Saturday, December 23rd, 2023

thrown – On the Verge

Michelle gets us some metalcore coverage…


[Video]
[6.36]

David Moore: Power music, nu metal revival!
[7]

Michelle Myers: Metalcore is less a genre than an approach. It’s hardcore-shaped music rendered in a metallic palette. In thrown’s case, the hardcore is modern, post-Knocked Loose heavy shit with a tough NYHC beatdown influence. The metal is thuddy, dissonant thall, pitched straight down to the depths of hell. In an interview with Ola Englund, Thrown’s multi-instrumentalist/producer Buster Odeholm said, “It’s 2023. Notes are overrated.” Thrown’s willingness to eschew melody for texture and rhythm lends their music gravitas. The riffs on “On the Verge” are never sterile, and Thrown’s considerable technical prowess doesn’t overshadow the intense emotionality of their music. They don’t need to play fast. They don’t need to squeal like hellspawn. When the breakdown comes, they just chug slower. The new pace allows frontman Marcus Lundquist to add a new layer of despair to his words as he repeats the first verse. “I’ve tried,” he insists, in the past tense, “to come to terms with my mind.” He doesn’t need to tell you it was an unsuccessful attempt.
[9]

Brad Shoup: One of my favorite bits is “Nuggets, but for __”. If it worked for garage rock–a very bad style of music–why wouldn’t it work for Eurodance or gabber or freestyle? Or metalcore? This would be one for the Children of Nuggets box: the anguish is rendered from a very old and muddy palette. (Referencing “demons” is bad enough; did they really have to rhyme it with “screaming”?) But to their credit, they take their torment and swing it against a brick wall. The track, frankly, slams: the breakdown is sick, the klaxon-like guitar ostinato and rap sample are a nice nod to the massively influential (!) Linkin Park. Another hint we’re dealing with a new generation of metalcore: they’re out in a breezy 2:15.
[6]

Ian Mathers: Satisfyingly chunky, like a good peanut butter. After the relative velocity of the opening salvo, it’s a nice change when they downshift into something more stompy. Kind of wish they kept it there, but this is so short I can just play it again.
[7]

Will Rivitz: If not for the TikTokicity of this song — phonk-inflected intro and interlude, verse-chorus-verse-chorus-bridges-are-for-suckers structure — you could have convinced me this came out in 2007. As that was the last time this type of -core featured regularly in my musical diet, I don’t mind the throwback at all.
[7]

Katherine St Asaph: This wasn’t my thing then, and it still isn’t my thing if you add a Tyga intro.
[4]

Joshua Minsoo Kim: I’m mostly interested in this as a barrage of textures: the phonk intro, the revved-up guitars 40 seconds in, the breakdown’s constant pummeling, the way things cohere in the final seconds. And yet, I still feel shortchanged — there’s not enough time for the heaviness to really hit you.
[5]

Nortey Dowuona: The snare drum is the most underrated drum in music. It settles a song, makes it translatable and danceable — a space for vocalists, other instrumentalists and a poet — but it rarely gets as much praise and love as the bass drum or the kick or the hihats. Here, the snare punctuates the frothy guitar and drowned bass and drags the song back to earth, allowing one to get immersed as the song lurches to a stomp, then a hop, a jog, all made possible by the snare.
[8]

Jacob Sujin Kuppermann: Linearly gets more conventional (and less interesting) with time; I was so disappointed when it switched from the very fun groove-like riff of the first half to the more pounding downward spiral of the B section that I immediately ran back to the start of the song.
[6]

Micha Cavaseno: One of the more fascinating things about the death of rapper XXXTentacion is just how effectively he helped bring dirtbag aggro rock energy back from seeming death. His flirtations with “screamo” and “nu-metal” (themselves emulating the work of fellow post-Raider Klan rapper Bones) led to a bunch of kids in rap and rock alike taking his DNA and merging it into filthy Adidas Rock wallows, whether for aesthetic purposes or genuine appreciation. “On the Verge” is the same beatdown hardcore knucklescrapes that I’ve heard for decades, but until fairly recently your average rap homages were funk beats or a guy rambling about his third eye, not fake Memphis-style loops or Marcus Lundqvist barking in a Three Six-style staccato pattern. I can’t help but be taken with the idea that we live in a world that’s slightly discolored even in the monochrome.
[4]

Taylor Alatorre: I spent the better part of a week trying to gather my thoughts for a blurb that would weave together digressions on the etymology of “metalcore,” the history of abortive nu metal revivals, the performance of masculine self-loathing, and the ethnomusicology of hardcore shows. Had the footnotes ready and everything. Then, after around my 37th time listening to the mini-breakdown before the chorus (“well I cannot fucking wait“), the urge to write had dissipated completely, and the urge to slam had taken hold. I am no longer thinking about what the next word in this sentence will be; I am astral projecting myself from my office chair into a violently teeming mass of bodies that I’m several years too old to safely be a part of. I am at war, I am at peace; I have given up.
[7]

Reader average: No votes yet!

Vote: 0   1   2   3   4   5   6   7   8   9   10

One Response to “thrown – On the Verge”

  1. First references to “phonk” in TSJ history.

Leave a Reply