AN OPEN LETTER TO METALCORE BY SAMMY O’HAGAR
Dear Metalcore:
I know you and I don’t hang out as much as we used to. I could list a couple of cleverly-worded reasons why, but today is apparently not the day to dwell on that. Instead, I’ll just share that I’ve been doing alright. I’ve been hanging out with the brothers doom and stoner metal a lot lately, and put in some QT with black metal over the winter. I mean, we get along really well. But it’s not like I don’t miss you from time to time or anything. But sometimes folks grow apart, hypothetical greener pastures are gone off to, new horizons breached. I started watching a lot more Coen Brothers movies; you started hanging out down at the mall for some reason. Interests differed, roads diverged. It was nothing personal, I suppose.
But that doesn’t mean the time we spent together didn’t have an effect on me: those first few Poison the Well albums, the brilliant cheesiness of Killswitch Engage, early Dead to Fall… all good times, man. And I still wonder how you’re doing. I mean, I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t a little bit concerned over what I’d heard you’d been up to lately; you just don’t seem like yourself, or at least the way you were when I knew you. Which is why I’m relieved — even if briefly — when hearing bands like New Hampshire’s Mercury Switch. You just seem like your old self then.
I mean, don’t get me wrong: you guys clearly spend a lot of time together. The guitars are all Swede-tastic, there are good cop/bad cop vocals, and oh, those breakdowns. But there’s a freshness to it, a sense that it’s not all being poured into a baking pan for overcooked metalcore brownies. Yes, the guitars are chock full of Scandinavian harmonies, but I’ll be damned if they’re not dripping with well-assembled catchiness. Yeah, there’s a screamy vocalist and a singy one, but the singy one actually provides worthwhile vocal melodies instead of wailing tunelessly and consistently falling short of the notes he’s striving for (um, not that that’s what you’d been doing or anything). And the breakdowns have a looseness and burliness that make me remember what it was like to hear shit slow down and want to punch some dudes in the face, even if I’d been reading John Ashbery and sipping green tea a few minutes before. Mercury Switch’s latest album is called Unbelievable, a name so obvious and dumb that it actually kind of wraps itself back around and is sort of awesome again. And, fittingly, the band is the same: stepping on ground so well-trod that it’s hard to see a point in walking it again, but stomping down on it confidently enough that one is incredibly glad they’re doing so. It makes me remember the good times, before I could hear a band playing through the floors at some fest and could semi-accurately guess that their name was Ashes of Tomorrow’s Morning or some shit (um, not that that’s what you were… oh, nevermind).
If more of you still sounded like this — familiar but crisp — we’d probably hang out more. And a part of me still thinks that’s possible. Maybe we can put aside what happened over the last few years on MTV2 and Victory Records and bro down like flat brimmed caps and (something) the (something) bands never happened (how is your little brother Deathcore doing, by the way?). But it seems like you have a good thing going with that Attack Attack! and Vampires Everywhere business and whatnot; Lord knows dudes like me aren’t making you any money. But so long as you throw bands like Mercury Switch my way every once and a while, we’re cool. Or at least cool until someone covers the Postal Service again.
Sincerely,
Dr. Samuel L. O’Hagar IV
