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Originally Posted by SpectralJulianIsNotDead
I noticed the word post-hardcore is starting to get mainstream too. But instead of referring to post 80's hardcore, it refers to post-now hardcore, which is just shitty emo kids screaming. WTF is this Norma Jean shit?
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What's happened to the word "hardcore" is a perfect example of the streamlining or narrowing of a genre which changes a word's definition. I never thought I'd see a day when I'd have an argument with someone half my age about what is "hardcore," but now it has happened, as certain myopic kids who misguidedly subscribe to rigidly segregated genre ghettos wanna re-characterize the original "hardcore" of the years 1980-1985 as "hardcore punk."
The whole emocore/screamo, metalcore, and melodic hardcore thing were the ingredients that combined to form this stuff. It's gotten kids away from the DIY punk ethos and rawness of the original HC...all the way to the point where that is actually something to be vilified. And yet, some of the first bands to begin leading toward this trend are totally redeemable. Converge, for one.
As far as it "starting to get commercial," it's
waaayyyy beyond that point when you walk into a Wal-Mart or a Fred Meyer store in rural southeast Oregon, and the young men's clothing section is full of distress-dyed hoodies with asymmetrical screenprints of feathered skulls on them. In fact, I was just at the Fred Meyer in Klamath Falls, OR, on my recent roadtrip, and I saw this helplessly nerdy kid out back-to-school shopping with his farmer dad and ultra-frump mom. He was trying so hard to get some of those shirts and hoodies with those prints.
"Mom, what about this?" the kid asked, eyebrows raised in hopeful excitement.
"No way!" mom snapped. "Too goth!"
Reaching for a compromise, kid held up a Nike shirt with a small swoosh overshadowed by a strong "NIKE" inscripted in large orange-glowing outlines and the look of a wrought-iron "NIKE" brand.
"How about this?" he pleaded.
Mom: "That's still too goth!"
Kid: "Do you know what it says?"
Mom: "Nike...I can read."
Kid: "Well, it can't be too goth if you can read it."
Seriously, though...the uniform of Avenged Sevenfold is available in every big box store. By and large--so I'm not talking about anyone here specifically--youth don't know how to rebel anymore. It actually started with my generation, the first to be marketed corporate-controlled rebellion since the "psychedelic era" of 1967-1968 that permeated pop culture. We had "grunge." And since then, with "nü-metal" and "rage rock" and now this "post-hardcore" crap, corporate-controlled rebellion continues, and it only truly counts as rebellion in places like Klamath Falls, OR, where parents never caught up to understanding "grunge"...and other places where the local Bible store is the only bookstore around.