Unpopular Opinion: Breakdown is the worst thing that happened to metal and hardcore.

My face when I go to a metal gig and the music is as fast as grandma on her walker.

I like fast music, music to jump to, to get wild, I blame my whole musical taste on Paranoid by Black Sabbath, the first time I heard the song playing Rock n' Roll Racing as a kid I went nuts, but when I was a kid I also really liked the song Chopis Centis by Mamonas Assassinas (I mentioned them briefly in this rant) and only years later I discovered it was a parody of Should I Stay or Should I Go by The Clash, I don't know which came first in my life, but I guess speed has chosen me.

This pointless rant is not just to complain about how slow the songs of the mainstream of alternative extreme rock have become (in the last 20 years already), but also about a bit of culture shock within my geographical scope, because the way I see it, there's a mainstream and an underground alternative extreme rock scene, and for some reason there seems to be an ethical difference along with the musical differences...

I remember when screamo was very popular in the mid '00s, my thought back then was that it was the emo kids wanting to look tough because they were tired of being bullied, and it was in general the kids that would hang out in shopping centers and worship clothing stores and stuff, there wasn't a very political or social ethos, a lot of style and little substance... in my city it even manifested as a recruiting ground for evangelical churches, out of nowhere there were three or four Christian screamo bands that would go to underground gigs to leaflet church stuff, at the time there was this church called Bola de Neve (Snowball) backing them, so I started my punk distro called Bola de Fogo (Fireball) to poke fun at them... I didn't like the people involved in general, but looking back, some were idiots, but I also was an asshole to one of them and that guy really didn't deserve it, and I wish I could meet him again to say it.

Anyway, these shopping center variants of metal and punk, like screamo, metalcore, deathcore, I never really saw them playing in the underground in my geographical scope (I talk a lot about it in this journal entry - it has a bunch of cool pictures of underground gigs in the countryside of a third world country), I knew they were more of the mainstream of the alternative independent scene, but for me it was still alternative (at least the ones that weren't evangelical).

Flash forward to when I moved to my current city, didn't know anyone, there was some biker event going on and I showed up there and talked to random kids that looked alternative, they told me there was going to be a "hardcore" gig a few days later, I showed up at the gig, very unfamiliar, brand T-shirts instead of band T-shirts, one band on the flyer said it played "djent" and I had never heard of it before, I think what they called hardcore was some post-screamo or something, and the headliner I didn't even know was kinda famous in the metal scene, back then they had already opened shows for Stone Sour, Gojira, and Slipknot... while I never had any problem going alone to punk and metal gigs where I didn't know anyone, I was really feeling like a fish out of water there, it was only then that I noticed that despite both being alternative, how different the mainstream was from the underground, and one thing that stuck with me from that night was when the bass string of one of the bands broke and the band members were all looking at each other not knowing what to do, and none of the other bands lifted a finger, they just looked away, out of nowhere one guy came from the crowd and just put his bass on the stage and left, he was from the thrash metal band that was going to play later that night, they were the only familiar sight there, with band T-shirts and patches and buttons instead of looking like the regular shopping center dweller, and it was only them that had the spirit of solidarity that formed the underground scene, while the rich shopping center kids just ignored each other - they were also the only band I musically liked that night.

I met some other guys there, they were straight edge, had a hardcore band, they'd also do gigs, great, I hung out with them once and their night out was going out for a coffee lol, super weird, but they were ok people, once they showed up at my home and we played a lot of vinyls and ordered a pizza too, and some weeks later it was their hardcore gig... it was screamo, metalcore, post-hardcore again, super slow music, really not my thing, it was a very independent gig but again not with a political or social background, and what marked me from that night was the "mosh pit", nobody would touch anyone, they were all meters apart, each kicking and punching the air in their own circle... did you see that link I put from the journal entry? This video below is from it, so it was a shock going from these to the no-touching pit:

Two gigs later, the next event they made was some church stuff and I never met them again... so I can't help but wonder about the relation between breakdown, apathetic shopping center kids, lack of solidarity, being afraid of human touch, and how easily one can be manipulated by religious institutions...

Yeah, I'm only talking about my personal experience, perhaps you've met some great screamo, metalcore, or whatever that plays those slow breakdown songs and participated in a lot of cool initiatives and stuff, I just happened to, despite not liking the music at all, also not have a great experience with the scene... but anyway, stop being lame, FUCKING PLAY FAST!