Once upon a time deathcore took the metal world by storm, drawing in vast legions of fans through its amalgam of monster vocals, brutish atonal riffing, and more bunker-busting breakdowns than any militarized armory could possibly hold. Like most waves of popular music in any genre, it quickly became saturated and homogenized, and came close to drowning beneath a tide of cookie-cutter mediocrity. The elements of the music that didn’t seem to require instrumental skill spawned hordes of bands that also had no talent for writing actual songs either.

But it would be wrong to proclaim that deathcore is dead. Instead, it has evolved, as all living things threatened with extinction must. Rather than depending entirely on the old core elements (so to speak), the better bands have expanded their musical palettes, some of them moving more in the direction of pure death metal and others integrating elements of melody and atmosphere, along with increased technicality.

The Portland band A World Without, for example, has retained some of those core features but has intertwined them with other ingredients, and today we have an example of their musical amalgamations through the lyric video premiere of a song called “In Extremis“, which includes a guest appearance by vocalist Steve Tinnon from Within the Ruins. Continue reading »