It’s never been a secret that metalcore bands generally favor moshing 4 christ and running in place in open grassy fields. It’s essentially Rap’s hanging out on ‘the block‘, Hardcore’s walking through the streets being ‘hard‘, and Blood on the Dancefloor’s embarassing their parents.
Even though I’m almost 26, I listen to music written for people who are probably at least 5 years younger than me. There’s more Tr00 pop punk on my iPhone than I should probably admit to on this site, but no fucks. I’ve been listening to pop punk since I was like 12 and all my friends made fun of me for it. Inb4 pop punk hipster. Anyways, after spending the last few years on a steady diet of Tr00, I’ve noticed a trend. Tr00 pop punk kids really love videos in their living rooms. Whether it’s general chicanery, having your friends point in your face and sing your lyrics that ‘tr00ly mean so much to them’, referencing ‘back in the day’ or really just being too broke/lazy to figure out anywhere else to go, Tr00 pop punk kids seriously get into hanging out in their living rooms.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nCoMSL0hwXE&w=480&h=360]
Set Your Goals is probably one of the biggest bands in the whole Tr00niverse. They’re pretty much what reminded a bunch of moshcore kids that they actually did used to like pop punk. This video reminds me of the stories my friend always tells me about his college apartment and playing ‘Knife in the Dark’, as well the three times I got invited to parties when I was younger and how I always wondered how people who clearly are renting a house were able to completely lay waste to it. But this video has good feels all the way through. A few notable bits of interest:
- Ladies room sign above the heater @ :24. Craziness guys. What kind of joker lives in this house anyways?
- What season is it at this party? I see dudes in shorts and guys in parkas. Maybe they did this in the slumz where they didn’t have heat or AC?
- A Spartan cheerleader sweater? Karate Gi? A guy in an Incredibles costume? DOES THE ZANINESS KNOW NO BOUNDS? Or did they raid a thrift store prior to the ‘shoot’?
- Getting underwear on your head while passionately singing to your friend @ 1:05? “Haha, good one guys. I love my friends. We’re gonna live forever. Etc.”
- Some guy who rmbrs teh 90s even back in 2006, by wearing camo.
Unfortunately, not all Tr00 pop punk is as wacky and carefree as the above. While this next video maybe considered Ikeacore, I’d argue that 9 out of 10 kids at a Title Fight show would classify them as pop punk. The other one calling them a hardcore band for some reason. Even right now I can’t think of why. I just envision myself making a dismissive wanking gesture and walking away.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fKqKM-gvK_w&w=640&h=360]
What I assume I’m watching through the VHS camcorder the guitar player in the glasses probably rented from his AV club, is a music video. I don’t know what it means, but it looks like they took a page from the Flight of the Conchords playbook and just don’t care about much.
- The singer is wearing a Judge shirt with a hole in it. I like to think he spent way too much money on ebay for it because someone told him it was an original pressing or something.
- Shots of black cats and umbrellas to show bad luck because why wouldn’t there be.
- Years from now, some poster on B9 is going to brag about being the kid in this video. Tumblr betas will shit their pants.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ecK6BmuaOrI&w=640&h=360]
My friend knows these dudes and this video was the thing that made me realize this whole trend.
- Lulz @ the dude playing the hollow body. I wonder if he got it after Tom Delonge started playing one and is now like “Well, I still have this. Not really worth buying a whole new guitar. Guess I’ll just look old.”
- The amount of shoes on clean carpet is rustling my jimmies. Floor’s not gonna vacuum itself bros. Have some respect for the room.
- Not sure how their calf muscles don’t look like this. They do that one all-your-weight-on-your-front-leg move the entire time.
- The awkward stage(floor?) left shot at 1:22 where they’re playing to no one. I like to imagine it’s on a holiday and their parents are making them perform for their family in the other room.
- 0:00-2:34, Trying reeeaaaaallllly hard not to look at the camera.
I listened to more of these dudes and they are good and have ability. Some might consider them lovely. Check them out.
Lastly, let me put this out there: I met these guys a few months ago and hung out with them for about an hour. They were nothing but nice and the chillest of bros. That being said, The Wonder Years like their living room so much they actually wrote a song about it. They have a video where they’re playing in a basement too, probably cause he was still sad at that point.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YRxWmMoMqFM&w=640&h=360]
There’s no point in breaking it down piece by piece. This video has it all. Hanging with your bros eating pizza, playing WWE on Xbox and drinking beers while your friends sing along? This video is tr00er than tr00. And they had more girls in this video than any of the other ones so there’s that.
Do you like to hang with your bros in your living room? Why do you think Tr00 kids like hanging out in the living room so much? Do you wish you could watch the guitar player from Title Fight’s AV Club projects? Am I seriously the first one to notice this?
“The amount of shoes on clean carpet is rustling my jimmies. Floor’s not gonna vacuum itself bros. Have some respect for the room.”
that line justifies the whole article, goddamn did I laugh
THIS.
pure gold.
also, is pizzabro in wonder years movie stepping in to the couch with shoes at 0:55??
consider my jimmies rustled too.
messy room = disrespecting your surroundings = NOT POSI
followingtherulescore
But moooooooooooom!
Agreed. Only crusties and hippies prefer filth.
I saw Title Fight back in March when they opened for ADTR and Rise Against. They actually brought a surprising amount of mosh, they’re way heavier live. However there was an irritating amount of “passionately singing along with all my heart” type bros during their set.
Just saw them at Warped and it was the same deal, but I had just seen Chunk so I was too stoked to give fucks.
I love passionate hearetfelt singalongs!
Parties are so shallow and meaningless; you can really connect to the people around you when your just chillin in your living room.
LOL, actually heard this line seriously before, but since I’m a hermit and rarely attend either type of gathering I really wasn’t sure what to do.
confused help me understand
^Bingo. “The intimacy of this space really helps us connect with the music.”
no care, all these tr00 pop punk bands all sound and look the same to me. go ahead and exile me to the “old and disgruntled” crowd.
mainly i was disappointed that the hyperlinked text didnt include separate instances of documentation of blood on the dance floor’s parents being embarassed. theres two words mane and i’m assuming theres at least 3
http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=blood+on+the+dance+floor&oq=blood+on+the+dance+floor&gs_l=youtube.3..0l10.192.2648.0.2900.18.5.1.9.10.0.246.483.2-2.2.0…0.0…1ac.nH0d3mRW5Pc
dnt b mad at me. plz respond.
Good post, but I thought Set Your Goals were founders of easycore? Maybe they’re tr00 now though not sure
always considered NFG to be the founders of easycore. p sure that is something most agree on, but then again i could be completely out of touch
that’s true. as far as i know, nfg were the first to coin the term, at least on a t shirt. as far this whole wave of tr00ness, syg was one of the first to get big.
i said it in another comment about the difference between easycore and tr00 pop punk, but easycore generally has more breakdowns and gang vocals, like city lights. Tr00 is pop punk with near lethal levels of butthurtedness.
tl;dr: i’m a fucking dork who over thinks the properties of tr00.
So, does an easycore band become tr00 when they forget how to have fun?
do they have beards? then yes.
guise I have written quite extensively about the differences between easycore and tr00 pop punk (srs), please consult those posts if u have any questions. the differences are glaringly obvious.
rereading the easycore post. tr00 and easycore can be compared using a vendiagram that i’m not going to make.
Sorry, I guess I wasn’t thinking by calling SYG “founders” of easycore, but they still sounded like easycore the last time I heard them (about 6 years ago). I totally meant that they could have changed since then, though, I’m just pretty sure at one point they were in fact easycore.
Set Your Goals is both Easycore and Tr00 so is Four Year Strong
This is why i <3 SYWH….
it shows me crap white people like…. like this crap…
I might not like it but at least i can classify the type of phylum dat deez gringos are: tr00 pop punk douches/ easycore or ikeacore fgz that have no game to pick up chix at bars/parties cuz "I respect women" n shit
but to be on (watt)par w/ em i can say that these douches do have some cute/hot bitches hanging around em for some strange odd ass reason doe =/… can't h8, gotta congratulate…
i read on the self defense family blog that patrick from self defense tried to convice title fight to fuck groupies at their shows, but he said they were very uptight.
forever young’s facebook was annoying to find, it only came up with one direction stuff i had to go to their youtube just to find it, unlucky name choice
it should be linked. if not, its like foreveryoungil
You lost me at “Even though I’m almost 26″,
this post just made me miss easycore-era SYG so much. :((
Would you consider Four Year Strong tr00 Pop Punk?
nope.
too many breakdowns, not tr00 pop punk.
I haven’t listened to anything by them other than their first album but i’ve heard they fired their keyboardist, stopped doing breakdowns, and are are currently in medical school as test subjects in the ever-lasting medical war to find a cure for Level 10 Butthurt so they gotta be damn close.
As I mentioned in my last article on the subject, it has become a trend amongst bands to start off as easycore early on, realize that that they are “serious artists with more to offer the world than just breakdowns”, and then turn into tr00 pop punk bands. Even though Four Year Strong have done just that, they still play songs with breakdowns in them, so I still categorize them as easycore. The Wonder Years, on the other hand, is an example of a band that started easycore, went tr00 pop punk, and completely disowned their past, thus making them an example of a band who made the full conversion from easy to tr00. Unfortunately, because these bands are so influential amongst young people right now, a lot of smaller groups who could’ve made fine, fun easycore bands are following suite.
correct.
Does BOTDFcore use bedrooms instead
I think the living room motif is so popular amongst tr00 pop punk bands because it communicates the idea that these bands consist of “normal kids, just playing their hearts out in the suburbs”, which obviously is what their fanbase will relate to the most. Because so many of these kids ‘feel awkward at parties’ and ‘find them meaningless’, it wouldn’t be appropriate (especially within the lyrical context of the music) to show people raging out at a party, and anything that puts the band on a pedestal (ie: normal shot at a club, or even something along the lines of the Seaway video where the band is the centerpiece of a zany wild event) would probably look a little too “rockstar” for comfort.
Also, while this was a good post and no offense is intended, personally I kinda view easycore and tr00 pop punk the way I look at slam versus brutal [death genrethatcannotbenamed]: I end up getting continually frustrated at finding bands that I hope are going to be the former, who end up being the latter.
This exactly– ‘see, we are just like u: fggts who’s biggest problem is that we don’t see eye-to-eye with the other college freshman so we spend all our time WKing 6.5s on Tumblr from the comfort of our parents’ couch’
Ikeacore reminds of of fucking tr00 screamo, idk, just that mix of whinyness, and “I’m an important indivdual who has to remind everyone of how sensitive and different i am than the norm.
“
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GHWPO2BoaXw
How would this be classified? My friend who’s really into tr00 pop punk is super into these guys (bought their album on vinyl wooo) but they have enough zaniness that it doesn’t seem like it’s too tr00? I’m just curious, I don’t really care that much. All I know is something about the way the fat guy’s face/mouth looks when he sings groces me out!
i’d say neither. they probably tour with a lot of the tr00 and easycore bands, but i dunno. they remind me of zoloft the rock and roll destroyer. so probably whatever they are.
Easycore = every song is intro riff of Beatdown in the Key of Happy by FYS.
incredibly accurate description
I’m from title fights hometown, and havent kept up on them for years until recently; equally confused on why they’re being called a hardcore band. plz help
This blog has the worst writing and completely fucking stupid opinions. Please hate on Title Fight more as if your boyfriends in Defiler merit any sort of respect. This blog is perfect example of what happens when unemployed, uneducated, internet mongering hardcore kids try to interpret anything with artistic substance.