Metallic Hardcore

A fusion of hardcore punk and extreme metal that consolidated in the United States during the 1990s, as hardcore bands adopted the downtuned guitars, double-kick drumming and chromatic riffing of thrash, death metal and sludge. Metallic hardcore retains hardcore's compact song lengths, shouted vocals, breakdowns and do-it-yourself infrastructure, but replaces punk's chord-based attack with rhythmically intricate, heavily palm-muted guitar work and a darker lyrical register addressing violence, faith, addiction and social collapse. The style is anchored by the Cleveland, New York and Massachusetts scenes and by labels such as #Victory# and #Trustkill#, and it supplied much of the vocabulary later codified as metalcore.