Topic summary
Melodic punk
Extracted from the Wikipedia article Melodic hardcore.
Characteristics
According to Brooklyn Vegan writer Andrew Sacher, "melodic hardcore is not an easy thing to define", due to it encompassing a variety of disparate sounds including the early pop-punk of Descendents, emo of Dag Nasty, skate punk of NOFX, and heavy, nihilistic but tuneful hardcore punk bands like Modern Life Is War and the Hope Conspiracy. In his two articles on the topic, he differentiated between the heavy and nihilistic style based in modern hardcore that he labeled as simply "melodic hardcore" and the more traditional, punk-based "melodic punk" style "that ties together Against Me! to Hot Water Music to Strike Anywhere to the Lawrence Arms". PopMatters writer Ethan Stewart instead suggested that melodic hardcore "as we know it today" began with late 1980s bands like Inside Out and Turning Point who merged youth crew hardcore with emo and tough guy hardcore, due to their influence upon much of the subsequent acts in the genre.