Wednesday, July 19, 2006

In Place of Dying, or How I Came to Loathe Phrasecore

From a local band's MySpace page:

"In Silence And Shadows was formed in the extinguished flames of die in plain sight.*"

Honestly, In Silence And Shadows, don't you think a better and more literally descriptive name might be Born in Ashes?** It would make a lot of sense, and In Silence And Shadows has two S-sounds in it, which don't sound really great when made into a microphone. Plus, if your name has some kind of personal significance to it, it will make all the nights spent practicing hammer-ons and screaming in the garage seem all the more awesome.

Here's what I would like to see. I'd like to see a high school metalcore band whose name is comprised of a maxium of three words, none of which form a prepositional phrase. If this naming convention doesn't peter out soon, we are going to have to subdivide the metalcore subgenre even further, classifying bands of that particular stripe as Prepositional Phrase Metal or more simply as Phrasecore.*** And as an aside, is it a rule that because you play some variant of metal, you have to have a name that indicates what type of band you are? For instance, I would be much more likely to check out a band called LaserPeen (who wouldn't!) than a band called Whispers in the Grave or some other similarly ridiculous prepositional seriousness. And then, when I discovered that LaserPeen played metal, I'd be that much more pleasantly surprised.

I'm just saying is all.

--The Robo-Pirate

*I don't know who is responsible for extinguishing the flames of gravely humorless teenage metal bands, but I need their mailing address so I can send my charitable donation.

**Patent Pending. That's my metasitional phrase so don't you touch it.

***I'm claiming coinage.

1 comment:

Josh said...

Phrasecore - LMAO