What the hell is Crabcore?

Music journalists seriously have a case to answer for. Especially ones who write for rags like the NME and Melody Maker. These people who, for some reason, just invent names for styles, scenes or genres of music that they feel need a name.

No longer content to call music "Rock", or "Pop", or "Metal", now there's Death Metal, Hardcore, Extreme Hardcore, Metalcore, Mathrock, Deathcore, Emocore, Screamocore, Grindcore, Nintendocore (yep - apparently that's a thing), Brit-pop, New Wave of New Wave and who knows what else.

The Guardian's music section has an amusing story on music genres that didn't catch on, largely because they were dreamed up by a bunch of half-pissed music journos in a Camden pub.

The funniest one I have heard in a long time was not featured in this article, but is just as random. It is...

...wait for it...

CRABCORE.

Yep - you read that right. Crab. Core. The name is just as stupid as the term "Baggy" was for describing the sound of the Stone Roses. (Baggy came about because in the video for one of the Roses' songs, Ian Brown wore a loose-fitting, or "baggy", shirt. And so a sub-genre was born...)

Crabcore. For those who don't know (which pretty much describes, well, everybody) it is a style of heavy music, not unlike Emo (another contrived and ridiculous genre name) but it is so named because of the way the band members stand and hold their instruments.

(click to enlarge)

That's right - they look like crabs.

Tim Berners-Lee might think the internet is the place to solve everybody's information needs, but when you let the weirdos loose on it, you get crap like this.

The exponent of this earth-shattering genre we will witness plying their trade below is a US band called Attack! Attack!  Note the presence of a rather attractive blonde girl throughout the clip. She seems to have her hands over her ears for most of it. Coincidence? You be the judge.

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Crabs Crabcore!