Hello everybody and welcome to The Noisegarden! Due to the lack of new releases that actually interest me and due to my lately obsessive listening sessions that involve The Dillinger Escape Plan’s discography (due to the fact that this marvelous band has broken up at the end of 2017) I’ve decided to do another genre guide, another walk through the dizzy Noisegarden. This time I wanna tackle mathcore. So, what is mathcore? Basically, this genre is the offspring of hardcore punk, extreme metal and a wide array of experimental genres such as free jazz, noise rock, grindcore and progressive metal. Are you confused yet? Good, then… To simplify it, it’s a chaotic, spastic and all over the place kind of metalcore, kinda. This genre was created in the 90s and was influenced by many bands such as Terrorizer, Neurosis, Cave In, Converge, Botch and later it gave birth to genres such as metalcore and deathcore, later in the early 2000s. Now, I guess you wonder what does this music sound like, well: blast beats, overwhelmingly fast guitar arpeggios, brutal breakdowns, shouted vocals and a lot of changes regarding time signatures, which most of the time end up being weird ones such as 7/8, 10/8, 7/4 or even shit like 24/32 or 9/16. You could call this music both experimental, avantgarde and brutal. So, without further ado, let me recommend you, my dear reader, 5 amazing albums that’ll get you into mathcore.
1) Every Time I Die – Hot Damn!
Maybe not ETID’s best album, maybe not an instant classic in this genre, but I think that this album is a good introduction to what mathcore is all about. You have fast paced drumming, dissonant guitars and mindless tapping, despaired shrieks and, actually, a lot of hardcore sensibility attached to it. If you like hardcore punk and metalcore, it’ll be easy for you to digest this record because, trust me, mathcore is not afraid to push the sonic boundary a lot of the times, but this 2003 release is an amazing, catchy, hectic and tame album. I cannot recommend Every Time I Die’s discography enough, this is a band that juggles between mathcore, hardcore punk and southern metal, but their sophomore record is still filled with this youthful aggression, whereas their older material is more mature and thought through.
2) Converge – Jane Doe
I wanna say this now, just as a friendly reminder, I am obsessed with this band, basically a fan girl. So, where was I? This 2001 Leviathan of a record is an important one for a lot of genres at the same time, it’s an album that paves the starting point for a lot of amazing musical journeys, upgrades and beginnings: metalcore, mathcore, hardcore punk, extreme metal, all of these genres have to thank their evolution into the 21st century to this album. Since the first echoed and panicked guitar strums of “Concubine”, the band is basically telling the listener to fasten their seat belt, because it’s gonna be a frenetic ride through shrieking vocals, chaotic time signature shifts, fast blast beats, dissonant guitar chords and hellish arpeggios. This album is both a rock classic, one of the best 21st century records, a massive hardcore, metalcore, mathcore album and overall, a 10/10 listening experience. If you won’t enjoy this the first time you hear, trust me, it’ll grow on ya.
3) Botch – We Are the Romans
Before “Jane Doe” we had Botch’s “We Are the Romans” to thank for the evolution and inception of mathcore. This album conveys the same aggressive characteristics that we’ve discussed earlier (and will do ’til the end of the post), but what I love about this record it’s the dark vibes that it has. It’s not that adrenaline filled, it has grande and epic instrumentals that depict this downward spiral into madness, into an inferno kinda place. The lyricism is dark, it reflects North American society and false values and it’s really political. Maybe that’s what makes this such an amazing LP, it fuses chaos with larger than life and it’s all blended in darkness. Unfortunately for us, this band has only been active for nearly 10, putting it all to an end in 2002. Nonetheless, these guys are legends too, both for hardcore and for metalcore, just like Converge.
4) Norma Jean – Redeemer
This is another band that has contributed to the scene quite a lot, and even though their a so-called “Christian metal” band, that doesn’t take away from their technical capabilities and musical craft. For me, religion as a lyrical theme is just like any other theme. And I have a message to the purists, if you continue to say that religion has no place in the metal community when it comes to its imagery and lyricism, then stop being a hypocrite and stop listening to songs about the devil and Satan. Whatever, the music is more dramatic, in my opinion, than it usually is on other mathcore releases, this is more influenced by the melodies found in metalcore acts such as Killswitch Engage, but it still retains those absurdly complex and fast sections, don’t get me wrong. But this album is amazing to show another side of mathcore, that this genre is not an absurdly fast music style, it can go many places on the sonic spectrum and, I think that it kicks a fuck ton of ass.
5) The Dillinger Escape Plan – Option Paralysis
Well, I think it was obvious that I was going to include a Dillinger record in here. This band is just the embodiment of everything that we’ve talked about: complexity and technicality, fast guitars, weird time signatures and hectic shifts in rhythm, shouting vocals, jazz, prog, punk, grindocre, basically an amalgam of all that shaped mathcore into what it is today. Maybe the most commercially successful act from this genre, they helped spread the message of this extreme type of music while providing brutal, unpredictable and, yet, beautiful song structures, energetic shows and an amazing attitude towards music and the scene. This album is complex beyond any level, it’s absurd, it’s abstract, it’s concrete, it’s noisy, I dunno. I really don’t have enough words to praise “Option Paralysis” and I beg you to check their discography, because it’s so much worth it… And this post it’s a little homage paid to them due to their unfortunate breakup. I maybe love this group as much as I love Converge, and other bands, of course.
So, this is what I consider to be a good basis for you to start building upon, you can dig into these bands’ discographies (but some Norma Jean records are hit or miss) and you can find many other great ones, which I’ll recommend to you a bit later. I wanna point out a thing: I’ve brought up metalcore a lot in this post, that’s because the line between mathcore and just really aggressive metalcore is really goddamn blurry, I mean, yeah Converge does not sound like Parkway Drive, but some people argue that mathcore is just metalcore on steroids, and not a genre on its own, just like pirate metal or viking metal. But some people argue that it’s actually its own thing and shit, and I stand on that side of the argument. But yeah, we metalheads love to argue about genres. So, ending this post I wanna recommend you other 5 amazing mathcore releases. So guys and girls, peace and see you next time in The Noisegarden!
Every Time I Die – Low Teens (their latest album which is mature, sober and dark and it blends melody and chaos beautifully);
Protest the Hero – Volition (prog metal and mathcore clash into a hyper-energetic and technical release by this Canadian powerhouse);
The Tony Danza Tapdance Extravaganza – Self Titled (a weird, quirky and brutal album that challenges the listener with muddy and brutal d-beat drumming, guttural vocals and weird guitar patterns);
Car Bomb – Centralia (this band is also weird, but their brutality and quirkiness borders on influences brought by genres such as grindocre, brutal death metal, progressive metal and jazz, maybe the most extreme record from the list);
Between the Buried and Me – The Silent Circus (now a prog metal giant, but in the early 2000s they were actually a band that refreshed the scene with clever songwriting and extreme technicality).
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