Mathcore is a subgenre of
hardcore punk
Hardcore punk (also known as simply hardcore) is a punk rock music genre and subculture that originated in the late 1970s. It is generally faster, harder, and more aggressive than other forms of punk rock. Its roots can be traced to earlier p ...
and
metalcore influenced by
post-hardcore,
extreme metal and
math rock
Math rock is a style of progressive and indie rock with roots in bands such as King Crimson and Rush as well as 20th-century minimal music composers such as Steve Reich. It is characterized by complex, atypical rhythmic structures (includi ...
that developed during the 1990s. Bands in the genre emphasize complex and fluctuant rhythms through the use of
irregular time signatures,
polymeters,
syncopations and tempo changes. Early mathcore lyrics were addressed from a realistic worldview and with a
pessimistic,
defiant,
resentful or
sarcastic point of view.
In the 1990s, the hardcore punk scene started to embrace extreme metal openly. It also started to become highly ideological, with most of the popular bands being part of
subcultures. This led to bands such as
Converge
Converge may refer to:
* Converge (band), American hardcore punk band
* Converge (Baptist denomination), American national evangelical Baptist body
* Limit (mathematics)
* Converge ICT, internet service provider in the Philippines
*CONVERGE CFD s ...
,
Botch,
Coalesce
Coalesce may refer to:
*Coalesce (band), a metalcore band from Kansas City, Missouri, active from 1994 to 1999, 2005–
**Coalesce discography, a list of Coalesce's albums and songs
* COALESCE, an SQL function
*Null coalescing operator, a binary o ...
and
The Dillinger Escape Plan
The Dillinger Escape Plan was an American metalcore band. The band was formed in 1997 in Morris Plains, New Jersey by guitarist Ben Weinman, bassist Adam Doll, vocalist Dimitri Minakakis, and drummer Chris Pennie. The band's use of odd time si ...
to establish the genre.
Characteristics
Music
Mathcore emphasizes complex and fluctuant rhythms through the use of
irregular time signatures,
polymeters,
syncopations and tempo changes, while at the same time the drummers play with overall loudness.
In the words of
The Dillinger Escape Plan
The Dillinger Escape Plan was an American metalcore band. The band was formed in 1997 in Morris Plains, New Jersey by guitarist Ben Weinman, bassist Adam Doll, vocalist Dimitri Minakakis, and drummer Chris Pennie. The band's use of odd time si ...
bassist
Liam Wilson
Liam Wilson (born December 22, 1979) is an American musician. He has been the bass player for The Dillinger Escape Plan since 2000 and is a former bass player of Starkweather. Currently, he is a part of Azusa, a project formed with members of Ex ...
, their "choppy rhythms that people get kind of tongue-twisted on" are "
Latin rhythms" mixed with the speed and "stamina" of
heavy metal, drawing a parallel between them and
John McLaughlin John or Jon McLaughlin may refer to:
Arts and entertainment
* John McLaughlin (musician) (born 1942), English jazz fusion guitarist, member of Mahavishnu Orchestra
* Jon McLaughlin (musician) (born 1982), American singer-songwriter
* John McLaug ...
's use of
Eastern
Eastern may refer to:
Transportation
*China Eastern Airlines, a current Chinese airline based in Shanghai
*Eastern Air, former name of Zambia Skyways
*Eastern Air Lines, a defunct American airline that operated from 1926 to 1991
*Eastern Air Li ...
sounds within a
jazz
Jazz is a music genre that originated in the African-American communities of New Orleans, Louisiana in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with its roots in blues and ragtime. Since the 1920s Jazz Age, it has been recognized as a m ...
context. Most pioneering mathcore drummers had jazz,
orchestral
An orchestra (; ) is a large instrumental ensemble typical of classical music, which combines instruments from different families.
There are typically four main sections of instruments:
* bowed string instruments, such as the violin, viola, ...
or
academic
An academy (Attic Greek: Ἀκαδήμεια; Koine Greek Ἀκαδημία) is an institution of secondary or tertiary higher learning (and generally also research or honorary membership). The name traces back to Plato's school of philosophy, ...
backgrounds, including
Dazzling Killmen's
Blake Fleming
Blake Fleming is an American drummer known for his involvement with several influential experimental bands.
Early life
Born in Alton, Illinois, in 1972, Fleming started drumming at age 8, spending several years in fife and drumming corps, ba ...
,
Craw's Neil Chastain,
Coalesce
Coalesce may refer to:
*Coalesce (band), a metalcore band from Kansas City, Missouri, active from 1994 to 1999, 2005–
**Coalesce discography, a list of Coalesce's albums and songs
* COALESCE, an SQL function
*Null coalescing operator, a binary o ...
's
James Dewees
James Matthew Dewees (born March 13, 1976) is an American musician best known for his work with The Get Up Kids, Reggie and the Full Effect and My Chemical Romance. He has also been involved in other musical projects including New Found Glory, Co ...
,
Botch's
Tim Latona, The Dillinger Escape Plan's
Chris Pennie
Chris Pennie (born May 31, 1977) is an American musician who is the former drummer for the progressive rock band Coheed and Cambria and former drummer and co-founder of mathcore band The Dillinger Escape Plan.
Background
Pennie began playing d ...
,
and
Converge
Converge may refer to:
* Converge (band), American hardcore punk band
* Converge (Baptist denomination), American national evangelical Baptist body
* Limit (mathematics)
* Converge ICT, internet service provider in the Philippines
*CONVERGE CFD s ...
's
Ben Koller
Ben Koller (born July 29, 1980) is an American drummer who has played with Converge, Mutoid Man, Killer Be Killed and All Pigs Must Die. He started playing a full drum kit at age 14.
Musical career
Early bands (1997–1999)
Koller played ...
. As with the rhythm section, the guitars perform
riff
A riff is a repeated chord progression or refrain in music (also known as an ostinato figure in classical music); it is a pattern, or melody, often played by the rhythm section instruments or solo instrument, that forms the basis or acc ...
s that constantly change and are seldom repeated after one section. Early bands were almost completely
atonal
Atonality in its broadest sense is music that lacks a tonal center, or key. ''Atonality'', in this sense, usually describes compositions written from about the early 20th-century to the present day, where a hierarchy of harmonies focusing on a ...
with the guitars or all the instruments playing
polyphonic dissonance.
[ After the first The Dillinger Escape Plan records, the guitar work of most bands became extremely technical as well and "not only musically challenging, but physically demanding."]
In a 2016 article, Ian Cory of '' Invisible Oranges'' described mathcore's emphasis on technical complexity as "the means by which" they attain the aggressiveness of punk
Punk or punks may refer to:
Genres, subculture, and related aspects
* Punk rock, a music genre originating in the 1970s associated with various subgenres
* Punk subculture, a subculture associated with punk rock, or aspects of the subculture s ...
, "but never the end unto itself", distinguishing it from "the overflowing excess" of progressive metal
Progressive metal (sometimes shortened to prog metal) is a broad fusion music genre melding heavy metal and progressive rock, combining the loud "aggression" and amplified guitar-driven sound of the former with the more experimental, cerebral ...
.[ Writer ]Keith Kahn-Harris
Keith Kahn-Harris is a sociologist and music critic. He is an honorary research fellow and senior lecturer at Birkbeck College and an associate fellow of the Institute for Jewish Policy Research and a lecturer at Leo Baeck College.
He has publ ...
has described some mathcore bands as a mix between the aggressiveness of grindcore and the idioms of free jazz
Free jazz is an experimental approach to jazz improvisation that developed in the late 1950s and early 1960s when musicians attempted to change or break down jazz conventions, such as regular tempos, tones, and chord changes. Musicians duri ...
.
Lyrics
Early mathcore lyrics were addressed from a realistic worldview and with a pessimistic, defiant, resentful or sarcastic point of view. They have been singled out for their philosophical and poetic elements. Some bands satirized and criticized the militant branches of the hardcore punk ideologies
Punk ideologies are a group of varied social and political beliefs associated with the punk subculture and punk rock. It is primarily concerned with concepts such as mutual aid, against selling out, egalitarianism, humanitarianism, anti-aut ...
prominent in the 1990s. Others wrote about deeply personal issues, such as Converge's Jacob Bannon
Jacob Bannon (born October 15, 1976) is an American musician who is the vocalist, lyricist and graphic artist for the metalcore band Converge. He is the co-founder and owner of the record label Deathwish Inc. and the author of many visual works ...
and The Dillinger Escape Plan's Dimitri Minakakis
Dimitri Minakakis ( gr, Δημήτρης Μηνακάκης; born June 16, 1977 in Morristown, New Jersey) is an American musician and graphic designer best known as the original singer of the band The Dillinger Escape Plan from 1997 to 2001. Mina ...
.
Although musically rooted in extreme metal, some mathcore artists have shown contempt for extreme metal fictional and horror lyrics.
Live performances
Some early mathcore bands incorporated light shows synchronized with the music, while others were noted for their reckless, chaotic performances that usually ended up with fights and injuries. Guitarists Jes Steineger of Coalesce and Ben Weinman
Benjamin A. Weinman (born August 8, 1975) is an American musician, film composer, and music manager, most notable for being the lead guitarist and primary songwriter of the metalcore band The Dillinger Escape Plan. He was the founder and sole con ...
of The Dillinger Escape Plan commonly featured erratic and violent behaviors. In 2001, vocalist Greg Puciato
Gregory John Puciato (born March 27, 1980) is an American musician best known as the former lead vocalist and lyricist of the metalcore band the Dillinger Escape Plan. He is also the lead singer of the Black Queen and Killer Be Killed, in which ...
joined The Dillinger Escape Plan and starred in the most controversial live performances of the band until their disbandment in 2017, being described by ''Invisible Oranges'' as "the perfect physical embodiment of he band's music because of his imposing physique along with destructive behavior.[
]
Etymology
Before the term "mathcore", the style had been referred to as "chaotic hardcore" or "noisecore",[Whitney Strub, "Behind the Key Club: An Interview with Mark "Barney" Greenway of Napalm Death ", ''PopMatters'', May 11, 2006]
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Terrorizer is an American grindcore band formed in 1986 in Los Angeles, California. After disbanding, its members gained recognition by playing in influential extreme metal bands, such as Morbid Angel ( David Vincent, Pete Sandoval), Napalm ...
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Neurosis is a class of functional mental disorders involving chronic distress, but neither delusions nor hallucinations. The term is no longer used by the professional psychiatric community in the United States, having been eliminated from th ...
as falling under this label.
Stewart-Panko described the sound of these bands as a "dynamic, violent, discordant, technical, brutal, off-kilter, no rules mixture of
The term is generally applied by journalists, rather than by musicians themselves.
bands of the 1980s and early 1990s. Post-hardcore is a broad term to define bands that maintain the aggressiveness and intensity of hardcore punk but emphasizes a greater degree of creative expression. Hardcore punk pioneers
incorporated characteristics reminiscent to mathcore during their mid-1980s experimental period, including
, instrumental songs and improvisational sections.
.