Fuck Easycore, We Have Heavy Pop Punk
At this point, most of you will likely know the out-of-the-ordinary-yet-now-pretty-common stylistic fusion of pop punk and metalcore that A Day to Remember pioneered on their sophomore album “For Those Who have a Heart”, later refined on “Homesick” and then was built upon by Chuck! No Captain Chunk (contender for the word bands name competition along with We Butter the Bread with Butter, The Number 12 Looks Like You and almost every pornogrind and goregrind band in existence [I'm look at you, Erotic Gore Cunt]) and Four Year Strong's early material. The style even became an influence on standard pop punk bands like Neck Deep and City Lights, and has everybody and their aunt pointing figures at New Found Glory, the Starting Line and, most commonly, Sum 41 as the biggest influences on how this style came to be (because, you know... New Found Glory and the Starting Line chugged in some of their material which makes them just as notable of influences as the band who did merge heavy metal and pop punk on their second album “All Killer No Filler”, before become a metal band on every album other than “Underclass Hero” [but that's a topic for another time]).
When I refer to “heavy pop punk”, this is the style you're probably assuming I'm referring to, but oh boy, let me open your eyes to the other side of pop punk. While everybody's creaming over how State Champs/As it is/Moose Blood/Seaway/Waterparks/The Front Bottoms are headlining this year's Van's Warped Tour, St Albans' pop punks Trash Boat are opening for Beartooth and Blood Youth and not feeling out of place, John Floreani from Australia's Trophy Eyes is destroying his vocal cords and every hardcore kid with a love of melody this side of Embrace is screaming “Where's your respect and didn't your father teach you anything before he left!” at a Knuckle Puck (who are actually influenced by the aforementioned the Starting Line... go figure) show.
This style's biggest band is probably Neck Deep, who are now-aping a lot more of an alternative rock-y mixed in with generic modern pop punk songs on “Life's not out to Get You” and “The Piece and the Panic”, but if you manage to dig up your copies of “Rain in July” and “A History of Bad Decisions”, you'd understand why everybody used to call them the British the Story so Far (who we don't talk about anymore since Parker Cannon kicked one of his female fans square in the spine, despite how much of an emotional trip “Clairvoyant” is, guaranteed to break any pop punk kid's heart), both of which have links to hardcore (or melodicore if you're being pedantic), in that, at this point Neck Deep was 1/5 Climates and 3/5 Spires, now being 2/5 Climates and Spire and 1/5 Blood Youth and the previously mentioned “Clairvoyant” was on a split EP that the Story so Far did with Stick to Your Guns.
Some bands use elements of emo pop, most notable Knuckle Puck, (who are pretty much the emo equivalent of Trash Boat [from before they were formed]) and Texas' Sylvania Ave. Additionally, it could be argue that the Wonder Years play this style (lead vocalist Soupy even produced and featured on Trash Boat's début), because their heavily-emotion-driven style of pop punk is more dense and thick than are a majority of their piers, however I'd be more likely to class them in with more-recent-Neck Deep-style pop punk, Sorority Noise-type emo pop or even alt rock thanks to “No Closer to Heavy” (yeah, this band change up their sound quite a bit).
Whether you want want to refer to this as a modern incarnation of skate punk or even melodic hardcore, “buzzpop”, “hardcore pop punk” or just “heavy pop punk”, it's undeniable that the bands who showcase the purist form of this style are Trash Boat, early-Trophy Eyes, Such Gold, early-Title Fight and even some of Hold Close's material, thanks to the obvious influences from early-2000s melodicore bands like Have Heart, Comeback Kid and Give up the Ghost, an extremely dense guitar tone that most thrash metal bands would be envious of and a raw vocal style.
Heavy Pop Punk Selection
