Genre story · Metal
Deathcore
Death metal's extreme riffing colliding with hardcore and metalcore's blunt rhythmic breakdowns.
Deathcore developed through several overlapping underground scenes during the late 1990s and early 2000s. Montreal's Despised Icon and California's Antagony are frequently cited among its early practitioners. MySpace then helped musicians and audiences find each other across cities that had no shared physical scene. By the middle of the decade, Suicide Silence, All Shall Perish and Whitechapel made the approach widely recognizable. Musicians involved in the earliest recordings did not necessarily call it deathcore at the time.
Two kinds of heaviness
Death-metal blast beats and low, guttural vocals meet tight guitar patterns, syncopated stop-start riffs and slower breakdowns. Some artists lean toward technical Death Metal, others toward a more direct hardcore-derived pulse. The contrast gives the style its shape: speed and detailed picking interrupted by short, brutally weighted passages.
Where its name comes from
Deathcore is a fusion of death metal and hardcore-related styles, particularly Metalcore. It is not a synonym for death metal, nor is every death-metal band that uses a breakdown automatically deathcore. The genre also changed over time, incorporating more technical and symphonic elements in later waves.
Essential recordings
- 2005Despised IconThe Healing ProcessA landmark of the first recognizable wave.
- 2007Suicide SilenceThe CleansingAn influential record from the MySpace-era expansion.
- 2007WhitechapelThe Somatic DefilementA heavier, death-metal-oriented take on the early formula.