UMM

This music is made to shock and gross out, if you decide to investigate expect disturbing imagery and lyrics. 

 Shitcore is a pretty wide genre. It's about songs that sound bad, with low quality effects, annoying riffs and vulgar lyrics. If a song has any of this, you can call it shitcore or crapcore. Going down this rabbit hole I found out that Crazy Frog and Darude sandstorm are both shitcore. Although they’re not quite as much so as the artist who created and popularized the genre: Passenger of shit (PoS). 

 While many songs can be considered crapcore, the original genre and artists have a more specific and identifiable sound. Imagine speedcore, breakcore, EDM, hard punk, screamo and extreme shock value lyrics in a song and you’ve got crapcore PoS style. 

The themes of his music are usually genital related mixed with gross out stuff like mentions of tapeworms and human waste. Often the awful lyrics are juxtaposed and represented in the music tone, and this is in almost all his songs. Drastic shifts in tone mean that you might be hearing a happy sounding melody in one second and the next you’re listening to cultists having a mosh pit concert. Often the only consistency a PoS song has is the gross lyrics.

The thing is, although the first time I heard it I laughed my ass off at the lyrics “Staple tapeworms on my p*nis”, eventually I started to tune out the gross screaming, tempo and lyrics and it became quite enjoyable. The trick to it is to not take the music too seriously, because I think that's the way it’s meant to be heard. Maybe there’s other ways to enjoy it as well, like anger fuel although it’s pretty hard to keep a straight face, but maybe that’s just from my childish sense of humour.

 There’s no deep meaning in the lyrics themselves, instead the artistic value comes from what the songs represent: anger, cynicism, nihilism and specially nonconformity. I consider that more interesting than lyrical meaningfulness personally. The way he uses annoying sounds, tonality and exaggerated screaming. This isn’t far from other punk and metal genres, although I feel like it mocks those genres rather than taking it seriously, which is where I get the idea of it being nihilistic and cynical from. 

 But the real difference from punk and metal comes in the way the song is edited to throw the listener in different directions every few seconds, like breakcore. This means the tone of the melody changes drastically and frequently, causing the listener to be further drawn into the music in a similar way an alarm would. It makes it hard for the listener to think, at least to me it does. I find it similar to the feeling of having ADHD while trying to keep up a consistent stream of thoughts. 

What makes PoS enjoyable is the feeling of detachment from regular political correctness, the unusual but captivating melodies and the attention grabbing mixing style. It makes me forget about everything while I listen and spend some time not thinking and having existential crisis’.

If you enjoy the sound of this but it loses you with the gross lyrics, you might enjoy “Yuu Kobayashy & Kenji Ohtsuki’s Buta no Gohan” which is similar in style but with japanese lyrics and less shocking lyrics/ imagery.

 PoS is an Australian musician. He goes by many aliases:  Doodleinacacoon, Dungnob, MC Bushpig, MC Poodick, Scortch1, Stapledpenisgolum, Swift Treweeke who each make different kinds of music, although all equally shock inducing. He writes independently but has featured with other artists such as Virya Dadura Vamana, Sh*tting Wh*re, Stella Rabbit, Ethereal Girl, Lil Panini and Todd Congelliere & Justin Pearson.

He also owns both S*ht W*nk Records and Butcher Harem Productions where you can find more similar shitchore, breakcore, speedcore, harsh noise and rap, which are performed by groups he’s been part of. These groups include Odiusembowel, where he’s the main singer or S****dal Rap *rgy which I believe has been disbanded.

Explaining Music: Underground Contemporary Music

Weirdcore is a music genre and an aesthetic art. Its origins aren't clear as the music genre isn’t defined by specific instruments or tempo, but by tone and visuals. This is similar to vaporwave, which leads me to believe weirdcore to have derived in some way from said genre. Vaporwave has more identifiable origins, its believed it originated in early 2010s and popularised largely by Macintosh plus - floral shoppe. Like weirdcore, vaporwave is characterized by the use of digital effects and nostalgic aesthetics. 

During the 2010s people grew increasingly cynical about corporal work and mainstream topics as corporations became more family friendly and powerful. Vaporwave is a reflection of that. In contemporary music like vaporwave and weirdcore, we see themes of nostalgia and derealisation. This could be influenced by the growth in media, internet and video games in our lives. It wouldn’t be a stretch to say that after spending the whole night watching memes on Instagram you might feel detached from reality. To clarify, this isn’t a criticism of the media or its use, but its common and it likely influenced younger generations and the music they choose to make/ listen to. This age of internet combined with the cynical personalities many artists have, has resulted in an age of music meant to confuse and shock. This is reminiscent of psychedelic music. 

As you might be able to tell by the last paragraph, music evolves and branches out over time. There are many factors to the way music evolves which make it very unpredictable. In the case of weirdcore, my guess is that it stems from growing non conformity in society. The fight against racism, homophobia, transphobia and generally xenophobia. This created the idea that media and morals should embrace change and differences. In turn, this means there are many more young musicians experimenting and trying to find new, unheard sounds as we’ve grown up being taught to do so in other aspects of life. You can also see this in memes for example. 

Memes are like inside jokes which millions of people can laugh at, which sounds counter intuitive until you consider that many of them grow in a small community in iFunny. I believe the weird part of weirdcore comes from this. Weirdcore is not for everyone. It's specifically targeted towards people who are most open to uniqueness and strangeness: Teens and young adults. Memes are a satire of everything. There’s likely little to no subjects which haven’t been memed about. Although some might not become popular. This makes them cynical by default. 

I believe weirdcore and other Gen Z/ Millennial underground music come from these main pillars of culture:

The way we’ve grown up used to feelings of derealization induced by work and media, the fact many of us strive to be open minded and different, the cynical culture of many countries responsible for most music distribution and influences from different old genres of music for nostalgia. 

As I see it, this is what underground music has been since the 20th century. These main points can be attributed to almost any contemporary genre and medium. Like dreampop/core, weirdcore/pop, electronic speedcore/shitcore, lowercase, vapor/synthwave. Some big influences to these would be Gorillaz, Macintosh Plus, the less known Passenger of Shit, Jack Stauber, Beach House, Tiktok/Youtube and many more.

In my opinion recent underground music has become based on:

cynicism/ shock, unique instrumentation/ sound effects, a somewhat ethereal tone and aesthetics, nostalgic sounds