*core

So I'm back onto the music topic again. And again, it's the retardation of genres.

I read today about emocore. It's a phrase I've heard before, but this time it kind of got to me. It was an argument on last.fm about whether a band was, post-hardcore, screamo, emocore or one of many other genres that all seem to describe a very similar group of artists. I get that screamo is music with screaming in, but also has an emo-y-ness to them, and that emocore is emo but with more hardcore influence, and post-hardcore is... ahhhh what the hell!

Does it really matter? I've heard good and bad bands of every genre, so surely picking out these little bits really is pointless yeah? I'm all for using genres to describe music, it's very obvious thing to do - if two bands sound similar you need to be able to describe that style. But the over complication is just stupid. A band is not defined by it's genre, and it is more than possible for a band to play any number of styles throughout the course of it's history (like brand new) or an album (like Queen) or even through a song (Tub Ring anyone?) So, lets just chill out a bit, and stop worrying about it.

If I call them metalcore or hardcore and you call them postscene-emocore then I'll probably think you're an idiot, but at least I'll know what a band sounds like! Pretty similar to a lot of what I like, which has some screaming some singing, some guitars and some drums. When it comes down to it, there's only two labels that really matter - Awesome and Not