page_title: Deathcore
section_title: Predecessors (1990s)
hierarchical_section_title: Deathcore / History / Predecessors (1990s)
caption_attribution_description: English: Despised Icon; Impericon Festival 2016 - Oberhausen
context_page_description: Deathcore is an extreme metal subgenre that combines death metal with metalcore. Deathcore consists of death metal guitar riffs, blast beats, and metalcore breakdowns. Deathcore gained most prominence within the southwestern United States, especially Arizona and inland southern California, which are home to many notable bands and various festivals.
  Deathcore began in the early 2000s with some of the earliest examples including Antagony, Despised Icon, and The Red Chord. The genre expanded in the mid–late 2000s with the emergence of bands like Through the Eyes of the Dead, Bring Me the Horizon, Suicide Silence, Carnifex, Job for a Cowboy, Chelsea Grin and Whitechapel. In the 2010s, deathcore bands began experimenting with an eccentric selection of other genres. The genre is noted for its criticism from longtime fans of heavy metal music, usually for its frequent use of breakdowns. Some deathcore musicians have even rejected the label.
context_section_description: The term deathcore was first used in reference to the style of music played by New York hardcore punk band N.Y.C. Mayhem in the mid–1980s. By 1996, Nick Terry of Terrorizer magazine wrote: "We're probably going to settle on the term deathcore to describe the likes of Earth Crisis (as well as the more NYHC-ish but still as deathly Merauder)." Embrace the Eternal (1998) by Embodyment and Rain in Endless Fall (1999) by Prayer for Cleansing are albums that feature metalcore combined with death metal influences. Decibel magazine wrote that death metal band Suffocation were one of the main inspirations for the genre's emergence by writing: "One of Suffocation's trademarks, breakdowns, has spawned an entire metal subgenre: deathcore." 
  The Belgian H8000 music scene was also influential to the development of the sound, with bands like Arkangel, Deformity, and Liar helping to pioneer a prototype for the genre in the late–1990s and early–2000s. When writing about deathcore pioneers Despised Icon, Dom Lawson of Metal Hammer wrote: "blending death metal with hardcore was by no means a new thing when Despised Icon emerged." Suffocation bassist Derek Boyer says Suffocation "were influenced by many early metal and hardcore bands". Death metal bands like Dying Fetus, Suffocation, and Internal Bleeding were influential on deathcore due to their use of "crushing, mid-paced grooves and breakdowns", according to Lawson.
caption: Despised Icon
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