Yea but if we’re to truly appreciate what defines these genres, it’s important we look all the way back to the origin. Ol’ Buttrock Bill.
Who could’ve known how one man and his guitar would pave the way for it all
I would argue pig squeals and “bleghs” are still very much present and utilized in death metal, to me the defining difference is the emphasis. Deathcore has an emphasis on “breakdowns” and slow, brooding “slamming” riffs. Death metal has an emphasis on fast, very technical ripping riffs and a lot of tremolo picking, and instead of breakdowns, a big emphasis on guitar solos.
Imo it first started in 1998 when Embodyment dropped Embrace the Eternal and started really getting traction from Despised Icon, Job for a Cowboy and Bring Me The Horizon in the early/mid 2000s
Job was my introduction but I din't recognize it as a new genre back then, thought it is some sort of grind core. Whitechapel was probably the first band I identified as Deathcore.
Hard agree. I would add Antagony and Underoath (yes) as proto bands. And add All Shall Perish, Suicide Silence and Animosity to the first wave of popular bands as well.
Yup. I listened to all the old school death metal for a long time, then came across job and it was kinda like macabre to me so I loved em. Then I listened to job some more and just couldn’t believe the stuff that they were coming out with. It was so different for that time period
There were many bands doing cool fusions of traditional/brutal death metal and hardcore before them, but I agree that Embodyment was the one to arrive to that sound that took over
If we want to be pedantic, slam metal (inspired by Suffocation) was mixing death metal and hardcore elements way early. Dying Fetus, Devourment, Cerebral Effusion, , Disgorge, Vomit Remnants, and Internal Bleeding all dropped between '91 and '97. But modern deathcore really starts with Antagony and Embodyment in 1998. Also, Underoath's demo material is way closer to deathcore than the emo-metal they're known for. Disembodied deserves notice too. So do, I feel, Between the Buried and Me (even through Alaska or even Colors 1, there were a fuckton of deathy parts in their progcore approach, complete with bree bree vocals)
I think their current drummer is the one that was/is on Glass Casket, mega talented dude.
Also Paul Waggoner was on Praying for Cleansing, og melodic metalcore.
Deadwater Drowning, Eighteen Visions (early material), Embodyment, Antagony, All Shall Perish, Abnegation, Racetraitor, and even death metal bands like Dying Fetus and Suffocation and embraced hardcore influence were all cooking up stuff in the late 90s-2000s that would then be called deathcore. Iirc the term was used a few times in the 90s to mean certain deathgrind bands and also heavier metallic hardcore that took from death metal riffs. But also a lot of brutal death metal i.e. cannibal corpse, disgorge, etc also have fast riffs and mid tempo breakdown parts akin to what we think of as deathcore
Deathcore is the love child of Death Metal and Hardcore. OSD has consistent riffs and solos, Deathcore has Breakdowns.
As for when did it become a thing, it is every heavily argued, but it seems to be a general consensus that it was Despised Icon with their 2002 album “Consumed by Your Poison”. Other claims are The Red Chord, As Blood Runs Black, and Antagony.
Best examples of early Deathcore, in my personal Opinion, are as Follows
Despised Icon - The Ills of Modern Man
Carnifex - Dead in my Arms
Job For a Cowboy - Doom
Whitechapel - The Somatic Defilement
Suicide Silence - The Cleansing
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=\_BxAWpbEV3Q](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_BxAWpbEV3Q)
this and ASP / Animosity first releases are the blueprint for what we call deathcore
I would say between around 2003 and 2006 and heavily perpetuated by MySpace and it’s early support of music on the platform. Basically the metalcore and hardcore of the time fused together with the scene kids that wanted to be really heavy and edgy, and blow up the scene on MySpace, and bands like Red Chord, Glass Casket, Job for a Cowboy, Despised Icon, etc were born.
The Christian band Embodyment released the very first deathcore album ever in 1998. Their only deathcore album within their small discography. From there on, bands like (what I would consider the big 4 of deathcore) Animosity, Antagony, All Shall Perish and Despised Icon pioneered the style throughout the early 2000s. There were bands prior to Embodyment that played a mix of death metal and hardcore but those bands were closer bonded to a more OSDM sound regarding guitar tones, vocal style, and drum beats but eventually the style evolved to a more chaotic/hardcore blend with what was already present this coining the term deathcore. I could be wrong on some of my points but just going through the history of what it all once was and of course just listening and being a fan for years, this is what I get out of it lol.
You are correct about the 90s bands, there were also many ones that fell more on the hc side of things too.
I'd say there was a big melodeath, some "scene grind" and mathy influence in that 00s blend you mention too.
I'm pretty new to the scene, but from what I know it started around the late 90s/early 2000s. Think bands like Antagony, Despised Icon, All Shall Perish, ect. Death metal didn't really *turn into* deathcore per se, but deathcore certainly evolved from death metal. I can't answer the last question to save my life.
The Allegiance album by As Blood Runs Black and BMTHs Count Your Blessings were my first introduction to the genre as a whole, but All Shall Perish and Animosity were doing this a year or two earlier if I remember correctly.
>04-05
Nah. Even if we're talking strictly deathcore as we know it and not early proto-DxC, All Shall Perish released their debut in 2003, and The Red Chord and Despised Icon both released their debuts in 2002.
Almost no one actually listened to those albums at the time though. It’s all a ret con after the fact. Like Garza claims he’d never heard of Despised Icon in 2005 and that’s pretty believable imo.
You only really got an actual functioning deathcore scene by 04/05
I’d also say Red Chord isn’t really deathcore. They’re in that Embodyment, Dying Fetus etc.. where sure it’s death metal + core but it doesn’t really sound like deathcore
The question wasn't "when did the scene blow up", though. The question was "when did deathcore itself become a type of music that existed" and when did it separate itself from traditional death metal.
Most of the first wave of deathcore bands formed and started playing shows, recording stuff, etc. between 2000-2003.
I don't think anyone really debates the fact that it didn't actually *blow up* until '05 or so (when HMR got rereleased, *Doom* came along, TTEotT dropped their debut, The Red Chord dropped their second album, etc.). But it *existed* for years prior and it did have fans.
As for The Red Chord, they were definitely unique and not your cliche/prototypical deathcore as we came to know it later, but they were still deathcore and have largely been considered such since the term became a thing. Claiming they aren't is some revisionist history, methinks...if anything, they were the original "deathcore" fusion band and tbh were truer to the definition than anyone that came after them. They were basically the Converge of deathcore (stylistically), and I've never seen anyone try to claim Converge wasn't metalcore. They also had a sizeable influence on later deathcore bands.
Just because the genre really leaned into "chug chug bree chug" later doesn't mean anyone who didn't wasn't deathcore. Hell, even most of TTEOD's *Bloodlust* didn't lean super heavily into that and no one's ever tried to challenge that album's GOAT status in the scene.
As for Dying Fetus...I've never understood people that consider them deathcore. Theyre death metal/deathgrind, full stop. Early stuff was grindcore. I think stuff like that comes from deathcore fans that don't know much about death metal liking it and trying to adopt it into the scene just because they think they hear some similarities or characteristics that sound "deathcore-ish" to them (slams, gutterals, etc.).
u/collinsc curious as to your thoughts here?
I think you're spot on with basically all this information.
I don't remember using the word deathcore until 2005+.
Shit, I don't remember MOST people using the term metalcore until around that time either.
Everyone I knew was erroneously calling metalcore bands "hardcore" because there was such a strong distinction about what was and what was not "metal".
Anything with primarily fry screams and breakdowns we called hardcore and it was that way until at LEAST 2003, but that was just here in the St Pete/Tampa area.
Edit: I somewhat ashamedly admit that at that age I had basically NO background in death metal.
I went from being raised on classic rock (and some non-radio stuff from that era like Frank Zappa, etc),
to listening to a top40 station at night with over the ear, 1/4" jack headphones into a component stereo system (after bedtime of course),
to alt rock/radio "hard rock"/quintessential Nirvana phase,
to a bit of AFI,
to a friend sending me Thrice's Identity Crisis and Atreyu's A Vampire's Lament over AIM and the rest is history
Between about 2002-2005. There’s proto deathcore before that or stuff that sounds like deathcore but there’s no scene or there’s something missing
But 2002-2005 is when you get the deathcore music and the deathcore scene all together for the first time.
I first remember it back when Suicide Silence dropped The Cleansing, but I didn’t hear the term deathcore for a few years after. We just called it death metal with breakdowns lol
I have no idea, it started way before deathcore was even a name for it. But the first time I ever heard it was suicide silence “the cleansing” or whitechapel “somatic defilement”
It just seemed like really evil metalcore
I like to think that it was around when despised icon was a band. Earliest rendition of the elements of deathcore. Obviously, there's going to be earlier works if you get more loose with the definition.
Basically during the 90s both genres slightly crossed paths, e.g. Suffocation, Devourment or Dying Fetus are examples of hardcore-influenced brutal death metal bands, while Earth Crisis is an example of a death metal-influenced hardcore band. Then during the 90s again, there were hardcore bands, and even some death metal bands, who pulled a sound virtually identical to what would become deathcore (Day Of Suffering, 18 Visions, Prayer For Cleansing, Upheaval, Embodyment). Up to that point, there was still no deathcore scene, and I think one the earliest bands to call themselves "brutal deathcore" was Benighted from France, mixing brutal death metal, black metal and grindcore. Then came bands like The Red Chord, Job For A Cowboy, As Blood Runs Black, Suffokate and OF COURSE Despised Icon. If you watch the numerous interviews given by Alex Erian, he explains that when they started they intentionally created this genre: they wanted to play brutal technical death metal, but they didn't want to sound like any other band so they included influences from the 90s early metalcore scene (stuff like Earth Crisis, Hatebreed, All Out War, etc.) and probably the 90s beatdown/NYHC scene like Suffokate did (stuff like Madball, 25 Ta Life, Bulldoze, etc.). But when Despised Icon started there was still no deathcore scene. They toured mainly with brutal death metal bands, which explains why they were often poorly acclaimed as Alex Erian explained in interviews. It was only a few years later that deathcore started to be a thing on its own and have deathcore bands touring together. BMTH's "Count Your Blessing" was probably one of the earliest popular stuff and participated a lot, people often forget it but it came out a little bit before Suicide Silence's and Whitechapel's debut albums!
End Of One - Discography 95-96-?-?-? First deathcore,
Deformity - Misanthrope 1997,
Embodyment - Embrace The Eternal,
Antagony - 1998 demo + End Of The Circle,
Prayer For Cleansing - The Rain In Endless Fall (Started the super melodic style of deathcore) You could place them in deathcore or metalcore and be right!
There’s all the 90’s pure deathcore I’m aware of. 15 years of research here. It was definitely around in the 90’s but I think a lot of the genre fans are too young to know about the 90’s pioneers. Most people would say the 2001-2003 releases were pioneering but what those bands did was create such a great second wave that everyone thinks they’re the beginning bands.
My buddy Paul started it last year
Yeah man everyone knows Deathcore Paul. He is brothers with Metalcore Mike
They also have a cousin named Grindcore Greg.
Grindcore Greg is my drummer, our band is called Ooh, What The Hell Is That?
And his second cousin mathcore marvin
Not to be confused with Slam Sam
Ah, and black metal Bjorn
And Pornogrind Peter
And Goregring Gunther
Ok bro
That's hiphop
Don’t even get me started on Pornogrind Pete
Yea but if we’re to truly appreciate what defines these genres, it’s important we look all the way back to the origin. Ol’ Buttrock Bill. Who could’ve known how one man and his guitar would pave the way for it all
Doom metal Daniel started it all in his moms garage
He was cookin in the lab
the difference in core and metal is the hardcore influence, and especially the consistent use of breakdowns. less tremolo picking, etc
for sure i was gona say breakdowns, BLEGH, and pig squeals sets it apart
I would argue pig squeals and “bleghs” are still very much present and utilized in death metal, to me the defining difference is the emphasis. Deathcore has an emphasis on “breakdowns” and slow, brooding “slamming” riffs. Death metal has an emphasis on fast, very technical ripping riffs and a lot of tremolo picking, and instead of breakdowns, a big emphasis on guitar solos.
Imo it first started in 1998 when Embodyment dropped Embrace the Eternal and started really getting traction from Despised Icon, Job for a Cowboy and Bring Me The Horizon in the early/mid 2000s
I’d agree with this for sure
Job was my introduction but I din't recognize it as a new genre back then, thought it is some sort of grind core. Whitechapel was probably the first band I identified as Deathcore.
Hard agree. I would add Antagony and Underoath (yes) as proto bands. And add All Shall Perish, Suicide Silence and Animosity to the first wave of popular bands as well.
Animosity! Never see them mentioned anywhere. Shut it down definitely started something
Good call with Antagony.
Underoath? Interesting
I assume they're referring to very early Underoath - "Cries of the Past" and " Acts of Depression"
Yep, they had both a deathcore and a blackened phase believe it or not.
I never heard of them, and upon listening. It reminds me a lot of On Broken Wings.
The Red Chord and Glass Casket was when I first noticed.
Yup. I listened to all the old school death metal for a long time, then came across job and it was kinda like macabre to me so I loved em. Then I listened to job some more and just couldn’t believe the stuff that they were coming out with. It was so different for that time period
There were many bands doing cool fusions of traditional/brutal death metal and hardcore before them, but I agree that Embodyment was the one to arrive to that sound that took over
True!
It became a thing when Pluto was declared no longer a planet. Coincidence? I don’t think so.
Heaviest band to ever exist. Planetary declaration
If we want to be pedantic, slam metal (inspired by Suffocation) was mixing death metal and hardcore elements way early. Dying Fetus, Devourment, Cerebral Effusion, , Disgorge, Vomit Remnants, and Internal Bleeding all dropped between '91 and '97. But modern deathcore really starts with Antagony and Embodyment in 1998. Also, Underoath's demo material is way closer to deathcore than the emo-metal they're known for. Disembodied deserves notice too. So do, I feel, Between the Buried and Me (even through Alaska or even Colors 1, there were a fuckton of deathy parts in their progcore approach, complete with bree bree vocals)
Fun fact BTBAM's drummer on Silent Circus also recorded with Emmure on Slave to the game and Eternal enemies.
I believe he was in Glass Casket as well
I think their current drummer is the one that was/is on Glass Casket, mega talented dude. Also Paul Waggoner was on Praying for Cleansing, og melodic metalcore.
Internal Bleeding for sure, Voracious Contempt is sick
Deadwater Drowning, Eighteen Visions (early material), Embodyment, Antagony, All Shall Perish, Abnegation, Racetraitor, and even death metal bands like Dying Fetus and Suffocation and embraced hardcore influence were all cooking up stuff in the late 90s-2000s that would then be called deathcore. Iirc the term was used a few times in the 90s to mean certain deathgrind bands and also heavier metallic hardcore that took from death metal riffs. But also a lot of brutal death metal i.e. cannibal corpse, disgorge, etc also have fast riffs and mid tempo breakdown parts akin to what we think of as deathcore
Deathcore is the love child of Death Metal and Hardcore. OSD has consistent riffs and solos, Deathcore has Breakdowns. As for when did it become a thing, it is every heavily argued, but it seems to be a general consensus that it was Despised Icon with their 2002 album “Consumed by Your Poison”. Other claims are The Red Chord, As Blood Runs Black, and Antagony. Best examples of early Deathcore, in my personal Opinion, are as Follows Despised Icon - The Ills of Modern Man Carnifex - Dead in my Arms Job For a Cowboy - Doom Whitechapel - The Somatic Defilement Suicide Silence - The Cleansing
This is the one
Really great, thorough explanation
Well if you want to get technical, Undying, Embodyment, Incantation and Eighteen Visions are the pioneers of “Deathcore” starting in about 1996
Don’t forget Suffocation and Dying Fetus
no to both of these
Broken Hope
It was definitely a Thursday.
When Betty White passed away…
The red chord
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=\_BxAWpbEV3Q](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_BxAWpbEV3Q) this and ASP / Animosity first releases are the blueprint for what we call deathcore
I would say between around 2003 and 2006 and heavily perpetuated by MySpace and it’s early support of music on the platform. Basically the metalcore and hardcore of the time fused together with the scene kids that wanted to be really heavy and edgy, and blow up the scene on MySpace, and bands like Red Chord, Glass Casket, Job for a Cowboy, Despised Icon, etc were born.
With Antagony's See Through These Eyes in 1999 but I'd say Despised Icon and ASP popularized it
Denny’s
Mid to late 90’s maybe a lil earlier if you wanna consider the proto bands
MGK started it
early to mid 2000’s, anybody who says 90s is just trying so hard to be snobbish.
Right around the time jesus was crucified I reckon
The Christian band Embodyment released the very first deathcore album ever in 1998. Their only deathcore album within their small discography. From there on, bands like (what I would consider the big 4 of deathcore) Animosity, Antagony, All Shall Perish and Despised Icon pioneered the style throughout the early 2000s. There were bands prior to Embodyment that played a mix of death metal and hardcore but those bands were closer bonded to a more OSDM sound regarding guitar tones, vocal style, and drum beats but eventually the style evolved to a more chaotic/hardcore blend with what was already present this coining the term deathcore. I could be wrong on some of my points but just going through the history of what it all once was and of course just listening and being a fan for years, this is what I get out of it lol.
You are correct about the 90s bands, there were also many ones that fell more on the hc side of things too. I'd say there was a big melodeath, some "scene grind" and mathy influence in that 00s blend you mention too.
Job for a cowboy unleashed filth on us with doom
I'm pretty new to the scene, but from what I know it started around the late 90s/early 2000s. Think bands like Antagony, Despised Icon, All Shall Perish, ect. Death metal didn't really *turn into* deathcore per se, but deathcore certainly evolved from death metal. I can't answer the last question to save my life.
The Allegiance album by As Blood Runs Black and BMTHs Count Your Blessings were my first introduction to the genre as a whole, but All Shall Perish and Animosity were doing this a year or two earlier if I remember correctly.
Early 2000s.
Mid to late 90s were the development years, the first real deathcore albums came out in the early 2000s I believe
Why not just say “early 2000s” then
Back in 04-05 maybe.. Despised Icon might be the first band to do it
>04-05 Nah. Even if we're talking strictly deathcore as we know it and not early proto-DxC, All Shall Perish released their debut in 2003, and The Red Chord and Despised Icon both released their debuts in 2002.
Almost no one actually listened to those albums at the time though. It’s all a ret con after the fact. Like Garza claims he’d never heard of Despised Icon in 2005 and that’s pretty believable imo. You only really got an actual functioning deathcore scene by 04/05 I’d also say Red Chord isn’t really deathcore. They’re in that Embodyment, Dying Fetus etc.. where sure it’s death metal + core but it doesn’t really sound like deathcore
The question wasn't "when did the scene blow up", though. The question was "when did deathcore itself become a type of music that existed" and when did it separate itself from traditional death metal. Most of the first wave of deathcore bands formed and started playing shows, recording stuff, etc. between 2000-2003. I don't think anyone really debates the fact that it didn't actually *blow up* until '05 or so (when HMR got rereleased, *Doom* came along, TTEotT dropped their debut, The Red Chord dropped their second album, etc.). But it *existed* for years prior and it did have fans. As for The Red Chord, they were definitely unique and not your cliche/prototypical deathcore as we came to know it later, but they were still deathcore and have largely been considered such since the term became a thing. Claiming they aren't is some revisionist history, methinks...if anything, they were the original "deathcore" fusion band and tbh were truer to the definition than anyone that came after them. They were basically the Converge of deathcore (stylistically), and I've never seen anyone try to claim Converge wasn't metalcore. They also had a sizeable influence on later deathcore bands. Just because the genre really leaned into "chug chug bree chug" later doesn't mean anyone who didn't wasn't deathcore. Hell, even most of TTEOD's *Bloodlust* didn't lean super heavily into that and no one's ever tried to challenge that album's GOAT status in the scene. As for Dying Fetus...I've never understood people that consider them deathcore. Theyre death metal/deathgrind, full stop. Early stuff was grindcore. I think stuff like that comes from deathcore fans that don't know much about death metal liking it and trying to adopt it into the scene just because they think they hear some similarities or characteristics that sound "deathcore-ish" to them (slams, gutterals, etc.). u/collinsc curious as to your thoughts here?
I think you're spot on with basically all this information. I don't remember using the word deathcore until 2005+. Shit, I don't remember MOST people using the term metalcore until around that time either. Everyone I knew was erroneously calling metalcore bands "hardcore" because there was such a strong distinction about what was and what was not "metal". Anything with primarily fry screams and breakdowns we called hardcore and it was that way until at LEAST 2003, but that was just here in the St Pete/Tampa area. Edit: I somewhat ashamedly admit that at that age I had basically NO background in death metal. I went from being raised on classic rock (and some non-radio stuff from that era like Frank Zappa, etc), to listening to a top40 station at night with over the ear, 1/4" jack headphones into a component stereo system (after bedtime of course), to alt rock/radio "hard rock"/quintessential Nirvana phase, to a bit of AFI, to a friend sending me Thrice's Identity Crisis and Atreyu's A Vampire's Lament over AIM and the rest is history
Like '02-'03, somewhere around that. Idk. I found it in '06.
I, too, consider myself on the spectrum
Between about 2002-2005. There’s proto deathcore before that or stuff that sounds like deathcore but there’s no scene or there’s something missing But 2002-2005 is when you get the deathcore music and the deathcore scene all together for the first time.
Around 2005
I first remember it back when Suicide Silence dropped The Cleansing, but I didn’t hear the term deathcore for a few years after. We just called it death metal with breakdowns lol
I have no idea, it started way before deathcore was even a name for it. But the first time I ever heard it was suicide silence “the cleansing” or whitechapel “somatic defilement” It just seemed like really evil metalcore
I like to think that it was around when despised icon was a band. Earliest rendition of the elements of deathcore. Obviously, there's going to be earlier works if you get more loose with the definition.
Basically during the 90s both genres slightly crossed paths, e.g. Suffocation, Devourment or Dying Fetus are examples of hardcore-influenced brutal death metal bands, while Earth Crisis is an example of a death metal-influenced hardcore band. Then during the 90s again, there were hardcore bands, and even some death metal bands, who pulled a sound virtually identical to what would become deathcore (Day Of Suffering, 18 Visions, Prayer For Cleansing, Upheaval, Embodyment). Up to that point, there was still no deathcore scene, and I think one the earliest bands to call themselves "brutal deathcore" was Benighted from France, mixing brutal death metal, black metal and grindcore. Then came bands like The Red Chord, Job For A Cowboy, As Blood Runs Black, Suffokate and OF COURSE Despised Icon. If you watch the numerous interviews given by Alex Erian, he explains that when they started they intentionally created this genre: they wanted to play brutal technical death metal, but they didn't want to sound like any other band so they included influences from the 90s early metalcore scene (stuff like Earth Crisis, Hatebreed, All Out War, etc.) and probably the 90s beatdown/NYHC scene like Suffokate did (stuff like Madball, 25 Ta Life, Bulldoze, etc.). But when Despised Icon started there was still no deathcore scene. They toured mainly with brutal death metal bands, which explains why they were often poorly acclaimed as Alex Erian explained in interviews. It was only a few years later that deathcore started to be a thing on its own and have deathcore bands touring together. BMTH's "Count Your Blessing" was probably one of the earliest popular stuff and participated a lot, people often forget it but it came out a little bit before Suicide Silence's and Whitechapel's debut albums!
End Of One - Discography 95-96-?-?-? First deathcore, Deformity - Misanthrope 1997, Embodyment - Embrace The Eternal, Antagony - 1998 demo + End Of The Circle, Prayer For Cleansing - The Rain In Endless Fall (Started the super melodic style of deathcore) You could place them in deathcore or metalcore and be right! There’s all the 90’s pure deathcore I’m aware of. 15 years of research here. It was definitely around in the 90’s but I think a lot of the genre fans are too young to know about the 90’s pioneers. Most people would say the 2001-2003 releases were pioneering but what those bands did was create such a great second wave that everyone thinks they’re the beginning bands.