PLATINUM MOSH, VOL. I
THE TOP FIVE FAVORITE BREAKDOWNS AND MOSH PARTS OF FRANKIE PIERRI (MONSTERS), CARL SEVERSON (FERRET MUSIC/GOOD FIGHT/NORA), DAN HORN AND KYLE MADDOCK (WOUNDED TOUCH), AND JACOB OLIVER (ALL THE CORES AND MORE)
PHOTO CREDIT: EVGENIY SMERSH
Few things unite heavy music fans across the spectrum quite like a great breakdown or mosh part, and few things not just in heavy music but—let’s face it—life, are more satisfying. I decided it would be an interesting and insightful running series to have different people from the world of heavy music weigh in on their favorites with a top five and a couple honorable mentions or wild cards if they so chose. In this first installment, I’m pleased to have Monsters vocalist Frankie Pierri, Carl Severson (founder of Ferret Music, co-founder of Good Fight Entertainment, vocalist of NORA), and Dan Horn and Kyle Maddock of Wounded Touch join to give their top five breakdowns and mosh parts, and I’ve also included my selections at the end!
Frankie Pierri
Here's my picks in no particular order:
Magrudergrind-“Bridge Burner”: The riff in this song is RELENTLESS. It's simple, straightforward, makes you enraged and makes you want to stomp around. The band themselves don't have too many parts like this so it hits that much harder. Put this song on in the gym and thank me later.
Bleeding Through-“Number Seven with a Bullet”: This is metalcore royalty right here. I grew up on this band, have always loved these guys and this breakdown is just perfect to me. The lyrics are perfectly placed, it's got the right level of anger and the right level of openness in between chugs.
King 810-“Heavy Lies the Crown”: This one will be too hard to articulate with words how heavy it is. Just listen to it, you'll lose your mind.
Left Behind-“West by God”: The intensity of the vocals in this song is enough to make anyone want to catch an assault charge. It's just in your face and punishing.
The Acacia Strain-“Carbomb”: This is THE breakdown. If you were around back in the early 2000s and you heard “Carbomb,” you knew what time it was. This breakdown defined an entire new sound, a genre, palm muting on 1, etc. Master class in heavy.
Carl Severson
Hatebreed-“Not One Truth”: This whole song is just begging for violence. Especially when this came out. Just hits all the way though.
Disembodied-“Cynic”: I love a fast mosh that builds into just an all out heavy chaotic mosh where you don’t know if you want to sing along to smash dudes. But at 1:11 into Cynic it’s game over. And hell, if you’re listening in order it rolls straight into “7 Stitches.” Joel just breathes mosh.
Integrity-“Those Who Fear Tomorrow”: Maybe it’s not a single part. And maybe it’s just remembering all the times I saw them in the 90’s. In NJ, it was an event if they played. I was lucky enough to travel and see them in Cleveland and other places and it was always insane. But in NJ if they played, it just was all go start to finish. But when “Those Who Fear Tomorrow” starts… no build up, fade in or feedback start. One note on the bass and there’s not a body not swinging or getting swung on.
Martyr AD-“ Broken Mouth”: 1:30 in and you’ve been just bouncing and vibrating with the breakneck build of the song and it hits and at 2 minutes it goes harder, and at 3:30 in you realize the song name was a prophecy. And yeah, I may be biased cause Joel’s one of my favorite songwriters ever.
The Dillinger Escape Plan-“43% Burnt”: Yeah this song is just fist fights into seizures. Opens with the foreshadowing of what’s to come 3 mins in. From that point on you’re just fighting for your life.
Quick mentions. These aren’t just obvious fight mosh. Just really good songs with some of the heavy mosh-inducing parts.
Blood Has Been Shed-“Greetings From The Gallows”
No Cure-“My World In Flames”
KYLE MADDOCK
1. Martyr AD-“American Hollow”: Going to start off heavy with this one. Granted, all these songs are heavy in their own right, but this has to be one of the moshiest songs to ever grace any pit. It has everything a mean breakdown needs: a catchy vocal hook, panic chords, and plenty of great chug patterns. It’s a wholesale deal on ass beatings, as all of the breakdowns in this song are absolutely perfect.
2. Zao-“Five Year Winter”: Maybe a slightly controversial pick but still one of my favorites. Noted for its use of industrial elements, and electronic drum kit, Zao’s self titled album may not be everyone’s first pick, but I also believe Zao is the best metalcore band of all time, and can find many things to love about each of their releases. And one of those things is the breakdown at the end of this song.
3. Disembodied-“7 Stitches”: Featuring pretty much everyone that would go on to form Martyr AD with the exception of vocalist Aaron Weseman, these folks are royalty in writing breakdowns that I enjoy. This whole song is basically one big mosh part, and the visceral qualities of Weseman’s vocals make this song an instant classic. Like filmmakers should refer to Kurosawa before using rain in a film, metalcore bands should refer to Disembodied before using panic chords in a breakdown.
4. Converge-“Last Light”: You Fail Me is my personal favorite album from Converge. Everything about it is perfect, from the lyrical content and delivery only made capable by frontman Jacob Bannon, the absolutely wild and emotionally cathartic guitar work of Kurt Ballou, and the crushing force of the match up between Nate Newton and Ben Koller. It was a toss up between the end of “Last Light” and “Eagles Become Vultures.” This one takes the cake for its fervent build up and final explosion closing out the track.
5. Misery Signals-“Departure”: I find Absent Light to be the most heavily slept-on album from your favorite band's favorite band. The ambition of this album shows Misery Signals pushing themselves into creative depths most metalcore bands won’t ever find themselves in, for better and for worse. Regardless, the final breakdown of this song gets stuck in my head constantly. The way the notes bend alongside the driving force of the kick is a treasure in songwriting. With Absent Light being the last Misery Signal album featuring vocalist Karl Schubach, “Departure” is a fitting epitaph, if ever there was.
DAN HORN
All these songs are ass beaters and have sick mosh parts.
1. Poison the Well-“Nerdy”: For me this record was peak PTW. Every song on the record rips, but this one has always been the stand out.
2. Blacklisted-“Tourist”: This is my favorite Blacklisted song. Everything about this record and song are perfect. Short, fast, pissed.
3. Advent-“Nothing”: Everything about this song rules. Short, multiple mosh parts, sick guitar tone. Easy pick.
4. Bleeding Through-“Faith In Fire”: Not my favorite BT song or record but this song is a ripper and the breakdown is beyond heavy.
5. Rise and Fall-“Forked Tongues”: This band rips. This song rips. Doing a solo over a mosh part rips.
Jacob Oliver
When they do the seeding for the NCAA March Madness college basketball tournament, they always list the “first four out,” worthy teams that juuust missed the cut, so for me these would be:
The Banner-“Funerals”: Listen to Brendan Murphy of Counterparts and END break it down here.
First Blood-“Victim” (album version): Two words: John Rambo.
Hatebreed-“Not My Master”: That unreasonably heavy breakdown at the end from the band once described as “if Vinnie Stigma was in Bolt Thrower,” for reasons personal and “professional.”
Architects-“These Colours Don’t Run”: As with our aforementioned selection, the first two-thirds of the song are essentially the foreplay and then the intercourse before the climax that is the breakdown; here, the build-up culminating in “you had it all…you fucking pigs” and then delivering the motherlode is a masterclass on how to do the “contextual breakdown.”
Top Five:
5. Legend-“Suffering” (demo version): There are multiple innards-loosening breakdowns in this song, but the one at the end is the chef’s kiss. As one commenter on the YouTube video put it (sic): “The bass on this demo causes my bowels to expell.... like a brown note at every breakdown...”
4. Reign Supreme-“Eighteen and Bulletproof”: The lead-up to the breakdown musically and lyrically—“it’s like having it all, but you always want more / it’s like falling in love with a beautiful”—and then “whore” forcefully exhaled with such primal savagery—twice!—against the musical bludgeoning is an explosive combination; the last minute-ish of this track is just pure pit carnage.
3. Every Time I Die-“Floater”: In the interest of radical candor, I will say that this list could’ve easily been dominated by Every Time I Die songs (and it could’ve just as easily been three hundred songs long) but I had to restrain myself, and I set an official-unofficial rule for myself that there could be only one song per band. With a lone ETID representative, 99 times out of 100 I’m going with “Floater,” but that one other time I’m going with a deeper cut from The Big Dirty in “Cities and Years.” This is not that time. Peak unhinged nervous breakdown-core.
2. After the Burial-“Cursing Akhenaton” (OG version): Gnarly, mind-bending Egypt-core. The whole song makes we want to run through a wall, but holy shit, the ending is lethal.
1. Trapped Under Ice-“Skeleton Heads”: Hard as nails. If the opening twenty seconds is like taking aural steroids, the final twenty is what it means to experience The Quickening and pit nirvana simultaneously.