If we received a nickel every time a musician complained to us about genre categories we'd be able to buy a luxury condo in Central Park. Sure, there are too many subgenres and bands tend to get pigeonholed within music types, but as someone famous once said, writing about music is like dancing to architecture. In order to give readers an idea of what a band sounds like, it's necessary to present terms that they understand. And, to be honest, the only ones we've really heard gripe about critics categorizing bands are the bands that don't wish to be placed in those particular categories, even if they accurately describe their music. Having said that, here's In This Moment's Chris Howorth sounding off about his distaste of genres. Click more for the guest blog.
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As a kid growing up in the late '80s and early '90s, I always loved heavy music. It started with Kiss, Metallica, Motley Crue, Ratt, Bon Jovi, Megadeth, Testament, W.A.S.P., Slayer, AC/DC, Priest, Maiden, Sabbath, Ozzy, Pantera, ect. Basically, I listened to any and all the great rock and metal bands I could. Sonically, I knew some of these bands were different from each other, whether they had louder guitars, more singing, screaming or shouting. And they looked different, too, from the way they dressed and acted. But all these bands were considered metal or hard rock. I don't know when the need to label every genre or subgenre with all these ridiculous names started, but it has really gotten out of hand.
I have personal reasons for being annoyed by this labeling phenomenon since my band, In This Moment, has been called everything from emocore, metalcore, gothcore, and goth to swedish death metal and thrash. We've been reviewed by numerous magazines and Web zines, and all the reviewers gave their honest opinions of our music, but none failed to throw in a few wacky genre descriptions for good measure. I always thought we were just a rock/metal band from North Hollywood, California, but I guess that isn't enough of a description these days.
Some of these names are absurd. I did a little Google search and here are some genres I found:
Doom metal, drone metal, folk metal, glam metal, gothic metal, groove metal, industrial metal, metalcore, neo-classical metal, nu-metal, post-metal, power metal, progressive metal, sludge metal, speed metal, stoner metal, thrash metal, alternative metal, avant-garde metal, Christian metal, extreme metal, rap metal, symphonic metal, Viking metal, new wave of British heavy metal, Norwegian black metal, Scandinavian death metal, Bay Area thrash metal, Brazilian thrash metal, Teutonic thrash metal, Australian heavy metal, new wave of American heavy metal, alternative metal, avant-garde metal, blackened death metal, screamocore, gothcore, classic metal, crossover, crustcore, crust punk,
deathgrind, death metal, deathcore, glam metal, goregrind, grindcore, grunge, hatecore, hard rock, hardcore punk, heavy metal, Horror punk, industrial metal, mathcore, melodic black metal, melodic death metal, melodic hardcore, noisecore, pornogrind, post-hardcore, post-grunge, power metal,
power violence, progressive metal, sludge metal, speed metal, stoner metal, symphonic metal, thrashcore.
As a metal fan, I can honestly say I don’t need these descriptions to help me decide what to listen too. They don’t help anyone do anything except scratch their head and wonder, "What the hell does that mean?"
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