What do people think about changing the genre label?
I'm researching for a music related project and I realized that a lot of artists who reject labels like "metalcore" or "nu-metal" seem to imply that Hardcore Punk, Metal or Rock are baseline source genres, when they aren't. The metal and punk lineage goes: metal and punk -> rock -> rock and roll -> jump blues -> boogie woogie -> blues -> folk -> music. So initially I thought rejecting "metalcore" is like rejecting any of these steps other than the term "music" itself.
But then I realized, maybe the reason some artists don't like the label "metalcore" is because the term itself isn't its own thing but rather a sort of cheesy combination of metal and hardcore. And that got me thinking, would the label fare better if we changed it to something native? Similar to something like Thrash or Sludge?
4 replies
'Metalcore' seems pretty entrenched as a definitive sub-genre. Despite artists' distaste for labels (there will always be those that try to revoke any kind of label/genre), I'm not sure a rebranding would catch on. Whatever new term is coined would probably just become it's own thing instead. That might be what they're really wanting in the first place, who knows?
Even so, what do you think are some of the things that it could be called instead?
Something like Thrash, like Push, Breaker, Rupture, Ballistic, Tactical and so on. I don't know though.
Rupture metal sounds kind of fitting, I like that one 😎
The central premise seems to boil down to: what is the purpose of a genre label? Is it to enable coherent discourse and appreciation of the music? Is it for descriptive taxonomy? Is the label used to abuse and denigrate the people that listen to it? Does the label serve to proscribe the creative prospects of a music record or of acts that have been "typecast" to that genre?
Of that non-exhaustive list, I can only agree to the first two: the music is what it is, and the label is a tool to help find similar music to enjoy. In the era before algorithms like Spotify, such genre labels were paramount for music discovery.
The latter two recognize the more toxic aspects of taxonomy, where a label is overloaded with connotations and other baggage that has nothing to do with the music itself. And while I bemoan that, it's also the case that nothing that humans interact with is immune to such "political" interference. But the last one is the most toxic IMO, because it runs counter to the whole point of musical expression. Why should it be that a genre is unwelcoming to "new blood", or that an artist known in one realm cannot enter another?
With all that said, some artists might take issue with "metal core" as a genre. But what of it? What goal would be appreciably advanced by changing the name? The current name does not denigrate indigenous people, does not reference slavery or colonialism, nor does it refer to sexual misconduct. If the label had those problems, there would be very good reason to change it. I posit that of that list above, the existing term "metal core" already serves the legitimate interests.
Now, that's not to say that if you brought ten people into a room, they'd be unanimous whether a particular track is or isn't metalcore. But their objections would be grounded in whether or not the music fits the metal core definition, rather than questioning the definition itself.