JamishT wrote:Google Play recommended August Burns Red's new album to me, and while I haven't gotten through the whole thing yet, this song, The Frost, stood out to me.
Also, question for the metalheads, does this count as metal?
I'd say no personally. Uh, pedantic rant incoming. ABR is metalcore. I kinda hate the word "metalcore." Reason being that metalcore is a hybrid genre, and as such some bands fall more on one side of the hybrid than the other, and some land on both sides of the line. In it's infancy metalcore was just hardcore + metal influence, most of the earlier bands leaned pretty heavily towards the hardcore side. (Side note: Hardcore is a style of punk, full name hardcore punk). And as with all genres, it grew and shifted, and certain bands took more influence from one side or the other, and eventually bands come about that barely resemble the originators of the genre. I wouldn't say that last point is applicable here, but there's bands that mostly get labelled as metalcore that I don't consider to fall under punk or metal.
It gets even more confusing when you look at the incestuous relationship metal and punk have had for decades. Punk started playing heavier and faster, metal borrowed influence and we got thrash metal. Punks liked it and borrowed thrash riffs, we got crossover and thrashcore. Black Flag took a heavy Black Sabbath influence on My War. Bands started playing music taking from death metal and hardcore, and we got grindcore. Then grindcore kinda went it's own weird direction, and like... that whole genre is weird to classify. Some grind is super metal, some is super punk, some is super noise, and some is just... grind. Then powerviolence comes along, is this punk thing borrowing from grind and noise. Crust punk borrowing from extreme metal, and sludge metal combining doom riffs with hardcore. Deathcore shows up and goes "yo, we want to combine metalcore with death metal riffs." Yeah, it gets confusing. It's basically two giant royal families that have decades of inbred children. Figuring out the exact lineage and genetic makeup of each bastard offspring is difficult.
For whatever reason, "metal" became the catchall term for loud heavy music for most people, so that gets thrown about a lot for people that don't know genres. Probably cause metal got the biggest. Of course everyone knows the metalheads that like to nitpick genres (me), and then you also have the punks that say X metalcore band is just sooo not punk and is totally metal. Or people who like both and are just super anal about classification (me).
What was the point of this? Oh yeah, I feel ABR is more on the hardcore side of things, what with the chugga-chugga riffs and breakdowns. There's metal influence to be sure, it's just not the predominant sound.
Oh, and looking bands up on Metal Archives is pretty nice. I agree with them about 99% of the time.