Mattowarrior's Metal Madness

I have a real problem with a lot of the metalcore bands and fans. It seems that there's this attitude that they can distill a certain element of earlier heavy metal, put a metalcore "sheen" on it, and call it something new. And I'm not really speaking of the more progressive metalcore bands, or the bands that just would rather leave Metalcore behind to some extent. 3 Inches of Blood for example, is mainly accepted in America because of their "semi-ironic" take on traditional metal in which they add in a bit of "metalcore" vocals. At least initially that is why they gained a following in a lot of ways. While true traditional bands such as Slough Feg and others get (relatively) ignored. And the part that bothers me is that many metalcore fans think there is something "new" from these bands, and that the influence "skips" straight from Iron Maiden to bands such as 3IOB. There is, and has always been a HUGE Power and Traditional...

This is a series of blogs I will be starting on what I think of the "Metalcore" scene. I will start by taking you back about 20 years when I first heard the term "Crossover". "Crossover was the combination of Metal and (Hardcore) Punk, and to my pre-teen mind it definitely represented something fresh. Flash forward about 20 years later and a music known as "Metalcore" is all the rage. They are two different things I must acknowledge. As "Hardcore" dropped a lot of the original "Punk" elements in late Eighties and Early Nineties with bands like Sick of it All, Agnostic Front, etc- it became somewhat indistinguishable from a lot of what else was happening- Groove Metal. Groove Metal included bands such as Exhorder and Pantera, and both bands included Metal, Hardcore and Crossover as influenced. Confused? Well in a way I am- but I am beginning to see where it all fits. The band "Overcast" was formed in the mid nineties, and ...