Research on the genre(s) of the pitch

Although The Acacia Strain are commonly labelled as "deathcore" due to the hardcore and abrasive nature of their music, the band often refuse to be pigeonholed when it comes genres, and just designate themselves as "heavy". Technically speaking, The Acacia Strain have a dabbled with a number of different genres as they've progressed as a band. These include influences of hardcore, metalcore, metal, death metal, deathcore and others.

Hardcore/Hardcore punk - this genre of rock formed in the early 80's and found mainstream success through a few bands such as Black Flag. most bands followed the traditional singer/guitar/bass/drum format. The songwriting had more emphasis on rhythm rather than melody. Hardcore vocalists screamed, chanted and used spoken word poetry. Guitarists started using various different techiques to achieve a heavier sound, such as breakdowns, chugging and tapping, which was previously left unexplored. The guitar sound was almost always distorted and amplified. A lot of hardcore songs were very short. 


Metalcore - metalcore is an subgenre of the two genres of hardcore and metal and the genre began in the early 90's. It is one of the most prominent and popular forms of metal around today, made famous by such bands as Killswitch Engage, Underoath, All That Remains, Trivium, As I Lay Dying, Bullet for My Valentine, and The Devil Wears Prada. It has had a few evolutions, such as phases of metallic metalcore, metallic hardcore and crossover thrash. It has also bred other genres too, such as mathcore which utilises and extreme amount of technical proficiency and complex time signatures, and The Acacia Strain's reluctant genre of deathcore. 

Whitechapel, a popular death metal/deathcore band.

Deathcore - this genre bears many similarities to metalcore, but employs the use of death metal riffs, whilst using a vast amount of dissonant and intentionally abrasive riffs, and often set at an extremely low tuning. The speed can change from very fast-paced drumline to a suddenly slow and lurching time signature and beat per minute, similar to the aforementioned genre. Vocally, low growls and screaming is extremely commonplace, with almost no room for clean vocals. There are also a large amount of breakdowns, comparable to metalcore as well. The Acacia Strain use all these features, thus resulting in them being labelled as "deathcore", and were one of the first bands to use the sound. 

Slayer, a notable death metal band and purveyors of the genre.

Death metal - as subgenres of metal go, death metal, as well as some deathcore and black metal, is the most extreme and also one of the most revered in the world of rock. Much of the style of branches of metal emerge from this genre, notable for its shugging guitars, blast beat double-bass drumming, and growled vocals. The tempos are often extremely fast and the tunings are regularly low, although sometimes not as low as some deathcore guitars. It emerged in the 1980's and was made famous by bands such as Slayer, Kreator, Celtic Frost, Deicide and Carcass, and cemented the genre and has since spawned a huge amount of subgenres, some of which are listed above.