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Heavy Metal Thunder Deathcore

Genres Heavy Metal Metalcore Deathcore

Deathcore

The extremity of death metal arranged around metalcore’s breakdowns. Young, brutal, and engineered for maximum impact.

Active years
2005 – present
Origin
USA / Canada
Family
Metalcore
Bands here
14

Before you press play

Explicit content

Graphic lyrics and artwork are a defining feature of this genre rather than an occasional accident — which of violence, gore or sex depends on the band. Worth knowing before you put it on in a room with other people in it.

Start here

Four records in order of how easy they are to get into — which is not the same as best first.

  1. The Cleansing Suicide Silence, 2007 The landmark

    The record that made deathcore commercially enormous, and the best argument for it. Mitch Lucker had genuine presence and the breakdowns are placed rather than merely repeated. He died in 2012, aged twenty-eight.

    Listen to The Cleansing

  2. This Is Exile Whitechapel, 2008

    Three guitarists, tuned as low as the instrument allows, and rather more actual death metal in it than the genre usually manages.

    Listen to This Is Exile

  3. Holy War Thy Art Is Murder, 2015

    Australian, and the most articulate — the anti-religious lyrics are argued rather than shouted. The tightest-produced record in the genre.

    Listen to Holy War

  4. Pain Remains Lorna Shore, 2022

    The modern extreme, and it went viral for a reason: symphonic arrangements, a vocalist doing things with his throat that should not be survivable, and a three-part closing suite that is genuinely moving.

    Listen to Pain Remains

What it sounds like

The breakdown taken to its logical end. Deathcore keeps metalcore's structure but swaps its melodic death metal parts for actual death metal: guttural vocals, blast beats, tremolo riffing and tuning several steps lower. The breakdowns are heavier, slower and more central, often with the guitars reduced to a single hammering note. Nothing is melodic and there is rarely a clean chorus. Production is modern, loud and extremely compressed. Compared with death metal it is more rhythmically simple and built for a live room; compared with metalcore it has abandoned any interest in a tune. It is the youngest genre on this site and the most divisive within metal, which is roughly what was said about every genre above it when it arrived.

  • Heaviness 5 out of 5
  • Speed 4 out of 5
  • Aggression 5 out of 5
  • Technicality 3 out of 5
  • Darkness 4 out of 5
  • Melody 1 out of 5

Where the name came from

A portmanteau of 'death metal' and 'metalcore,' coined by online metal communities in the mid-2000s. It describes bands applying death metal's extremity — blast beats, tremolo picking, guttural vocals — to metalcore's breakdown-centric structure.

The bands

Hear these first

  • Suicide Silence USA
  • Whitechapel USA
  • Thy Art Is Murder Australia
  • Carnifex USA
  • Lorna Shore USA

And 9 more

  • Despised Icon Canada
  • Acacia Strain USA
  • Job for a Cowboy USA
  • Oceano USA
  • Chelsea Grin USA
  • Fit for an Autopsy USA
  • Within Destruction Slovenia
  • Shadow of Intent USA
  • Bhayanak Maut India

If you liked this

Closest in sound outside this family, leaning towards the similar or the gentler rather than straight into the deep end.