Post-Metalcore:
The Little Engine That Could
A four-part series by MarsKid
[Part I] || [Part II] || [Part III] || [Part IV]
Part IV: Changing the Game
On paper, detractors that remained in the metalcore scene had plenty of ammunition in 2016. After years of providing the most chaotic brand of the genre to hit a mainstream audience, The Dillinger Escape Plan announced that they were terminating the band, concluding an enviable career with their swan song Dissociation. Their counterparts in Converge, though not absent from the scene, had not released new material since 2012, creating a subtle sense of doubt over whether or not there would be more to come. In the prog-core circle, proceedings apparently reached a grinding halt once key groups began to falter late in their career, in part due to personnel alterations. Erra presented Drift, which was caught in the shadow of Augment — a tall task to defeat such an influential record, in fairness — while Northlane began a steady decline in quality. Younger acts that took up the mantle were similarly faltering; Invent, Animate disappeared following Stillworld and lost a critical component when vocalist Ben English decided to depart from the band. For those that desired another surge in the creativity of the underground or the progress metal crossover realm, the classification seemed to have launched headfirst into a brick wall and shattered, with little…
