The Trance Metal Deep Dive
I've been a bit skeptical about the suitability of the Trance Metal genre's inclusion under our The Revolution clan since very early in the Metal Academy story so it's about time that I took the plunge by fully exploring the genre & deciding which clan it should rightfully sit under. I'll be exploring ten releases that are generally regarded as being decent examples of the genre & will be asking these questions of each:
1. Is the release genuinely deserving of the Trance Metal tag?
2. If so, does it represent justification for the existence of the Trance Metal genre or would it fit just as comfortably under another existing tag?
3. If not, what subgenre should it rightfully sit under?
4. If the release is a genuine Trance Metal record then what clan is it most closely affiliated with?
5. Is there a clear & well-defined Trance Metal sound?
The ultimate outcome will be that I'll be making a decision on which clan Trance Metal should sit under so please feel to make your own informed comments. I'm a relative novice when it comes to this niche subgenre so any input you may have will be taken into consideration.
BABYMETAL - "BABYMETAL" (2014)
I thought I'd start with a release that I'm miles more familiar with than any other Trance Metal record. In fact, I'd suggest that I've listened to it more than any other metal release over the last two years & that's not by choice. My two daughters are obsessed with BABYMETAL so they play the big hit singles from this record on repeat & never seem to tire of them. It's good to finally be able to get a rating out for it now but I unsurprisingly haven't found a lot of joy in it. There are a couple of decent tracks (see nu metal number "Onedari Daisakusen" & my personal favourite in djent effort "Rondo of Nightmare") but the rest is far too affiliated with J-Pop & commercial EDM for my taste. The musicianship is absolutely stunning though.
So is this a Trance Metal release? You know what, I'm way more across the finer details of trance music than the vast majority of metalheads due to my decade-long dalliance with the dance music scene (& DJing in general) so I think I'm well qualified to make a call on this. There's really only two tracks here that draw upon genuine trance music (see "line!" & "Uki Uki Midnight") with the rest of the album making a whole bunch of different stylistic choices (death metal, thrash metal, alternative metal, nu metal, industrial metal, djent, power metal) but this record ultimately ends up sitting much more comfortably under the Alternative Metal tag than the Trance Metal one. I don't even think the two trancey tracks fit the genre description all that well either so I've submitted a Hall of Judgement entry for this release which really belongs solely in The Gateway in my opinion.
2.5/5
Here's the best example of Trance Metal you'll find on this record:
Amaranthe - "Manifest" (2020)
For the second release in my Trance Metal deep dive I've opted to go with the latest full-length from arguably the most important artist in the genre in Sweden's Amaranthe. This is a very different record to the BABYMETAL one but it offers similarities in its focus on pop hooks. This is certainly a much better band than I heard on their 2009 debut E.P. "Leave Everything Behind" & Amaranthe prove themselves to be a well-oiled machine capable of stunning musicianship & production. This album definitely showcases the textbook Trance Metal sound, at least as far as my understanding of it goes. There's a noticeable trance influence on most tracks through the melodic & uplifting synth-driven electronic accompaniment, occasional use of four-to-the-floor beats & soaring, angelic female vocals. There's also the inclusion of harsh metalcore vocals that is generally thought to be a component of the Trance Metal sound but (as with their debut E.P.) they're comfortably the weakest component of the Amaranthe sound & they'd be well advised to drop them altogether in my opinion given how effective the clean male & female vocals are.
So, does this record justify the Trance Metal genre's existence? Quite possibly. It could sit under a genre like Power Metal but I don't mind the idea of keeping it separate either as it's just different enough to warrant it. It certainly has nothing to do with the Alternative Metal I heard on "BABYMETAL" & would be way out of place under The Gateway. It's also WWAAYYY too melodic for The Revolution. "Manifest" sits most comfortably under The Guardians in my opinion as it contains similar attributes & qualities to Symphonic Power Metal. I didn't mind this record either just quietly. It's certainly inconsistent but the highlights (see the wonderful power metal ballad "Crystalline" for example) are easily strong enough to carry the weaker moments. Consider "Manifest" to be a guilty pleasure for me.
3.5/5
Here's the good example of the Trance Metal sound:
PassCode - "Clarity" (2019)
Now, this fifth album from Japanese all-girl four-piece PassCode is a really interesting one because it's thrown the cat amongst the pigeons for me in many respects. PassCode's sound is comprised of many disparate elements that are beautifully integrated with metalcore, pop punk, j-pop, alternative rock, electro & trance all playing major roles in the overall package. The vocals flip-flop between j-pop & metalcore & while the instrumentation does something similar between metalcore & pop punk with the electronica being layered over the top in a fashion that's more than simply an accompaniment. The thing with "Clarity" though is that, despite being claimed to be predominantly a Trance Metal release on RYM, if your read the definition of the genre & then do the same with the Trancecore one it's very hard not to think that the latter is perfectly describing the sound we're hearing here, only Trancecore isn't a metal subgenre & "Clarity" is arguably metal enough to be included at the Academy. Perhaps this fact has caused people to label it as Trance Metal simply because they think it's gotta sit under a metal-related subgenre? I can see the logic in that actually as there is so much more going on here than melodic metalcore. If I had to put the album into a clan though it'd 100% be The Revolution. There's no doubt about that whatsoever. But there's also no way that PassCode should be thrown into the same subgenre as the Amaranthe record I just reviewed because they're nothing alike. I think I'll reserve my final position on the album's qualification for the Academy until the end of the deep dive so that I can get a bit more perspective but I'm tempted to lodge a Hall of Judgement entry for it. I'm just not quite sure what I want to do with it yet. I'd be interested to get Andi's perspective on this one actually as he's probably the member with the most knowledge of these two niche subgenres.
At the end of the day "Clarity" is a quality example of it's type but it simply sits so far outside of my taste profile that I struggled to connect with it's quirky hybrid sound. It's certainly a much stronger piece of artistic expression than the BABYMETAL debut but I can't say that I enjoyed the experience all that much more, at least not enough to give it a higher score. I can certainly understand how PassCode would have packed stadiums of Japanese fans on their feet & singing in unison though as their appeal would seem to be perfectly tailored to their homeland.
2.5/5
Well, Daniel, I've done my listening and reviewing for that PassCode album, and it's indeed J-pop-infused trancecore, basically what Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas sounds like with a Babymetal-like lineup. It's certainly different what you can hear from the majority of Amaranthe. With emphasis on both the hardcore and melodic sides, I wouldn't think of Clarity as just a trance metal album, and it deserves a judgement submission nice and early. Coming right up!
Here's one of their heavier highlights (you've already shared this before, Daniel, but I still strongly agree here):
To quote my judgement submission, there's more emphasis on both the hardcore and melodic sides, with the former including the riffing, harsh vocals, and occasional breakdowns, and the latter including the synths, clean vocals, and J-pop influences. So this is more of a trancecore album, but trancecore has been deemed a hardcore subgenre and taken out of the site, with all the trancecore releases being moved to melodic metalcore. With that, and not wanting to completely lose the trance metal subgenre for the album, I've done what you've suggested in your submission for Northlane's Obsidian, which is to propose adding the melodic metalcore subgenre next to trance metal.
To be clear, all Trancecore releases were not moved to Melodic Metalcore during that exercise. That was only done if an existing release didn't have another Metal Academy genre tag as the assumption was made that some people may have historically voted for Trancecore thinking that it was a metal subgenre so we selected Melodic Metalcore as a close-enough of sorts in order to get us out of trouble as it was the parent genre anyway. Once Trancecore was removed from the site we drew a line in the sand & no purely Trancecore releases have been added since unless they have other metal primaries. Essentially Trancecore is considered to be a Non-Metal subgenre at the moment. Therefore, I'd suggest that we should only be looking to add Melodic Metalcore to a release like this one if we think it's a legitimate Melodic Metalcore release. Not because we think it's a Trancecore release & are looking for a close-enough.
Also, I'm still not clear on why you think this is both a Trance Metal & a Trancecore release from what you wrote above. It seems like you agree with me that it's a classic example of Trancecore but then you still want to keep the Trance Metal tag. Why is that? I'm very curious to understand what the key Trance Metal components are that aren't covered by Trancecore for my own learning. I would have thought the best outcome would be for "Clarity" to be removed from Trance Metal & added to Non-Metal if it's a Trancecore release, isn't it?
As you and I have noticed, there are elements of different genres within the trancecore sound, one of them being metalcore, which can be found in some of the vocals and instrumentation, most notably in the highlight I've shared above. For this reason, I'm not entirely comfortable with deeming Clarity a non-metal album. The heavily trancecore-focused bands such as Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and 2000s-era Enter Shikari I believe has melodic metalcore prominence in the more notable songs in those releases, so I wouldn't want them to be considered non-metal just like that, so I think their move to melodic metalcore might've been the right choice there. But if you don't think of Clarity as a metal album, I won't stop you from making your own judgement submission, it's your call.
That's fair enough Andi & please bare in mind that I'm not saying that you're wrong or trying to guide your opinion. I'm simply trying to ensure that I get the most out of this deep dive by understanding the various nuances as deeply as I can. I agree that "Clarity" is metal enough for inclusion here but aren't quite sure of how to manage it with the current database. It's interesting that you're saying that a lot of Trancecore artists are metal enough for inclusion & perhaps that's something that I need to review in the future. For the moment though, I think I'm most struggling with the fact that "Clarity" doesn't sound like a Trance Metal or Melodic Metalcore release to me so, although that tagging would seem to be a happy medium, I'm not sure I'm comfortable with it. Perhaps just Melodic Metalcore? I dunno. There's not really a right answer other than to do another deep dive into Trancecore in the future.
Mesarthim - "Vacuum Solution" E.P. (2021)
Who the fuck ever thought that Black Metal should logically be partnered with uplifting Trance music??? Well obviously there's a fellow Aussie that did because that's exactly what he's done here & I've gotta say that he's been fairly successful in the endeavor too. Now I'm not a fan of Trance unless it's of the more subtle & progressive variety but I have to say that I did enjoy the way it's been implemented into the Black Metal here with both elements playing equal roles in the final product. The tracklisting is a bit inconsistent as the first couple of tracks are really pretty enjoyable while the next two are far too cheesy for my taste but the beautifully soothing space ambient closer "Absence" sealed the deal to see me awarding a respectable rating in the end. It's interesting that he's chosen not to go with extreme metal drumming here, instead opting for programmed dance beats & somehow managing to pull it off for the most part while the blackened shrieks don't sound horrible under the more epic Trance synths. I guess I just find it to sound pretty fresh & different.
So is this a Trance Metal release? Well it doesn't align with the description very well & certainly doesn't sound anything like the first three releases I've covered in this deep dive but I'll be fucked if this isn't the tranciest of the four records to date & if any release was gonna be called "Trance Metal" then surely it's gotta be this one. That then begs the question that if I can have four releases that sound completely different from each other & residing in totally different clans... is Trance Metal even a genre or could it simply be considered to be a descriptor like Southern Metal for example? I'm very open to the idea of Trance Metal being removed as a genre altogether if that's found to be the case but would have to work out a way to suitably categorize the relatively small number of releases. Let's wait & see how I go with the remaining six releases, shall we?
3.5/5
Semargl - "Satanic Pop Metal" (2012)
A fifith Trance Metal release & another completely different sound with the trance component layered over the top of a Ukranian version of the German Neue Deutsche Härte sound on this occasion & only then on around half of the tracklisting. Former black metal band Semargl really did manage to piss a few elitists off when they opted to go in an unapologetically commercial direction with their fifth full-length album & I can see why because not only is "Satanic Pop Metal" a drastic departure from anything black metal related but it's also a pretty poor example of its type too. Just listen to how dumb tracks like "Tak, Kurwa", "Join In Fire", Drag Me To Hell" & "Labyrinth" are! The growly vocals are one of the major obstacles for me as they're not very good to be honest. The sporadically used female vocals are miles better & I think they missed a trick by not exploiting those further. There's really only a couple of tracks that I found to be genuinely enjoyable & they bookend the tracklisting with closer "Redire" being the clear album highlight in my opinion.
There's little doubt that the album belongs in The Sphere but should it qualify as Trance Metal too? I'm not sure. I mean the prominence of Industrial Metal in Semargl's sound is by far the most senior element with the trance stuff not being universally evident so I'm gonna go with an unconvinced no but I could go either way to tell you the truth. This release also highlights just how stupid the Neue Deutsche Härte tag is because "Satanic Pop Metal" should definitely be listed under the same subgenre as Rammstein & co. but is lumped into the Industrial Metal primary simply because it's not German. *sighs* Locational subgenres shit me.
2.5/5
Blood Stain Child - "Epsilon" (2011)
Ok, so here we have a release that I can comfortably say is genuine Trance Metal although it also contains a fair bit of the Melodic Death Metal influence of Blood Stain Child's roots. Japan seems to be the home of Trance Metal so far & "Epsilon" is a beautifully executed example with a fluffy, accessible & unimposing production job & high precision performances with a great deal of attention to detail. The melodeath riffs are great & draw heavily on At The Gates for inspiration while the vocals take a similar approach to Amaranthe in their combination of sweet, clean female trance vocals & harsh male melodeath shrieks. Half of the tracklisting is really pretty good & at times I found myself wondering if I could get into this sort of stuff but unfortunately there are a few terribly cheesy tracks that indulge themselves much further in the trance than they do the metal & this pulls the album down overall.
I have to say that "Epsilon" has left me a little more confused about what to do with the Trance Metal genre than I was before. On the one hand, it's categorically a Trance Metal record & wouldn't fit very well under any other tag. If I had to pick a clan for it I'd have say that it would fit the most comfortably within the more melodic confines of The Guardians along with Symphonic Metal & Power Metal but the harsh melodeath vocals certainly confuse things a bit. I'd like to keep The Guardians free of harsh vocals as much as possible but I do think that it's that clan's audience that will be most attracted to a record like "Epsilon". I doubt it'll appeal to too many death metal, alternative metal or metalcore fans in all honesty so perhaps so I need to get over myself & accept that harsh vocals can belong in The Guardians if the musical style will appeal to that audience.
3/5
Here's a prime example of the Trance Metal sound:
DOLL$BOXX - "High $pec" E.P. (2017)
This five-song E.P. is tagged as Trance/Power Metal but neither are correct. Power Metal only appears as an influence on one song while the Trance influence is more of a secondary component. I'd go with a dual tagging of Progressive Metal & Alternative Metal for this one with The Infinite being the most appropriate clan. I was expecting cheesy J-pop stuff but received nothing of the sort from this fairly experimental & accomplished effort. The Japanese vocals do shit me a bit but the instrumentation is really good, particularly the funky slapped basslines which are an easy tie to Alternative Metal along with the occasional rapped vocals. I quite like a couple of the tracks but found the experience a touch underwhelming overall if I'm being honest. It's another example of the poor use of the Trance Metal tag as the synths are only sporadically used as an accompaniment & aren't always trancey in nature either. They're often more in line with electronica.
3/5
Noidz - "The Great Escape" (2008)
The debut album from this Portugese outfit is a genuine combination of trance & metal music in about a 60/40 ratio; psytrance & industrial metal in fact. I've often been known to have a soft spot for well-produced psytrance in the past but only when it's of the deeper & darker variety whereas this material is more bouncy & squelchy. The metal component comes very much from the Rammstein school of simple chunky power-chord riffage but is well integrated so Noidz have done a pretty good job at creating an original hybrid of two disparate sounds here. It's just that it doesn't really appeal to me much. Is it genuine Trance Metal? Well duh! Of course it is as these tracks would all fit comfortably into a Psytrance set but could also be played at a metal club without too many people fussing over it. Does it sound in any way the same as the other releases I've granted Trance Metal status during this deep dive? Not in the slightest. It certainly belongs solely in The Sphere as far as clan assignment goes though.
2.5/5
Equilibrium - "Renegades" (2019)
This is one of those records that gets absolutely slammed by fans of the band, primarily because it saw these Germans opting to deviate from their symphonic folk metal model by trying something different. I went into the album with an open mind though because my only previous experience with Equilibrium was through their 2010 third album "Rekreatur" & I fucking hated it to put it bluntly. Folk metal & I generally don't see eye to eye so any distance they could put between themselves & that genre would be worthwhile as far as I'm concerned. What you get with "Renegades" is a union of the Trance Metal & Melodic Death Metal sounds with traces of Folk Metal & Power Metal here & there. It's an incredibly inconsistent record though as I actually found myself really enjoying half of the ten tracks on offer but the other five are nothing short of fucking awful. The big synth lines are really well integrated & sound full & epic while I can definitely dig the death metal component, particularly the blast beat sections which are beautifully performed. It's all about the chorus hooks though in my opinion & when Equilibrium nail those they can be genuinely captivating (see the marvelous closer "Rise of the Phoenix" for example). But when they tail off into cheesier territory I find myself recollecting my past trials with the band & that ultimately sees "Renegades" failing as an holistic piece of art.
Is this a Trance Metal record? Yeah, it is. It may be intertwined with melodeath but there can be little denying the trance influence on tracks like "Hype Train" & I'd suggest that Trance Metal is the most consistent genre represented across the tracklisting. Does this sound like any of the other Trance Metal records I've reviewed? No, not really. What clan would I place it in? Hhhmmm.... probably The Horde to be honest as it definitely doesn't have anything to do with The Revolution or The Gateway & it's probably a little too brutal for The Guardians.
3/5
Candye♡Syrup - "iDOL Can Dye Sick Rock!!" (2018)
After taking a quick glance at the front cover I was obviously expecting a cheesy Babymetal tribute from this Tokyo act that was originally spawned as an offshoot from a popular Japanese hair salon. And that's not altogether a misleading assumption as the j-pop component of the band's sound is certainly a focal point however Candye♡Syrup offer something a little different to their more popular peers. I don't consider Babymetal to be Trance Metal really. They're more of an Alternative Metal artist whereas Candye♡Syrup embrace their cute & quirky image more with a Trancecore sound that flip flops between the sweet & the savage. The breakdowns here are quite savage & the gutteral vocal delivery is over the top but neither of those things can take any of the gloss off the pop & pop punk components with the innocent & child-like vocals offering a distinctly Japanese appeal & the electronica being of the quirky/bleepy nature as often as it is genuinely trancey. Does it work? well, yeah it does if you like that kind of thing but unfortunately I don't other with the possible exception of up-tempo hardcore number "Idol of Death (Burst Ver.)" (which features 「Story of Hope」front woman m!sa behind the microphone).
Is this a Trance Metal release? Well it is a metal release but I don't think it's Trance Metal. It's very much a Trancecore record with a strong Alternative Metal feel. It would fit best in The Revolution & possibly also The Gateway. This leaves me once again questioning whether we made the right call to remove the Trancecore subgenre as "iDOL Can Dye Sick Rock!!" wouldn't fit all that comfortably alongside other Melodic Metalcore, Alternative Metal or Trance Metal records but still has a right to command representation at the Metal Academy site. I think I'm gonna have to do a Trancecore deep dive at some stage to develop an informed position on that though.
2.5/5
So this brings me to the end of my Trance Metal deep dive & has left me with some confusing results to be honest. On the one hand, it's very clear that Trance Metal isn't a well-defined genre with it's own easily identified sound (at least not when you take the ten releases in holistically). In fact, a good half of the ten I've explored aren't even Trance Metal in my opinion. Amaranthe & Blood Stain Child are the ones that I'd suggest offer the purest examples of the style as neither seem to fit very well under any other tag but if I examine the clans that I felt were most representative of each release I find a complete mish mash with only The Fallen & The Pit missing out on inclusion. I think that's telling because it's as strong an indicator that Trance Metal is more of an additional element added on top of another pre-defined genre as you're likely to find (see Symphonic Metal, Neoclassical Metal, etc.). I mean there's no way that the Mesarthim & Noidz releases should reside in the same clan yet both have equally strong claims to the Trance Metal tag. I don't think that either of them would appeal to fans of the Japanese style either.
So the question is, would each of the five releases that I believe to have a genuine claim on the Trance Metal genre fit under another existing tag comfortably enough so as to enable to removal of the Trance Metal genre from Metal Academy? I'd suggest that Mesarthim, Noidz & Equilibrium all would but Amaranthe & Blood Stain Child are a little more borderline. In saying that though, do we maintain a genre simply for two bands? Ben & I don't think so so we've decided to remove Trance Metal from the site which will see these ten releases being allocated as follows (at least for the time being until we can work out the true merits of the Trancecore subgenre's claim on inclusion at the site as I don't think it's all that accurate to call those releases Melodic Metalcore when they possess a noticeably different & fairly well-defined sound):
Amaranthe - Melodic Metalcore
PassCode - Melodic Metalcore
Mesarthim - Symphonic Black Metal
Semargl - Industrial Metal
Blood Stain Child - Melodic Death Metal
BABYMETAL - Alternative Metal
DOLL$BOXX - Power Metal
Noidz - Industrial Metal
Equilibrium - Melodic Death Metal
Candye♡Syrup - Melodic Metalcore
I know that some of those tags still need some work (Amaranthe & Blood Stain Child are much closer to symphonic/power metal in my opinion while the DOLL$BOXX record doesn't have much to do with power metal) but It will certainly eradicate the problem we currently have where The Revolution contains a bunch of releases that are nothing to do with the sounds that clan was originally designed to draw together.
To quote one of my earlier posts, while a good amount of metalcore lovers also enjoy a bit of trance metal, some might get confused about trance metal being in the same clan as metalcore. The Revolution's superior genre, metalcore has their roots from mixing metal with hardcore punk and lyrics of rebellion, and if trance metal bands like Amaranthe have an electronic-infused sound that leans more towards symphonic/power metal than metalcore, that would cause quite an issue. Then again, I still believe Amaranthe often has some melodic metalcore going on, especially in the earlier material. So I agree that it makes sense to have trance metal taken out of the site, with all those bands/releases you've reviewed for this thread moved to whichever clan/genre they fit well in. A trancecore deep dive would be a good idea to see which releases belong in melodic metalcore or not, but for now, you've earned your rest from deep diving. The fate of trance metal is nigh!
Here's my first ever Top Ten Trance Metal Releases of All Time list following my completion of my Trance Metal deep dive this morning:
01. Amaranthe - "Manifest" (2020)
02. Mesarthim - "Vacuum Solution" E.P. (2021)
03. DOLL$BOXX - "High $pec" E.P. (2017)
04. Equilibrium - "Renegades" (2019)
05. Blood Stain Child - "Epsilon" (2011)
06. Amaranthe - "Leave Everything Behind" E.P. (2009)
07. PassCode - "Clarity" (2019)
08. Candye♡Syrup - "iDOL Can Dye Sick Rock!!" (2018)
09. Noidz - "The Great Escape" (2008)
10. Semargl - "Satanic Pop Metal" (2012)
To quote one of my earlier posts, while a good amount of metalcore lovers also enjoy a bit of trance metal, some might get confused about trance metal being in the same clan as metalcore. The Revolution's superior genre, metalcore has their roots from mixing metal with hardcore punk and lyrics of rebellion, and if trance metal bands like Amaranthe have an electronic-infused sound that leans more towards symphonic/power metal than metalcore, that would cause quite an issue. Then again, I still believe Amaranthe often has some melodic metalcore going on, especially in the earlier material. So I agree that it makes sense to have trance metal taken out of the site, with all those bands/releases you've reviewed for this thread moved to whichever clan/genre they fit well in, and if there's any solely trance metal release you might've missed, we might investigate which clan/genre they might belong in. A trancecore deep dive would be a good idea to see which releases belong in melodic metalcore or not, but for now, you've earned your rest from deep diving. The fate of trance metal is nigh!
Thanks Andi. I'm glad you're comfortable with this outcome as I value your opinion. Interestingly, this wasn't the result I was expecting when I went into the deep dive so I'm really pleased that I undertook the exercise. Ben has volunteered to make the database changes during the holiday period. I'll need to take out any Trance Metal-related Hall of Judgement entries.
Thanks for doing these Daniel, the hard work is appreciated to give this site a more streamlined take on the current Metal genres. I'll admit I haven't listened to many Trance Metal records, but from the ones I have heard, I'm in agreement that it feels like a tacked-on descriptor that doesn't hold weight on its own. I think Trance Metal is another one of those tricky genre differentiations where one element or instrument makes it seem like it's in a league of its own, but it's fairly obvious that's not the case here. "If it has X then it must be Y" can work for some genre classifications, but not all of them.
Trance Metal has now been completely removed from the database with each release now sitting under the most significant alternative primary/secondary genre/subgenre.