What is “Melodic Punk” Supposed to Be?

Let me just put this out there, melodic hardcore is probably one of my favourite genres. After having had Rise Against be one of my favourite bands since I was thirteen, but having known multiple songs by them since I was nine, I branched out discovered bands like Strike Anywhere, 88 Fingers Louie and Bad Religion. I also love skate punk, I never got to see Blink-182 in their gold ages but I saw them about a year ago (despite them not playing anything off of their first or second albums other than “Dammit”) and my first ever gig was Pennywise and Strung Out. But it's only recently that I've come across the word “melodic punk” to describe both of these styles.

To be completely honest, it's kind of useful that this tag exists because of the constant confusion between melodic hardcore and melodicore (Have Heart, While She Sleeps, Blood Youth, Counterparts, Stick to Your Guns), but I would have thought that the large majority of people would have preferred to refer to the old style as melodic hardcore, rather than this more recent style that just kind of nabbed it's name.

And, I'd be lying if I said that there isn't any similarities between these three styles of skate punk, melodic hardcore and melodicore, I can especially imagine skate punk and melodic hardcore getting mixed up, which would constitute this “melodic punk” term, as I still can't decide whether Strung Out are a melodic hardcore band or a skate punk band. But at the same time, bands like Give Up the Ghost and Comeback Kid walk the line between melodic hardcore and melodicore very closely and Stick to Your Guns even tributes the only old style that their genre took it's name from on their song “We Still Believe”.

I explained what melodicore was in detail in my article “What Even is “Melodicore”?”, but in short, melodicore is when metallic hardcore bands become more melodic, some of which took influence from melodic hardcore, some of which did not, this began as the style practised by Have Heart, Killing the Dream and Modern Life is War and eventually embraced modern metalcore influences, evident in Napoleon, the Ghost Inside and Vanna.

Melodic hardcore is, as the name suggests, a more melodic form of hardcore punk, Rise Against is the most notable example but other punk behemoths such Bad Religion and Descendents (despite Descendents also being very skate punk-y), generally it's typic hardcore instrumentals with sung vocals or melodic lead guitar lines.

And finally skate punk... which is a strange topic. Skate punk is very much the predecesor of pop punk, some people just say it's any punk from the '90s, but there's still bands playing this style like Forus, Adrenalized and Straighten Things Out. A lot of skate punk embraces the D-beat drumming style, but many don't, while many bands are just rawer pop punk bands, and at it's essence it's really just bands trying to play classic punk, but in a world and culture where hardcore is reigning supreme, despite there being a lot of melody in a lot of bands. Skate punk is probably best typified by NOFX, early-MxPx, the Dillinger Four, No Use for a Name and Face to Face, while bands walking the line between pop punk and skate punk include “All Killer No Filler”-era Sum 41, Allister, “Dude Ranch”-era Blink-182 and the Offspring.