math metal

unknownkadath666 · **Posted:** Sat Jul 30, 2005 4:16 am

what the hell is it?

i have heard bands described this way but i havent got a real definition for what it means.

All i know is that mudvayne is called this and sometimes messhugah

Open Mind · **Posted:** Sat Jul 30, 2005 9:41 am

I found this recently:

"Math Metal is a subgenre of heavy metal. It is characterized by a show of skill, changeable time signatures, and often dissonant or atonal guitar riffs. Math metal bands sometimes employ elements of jazz into their music, such as dynamic time signatures and drumming patterns. It use extended polyrhythmic passages, complex drum patterns, odd time signatures, smooth, melodic lead guitar solos, and harsh, atonal vocals."

Source: I forgot

lizardtail · **Posted:** Sat Jul 30, 2005 10:54 am

SiKth could slot into this description fairly well, too.

Notice how Meshuggah doesn't fit the description because they've never played a melodic solo in their lives, and Mudvayne don't fit because like Tool, most of their songs stay in the same groove all the way through.

rio · **Posted:** Sat Jul 30, 2005 12:47 pm

Sikth woohoo!

Apologies this is an involuntary reaction whenever this band are mentioned. I love them 8)

Anyway, for me Meshuggah are the archetypal math metal band- in that I can't think of many others right now. Jazz music does NOT have MELODIC solos... In fact Meshuggahs solos are jazz influenced by virtue of being very UNMELODIC.

Can anybody name some more of these groups?

Sikth woohoo!

lizardtail · **Posted:** Sat Jul 30, 2005 2:13 pm

The first alternative people suggest is always "Scarve" and I find them to be ok tech-death rather than anything math metally. There are plenty of tech-death bands though, and none of them sound even close.

I imagine if Chuck Schuldiner had joined latter-day King Crimson, that'd be a math-metal band. I don't entirely trust the name of the genre. :wink:

Sikth woohoo!

Stefan · **Posted:** Sat Jul 30, 2005 2:27 pm

lizardtail wrote:

The first alternative people suggest is always "Scarve" and I find them to be ok tech-death rather than anything math metally. There are plenty of tech-death bands though, and none of them sound even close.

I imagine if Chuck Schuldiner had joined latter-day King Crimson, that'd be a math-metal band. I don't entirely trust the name of the genre. :wink:

Sikth woohoo!

woohoo indeed !!!

but as for the math metal "genre", here's an accurate description (because, after all, it's Mathcore we're talking about) :

Quote:

Mathcore
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Mathcore, also known as math metal, tech hardcore, or chaotic hardcore, is a hardcore punk subgenre recognized for a high level of technical musicianship. The genre has its roots in bands like Botch, Deadguy, Kiss it Goodbye, Knut and Rorschach and is currently being promoted by bands such as The Dillinger Escape Plan and Converge.

The music is usually filled with discordant, somewhat grindcore-inspired riffing, complex time signatures and song structures, and usually indecipherable lyrics. Songs played by bands of this style tend to vary from mere seconds in length to over 15 minutes and rarely feature a conventional verse-chorus song structure. Other styles of music, such as blues-rock and free jazz have been known to inspire various mathcore bands. Coalesce have been influenced by the former, to the extent of releasing a Led Zeppelin cover EP named 'There is Nothing New Under the Sun', whereas The Dillinger Escape Plan are known to credit the latter.

Other notable bands in this style: Psyopus, Ion Dissonance, Curl Up and Die, Daughters, The End, The Power and the Glory, Creation is Crucifixion, Misery Signals, Meshuggah, Spiral Architect, CKY, Foreign Objects, and Spastic Ink.

I'll have to add Rumah Sakit, Radiation 4, Ahleuchatistas, Hella, Don Caballero, Turing Machine etc...

rio · **Posted:** Sat Jul 30, 2005 5:41 pm

Hmm but is there not a difference between "math metal" and "Math core"?

Meshuggah and Botch for example, are both "math", but the former is indisputedly metal, and the latter is undoubtedly core.

Stefan · **Posted:** Sat Jul 30, 2005 6:45 pm

rio wrote:

Hmm but is there not a difference between "math metal" and "Math core"?

Meshuggah and Botch for example, are both "math", but the former is indisputedly metal, and the latter is undoubtedly core.

sure thing, but then, there much more in common between Meshuggah & Botch than there is between Meshuggah and most of the metal scene (except those sharing the mathy aspects of course...)

so I guess it's okay to put them all together (including softer acts like Karate or Dismemberment Plan who could be the softer side of this genre as AOR/Hard Rock is for Metal) in some kind of MATH ROCK SCENE... :roll:

unknownkadath666 · **Posted:** Sat Jul 30, 2005 9:37 pm

hmm..

i geusse im gonna have to download some meshuggah to understand whats goign on here.

what are there better tracks/albums?

Open Mind · **Posted:** Sat Jul 30, 2005 10:28 pm

rio wrote:

Can anybody name some more of these groups?

Look here.

http://www.audioscrobbler.com/group/Math+Metal

Stefan · **Posted:** Sat Jul 30, 2005 11:18 pm

Open Mind wrote:

rio wrote:

Can anybody name some more of these groups?

Look here.

http://www.audioscrobbler.com/group/Math+Metal

that was a good idea my dear O.M.

but it's a crappy answer after all... I could find bands like OFFSPRING ( :shock: ), FEAR FACTORY, THRICE, METALLICA (etc) in that group's chart... not so mathy !:evil:

my advice is to stick with the names of Wikipedia & the few more I gave, if you like it everything will flow naturally from there...

EDIT Ho, and about the guy who wants to try Meshuggah, try downloading the song 'I" (20+ music of crazy mathy Meshuggah !), not their catchiest work but surely their more breath-takingingly technical track !

lizardtail · **Posted:** Sat Jul 30, 2005 11:37 pm

unknownkadath666 wrote:

hmm..

i geusse im gonna have to download some meshuggah to understand whats goign on here.

what are there better tracks/albums?

Destroy, Erase, Improve for their concise, aggressive stuff. Catch Thirtythree for their more in-depth, indulgant and experimental work.

never listen to their song "Futile Bread Machine" if you can help it

Open Mind · **Posted:** Sun Jul 31, 2005 5:25 am

T.I.E. wrote:

Open Mind wrote:

rio wrote:

Can anybody name some more of these groups?

Look here.

http://www.audioscrobbler.com/group/Math+Metal

that was a good idea my dear O.M.

but it's a crappy answer after all... I could find bands like OFFSPRING ( :shock: ), FEAR FACTORY, THRICE, METALLICA (etc) in that group's chart... not so mathy !:evil:

I don't get it. I can't see any of these names in this list:

Meshuggah PsyOpus The Dillinger Escape Plan Coprofago Between the Buried and Me Glass Casket Craw Botch Converge Ion Dissonance Comity Swarm of the Lotus Terminally, Your Aborted Ghost Neuraxis The Secret Fredrik Thordendal's Special Defects Cephalic Carnage Alarum Coalesce Harlots Gojira Sikth Fear Before the March of Flames Daughters Eden Maine Extol Losa As The Sun Sets Behold... the Arctopus Bodies in the Gears of the Apparatus Into The Moat Origin The Hostage Heart Ephel Duath The Number Twelve Looks Like You Zero Hour Mastodon Norma Jean Misery Signals Soilwork Mnemic Five Star Prison Cell A Life Once Lost Radiation 4 Unsane The End Final Conflict The Red Chord Necrophagist The Locust Dysrhythmia Knut Crowpath The Sawtooth Grin Deadguy Pravda thumbscrew Eyes Upon Separation Thirty Called Arson Tower of Rome Breather Resist

Open Mind · **Posted:** Sun Jul 31, 2005 5:39 am

T.I.E. wrote:

so I guess it's okay to put them all together (including softer acts like Karate or Dismemberment Plan who could be the softer side of this genre as AOR/Hard Rock is for Metal) in some kind of MATH ROCK SCENE... :roll:

Another crappy link ;-):

http://www.epitonic.com/genres/mathrock.html

Lots of full song MP3s!

Anonymous · **Posted:** Sun Jul 31, 2005 6:13 am

Sikth>life.

Other good examples: Between the Buried and Me, Dillinger Escape Plan

Anonymous · **Posted:** Sun Jul 31, 2005 6:17 am

Here man, just click this link:

http://betweentheburiedandme.com/audio/btbamsilent4.mp3

It's a great example of math metal.

lizardtail · **Posted:** Sun Jul 31, 2005 12:30 pm

Open Mind wrote:

T.I.E. wrote:

Open Mind wrote:

rio wrote:

Can anybody name some more of these groups?

Look here.

http://www.audioscrobbler.com/group/Math+Metal

that was a good idea my dear O.M.

but it's a crappy answer after all... I could find bands like OFFSPRING ( :shock: ), FEAR FACTORY, THRICE, METALLICA (etc) in that group's chart... not so mathy !:evil:

I don't get it. I can't see any of these names in this list:

Meshuggah PsyOpus The Dillinger Escape Plan Coprofago Between the Buried and Me Glass Casket Craw Botch Converge Ion Dissonance Comity Swarm of the Lotus Terminally, Your Aborted Ghost Neuraxis The Secret Fredrik Thordendal's Special Defects Cephalic Carnage Alarum Coalesce Harlots Gojira Sikth Fear Before the March of Flames Daughters Eden Maine Extol Losa As The Sun Sets Behold... the Arctopus Bodies in the Gears of the Apparatus Into The Moat Origin The Hostage Heart Ephel Duath The Number Twelve Looks Like You Zero Hour Mastodon Norma Jean Misery Signals Soilwork Mnemic Five Star Prison Cell A Life Once Lost Radiation 4 Unsane The End Final Conflict The Red Chord Necrophagist The Locust Dysrhythmia Knut Crowpath The Sawtooth Grin Deadguy Pravda thumbscrew Eyes Upon Separation Thirty Called Arson Tower of Rome Breather Resist

This list adds another layer of confusion, because every name on it is already tied to another genre of music, ie, Soilwork -> Melodeath, The Locust or Cephalic Carnage -> Grind, Neuraxis or Necrophagist -> Tech-Death and Mnemic -> Thrash, or "Space Metal" if you're into meaningless genre titles..

..other bands like Behemoth, Losa and Extol just tend to do their own thing within the confines of Metal and STILL get lumped in with Metalcore. The remainder of the list seems to be metalcore, or in the case of the bands I'm not familiar with, have metalcore names.

It seems that "math metal" or "math core" is a convenient dumping ground for bands who rip off Botch and DEP, as well as bands who are hard to classify, ie Ephel Duath and Fredrik Thordendal. Frankly if you'd given me a million guesses at who is contained within "math metal" then none of them would have been Norma Jean, haha.

rio · **Posted:** Sun Jul 31, 2005 1:59 pm

I heard Jaden's link a while back and think its pretty good, although the melodic section surpasses the heavy section by some way. In Sikth, I think this is vice-versa, no?

Anyhow, I'm off to try and hunt down some more BTBAM, cos this is still the only track I've heard of them.

Seinfeld26 · **Posted:** Mon Aug 01, 2005 1:38 pm

Wait, since when were Mudvayne really a technical metal band?

lizardtail · **Posted:** Mon Aug 01, 2005 3:18 pm

Seinfeld26 wrote:

Wait, since when were Mudvayne really a technical metal band?

Usually they're straight-forward, irritating nu-metal, but on LD 50 they had a lot of songs that sounded a lot like Tool, what with interesting riffs and non-standard interplay between the bass and the drums.

Er, but their latest album ruined any hope for them I had anyway, haha. NU-METAL!!! \m/ \m/

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