For every band like Infant Annihilator, Jiluka, Lorna Shore and Knocked Loose, there has definitely been a growing trend of pushing for the breakdown and nothing else in modern metalcore/deathcore, seeking out to have the heaviest breakdown possible with none of the flavor and clever songwriting behind it. Have you noticed this, and are you a fan of this direction or not? You can let me know down below, I can't wait to hear your opinions on it!!!!!!! But for now, cheers, rock on, stay heavy and have yourselves a fantastic rest of your day or night, depending on when you see this!!!!!!! 🤘🤘🤘🤘🤘🤘🤘
Welp. I completely agree with everything you said lmao. Just tune it way lower than the rest of the song and add all the sounds you can push in there. Bonus points if you somehow make a slower breakdown in the end.
The modern core breakdown has totally destroyed the average bands ability to write a song. It’s just about getting your snippet to go viral on TikTok now, no real deep artistic expression just copying Lorna shore and knocked loose (although this issue imo existed long before those bands got popular). The breakdown in modern core is always extremely predictable and sounds like every other bands breakdown. Breakdowns in metal are not new they’ve existed since the 80s and death metal had breakdowns since the early 90s/late 80s. The difference is those bands didn’t over rely on breakdowns and the song tended to lead more fluidly into the breakdown instead of abruptly turning silent than forcing it like these modern bands. Of course it also doesn’t help that modern production is trash with pretty much all metalcore/deathcore bands the guitars sound too computerized and the drums are usually too overpowering in the mix. Another thing I notice way too often is that breakdowns are almost always just broken open chugging. When u listen to older bands their breakdowns weren’t just breakdowns they often were actual riffs
There is an issue with breakdowns people are not saying is that at its core, no pun intended. We’re at a point where bands are running out of ideas to come up with unique rhythms for breakdowns. Actually I would say every breakdown that is possible has already be done. A lot of “metalcore” bands fill their mid af songs bridges with a breakdown that has a synth or some other noise that drowns out the chugs. I miss when breakdowns was just naked and sometimes have discordance be present in them. But bands need to go back to focus on writing good songs as a whole. Place the breakdowns in places where it makes sense so they hit hard.
I definitely think that's real. It's funny how I've been getting back into a lot of late 90's and early 2000's screamo/metalcore music and some of the simplicity of their breakdowns and primal songwriting hits 10x harder than some of the over the top modern stuff and that says a lot. I'd love to do a list sometime of my favorite old-school metalcore breakdowns, think it'd be fun to show how different it is now comparatively speaking. I think there's good to both.
I can somewhat agree that the breakdown has become an interesting facet of metalcore songs, and some bands seemingly tack on a breakdown to get the "OOOOOOHHHHHHHHH" type of reaction from the reactors (*cough cough* Wage War - Magnetic *cough*). The real innovation in breakdowns comes from bands that do something unique with it, either making it an essential part of the song or building it up in such a way that doesn't feel forced or dropped in there. A good example comes from an artist that isn't even in the metalcore scene, Kobaryo. Kobaryo is primarily a J-Core/Speedcore artist who has different personas representing different genres, such as one for industrial noise, one for trance, and even one for metal! On his latest album, HiTNEX ViRTUAL SHiFTERZ, Kobaryo combines several of his personas together for these insane collaborations of genres, and prominently features his metal side throughout the entire record. My favorite breakdown of the year so far comes from the last song on the record, "Emergence Failure." Highly recommend giving it a listen, as both a Kobaryo fan and a metal fan, this album SLAPS.
The over-reliance on breakdowns is what turned me off to Metalcore and Deathcore for a number of years. It always feels so anti-climatic, especially when I've started listening to Thrash and Death Metal bands first and they always seem to have much more dynamics with their song writing. I would just sit there listing to the core bands and be like "Are you gonna actually do something or are you just gonna stop-chug-chug-stop?"
Oh for sure! I love a lot of metalcore and I'm an apologist for it and I love the gnarly stuff but lord if it doesn't, at times, get a bit...old, especially with new bands that fizzle out so fast yknow lol.
@@TheMetalTempestYT I would see sometimes see local core bands somehow getting on the bill of bigger death metal bands and when they were on, I would just be so bored. And there would be like 3 of them before the headliner would come on.
I don't find modern metalcore very interesting. There are a few bands that I still follow today, and on the newer end, I think Paledusk has some fun songs, but other than that, I listen to metalcore from 10-15 years ago. It was just better back before it became "generic hard rock with a breakdown after the second chorus", or a pissing contest of who can be heavier. I just want fun riff salad metalcore that actually goes somewhere. Old Born of Osiris, Veil of Maya, August Burns Red, Attila, and many more were great. I still like new After the Burial, I like most of Within the Ruins' albums, but I think they've gotten a bit stale in the past couple albums, and I think this Chelsea Grin is better than any lineup with original members. I'm just not getting genuine vibes from newer metalcore. I've heard songs here and there from other bands that I can get into, but they don't stick with me.
oh hey this is the first time i’ve ever seen jiluka mentioned in a video! loved listening to them in 2019 but i swear i forgot about them, cool to know they’re still around and seemingly a bit more popular than they were a few years ago (:
My personal problem with breakdowns is that a lot of them are unnecessary. I love a good chugga chugga but many modern bands just put them in there because they can. I don't mind weird song structures, (Im a prog fan), but adding random breakdowns ends up making things disorienting, and not in a good way. Why can't people just make a song? For instance in the new Dealer record (awesome by the way) there was a unexpected chill vibey song "Pearl" that was awesome, I wanted to put it on a chill vibey playlist right? I got to the end and there was 0s and a really heavy part. I wondered why they would ruin a perfectly good song. Don't they have the rest of the album to go heavy? In my opinion that breakdown just didn't even make sense, it was just put in there because they HAVE to have a breakdown. When you listen to a generic song and are like "time for the 100th breakdown," It looses its impact. If every song has a breakdown then they all blend together. You need to have the contrast to make that breakdown stand out. Just my 2 cents.
I genuinely believe the proliferation of breakdown heavy music and the overly done djenty chug fest that is a lot of contemporary metal exists as a consequence of social media/internet influence on young musicians wanting to get started and get their music out there earlier instead of taking more time to practice before trying to get big. It’s way easier to play 4 minutes of chugs, simple power cord changes and 0-5-7-8 guitar riffs than 4 minutes of shredding, fast or complex riffs and no real break moments to let your hands reset on the fret board. And the drums are a no brainer obvious go to style for any drummer who wants to sound “heavy” and “metal” without putting in the real work it takes to play extreme metal or even thrash. I’ve been drumming for almost 15 years, and it’s taken 15 years to be able to play stuff along the lines of behemoth, slayer or even some sort of more sophisticated death-core like Whitechapel and stuff like that with any sort of professional quality and consistency. But bro, we were playing Asking Alexandria in 10th grade, as 15 year olds with no problem. 😂 In all my years as a musician I’ve only ever met 1 guitarist good enough to play music like nile or necrophagist, but if I had a dollar for every guitarist I’ve met that could play Asking Alexandria I could buy me a new guitar 😂 And I get why, I’ve been learning guitar for about a month now and I can play some pretty good breakdown-metal-core type licks, even some simple older metal-core stuff like Bullet For My Valentine but I can’t even consistently get through all the opening riffs of master of puppets without messing it up because the downstroke stamina required alone is far more advanced guitar playing than something like a prophecy 😂
Oh my god haha, I love early whitechapel and asking alexandria! In the grand scheme of things there's something to be said about simple riff-writing vs. complex and I've always been a staunch advocate for saying you don't have to be the heaviest thing ever to be good and alternatively the most complex stuff isn't always the best. There really is a line to walk! And I'd just love to see people be a bit more diverse with their thinking and not see it so black and white. :) cheers!
Granted they’re not metal core, but Good Terms is such a breath of fresh air. They put in breakdowns but it all flows together so seamlessly, it feels like it wouldn’t have worked any other way
If everyone is trying to one-up each other over one little part, then it saps up tons of energy from making entire Metalcore songs actually listenable.
In metalcore I have much less of an issue with this tbh. Altho breakdowns in songs that don't warrant them do pop up, specifically in lighter songs like the first Wage War single and basically ever MMF song, I have MUCH more of a problem with this in deathcore. In lighter metalcore songs breakdowns can actually make for good contrast if done seemlessly, particularly in the case of Invent Animate and TDWP, and in heavier metalcore songs it usually doesn't feel as overkill to me. Breakdowns in modern deathcore actually make me mad sometimes lol, and I genuinely believe Lorna Shore is the biggest offender of this. Let it be known, Lorna Shore is one of my favorite bands of all time and I will always have the utmost respect for them, the damn breakdowns get on my nerves now. I started to have this problem with Immortal to some degree, especially in the case of Hollow Sentence, but the album didn't stick with me in general as much so it didn't bother me. AIRTN I also don't have so much of an issue with; I could do without the second and third breakdowns in To The Hellfire (sue me) and the breakdown in Of The Abyss, but they don't get to me too much. The breakdowns on Pain Remains on the other hand at some times infuriate me with how tacked on and pointless they feel. Everything apart from the breakdowns on Pain Remains is absolutely MASTERFUL imo, they managed to make some of the most overbearing music in recent memory somewhat digestible and catchy, which I view as a massive accomplishment. The breakdowns then come in and just fuck up the song pacings without fail for me and it's actually tragic. Welcome Back O' Sleeping Dreamer gets somewhat of a pass bc the whole song is so unnecessarily relentless even by Lorna standards in a good way, but literally all the other ones I could do without. The worst offender is Cursed to Die imo; that song is absolutely GORGEOUS and triumphant in literally every other part, then the breakdown hits and it ruins the mood every damn time I hear it.
Yeah breakdown needs to be creative these days. I like jiluka for thr edm breakdown into metal and knocked loose for the Puerto Rico sounding breakdown in the newest album. Add some flare with into your music and breakdown as well.
For every band like Infant Annihilator, Jiluka, Lorna Shore and Knocked Loose, there has definitely been a growing trend of pushing for the breakdown and nothing else in modern metalcore/deathcore, seeking out to have the heaviest breakdown possible with none of the flavor and clever songwriting behind it. Have you noticed this, and are you a fan of this direction or not? You can let me know down below, I can't wait to hear your opinions on it!!!!!!! But for now, cheers, rock on, stay heavy and have yourselves a fantastic rest of your day or night, depending on when you see this!!!!!!! 🤘🤘🤘🤘🤘🤘🤘
Welp. I completely agree with everything you said lmao. Just tune it way lower than the rest of the song and add all the sounds you can push in there. Bonus points if you somehow make a slower breakdown in the end.
The modern core breakdown has totally destroyed the average bands ability to write a song. It’s just about getting your snippet to go viral on TikTok now, no real deep artistic expression just copying Lorna shore and knocked loose (although this issue imo existed long before those bands got popular). The breakdown in modern core is always extremely predictable and sounds like every other bands breakdown. Breakdowns in metal are not new they’ve existed since the 80s and death metal had breakdowns since the early 90s/late 80s. The difference is those bands didn’t over rely on breakdowns and the song tended to lead more fluidly into the breakdown instead of abruptly turning silent than forcing it like these modern bands. Of course it also doesn’t help that modern production is trash with pretty much all metalcore/deathcore bands the guitars sound too computerized and the drums are usually too overpowering in the mix. Another thing I notice way too often is that breakdowns are almost always just broken open chugging. When u listen to older bands their breakdowns weren’t just breakdowns they often were actual riffs
There is an issue with breakdowns people are not saying is that at its core, no pun intended. We’re at a point where bands are running out of ideas to come up with unique rhythms for breakdowns. Actually I would say every breakdown that is possible has already be done. A lot of “metalcore” bands fill their mid af songs bridges with a breakdown that has a synth or some other noise that drowns out the chugs. I miss when breakdowns was just naked and sometimes have discordance be present in them. But bands need to go back to focus on writing good songs as a whole. Place the breakdowns in places where it makes sense so they hit hard.
I definitely think that's real.
It's funny how I've been getting back into a lot of late 90's and early 2000's screamo/metalcore music and some of the simplicity of their breakdowns and primal songwriting hits 10x harder than some of the over the top modern stuff and that says a lot. I'd love to do a list sometime of my favorite old-school metalcore breakdowns, think it'd be fun to show how different it is now comparatively speaking. I think there's good to both.
I can somewhat agree that the breakdown has become an interesting facet of metalcore songs, and some bands seemingly tack on a breakdown to get the "OOOOOOHHHHHHHHH" type of reaction from the reactors (*cough cough* Wage War - Magnetic *cough*). The real innovation in breakdowns comes from bands that do something unique with it, either making it an essential part of the song or building it up in such a way that doesn't feel forced or dropped in there.
A good example comes from an artist that isn't even in the metalcore scene, Kobaryo. Kobaryo is primarily a J-Core/Speedcore artist who has different personas representing different genres, such as one for industrial noise, one for trance, and even one for metal! On his latest album, HiTNEX ViRTUAL SHiFTERZ, Kobaryo combines several of his personas together for these insane collaborations of genres, and prominently features his metal side throughout the entire record. My favorite breakdown of the year so far comes from the last song on the record, "Emergence Failure." Highly recommend giving it a listen, as both a Kobaryo fan and a metal fan, this album SLAPS.
The over-reliance on breakdowns is what turned me off to Metalcore and Deathcore for a number of years. It always feels so anti-climatic, especially when I've started listening to Thrash and Death Metal bands first and they always seem to have much more dynamics with their song writing. I would just sit there listing to the core bands and be like "Are you gonna actually do something or are you just gonna stop-chug-chug-stop?"
Oh for sure!
I love a lot of metalcore and I'm an apologist for it and I love the gnarly stuff but lord if it doesn't, at times, get a bit...old, especially with new bands that fizzle out so fast yknow lol.
@@TheMetalTempestYT I would see sometimes see local core bands somehow getting on the bill of bigger death metal bands and when they were on, I would just be so bored. And there would be like 3 of them before the headliner would come on.
1:10 that's not what the loudness war is. The loudness war is a mixing/mastering thing, and started in the 90s
Yeah! I've talked about it before. The overcompression, distortion etc!
modern metal core need to write *a* song not a breakdown song
full agree
Haven't heard of Jiluka before, which album of theirs would you recommend?
Xanadu for album! But if you want a taste test of imo their best song, Venom or Blvck!
@@TheMetalTempestYT thanks! will check them out now.
I don't find modern metalcore very interesting. There are a few bands that I still follow today, and on the newer end, I think Paledusk has some fun songs, but other than that, I listen to metalcore from 10-15 years ago. It was just better back before it became "generic hard rock with a breakdown after the second chorus", or a pissing contest of who can be heavier. I just want fun riff salad metalcore that actually goes somewhere. Old Born of Osiris, Veil of Maya, August Burns Red, Attila, and many more were great. I still like new After the Burial, I like most of Within the Ruins' albums, but I think they've gotten a bit stale in the past couple albums, and I think this Chelsea Grin is better than any lineup with original members. I'm just not getting genuine vibes from newer metalcore. I've heard songs here and there from other bands that I can get into, but they don't stick with me.
oh hey this is the first time i’ve ever seen jiluka mentioned in a video! loved listening to them in 2019 but i swear i forgot about them, cool to know they’re still around and seemingly a bit more popular than they were a few years ago (:
My personal problem with breakdowns is that a lot of them are unnecessary. I love a good chugga chugga but many modern bands just put them in there because they can.
I don't mind weird song structures, (Im a prog fan), but adding random breakdowns ends up making things disorienting, and not in a good way. Why can't people just make a song?
For instance in the new Dealer record (awesome by the way) there was a unexpected chill vibey song "Pearl" that was awesome, I wanted to put it on a chill vibey playlist right? I got to the end and there was 0s and a really heavy part. I wondered why they would ruin a perfectly good song. Don't they have the rest of the album to go heavy? In my opinion that breakdown just didn't even make sense, it was just put in there because they HAVE to have a breakdown.
When you listen to a generic song and are like "time for the 100th breakdown," It looses its impact. If every song has a breakdown then they all blend together. You need to have the contrast to make that breakdown stand out.
Just my 2 cents.
I genuinely believe the proliferation of breakdown heavy music and the overly done djenty chug fest that is a lot of contemporary metal exists as a consequence of social media/internet influence on young musicians wanting to get started and get their music out there earlier instead of taking more time to practice before trying to get big.
It’s way easier to play 4 minutes of chugs, simple power cord changes and 0-5-7-8 guitar riffs than 4 minutes of shredding, fast or complex riffs and no real break moments to let your hands reset on the fret board. And the drums are a no brainer obvious go to style for any drummer who wants to sound “heavy” and “metal” without putting in the real work it takes to play extreme metal or even thrash.
I’ve been drumming for almost 15 years, and it’s taken 15 years to be able to play stuff along the lines of behemoth, slayer or even some sort of more sophisticated death-core like Whitechapel and stuff like that with any sort of professional quality and consistency. But bro, we were playing Asking Alexandria in 10th grade, as 15 year olds with no problem. 😂
In all my years as a musician I’ve only ever met 1 guitarist good enough to play music like nile or necrophagist, but if I had a dollar for every guitarist I’ve met that could play Asking Alexandria I could buy me a new guitar 😂
And I get why, I’ve been learning guitar for about a month now and I can play some pretty good breakdown-metal-core type licks, even some simple older metal-core stuff like Bullet For My Valentine but I can’t even consistently get through all the opening riffs of master of puppets without messing it up because the downstroke stamina required alone is far more advanced guitar playing than something like a prophecy 😂
Oh my god haha, I love early whitechapel and asking alexandria! In the grand scheme of things there's something to be said about simple riff-writing vs. complex and I've always been a staunch advocate for saying you don't have to be the heaviest thing ever to be good and alternatively the most complex stuff isn't always the best. There really is a line to walk! And I'd just love to see people be a bit more diverse with their thinking and not see it so black and white. :) cheers!
Granted they’re not metal core, but Good Terms is such a breath of fresh air. They put in breakdowns but it all flows together so seamlessly, it feels like it wouldn’t have worked any other way
If everyone is trying to one-up each other over one little part, then it saps up tons of energy from making entire Metalcore songs actually listenable.
Amen to that, that's so real
In metalcore I have much less of an issue with this tbh. Altho breakdowns in songs that don't warrant them do pop up, specifically in lighter songs like the first Wage War single and basically ever MMF song, I have MUCH more of a problem with this in deathcore. In lighter metalcore songs breakdowns can actually make for good contrast if done seemlessly, particularly in the case of Invent Animate and TDWP, and in heavier metalcore songs it usually doesn't feel as overkill to me. Breakdowns in modern deathcore actually make me mad sometimes lol, and I genuinely believe Lorna Shore is the biggest offender of this. Let it be known, Lorna Shore is one of my favorite bands of all time and I will always have the utmost respect for them, the damn breakdowns get on my nerves now. I started to have this problem with Immortal to some degree, especially in the case of Hollow Sentence, but the album didn't stick with me in general as much so it didn't bother me. AIRTN I also don't have so much of an issue with; I could do without the second and third breakdowns in To The Hellfire (sue me) and the breakdown in Of The Abyss, but they don't get to me too much. The breakdowns on Pain Remains on the other hand at some times infuriate me with how tacked on and pointless they feel. Everything apart from the breakdowns on Pain Remains is absolutely MASTERFUL imo, they managed to make some of the most overbearing music in recent memory somewhat digestible and catchy, which I view as a massive accomplishment. The breakdowns then come in and just fuck up the song pacings without fail for me and it's actually tragic. Welcome Back O' Sleeping Dreamer gets somewhat of a pass bc the whole song is so unnecessarily relentless even by Lorna standards in a good way, but literally all the other ones I could do without. The worst offender is Cursed to Die imo; that song is absolutely GORGEOUS and triumphant in literally every other part, then the breakdown hits and it ruins the mood every damn time I hear it.
Yeah breakdown needs to be creative these days. I like jiluka for thr edm breakdown into metal and knocked loose for the Puerto Rico sounding breakdown in the newest album. Add some flare with into your music and breakdown as well.