page_title: Metalcore
section_title: Precursors (1980s)
hierarchical_section_title: Metalcore / History / Precursors (1980s)
caption_attribution_description: English: Integrity live at Antiknock, Shinjuku, Tokyo, Japan on 6 OCT 2017
context_page_description: Metalcore is a fusion music genre that combines elements of extreme metal and hardcore punk. As with other styles blending metal and hardcore, such as crust punk and grindcore, metalcore is noted for its use of breakdowns, slow, intense passages conducive to moshing. Other defining instrumentation includes heavy guitar riffs, occasional blast beats, and double bass drumming. Vocalists in the genre typically yell or scream. Some later metalcore bands combine this with clean singing, often during the chorus. Death growls and gang vocals are common. 1990s metalcore bands were inspired by hardcore while later metalcore bands were inspired by melodic death metal. Melodic death metal bands like At the Gates and In Flames influenced later metalcore bands.
  The roots of metalcore are in the 1980s when bands would combine hardcore punk with heavy metal. This included New York hardcore bands like Agnostic Front, Cro-Mags, and Killing Time, British hardcore punk bands like The Exploited and Discharge, and American crossover thrash bands like Dirty Rotten Imbeciles and Suicidal Tendencies. The genre emerged in the early 1990s and expanded in the mid–late 1990s.
context_section_description: Black Flag and Bad Brains, among the originators of hardcore punk, admired and emulated Black Sabbath. British hardcore punk groups such as Discharge and the Exploited also took inspiration from heavy metal. The Misfits put out the Earth A.D. album, becoming a crucial influence on thrash metal. Nonetheless, punk and metal cultures and music remained fairly separate through the first half of the 1980s. Cross-pollination between metal and hardcore eventually birthed the crossover thrash scene, which gestated at a Berkeley club called Ruthie's, in 1984. The term "metalcore" was originally used to refer to these crossover groups. Hardcore punk groups Corrosion of Conformity, D.R.I. and Suicidal Tendencies played alongside thrash metal groups like Metallica and Slayer. This scene influenced the skinhead wing of New York hardcore, which also began in 1984, and included groups such as Cro-Mags, Murphy's Law, Agnostic Front and Warzone. The Cro-Mags were among the most influential of these bands, drawing equally from Bad Brains, Motörhead and Black Sabbath. Cro-Mags also embraced some aspects of straight edge and Krishna consciousness. Another New York metal-influenced straight edge group of this time period is the Crumbsuckers. The year 1985 saw the development of the hardcore breakdown, an amalgamation of Bad Brains' reggae and metal backgrounds, which encouraged moshing. Agnostic Front's 1986 album Cause for Alarm showed a combination of hardcore punk with heavy metal influences.
caption: Integrity in Tokyo, Japan in 2017
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