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Beatdown hardcore (also known as heavy hardcore, brutal hardcore, moshcore, or simply beatdown) is a subgenre of hardcore punk which incorporates elements of thrash metal and hip hop. The genre features aggressive vocals, heavy, palm muted guitar riffs and breakdowns. The genre has its origins in late 1980s tough guy hardcore bands such as Breakdown, Killing Time, and Madball, and was pioneered in the mid-1990s by bands like Bulldoze, Terror Zone, and Neglect. The definition of the genre has expanded over time to incorporate artists increasingly indebted to metal, notably Xibalba, Sunami, and Knocked Loose. Later acts also feature slam death metal riffs.

Characteristics

Beatdown makes use of low pitched, shouted vocals, downtuned guitars and thrash metal–inspired drum rhythms, putting a particular emphasis on breakdowns. Many bands make use of palm muted guitar riffs, influenced by slam death metal, in conjunction with hip hop-influenced vocals. According to Bandcamp Daily writer Kevin Warwick, after the 1990s the genre expanded from a specific style of metal-influenced hardcore to "encompass a larger variety of mosh-friendly, breakdown-fixated groups", which includes both 1990s-style hardcore revivalists like Absolute Suffering and more metallic groups like Knocked Loose. With this progression, influence from death metal and doom metal became increasingly prevalent with MetalSucks writer Max Heilman calling slam riffs "a staple of modern beatdown". Subsequently, the genre's borders have become increasingly blurred with those of metalcore and deathcore.

One prominent characteristic of beatdown is its close association to hardcore crews particularly New York's DMS and Boston's Friends Stand United, to the extent that academic Jeff Purchla used the term "crew scene hardcore" to refer to the genre in his 2011 essay The Powers that be: Processes of Control in 'Crew Scene Hardcore'. Sociology academic Edgar M. Peralta defined crews as being people involved in hardcore scene who unify "based on reciprocal ties and varying interests, including non-criminal elements such as music or sports, but also including some criminal elements, which often include violence and graffiti", specifically originating as a means to oppose the white supremacist currents in their scenes.

Beatdown bands often make use of hip hop–inspired imagery, with logos being based off of graffiti designs and band members wearing sagged pants and baseball caps on irregular angles.

History

Predecessors

Beatdown's origins are particularly tied to the Lower East Side hardcore crew DMS (Doc Marten Skinheads). Formed in the early 1980s by Jere DMS, the crew's embrace of elements of hardcore, hip-hop, graffiti, motorcycle, skinhead, and skateboarding culture, and multi-ethnic membership led to it including members who would go on to form bands including Bulldoze, Madball, and Skarhead. The way in which DMS bands would sometimes discuss their crew's brotherhood and criminal activities would play a key role in developing the lyrical themes of beatdown.

Beatdown originated from the earlier tough guy hardcore sound. One of the earliest tough guy bands was Breakdown from Yonkers, New York. Formed in 1987, they were a part of a new wave of New York hardcore bands similarly expanding the scope of the genre, like Sick of It All, Sheer Terror, and Krakdown. That same year, Judge released their debut EP New York Crew, which Crack magazine described as the record that took New York's "tough guy mentality to new heights". Killing Time's 1989 debut album Brightside was a key step in New York, by making use of the heaviness of thrash metal while sidelining metal's camp and creating beatdown style groove parts in songs like "New Release". Furthermore, Madball's emphasis on heavy grooves and lack of reliance on the speed which defined earlier hardcore, became the characterizing sound of New York hardcore in the 1990s and birthed beatdown.

Origins (mid-1990s)

Beatdown was pioneered by Bulldoze, with their 1996 album The Final Beatdown giving the genre its name. Bulldoze, along with Terror Zone, merged the sound of earlier New York hardcore with heavy breakdowns and lyrics revolving around themes such as gang activity to set the template for the genre. In their wake followed groups like Next Step Up, Neglect, Confusion, and Grimlock. The genre took a particular hold on the New Jersey hardcore scene at the time, with venues including Melody Bar, the Stone Pony, and Birch Hill Nightclub frequently playing host to bands like Clubber Lang, Signed with Hate, and Force of Aggression. NoEcho writer Chris Suffer called New Jersey beatdown band Shattered Realm's 2002 album " Broken Ties... Spoken Lies "the standard for which all future beatdown style hardcore should try to live up to but not expect to come anywhere close". Two of the most prominent groups were in this scene were E.Town Concrete and Fury of Five.

In 1996, a hardcore scene in London began around the informal collective "London Black-Up", which include bands like Knuckledust, Ninebar, and Bun Dem Out. Bands in this scene often incorporated elements of grime, hip hip, and metal into their sounds and was based around venues such as the Camden Underworld, New Cross Inn, and the Dome in Tufnell Park.

In the following years beatdown's ignorant take on heavy riffing would prove particularly influential on the sound of nu metal. Furthermore, Hatebreed formed in Bridgeport, Connecticut in 1994, merging classic hardcore with beatdown and metalcore. Their 1997 debut album Satisfaction Is the Death of Desire sold over 150,000 copies. By the beginning of the 2000s, the genre was declining in popularity, with the dominant style of hardcore having become more metallic, and many bands adopting this style being signed to Victory Records.

Developments (2000s–present)

Baltimore-based Trapped Under Ice and their 2007 demo, the cover photo of which featured the members aggressively posing, re-popularised the tough guy hardcore aesthetic and beatdown hardcore sound by incorporated polished production from, danceable rhythms, and more melodic and experimental aspects into the genre. The band's Chad Gilbert-produced second album Big Kiss Goodnight (2011) was one of the most influential hardcore albums of its time, with Stereogum writer Tom Breiham stating in a 2023 article that "it's been years since we've gotten a new Trapped Under Ice song, but that band's influence looms large over the entire hardcore landscape today."

As the genre progressed, it became increasingly influenced by metal, often death metal and doom metal, an aspect particularly prominent in groups like Kruelty, Xibalba, and No Zodiac.

In the 2010s, the Lancashire, England-based band Gassed Up made a name for themselves by putting a greater emphasis on the genre's hip hop influence. This helped to establish what Metal Injection referred to as the "UK style" of beatdown, which was continued as the decade progressed by Street Soldier and Recount. Beatdown experienced a surge in popularity in the 2020s, Malevolence became one of the most prominent bands in the genre, incorporating themselves further into the heavy metal scene and embracing the influence of groove metal and sludge metal, and Enemy Mind became increasingly indebted to death metal.

Beatdown band Sunami formed in 2019, originally a parody of the genre's violent ignorance, the attention the band received during the COVID-19 lockdowns, particularly on TikTok, led to them selling out the majority of their live performances in the following years. A 2023 article by Revolver credited them as "in the upper echelon of bands dominating the hardcore zeitgeist". Other prominent bands in the genre at this time were Pain of Truth and Never Ending Game.

See also

• List of beatdown hardcore bands
• Groove metal
• Moshing
• Sludge metal

References

1. ROA, RAY. "WTF is sasscore, and why is SeeYouSpaceCowboy bringing it to St. Petersburg's Lucky You Tattoo?". Creative Loafing. Archived from the original on February 9, 2019. Retrieved February 9, 2019. The subgenre of hardcore takes a little bit of grindcore, emoviolence, metalcore and moshcore and then mixes in gay tendencies and clever lyrics with some fantastically aggro results.
2. ^ Heilman, Max (March 15, 2023). "Review: Kruelty mines death metal for the best beatdowns with Untopia". MetalSucks. Retrieved August 26, 2023.
3. Sfetcu, Nicolae. American Music. p. 352. Essentially the "heavy hardcore" sound is an amalgamation of deep, hoarse vocals (though rarely as deep or guttural as death metal), downtuned guitars, thrashy drum rhythms inspired directly from earlier hardcore bands, and slow, staccato low-end musical breaks, known colloquially as "breakdowns". Some bands tend to focus more on breakdowns than others (such as New Jersey's Redline), and others tend not to rely on them too much, letting the overall songwriting and feel drive the music (Troy, New York's Stigmata is a prime example). Elements such as thrash metal and hip hop are also common. Sworn Enemy and Boxcutter are two current respective examples of such.
4. ^ Heilman, Max (September 2, 2021). "Rappers and Riffs: 5 Rap Metal Bands That Don't Suck". Retrieved October 10, 2024.
5. "SLAMSDANK SLAMS: A Slam By Any Other Name Is Still A Slam (Within Destruction, Horned, Hateful Transgression, Open Wound, Begging For Incest, Infected Swarm)". October 27, 2016. Retrieved August 24, 2023.
6. ^ Warwick, Kevin (November 17, 2016). "Eight Bands Re-Inventing the '90s Hardcore Breakdown". Bandcamp Daily. Retrieved August 26, 2023.
7. Enis, Eli (June 16, 2023). "6 BEST NEW SONGS RIGHT NOW: 6/16/23". Revolver. Retrieved August 26, 2023.
8. ^ Purchla, Jeff (June 2011). "The Powers that be: Processes of Control in 'Crew Scene hardcore'". Ethnography. 12 (2): 198–223. doi:10.1177/1466138110362012. S2CID 145616134. Actors within the field may often refer to the crew scene as 'beatdown hardcore', 'thugcore', or 'tough guy hardcore'. The third and most common of these phrases is often taken to be demeaning by those involved with the scene. By employing 'crew scene hardcore' as a descriptor, this study aims to avoid imposing what may be considered a demeaning phrase upon actors in the scene...DMS formed in the early 1980s around New York's Lower East Side as 'Doc Martin Skins', which is a reference to a type of boot popular amongst skinheads at the time. Skinheads in punk and hardcore scenes, despite popular connotation, are not a unified faction of racists. The complex racial ideology that has accompanied hardcore, especially in its early days, exceeds the limits of this paper and deserves further research. The DMS crew, as one member informed, does not adhere to racist ideology and has dropped allusions to the skinhead scene. Now the acronym is more likely to mean 'Dirty Money Syndicate', or 'Drugs Money Sex'. The FSU crew started as 'Friends Stand United', and has been also referred to as 'Fuck Shit Up', or 'Forever Society's Underdogs'. The pliability of crew names will be addressed later in the article.
9. ^ Peralta, Edgar M. "HARDCORE CREWS: FRIENDS, CREWS OR STREET GANGS?". Retrieved August 21, 2023.
10. Sfetcu, Nicolae. American Music. pp. 354–345. Though certainly not representative of all listeners, this particular scene of hardcore is known for (and sometimes looked down upon for) its stereotypical image and attitude of inner city street thugs with fake gangster mentalities. Again, it must be noted that much of hardcore's fanbase has always revolved around inner city youth. With the popularity of inner city fashion and image, and the similarities of some of the heavier bands' music to hip hop, it is not surprising that the two would end up crossing over... They also have a heavy "gangster" like image ("SYG" graffiti logos on their shirts and boxers, baggy-saggy pants, and baseball caps cocked to the side) and openly listen to rap/hip-hop. To many old school punks (crusties, street punks, and deathrockers), this is equivalent to heresy. Not all groups of SYG's crews are like this though, as these groups of "wannabes" have been confronted by their Los Angeles (and other Inner City groups) for their unintelligent actions against their own kind, and have backed down or lost (brutally) to a challenge/fight.
11. Heilman, Max. "6 new albums to pick up on Bandcamp Friday". Retrieved October 10, 2024. For anyone who wishes modern tough-guy hardcore music had more to offer than suburban chest-beating, look no further than Sunami. This band brings beatdown hardcore back to its source
12. Rettman, Tony (2015). NYHC : New York Hardcore 1980–1990. Brooklyn, NY. pp. 294–295. ISBN 9781935950127. Breakdown is considered one of the first "tough guy" bands to come out of New York. When Breakdown started playing, the Sick of It All demo had just come out a few months earlier. Sheer Terror was still slogging it out with demos, trying to make a name for themselves. The Krakdown demo had just come out, along with Leeway's Enforcer demo, plus Rest in Pieces and stuff like that. Some of the original NYHC bands were slowly disappearing, like Major Conflict, Reagan Youth, and Antidote. Around 1986 and 1987 a whole new wave of bands emerged that were influenced by the original New York bands but added something different.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
13. Black, Billy. "POSITIVE MENTAL ATTITUDE: 5 ESSENTIAL YOUTH CREW RECORDS". Crack. Retrieved August 24, 2023.
14. Enis, Eli (November 15, 2021). "10 ESSENTIAL NEW YORK HARDCORE ALBUMS". Revolver. Retrieved August 22, 2023.
15. Steel, Jackson (July 13, 2016). Das Lexikon der Musikrichtungen – Was ist eigentlich Metal ?: Von Heavy Metal über Death Metal bis White Metal (in German). Neobooks. Ein besonderes Subgenre des Metallic Hardcores oder New School Hardcores ist der "Mosh Style", überwiegend auch als "Beatdown" bezeichnet und von Gruppen wie Insurgence und Undertow vertreten. Mosh-Core zeichnet sich durch einen langsameren Tempo Beat, Groove- Orientierung und harte Breakdowns mit Tempowechseln aus, die die Menschenmenge vor der Bühne zum "Moshen" animieren sollen. Als die Begründer des Beatdown Hardcore wird häufig die New Yorker Band Bulldoze genannt. Einige moderne Beatdown-Gruppen fügen ihrer Musik mittlerweile auch Rap-Parts hinzu.
16. Farin, Klaus; Möller, Kurt (June 20, 2014). Kerl sein. Kulturelle Szenen und Praktiken von Jungen (in German). Hirnkost. Als Begründer oder zumindest als Namensgeber gilt die New Yorker Hardcore-Band Bulldoze mit ihrem Song "Beatdown" von ihrem 1998 veröffentlichten Album The Final Beatdown.
17. Caporn, Brett. "Self-Realization: A True Lesson in Hardcore by Terror Zone [Re-release]". Retrieved August 26, 2023.
18. Ramirez, Carlos (June 28, 2016). "Best Beatdown Hardcore Bands". Retrieved August 26, 2023.
19. Suffer, Chris (July 16, 2021). "20 Underrated New Jersey Metallic Hardcore Records From 1995–2005". Retrieved August 24, 2023.
20. Sfetcu, Nicolae. American Music. p. 352354. Heavy hardcore: Throughout the following couple decades the newer style became just as predominant as its faster cousin. Prominent bands include 25 ta Life, Vision Of Disorder, 100 Demons, All Out War, Neglect, Shattered Realm, Death Threat, Next Step Up, E-Town Concrete, Hoods, Subzero, Sworn Enemy, Breakdown, Knuckledust, Mushmouth, Settle The Score, Angel Crew, and The Bad Luck 13 Riot Extravaganza who became infamous for their unpredictable and chaotic live sets.
21. Ramirez, Carlos (March 22, 2024). "Fury of Five Teams Up with Irate Vocalist on "Cold Day in Hell" Music Video". Retrieved October 11, 2024.
22. Hutchcraft, Jak (July 28, 2015). "Meeting LBU, London's Hardcore Party Crew". Vice Media. Retrieved May 16, 2021.
23. Richardson, Jake (April 17, 2023). "10 BEST CLEAN SINGERS IN METALCORE". Loudwire. Retrieved August 24, 2023.
24. "Hatebreed's 'The Rise Of Brutality' Enters Billboard Chart At No. 30". Blabbermouth.net. November 5, 2003. Archived from the original on November 12, 2017. Retrieved November 11, 2017.
25. Gramlich, Chris. "Shutdown Few and Far Between". Exclaim!. Retrieved August 24, 2023.
26. Sacher, Andrew. "Out of Step: 11 albums that pushed hardcore towards its current genre-defying moment". Retrieved September 30, 2024.
27. Breiham, Tom (April 14, 2023). "Gorilla Biscuits, Reunited And Vital". Stereogum. Retrieved September 4, 2023.
28. Heilman, Max (May 18, 2022). "REVIEWSAlbum Review: MALEVOLENCE Malicious Intent". Retrieved September 30, 2024.
29. Enis, Eli (August 8, 2023). "SUNAMI STYLE: FROM JOKE BAND TO BAY AREA HARDCORE LEADERS". Revolver. Retrieved August 21, 2023.
30. BREIHAN, TOM (June 14, 2023). "Stream Sunami's Stupendously Ignorant Surprise-Release Self-Titled Debut Album". Stereogum. Retrieved August 21, 2023.
31. Corcoran, Nina (December 20, 2023). "Hardcore Expanded Its Boundaries in 2023—and the Scene Embraced It". Pitchfork. Retrieved September 30, 2024.
32. Enis, Eli. "5 ARTISTS YOU NEED TO KNOW: MAY 2022". Revolver. Retrieved October 1, 2024.
33. HUGHES, MIA. "HOW BALMORA ARE PUTTING A FRESH SPIN ON Y2K-ERA METALCORE". Revolver. Retrieved October 1, 2024.

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