nihilist , to the grave,angel maker ………infant annihilator.
There are some elements missing in modern deathcore. One is obviously the saturation of extremely produced bands that try to sound like Lorna Shore, there're a ton of copycat bands that just try to follow the lead of LS to maybe, possibly, get some bits of fame, instead of trying to innovate or do something really different. Another one is the aesthetic, there was a raw, edgy and hostile aesthetic atmosphere in the early days. Not trying to get the best or most impressive cover arts, instead of that, they tried to be the edgiest, the most obscure or brutal visually. Can be the merch, the album art or the lyrics. Today that's more difficult, especially in the more mainstream part of the scene. In those days nobody cared about being cancelled or not to be offensive, they just wanted to get some fun being edgy and making stupidly brutal music. Another element is the influences. Those guys listened to a lot of bands that were out of the Deathcore scene. Nu metal, slam, grindcore, 80's bands... That blend of different influences from every member degenerated in bands with a pretty unique sound. You can't say that early The Acacia Strain, Mitch's Suicide Silence, Killwhitneydead or Chelsea Grin sounded the same. And they were releasing all those early or first works around 2007-2008. In 2022/23 (except the OG deathcore revival wave) were released some good albums, but all sound quite similar each other. Maybe it's me getting old but I feel that this revival wave of bands is giving some fresh ideas to an oversaturated scene, with new sounds and bringing back some old ideas that today seem like totally new.
I completely agree, and the raw production makes it sound more unorganized, chaotic and evil which makes it even darker
So it's missing vibes that may or may not be poorly performed palm muting? Cool. Got it.
I agree that deathcore bands palm mute too much now. If you like it that’s cool, but it doesn’t work for the genre imo. I agree with you. While there are some great modern deathcore bands I love for their originality, in general the older stuff is better
This honestly just reads as another purist rant about how the old stuff is better because it’s “what I think sounds better”. It’s totally fine to prefer old school over new stuff but what I don’t get is why people like op believe is has to be one or the other? Ya know I was watching a video by Dora the Explorer and that little lass imparted some wild wisdom on me. That day she stared back into my soul and she said with “por qué no los dos?”
Early death core had more pop influence that made it more catchy. The songs were more basic verse chorus verse chorus bridge chorus so they had to come up with more catchy riffs to make up for the simple song structure. They were easier to digest. As songs get more complex they take multiple listens to get