Mathcore, from the outside in. Each step is a genre and the single record this encyclopedia would put on first. Play them in this order and the last one should sound like a next step rather than a wall.
- 1 The way in
Rock 1954
The whole family: guitar, bass, drums and a beat borrowed from blues and rhythm and blues. Every branch below grows out of this trunk, metal included.
Sung. Melodic singing throughout.
Put on
The Beatles - Revolver, if you want to understand why everything branched so fast.
The Beatles, Revolver (1966) - 2 Then
Hardcore punk 1980
Punk accelerated to 200 bpm, songs of one minute and shouted vocals. Without it there is no thrash, no grindcore, no metalcore.
Shouted. Barked or chanted, and you can still make out the words.
Put on
Bad Brains - Bad Brains (the ROIR cassette). The fastest band of the decade.
Bad Brains, Bad Brains (1982) - 3 Then
Post-hardcore 1985
Hardcore that allows itself dynamics, empty space and irregular structures. Emo, screamo and mathcore all branch off from here.
Sung and screamed. Clean singing and harsh vocals trade off, often chorus against verse.
Put on
Refused - The Shape of Punk to Come. The title was an arrogant joke that came true.
Refused, The Shape of Punk to Come (1998) - 4 What you asked about
Mathcore 1993
Metalcore with its wiring torn out: meter changes every few seconds, dissonance and chaos controlled to the millimetre.
Growled or shrieked. Unintelligible without a lyric sheet. The thing most newcomers bounce off.
Put on
Converge - Jane Doe. Technically mathcore, emotionally something else entirely.
Converge, Jane Doe (2001) - 5 Where to go next
Second wave 1991
The Norwegian scene that fixed the definitive sound: thin guitars, demo-tape production as an ideal, corpse paint.
Growled or shrieked. Unintelligible without a lyric sheet. The thing most newcomers bounce off.
Put on
Immortal - Pure Holocaust. The scene's best album without the troubling baggage.
Immortal, Pure Holocaust (1993)
Assembled from the tree: the root, the two genres directly above Mathcore, and Mathcore itself. Mathcore has no subgenres, so the last step is the genre that rates closest to it by sound.