Chug-chug-chug. Chug-chug-chug....
CHUG. CHUG. CHUG.
CH-CHUG. CHUG. CHUG.
If you thought this was a frat boy with a stutter performing the song of his people, you may be a normal human being. If you began to imagine stage dives, mic grabs and spin kicks, you may be or once have been a scene kid. Metal, hardcore, it doesn't matter. If you read that intro and imagined a dark room filled with loud music and a humid cloud of sweaty haze heavy enough to cut with a knife; that doesn't smell that much unlike an Italian hoagie I might add, then you are a part of the scene and know about the epicenter of any metal or hardcore song. The climax of chaos. The rapture of rhythmic percussion.
The breakdown.
This still exists
Now here's the deal, this list is not definitive anything, hell, this should be a top 30 but I don't have the time or the patience, so without further ado, here's the top ten list!
Honorable Mentions
Captain Puerto Rico aka Caboose aka the Rape Van
Ah yes, the Beyond Dishonor tour van. What can I say about this big blue beautiful beast it can't say for itself? On an overnight trip to Buffalo, it broke down on the way there. It then broke down on the way home. Yeah, it was an overnight because we had to sleep in this bitch on the shoulder of the highway and wait for the shop to open the next morning. It's had more breakdowns in her two year life than the Acacia Strain's entire career, speaking of...
Whoa! Shut it Down by the Acacia Strain
The quintessential breakdown. The breakdown of breakdowns. I couldn't even include it on the list for the simple reason to leave room for other choices besides the most obvi of the obvi. With that said, a tip of the hat to the OG.
Stiletto by Symphony In Peril
Just watch the video
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OBF2TE_IvHc
If there's a list about breakdowns and this isn't included, you're wasting your time. Besides being an awesome ending to an awesome song, kids used to roll up in public places and ask strangers where they could go to find dancing... hardcore dancing. The rest was internet lulz for years to come.
Bury Your Dead
I wanted to add about 6 Bury Your Dead tracks and even was thinking about putting the entire Beauty and the Breakdown album as a choice, but instead I'll give the ol' tip of the hat to the Boston bruisers. Cover Your Tracks has some of the most timeless breakdowns and tracks that are still relevant today, especially with the resurgence of hardcore infuse metal that is big in the scene.
Solely Concentrating on the Negative Aspects of Life by Shai Hulud
The band that help me truly respect and love underground metal, the final build in this song is my everything. "Time will be the catalyst to weed out the week," and the mantra that "things will change," will forever stick with me. As well as this awesome sound byte.
Now again, I can't wait to talk to you about all the ones I missed, but believe me, I KNOW, I'm actually upset I even chose this topic because it's like trying to pick your favorite child if you had hundreds of children, I digress, onto the list!
10. The Handshake Murderers - Painted Contortionist
This off time, Meshuggah influenced band jumped in and out of the scene quicker than Jesse Owens. Their debut Usurper had bangers galore, but nothing hit home like the closing break of Painted Cotortionist. I was lucky enough to see them with The Chariot, A Life Once Lost and the mighty Norma Jean in an evening of psychotic groove audio assault, and nothing was like 300 kids all clawing for the mic to scream, "I'LL RIP YOUR THROAT OUT!"
9. The Tony Danza Tap Dancing Extravaganza - Big Pun's Not Dead I Just Saw Him at the Krispy Kreme
"Hello my name is Laquiesha, my grandaddy was a slave, and in my spare time I like to get off roller coasters yelling, 'I CAN'T BREATHE, I CAN'T BREATH.'" With an intro like that and a band and song title like so, you know you're going to be in for a treat. It all culminates with creepy high noted guitar fingering over and empty chug pattern and the lyrics, "void this time era." Fucking heavy.
8. Dead To Fall - Bastard Set of Dreams
With tracks like You've Already Died, Major Rager, and lyrically self aware ("let's end this song with a fucking breakdown") Stupid? my decision for number 8 was tough. But then I remembered the 50+ man pile up at PhilaFunk Live! for the "a 1,000 open ears and still not a word to say," line, and my choice became easy.
7. August Burns Red - Endorphins
The "don't say another word" line from White Washed? That awesome lkittle tucked in drum fill from the closing of Back Burner? I trade them all in for the empowering, "grab the wheel right now and make this life yours" gang chant from Endorphins. ABR breathed a new life into the scene as true gamechangers, and this was the one that started it all in my opinion.
6. Poison The Well - An Artist Rendering of Me
I COULD
NEVER
SWALLOW YOUR FALSE IDEALS
OF A
LIFELESS
HAPPY ENDING :)
5. Zao - 5 Year Winter
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Speaking of passionate lyrics, nothing comes across more heartfelt then a note written to your ex that ends with you burning her alive. Now was it a metaphor and your belief is that Dan Weyandt meant more burning the bridge that was their relationship when he said "burn it down and walk away"? So you're saying it's wrong to set your ex-girlfriend on fire? Well never mind then.
4. Into The Moat - Empty Shell
After I heard this I wanted to start a award ceremony strictly for metal. This would've won Best Breakdown that year unanimously. The whole idea of the award show was built around this one category, so I could give it to this song. This technical powerhouse from Florida was the Dillinger Escape Plan Jr that the scene needed, and the production of the build up of this track was superb. Preceded by machine gun fire, the guitar and drums mimicked the pattern to create an onslaught of mayhem that was music to my ears.
3. Norma Jean - Creating Something Out Of Nothing Only To Destroy It
For the last minute and a half of this song, you don't have any friends. Everyone in your surrounding area has come to bring harm to your person. The final minute and a half of this song will make you lose control of your inhibitions and help prepare yourself to destroy everything in your path. Luckily, they all have brought a knife to a gun fight :)
And if we're talking mayhem...
2, The Dillinger Escape Plan - 43% Burnt
These were the boys your mother warned you about. Every live performance of Dillinger has been a life changing experience for me. I've never seen a band recklessly give 110% and still play some of the most technically complex rhythms I have ever heard. This is the OG "I'm gonna fuck some shit up" jam. From the intro when we were told of the approaching stench of a whore that brought him back and then we were asked to present him with a brick, we all knew shit was about to hit the fan. The last time I saw them in small venue, lead singer Mike grabbed a cymbal from the drum arrangement, walked across the heads in the sea of people, bashing along to the final breakdown.
Mind you this was after he ripped out the duct work while hanging upside down from the ceiling. These guys are on another level.
1. Every Time I Die - Hot Damn!
I could've picked the "savor it" outro of Off Broadway. I could've settled with Floater, "drain the lake, you'll find it full of love. The unmistakable cool factor of the "rock and roll takeover" of Ebolarama. The lyrical mastery of "when we find you we'll skin you alive, we'll pluck out your eyes and the cannons will roar as march to the capitol dragging your hide" from hit of the Search Party. Shit, moments before I actually wrote this list I had given it to honestly my favorite part of the whole album, the ending of She's My Rushmore.
The greatest lovers were murderers first. That line still grabs me by the throat. But I couldn't, not wouldn't dare choose one over the other. In a sense of passion, lyrical content, heaviness, rhythmic patterns, and sheer coolness, Hot Damn! as an album is the perfect representation of what I love about breakdowns.
I know there are literal dozens that I could've included that I didn't. More Shai Hulud, the not too often users of breakdowns like Between the Buried and Me with tracks like Use of a Weapon, Mordecai, Aesthetic, The Primer and the amazing culmination of White Walls. Classics like Remembering Never's Incisions or The Red Chord's Dreaming in Dog Years. I missed the modern classics even with Born of Osiris' Abstract Art and All Shall Perish' No Business To Be Done on a Dead Planet. Even deathcore favorites of mine Carnifex and one of my all time biggest influences Unearth felt the snub.
Shoot back your responses to my list and some of your favorite tracks you wish had made it!
Reese Dunlap
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