Let's Break Down That Breakdown

I have two things in mind for my next two posts, both of which may either be controversial, informative (at the very least), or just wrong, as you may see it. I want to apologize ahead of time, if you find my views disagreeable. A few months ago, I would have definitely found a bit of it very disagreeable. All of this will be clarified, I promise.

My first idea will be handled presently. And to some extent, if you're a long-time hardcore-show-attendee, what I am about to say will seem arbitrary or obvious, but to people like (most) of my friends, this will be surprising, and hard to accept. But this is about hardcore dancing, and how not only is it acceptable (in it's proper context), but also it makes just as much if not more sense to dance to hardcore as it does to mosh to metal. Again, it's all about context; just to prologue this argument, any time I mention hardcore dancing, as appropriate, I mean as appropriate to hardcore, hardcore punk, metalcore, whatever the fuck you want to fucking label it. If you're not informed about what contexts I'm talking about, read the next few paragraphs; if you are, you can skip down a bit.

Contexts for Dancing:

Mainly, the music appropriate for hardcore dancing must be hardcore punk, and it's more modern derivatives. What qualifies as a derivative is way to complicated nowadays. But let me try and break it down (pun intended).

Hardcore is now more predominately metal-influenced; take a band like anything on Deathwish, Hatebreed, Throwdown, Madball, and the (rather good, in my opinion) newbies like some of the stuff on Bridge Nine. So that, along with the more traditionally punkier sounding roots (Minor Threat being in mind of course), is all called "hardcore", for better or worse. Today, and perhaps since Shai Hulud, we've had some oddity called "metalcore". This name also applies to two things: one of them is a metal-breakdown infusion which became popular as of the beginning of the 2000s, including bands like As I Lay Dying, Parkway Drive, August Burns Red, and you can include Underoath or The Devil Wears Prada if you like, though I tend to find them a bit too "light" for that label. I'd say those sorts of bands are more "post-hardcore" (to be explained in a second), but whatever. What makes them "-core" at all, is simply the amount of breakdowns included. But then why is As I Lay Dying called metalcore? They use little to no breakdowns. It's just metal, but the amount of melodicism involved identifies it with a "scene" which a more melodic, expressive sort of music. (This is the subject of my upcoming post, so you'll just have to stay in the dark for now, though most of you know what I mean, I guess.) The other side of "metalcore" would be a true hardcore + metal = metalcore mixture. Shai Hulud seems the most appropriate example, though under these rules, almost any modern hardcore band could be called metalcore, and they are not. So I need to amend this ever so slightly: it's more so hardcore + metal = metalcore if and only if the mixture is predominately metal. If it's not predominately metal, and has come out in the last few years, it should be called hardcore, because that's sort of what hardcore is nowadays. For instance, Hatebreed, although I'd call them hardcore, as a fan base more metal-inclined. Go to iTunes, see what most people buy with Hatebreed albums: Lamb of God, Shadows Fall, and the like. So that's hardcore and metalcore; lastly, we have "post-hardcore". This is sort of the beginnings of what people sillily today call "emo". Emo (in the punk-sense) started with Fugazi (or arguably with a band called Rites of Spring in '85), because they had emotional on stage performances. No other reason. And post-hardcore is more or less the mixture of hardcore and 90s rock that pooped out of...well, the 90s. Quicksand comes to mind (Walter Schreifels's project after Gorilla Biscuits) immediately as (perhaps) one its pioneers. But today, the name "post-hardcore" really ends up applied to bands like Circa Survive, Saosin, Boysetsfire (when they were around), Escape the Fate, Vanna, and tons more newer groups signed to Epitaph and Equal Vision and Victory in the last few years. For better or worse, these bands are more a mix of modern indie rock and screamo, with perhaps some hardcore roots. I mean, Circa Survive, the only band I listed I truly love, is made up of dudes from This Day Forward, which was a post-hardcore band in Philly from '97-'03. But listening to them, you really hear the hardcore influence: why it still gets called post-hardcore is because it actually was a mix of hardcore and 90s rock/emo. (Keep in mind, "emo" also applies to a bunch of bands like Texas Is the Reason, Sunny Day Real Estate, Mineral, American Football, and Jimmy Eat World which became popular in the 90s; that is what I meant by "90s rock/emo" there.)

Now, what makes these groups appropriate for hardcore dancing? Well, hardcore nowadays normally comprises three main rhythmic motifs: a back-beated chug, punk rhythm, and breakdowns. Go listen to Reign Supreme's "And Come What May": here's the rhythms you hear in that tune (in the order they come up) in the first minute alone: 1. Punk; 2. Breakdown; 3. Chug. You hear those there main rhythmic ideas right in the first minute of that tune (by the way, it's just on their myspace, go check it out both because RS is pretty good, and because if you don't know what I'm talking about, you'll have a nice sample). I purposely used Reign Supreme because they are a quite modern version of hardcore, and the more "modern" you get, the more the prevalence of rhythms 2 and 3 pop up, as opposed to 1. In order words, it's gotten less "punk", at least rhythmically. But regardless, that was just in case you weren't familiar with that sort of stuff. Obviously those are not the only three, but those are the most typical. And it's these beats that induce hardcore dancing mostly: and more so with chugs and breakdowns than anything. It's "rhythmic" in such a way that warrants it literally danceable. And in general, it's back-beats that make that possible: for breakdowns, it's just the shear intensity of the moment that (I feel) ends up producing hardcore dancing. But we'll get to that.

This was all very confusing. But making my exposition any clearer would mean taking more time out of doing my homework, and I just can't spare it. Plus, sleeping is fun. Gonna wanna do that later, maybe are 5 in the morning. College is fun.

Psht.

Anyway, so yeah. Where and when is dancing appropriate, and why? I used to be, as most of my friends still are, ardent haters of hardcore dancing. It just seemed so pointless, and moreover, just ended up hurting people, badly. And to some extent, the fact that it ends up being so unsafe pisses me off, but that's sort of how pits work. They are going to be slightly unsafe somehow. But mainly people only get seriously hurt when some stupid motherfucker is not contributing fruitfully to the pit, and, as I will call it, is pitting selfishly. He's dancing as if he's the only dude there, and is completely and utterly careless of the people in the pit with him. Does he need to avoid everyone? Of course, not; actually, if he did, he'd be pitting a bit overcautiously. The whole idea is it can involve physical contact. That's okay. It's when you are swinging you fists around aimlessly knowingly about to slam into the side of the pit, when kids are just trying to enjoy the show (i.e. not pitting), then I have a problem with you. The pit is a communal experience, and when someone doesn't help someone else up, or gets in a fight, or hits people not actually in the pit, then you need to relax and start contributing to the experience for the people actually in the pit, without hurting them seriously.

But that point applies to all forms of moshing: what about hardcore dancing itself? What makes that ever excusable? I suppose I used to just find it stupid. It just looked stupid. But that was foolish, the main reason being that I had no good reason to find it stupid. I definitely didn't understand it, and if you read this blog regularly, you may have found: I am a strict believer in don't-say-anything-without-good-reason (unless you think you have a good reason to suggest why something isn't music). Hardcore dancing is simply a form of expression: it's literally dancing, you take the obvious back-beat that occurs in a lot of hardcore riffs and simply express it in motion, like you would to any dance tune with (an even more obvious) back-beat. And for the breakdowns: it's a moment where all of the intensity of the song builds up, so much so it feels about to boil over into a sea of boiling dead sea creatures that happened to be passing by. Sucks. Anyway, dancing to the breakdowns are notoriously more intense: that's why you see more flailing about, more spin kicks and shit, whatever. I'm not too interested in the technicalities. All I know to argue is that it's not only permissible, it's appropriate. Moshing in the usual sense is merely an expression of the intensity of the musical experience: it's so intense in fact that it's expression takes the form of some sort of odd, communal wave of people, all simply loving what they are hearing. And the physical togetherness is a bit lost in a hardcore pit: a lot of the time, it's possible to have just a bunch of kids dancing with no interaction. But that doesn't make it any less communal. What do you when someone falls? You help them the fuck up. If you don't, or you intentionally cause a fight, you're are ruining the experience for everyone, and you know you are. No one is actually supposed to risk their life and limb in a pit. You'll get hurt, yes, but if you break a bone, it's probably because some fuck was being too rough, or in general no one was looking out for each other. That is not what a pit is, and it's clear I think, that both hardcore and metal pits share that quality which makes them selfish or ill-formed: people not looking out for each other. If you finish moshing/dancing/parading/circling and feel like you've just climbed a mountain, you, and probably everyone else, did something right. Now that's a pit.

Thanks for listening, bitches. Go listen to Tombs, Baroness, Gaza, Coalesce, Brutal Truth, Doomriders, Lewd Acts, Ion Dissonance, Pulling Teeth, and Polar Bear Club. Just a few of the bands I've slobbered over recently.