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You are now watching: SHEEPHEAD: The Decision (Wacken 2007)

sings the following genre(s): Death Metal, Metalcore


Metalcore is a fusion genre that incorporates elements of the hardcore punk and heavy metal genres. The term is a portmanteau of heavy metal and hardcore punk. While the term appears to be of recent coinage, the rudiments of the genre were established as early as 1989 in the work of Integrity.

Through the 1990s, metalcore was mostly an underground phenomenon, but from 2004 to the present, many bands have appeared on the Billboard album charts.

Many metalcore bands influenced the New Wave of American Heavy Metal.

Hardcore punk had always borrowed from heavy metal. Black Flag and the Bad Brains, among the originators of hardcore, admired and emulated Black Sabbath. British street punk groups such as Discharge and the Exploited also took inspiration from metal. The Misfits began to borrow from Motörhead, becoming a crucial influence on thrash. Nonetheless, punk and metal cultures and music remained separate through the first half of the 1980s.

Cross-pollination between metal and hardcore eventually birthed the crossover thrash scene, which gestated at a Berkeley club called Ruthie’s, in 1984. Hardcore punk groups Dirty Rotten Imbeciles and Suicidal Tendencies played alongside thrash metal groups like Metallica and Slayer. This scene influenced the skinhead wing of New York hardcore, which also began in 1984: the Cro-Mags, Murphy’s Law, Agnostic Front, Cause for Alarm and Warzone. The Cro-Mags were the among the most influential of these bands, drawing equally from Bad Brains, Motörhead, and Black Sabbath. The Cro-Mags also embraced straight edge and, surprisingly enough, Krishna consciousness. Other New York straight edge groups included Gorilla Biscuits, Crumbsuckers, and Youth of Today, who inaugurated the youth crew style. 1985 saw the development of the hardcore breakdown, an amalgamation of Bad Brains’ reggae and metal backgrounds. The North Carolina group Corrosion of Conformity was also revered in the scene. Agnostic Front’s 1986 album Cause for Alarm, a collaboration with Peter Steele, was a watershed in the intertwining of hardcore and metal.

Between 1989 and 1992, a new wave of metalcore bands emerged. These included Integrity, Earth Crisis, Converge, and Bloodlet. Integrity drew influence primarily from the youth crew hardcore of the Cro-Mags and the thrash metal of Slayer, with more subtle elements of Septic Death, Samhain, Motörhead, and Joy Divisio. Earth Crisis and Converge also borrowed from death metal and grindcore.
Biohazard, Hatebreed, Coalesce, Cave In, Zao, and Shai Hulud were also important early metalcore groups.

In Scandinavia, parallel to the development of early 1990s metalcore, melodic death metal appeared. This classic metal-influenced death metal subgenre incorporated melodic guitar hooks, polyphonic melodies, and high-pitched, guttural vocals. At the Gates, Dark Tranquillity, In Flames, and Carcass are considered influential melodic death metal bands. Melodic death metal would be influential to the sound of later metalcore.

In the mid-2000s, metalcore emerged as a commercial force, with several independent metal labels, including Century Media and Metal Blade, signing metalcore bands. By 2004, metalcore had become popular enough that Killswitch Engage’s The End of Heartache and Shadows Fall’s The War Within debuted at numbers and 20, respectively, on the Billboard album chart. Welsh metalcore band Bullet for My Valentine’s second album, Scream Aim Fire, went straight to 4 on the Billboard 200. The American band Underoath had their album Define the Great Line, released in 2006, peaked at #2 on the Billboard 200 charts. Hatebreed, God Forbid, Lamb of God, and As I Lay Dying have also charted. Metalcore bands have also received prominent slots at Ozzfest, Download Festival, and Warped Tour.