Diving deeper into Mathcore and its inconsistencies as a Genre.

I have been listening to hardcore for around 3 years now. Throughout the years I have heard the term "Mathcore" thrown around a lot as a sub genre. I always wondered what it was because I had never listened to bands that had been dubbed as said sub genre. Today my curiosity had peaked and I decided to really get a true definition of the sonic etiquette known as "Mathcore". I started with the foundations (of what I could only hope was the truth) of Mathcore on Wikipedia. Mathcore is describer as, "A rhythmically complex and dissonant style of metalcore. The term mathcore is suggested by analogy with math rock. Both math rock and mathcore make use of unusual time signatures."

After reading those three sentences it can be assumed, at least for my sake, that this sub genre is the based on a different sub genre. I see no real rhyme or reason for the classification of the type of music as a new genre. Why can't people call it was it is, the technical side metalcore. Speaking of it as this you would be covering all of the main points that justify the title of the genre. Technical as in rapid or complex guitar or other instrumentation. Metalcore as in music that combines metal elements with elements from hardcore music.

To address another point, the vocal style is similar to metalcore. Mathcore bands such as; The Locust, The Number 12 Looks Like You, The Fall Of Troy, and See You Next Tuesday are all know to vary their vocal stylings from High pitched, ear piercing screams or yells to low pitched grunts or spleen rupturing lows. A few bands in the mathcore genre consistently stay with the same vocal type, such as; Converge and the Dillenger Escape Plan. I do not believe that a vocal style is enough to make a sub genre out of.


The last point I must address, the use of breakdowns. A lot if not all of the mathcore bands include some kind of use of a breakdown of some sort. It might not be the main focus of their songs but they are usually their in one or two of the songs. Thus, keeping them in the metalcore sub genre. They just wouldn't be the shining image of what you would assume a metalcore band is. They would be more like the bastard step children of metalcore. They still have to keep the family name but they get to do their own thing.

I realize that you could argue the point that bands look to math for outlandish time signatures but so do a lot of technical bands. Remember a certain band, Dragonforce? Their technical on a whole different level and a lot of their time signatures are pretty insane. They are also considered metal. Isn't that another inconsistency with genre labeling.

It just proves to me that trying to label music into different sub genres is very pointless. Why should people label music? I suppose to know what you are going to listen to. Although I believe people should take some risks and look outside of the normal everyday stuff they hear on the radio and look for music that they would truly like. You never know, if you search then you may stumble upon your next favorite band/artist.