Omerta Call Out The "Metalcore-Redditor-Basement-Djent-White-Bread-SiriusXMcore Crowd" & More

Adventurous alternative nü-metal outfit Omerta and melodic metalcore group Windwaker recently had a beef flare up online, which apparently stemmed from Omerta‘s critiques over current genre trends and a shared album title. Back in 2020, Omerta issued an album titled “Hyperviolence“. Now Windwaker are gearing up for their own stab at the title with their sophomore album, the all-caps “HYPERVIOLENCE“, due out on July 12th.

Omerta look to have kicked off the incident online last Thursday, May 02nd — the same day Windwaker announced their new album. Omerta went on the attack, posting:

“There’s something fascinating about how the advent of AI tooling has simultaneously enabled and culled out the creatively bankrupt who have made entire careers larping as artists.

Aside from the obviously AI-generated cover art and suspiciously familiar album title, there is nothing “hyperviolent” here. This is exactly why we have, time and time again, advocated for “violent art”.

For a while now, there has been a trend among our peers toward incorporating dated pop production, recycling uninspired djent riffing, and incredibly vapid, lacking-in-any-chromaticism melodic chord progressions. In seemingly every other genre – including specific subgenres of alternative music – creative evolution seems to reflect the milieu. Now, for whatever reason, this has not been the case among the metalcore-Redditor-basement-djent-white-bread-SiriusXMcore crowd, who might be allergic to innovation – even preferring cheap nostalgia bait over anything dangerous enough to skirt the edge. Case in point: the soi-disant “Hyperpop-Metal” tag when the pioneers of hyperpop themselves have proclaimed it dead for years.

There is a reason the recently disaffected have found more solace in communities and styles of art/music outside of this strangely primitive and pedestrian scene. When the dissidents and estranged seek out their place in this world, what exactly is this supposed to be an alternative to? This defanged, neutered, and lobotomized slop is the consequence of years of propping up uninteresting people with absolutely nothing compelling to say. We need art – dangerous, chaotic, intentional, unafraid, antisocial, violent art.”

They followed up with:

Windwaker fired back with the following post:

There’s interestingly at least a bit of irony in the situation, as Omerta‘s latest single “Charade“, shares a title of sorts with a 2015 Windwaker track, “The Charade“. The criticisms leveled by Omerta saw several of their musical peers chime in, with Fever 333‘s Jason Aalon Butler and Dr. Acula both showing their support for Omerta in their overall assessment of the current metalcore, etc. scene. However, it also drew controversy as well, with detractors also voicing their concerns.

Threads of that discussion have since continued on throughout the past few days on Omerta‘s X profile. Some of the highlights since include:

“The point is not that there is no transgressive art at all.

The point is that the landscape of alternative culture still heavily favors coworkercore industry darlings who are being spotlit by out-of-touch dinosaurs and peddled to people who desperately need something real.

You can try to shift the discourse in whatever way you think will allow you to evade accountability, but the truth will always prevail in the end. We have the tools to produce recordings that rival studio-quality music in the palms of our hands. We have access to the entirety of digitally archived human information at our fingertips. We can spin up entire companies on a whim with our friends in a group chat.

Why are we still beholden to these suits? Why are we still allowing grifters to fleece the naive? Why is the bar still in hell?

Don’t you want to create something beautiful?”