A blog dedicated to taking a look at some of the not as well known, and also more known, metalcore bands that you need to be listening to right now! Like seriously, stop what you're doing and crank up the metal!
Just in time for Halloween, this week's band of focus is Vesta Collide. This Michigan based metalcore act kind of sounds like if My Chemical Romance and Blessthefall had a baby, so in other words, they're pretty freaking good! These guys haven't been around for a very long time, since 2014 actually according to their Facebook page, and they've already racked up 20,000 likes on Facebook as well as a deal with a major record label, Stay Sick Recordings and are currently making a new album. So far they've only released one full length album that they debuted just this year with their record label and a few singles that they've released over their few years of existence before being signed. They stay pretty consistent in touring and have even just recently toured with Alesana earlier this year. So basically, for a new band that no one had really heard of before this year, I'd say they're starting off really well! In fact, I hadn't even heard of them before a few weeks ago and immediately fell in love and was so excited to get to talk about them here!
The one downside that I see in Vesta Collide is their generic metalcore sound. It sounds as if they're trying to mimic a bunch of the mainstream metalcore acts, but they're still young so I definitely cut them some slack there and just hope they find their niche and find their sound. However, for me anyways, it was nice to listen to something that sounded mainstream but wasn't. They have some daker lyrics than the previous bands I've posted about (hint the reason I'm posting this around Halloween), but they're unique lyrics for the most part that really fit with their sound. They have a few songs that have more positive messages behind them as well. Their vocalists have a great hard hitting scream and beautifully sung clean combination which always makes for good music. Another difference between them and the other bands I've posted (aside from the last post before this one) is their use of synthesizers, they don't go too heavy on them but I feel as if they do an excellent job of using them at appropriate times that makes their tunes even more enjoyable to me.
Moondancer I feel is an appropriate song to keep the spooky theme going for this time of year and is also one of my favorites by them. Enjoy!
So I'm at the halfway mark for my required amount of blog posts, so I figured this is a good time to take a break for this week to talk about something different. As opposed to focusing on just one band, I want to talk about a couple of different bands. These bands are bands that are influential bands to not only myself but many, many other people. Instead of looking at a band that isn't well known, these bands are a little more well known and the first two are very popular today. These bands have influenced many of the youth and adults of the world in the best way possible and hopefully everyone reading will enjoy!
The Amity Affliction
The first band I want to mention is The Amity Affliction. The Amity Affliction is one of the big metalcore giants of Australia, and rightfully so with their incredibly inspirational lyrics. Despite some average instrumentals and generic breakdowns you hear from most of the popular metalcore bands, The Amity Affliction definitely makes up for this in their lyrics which is why I keep finding myself jamming out to them, that and Ahren's vocals are very bone chilling despite being a little auto tuned sounding. My favorite lyrics from them comes from the song Youngbloods. "Youngbloods run free forever, forget the death that's ever nearer. Youngbloods young hearts alike, let the fires burn inside your eyes. We won't give up these memories, and we won't go near those cemeteries." This song is about suicide prevention, which is a very common theme among The Amity's songs and I strongly encourage everyone to check them out especially their older stuff if you haven't!
Beartooth
This next band is a newer band that has found themselves a lot of success in their first few years of activity. Beartooth is a phenomenal band devoted to sending a positive message to everyone going through a rough time. Whether it's social injustice, or just going through a difficult time in life, Beartooth tackles those topics and everything in between. The song I want to talk about is from their debut album from 2013, this song is called Beaten in Lips. To sort of quote the song, this is dedicated to the kids with beaten in lips, or are just beaten in general from parents or anyone in their life. The message behind this song can be used for anyone else that suffers from any kind of domestic violence as well or just anything else that's crappy in your life. "Keep living loud and proud! They never can hold you down!"
In Fear and Faith
Finally there's one more band that I want to talk about in this post, and that's In Fear and Faith. Unlike the other two, In Fear and Faith are on a hiatus and also aren't nearly as well known as the other two, but when they were around, they made a lot of influential music in their earlier days of their career. One of those songs being, The Road to Hell is Paved With Good Intentions. This song is your typical metalcore song with heavy and fast music and of course a good scream vocalist and clean vocalist. What makes this song special though, is that like The Amity Affliction's song from earlier, this is a song dedicated to suicide prevention. Not only that though, it's actually a story of someone wanting to commit suicide and there's two parts to it. The first part is meant to be two people talking about it, and then the second part (the part with the singing and screaming duet) are the thoughts that go through someone's mind when wanting to commit this act with the evil side (screamed parts) and good side (clean parts) of staying. To me, this is such a great and complex song with a very positive message behind that I know has helped many people, including myself even. And if that isn't enough, Craig Owens does some guest vocals on this song and Craig Owens is one of many ultimate baes.
There's so many other great metalcore bands out there that have very influential music but it would take me forever to talk about all of them so I picked the three that have really influenced my life personally and have helped keep me going when I felt like it wasn't worth it. I would talk more about it, but I don't want to get off topic and talk about myself, but for real guys, the reason I wanted to share on this topic is because this music really, really does help save some people so I highly encourage everyone to share some of these bands to anyone that you know that's got some messed up stuff going on in their life because it might just help keep them going. Anyways, thank you for taking the time to read and if you already knew about these bands, hopefully you learned something new about them! Tune in next week where I'll return with talking about a new metalcore band to be on the lookout for!
If you liked ERRA, then you're absolutely going to love Invent Animate! The Texas based progressive metalcore band has released 2 full length albums and one self-released EP since 2012. Their self-released EP found them with quite a nice fanbase and even caught the eye of record label Tragic Hero Records (formerly the record label of ERRA as well so that's another thing these two have in common). Another thing the two have in common is that Jesse Cash not only did some guest vocals for their song Naturehold off of their debut full length album Everchanger, but Jesse also helped produce that album for them so that's pretty cool!
Invent Animate has such a unique sound to them, every metal band has their own unique sound which is what makes this genre so great! Their style really is similar to that of ERRA's in that they have such an ambient and also really heavy sound to them.They have that perfect combination of atmospheric instrumentals with bone chilling cleans as well as djenty and intense breakdowns and the use of low growls and mid screams from vocalist Ben English. If you don't know what I mean by the word "djenty," "djent" is a guitar technique that was started by progressive metal legends Meshuggah that is widely used by many progressive metal bands today. Basically "djent" is just the sound you make the guitar make when you play it, usually in a low pitch, palm muted style. They utilize 7 string guitars and a 5 string bass to utilize this combination of heaviness and also ambient, atmospheric sounds in their strings work.
Just like any progressive metalcore band, Invent Animate is great to listen to whether you're looking to just relax and close your eyes and escape to the music, or to bang your head to, and especially if you're looking to do both. They really do an excellent job of combining these elements together to make what really is a beautiful sound. Expect great things from this young up and coming band!
Here's Nocturne: Lost Faith from their debut full length album Everchanger, which is an excellent example of their ambient and also heavy sound.
Australia is home to A LOT of great metalcore bands, and one of those bands is In Hearts Wake. While they have certainly gotten a lot of views on some of their music videos on YouTube, they still haven't quite hit the commercial success that I strongly feel like they should've hit by now. In Hearts Wake has released 2 EPs, 2 split EPs, and 4 full length albums since 2007. Their first 2 EPs came out in 2007 and 2008 when the band members were still in high school. After a few years, they released their debut album with UNFD record company in 2012 entitled Divination. This was a great debut album for the band that helped put them on the map and even featured a few big name guest vocalists such as Winston McCall, Garret Rapp, and Adrian Fitipaldes.
In Hearts Wake is another band with very influential lyrics. A big common theme for them is environmentalism, they are definitely the most eco friendly band out there. They even went around and got a bunch of fans to join them in cleaning out trash in different areas such as the land and water systems of the cities they were touring in in Australia earlier this year. On top of that though they deal with a lot of social issues as well in their lyrics. The best example and my favorite song by them is their song Healer. "No hate, no fear of anyone. All we need is to live and forgive everyone, everything that holds us back. No hate, no fear of anything." This is such a powerful message that should not go unnoticed by anyone, especially in light of what's all going on in the world right now. As you could guess, this a song that talks about healing us of all the hate in the world.
A combination between great, meaningful lyrics, as well as Jake's powerful screams and Kyle's beautifully sung cleans, In Hearts Wake is a band that I encourage everyone to check out! You can strongly sense an inspiration from fellow Aussie metalcore bands Parkway Drive and Northlane and that is most definitely a good thing! They have that perfect flow of elements from both of those bands in their style, they're hard hitting and heavy just like Parkway Drive, and they slow the tempo down a bit for some songs to chill out to that give the song a Northlane like feel. They even did a split EP with Northlane in 2016 and I strongly encourage you give it a listen, it's only 3 songs so it won't take long to listen! One last note about In Hearts Wake, they'll be in Lawrence with Fit For A King at The Bottleneck on December 15th so I hope to see some of you there!
As talked about earlier, here's Healer off of their 2014 album Earthwalker.
