THE GENRE PROJECT - January 22 - Mathcore

Genre of the Day - Mathcore

Album of the Day - Jane Doe by Converge (2001)

Today’s genre marks the first time I’ve interacted with math in a substantial way since the day I sauntered bravely into my AP Calculus exam senior year of high school, sat at the table, fervently crunched the numbers, and somehow squeezed out some answers. Two months later, I was greeted by an email leading me to a portal displaying my results: I fucking failed. I failed abysmally. I don’t have to take math for my major, really (lord knows if I had those math credits maybe I would have at some point felt brave enough to switch into a more business intensive path of my major, but alas) so failing meant nothing in the grand scheme. But it still stung, of course! Once upon a time, I was a year ahead in math. But I was always a little better with words, so I really backslid over time. Math comes to haunt me again today in the most unexpected form.

Mathcore is actually seemingly a bit of an arbitrary name. When the randomizer gave me this genre, I was expecting something closer to the nerdy, very mathy abstractness of serialism; something more classically inclined. Instead, though, mathcore is a hardcore as fuck branch of metalcore which is in turn a hardcore as fuck branch of metal and punk. Characterized by more complex rhythms than parallel genres and an emphasis on unusual elements of rhythm such as unorthodox time signatures and tempo changes, this sees metal at its nerdiest extreme.

One of the originators of the genre, Converge, is also seated at #1 on RYM’s mathcore chart with 2001 album Jane Doe, lauded by many critics as one of the best metal albums of all time. When I was reading the reviews for this album, I was admittedly nervous for what was to come. User velvet_elvis81 described their music as “sonic total war,” going on to dub each song as “a violent collision of speed, screaming, dissonance, and chaos.” On the precipice of listening to this album, I felt like a small, scared deer in a forest, spindly legs ready to snap in half at the undertow of a landslide. But I was pleasantly surprised, mostly because this is a very cathartic album largely centering on the most visceral descriptions of feelings about a breakup. Very pertinent, Converge. 

It’s a bit hard to hear the mathiness of it all, honestly. I think I’m just not well versed enough in metal to really pick out the difference between rhythms; I feel I’ll need to familiarize myself more with the sound to truly understand what makes it different. However, this is a worthy listen, if you have Spotify lyrics at your side. The lyrics are screamed out through a layer of abstraction so thick I genuinely couldn’t pick out a single word without the aid of lyrics, but I think it’s much better this way, and such a hallmark of what makes metal attractive; it really is all in the music and the lyrics function more as release, as pure and unabashed catharsis in a way other genres can’t really achieve. The album reaches its zenith to me on Phoenix in Flames, a song that resembles literally lighting something ablaze. The no-prisoners-taken intro reflects the flame lighting and shooting up and then the song simmers briefly into one, long extended shriek, before launching into more pounding and uncontrollable thrashing, like throwing more things onto the pyre. It's a glorious release; emotional emancipation at its rawest.