EVERY GENRE PROJECT - August 10 - Easycore

Genre of the Day - Easycore

Album of the Day - Rise or Die Trying by Four Year Strong (2007)

Do the emotional qualities of the music we predominantly listen to affect our own emotional lives? It’s hard to say—I know metal devotees who seem well-adjusted, and pop fanatics who are absolutely unhinged. I also know people who listen seemingly exclusively to ‘sad girl music’ who are aptly cynical. Though musical prescriptives hold little water as everyone’s individual listening experience is as unique as their fingerprint, it’s still probably safe to say that it’s best to balance the light and the dark in our listening at times to open up alternative emotional paradigms.

Easycore follows that route in the worlds of pop punk and hardcore, striking a balance between the two with its straightforward moniker. Pop punk is occasionally criticized by diehard punk fans for its perceived lack of authenticity glaring off its mainstream sheen and its inclination away from establishment-critical lyrics, but easycore posits that harder-edged sonic elements are not incongruent strangers among pop punk’s more accessible sensibilities. Easycore’s impact lies in the ears of the beholder: to the pop punk fan, its riffs stand out with a grittier edge, and for hardcore fans, its uptuned melodies merit a side-eye or, better yet, a smile. 

Beyond their playing approach, easycore draws from a wellspring of punk ideologies. Many of easycore’s hallmarks can be traced back to beatdown hardcore, a machismo-infused punk scene that emerged in the ‘90s. Beatdown hardcore bands portrayed themselves more as tight-knit gangs rather than simple bandmates, and the music often reflected this emphasis on brotherhood and the aggressive lengths necessary to defend it in ‘gang vocals’ shouted by multiple band members and heavy breakdowns. While easycore knowingly strikes a less aggressive pose with poppier melodies, it takes small doses of those beatdowns and the gang vocals, though its melodically and lyrically freer and more uplifting nature is true to the pop punk the scene splintered off from in the late 2000s. 

With the free time of summer, I’ve let article lengths extend further and further, and I simply feel out a logical point to enter the stage of discussing the album. It seems appropriate then that writing about easycore feels as light and easy as the music would suggest and that we’ve naturally waded into album waters. Four Year Strong, the fathers of easycore, serves us with its defining 2007 album. Bright, uplifting melodic circles lend an irresistible, optimistic pop flair on “Prepare to be Digitally Manipulated;” the drumming is strong and the lead singer possesses a blow-out-the-mic voice, elements more evident than any digital manipulation, so perhaps I have been manipulated in my imperception. This album is an intriguing reminder of how much particular, subtly different chords and melodies have immediately recognizable emotional implications; the sheer intensity of the riffs of “Heroes Get Remembered, Legends Never Die” match that of hardcore, but the melodies conceal the force to an unknowing ear. “Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Hell” sees the band leaning into more menacing riffs on the chorus with a slight tongue-in-cheek smirk at the drama (the riffs follow a gang-chanted “HELL!”) and reminds us of a time of overstuffed pop-punk song titles and romantic woes à la Panic at the Disco. One of easycore’s strengths is its sense of contrast; the sheen of the melodies dominating most song sections allows the hard beatdowns as on the birds’-eye title “Beatdown in the Key of Happy” and closer “Maniac (R.O.D.)” a harder-hitting treat. No matter the emotional sphere you hail from in your listening habits, easycore offers a contrast for everyone; sometimes, it’s as easy as that.