Neoclassical Punk Zydeco Rockabilly

The coolest band that never existed.

So Joe the guitarist and Chris the drummer are metalheads, Sandra the bassist loves soul, Alex the keyboardist is obsessed with synthpop, and Bob the vocalist always wanted to be a country singer. After a few arguments over what musical direction the band should go in, they eventually come up with a solution: all of them!

Neoclassical Punk Zydeco Rockabilly is when a musical artist mixes seemingly disparate musical genres to create a new sound. After all, if two genres are already awesome on their own, then combining them will result in something even more awesome, right?

For musicians who play multiple, disparate musical styles without mixing the styles together, see Genre Roulette.

Examples of Neoclassical Punk Zydeco Rockabilly include:

Genres

  • Jazz originated as a mix of blues, ragtime, and brass band music.
    • Fusion jazz started out in the 1960s as the incorporation of rock into jazz. It's since grown to include any genre imaginable, incorporated into jazz.
      • The term 'fusion' used by itself usually refers specifically to the fusion of jazz and rock, however. See Steely Dan and Chicago for two prominent examples.
  • Rock'n'roll originated as a mixture of rhythm & blues and country with some blues, gospel, and folk music thrown in for good measure.
  • Progressive Rock, to a tee. Progressive rock started (arguably) when King Crimson tried to create rock music from classical influences rather than blues ones. After 30-plus years of experimentation by many bands combining all the musical genres known to mankind under the 'Progressive Rock' banner and coming up with wildy varying results, Many prog fans think that if you're in a prog band and not invoking this trope, then you're just not doing it properly.
    • Progressive Metal follows this as well. If it's metal, and you're not sure what subgenre it falls into, it's probably progressive metal.
  • Industrial Metal was an unlikely combination pioneered by Big Black, Ministry, and KMFDM in The Eighties. Nowadays, it's so common that most people think of industrial metal when you mention industrial music.
  • Symphonic Metal, heavy metal mixed with classical music. Therion, the leader of the genre, is listed with twelve Crowning Songs Of Awesome, and the index is growing. It presently lists songs from only the latter half of their career. You do the math. Also, Therion takes their genre-blending quite seriously, as their recent live album "The Miskolc Experience" featured about a dozen classical compositions rewritten from the ground up to incorporate modern heavy-metal instruments along with the original orchestras, choirs, and opera soloists.
  • Psychobilly is punk mixed with rockabilly, while gothabilly is goth rock mixed with psychobilly.
    • To the extent that punk was a "return to roots" movement for rock and roll (see above), psychobilly is pretty much just standard rockabilly with the volume and tempo turned Up to Eleven.
    • Gothabilly puts it all in a drippy surf guitar echo tank.
  • Two-tone is the offspring of ska and punk.
    • Ska itself is the offspring of jazz, early R&B and Caribbean rhythms, and has been mixed with everything from folk to metal.
      • "Caribbean rhythms" means calypso, itself the result of West African ritual music wedded to Christian slave music.
        • And then there's reggae: a handy way to skank up any song by accenting the off-beat.
  • Funk metal, funk rock, funk punk...let's just say that everything's better with Funk.
  • A subtrope of this is "Ethnic Punk":
    • Celtic punk, which combines punk rock with Scottish, Irish and occasionally Welsh or Breton folk. Pioneered by Anglo-Irish group The Pogues and popularised by groups like Dropkick Murphys and Flogging Molly.
    • Gogol Bordello is a self-described "Gypsy punk" band that plays a mixture of punk, cabaret, dub, and Gypsy folk music.
      • The Zydepunks as well, although vocally they're closing to bands like Flogging Molly.
    • The Ukrainians, who play punk-ish music with Slavic instrumentation and Ukrainian lyrics. Have covered The Smiths, Velvet Underground, and the Sex Pistols, in translation.
    • Golem! is a klezmer-punk band and they are fucking awesome.
    • The more general term "folk punk" is used to refer to the style played without any self-conscious ethnic alignment. It developed in the UK as a sister-style to celtic punk; the two were more or less an identical movement until the latter.
  • Folk Metal, which crosses metal with (usually) Scandinavian traditional folk, ranges from Ensiferum's attempts to take metal even further over the top, to Korpiklaani, which is...something else entirely. Special mention goes to Alestorm for being pirate metal.
    • Korpiklaani describes their style as "old people's music with heavy metal guitars". Frontman Jonne Jarvela's started out with Sami folk band Shamaani Duo, added synthesizers and heavier guitars and formed a new band, Shaman. Shaman then became Korpiklaani by dropping the synthesizers and Sami language lyrics, and adding traditional instruments and a more metal sound.
    • Finntroll is a special case for Folk Metal. Along with the primary components of their music being black metal, Finnish folk music and "humppaa" style polka, over the years they've also added dashes of punk, classical, Caribbean music, honky tonk, and whatever else they felt like. They also sing exclusively about trolls in Swedish (although they are from Finland, Swedish sounds more like Troll).
    • There are a number of different approaches to folk metal, ranging from the Black Metal with added Scandinavian folk of Finntroll to the English folk song made dark and growly of Skyclad
    • Folk Metal is usually a combinatin of Death/Black/Power Metal with whatever the band members' local/ethnic folk music traditions are. It has spawned two sub-genres -- Celtic Metal, which is Folk Metal incorporating Celtic revival styles; and Oriental Metal, which is Folk Metal based on Middle-Eastern musical traditions.
      • It has also indirectly spawned two other, similar sub-genres—Viking Metal (Power, Black, or Death Metal with some traditional Scandanavian influence) and Pirate Metal (Power Metal with a touch of Folk Metal and a romantic pirate theme).
  • Christian black metal. Wait... black metal?
    • Also known as White metal...
      • Formerly known as Unblack metal, a term now used mostly perjoratively by trve black metal fans and artists. Just to drive home how out of place it really is: In the early 90's, church burnings were considered an acceptable way to earn respect in the Norwegian black metal scene. Murder, suicide, spikey shin guards and absurd facepaint all happened as well. To go along with that, the lyrics are frequently generally anti-religious and misanthropic, specifically anti-Christian, Satanic, nihilistic, atheistic, and pro-neopaganist. For most of this and more distilled into one band, read up on Mayhem.
  • Flamenco jazz.
  • "Mathcore" takes two things that seem by very nature to be contradictory Hardcore and Progressive/Avantgarde metal. Throw in some Jazz Fusion and Blues influence as well as maybe some electronic bits and you've got an noisy, spastic and downright crazed sound of music.
  • Stoner metal is a fusion of doom metal, psychedelic rock, and grunge.
    • Grunge itself began as a fusion of early doom metal, hardcore punk, and glam rock illustrated with bands like Green River, Malfunkshun and Skin Yard. Later bands would incorporate indie, psychedelic, and post-punk influences as well.
  • Electronic music in general lives and breathes this, due to having a huge variety of subgenres with only small differences, and having a wide variety of individual styles, and thousands of different synthesizers and different drumsounds that can be used.
  • Post-avant jazzcore is better than progressive dreamfunk.
  • Musica Mestiza is this taken to the extreme: a mix of Salsa, Punk, Reggae, Ska, Hiphop, Flamenco, Raï, African Rhythms and any other genre that seems like a good idea to add to the mix. Manu Chao is probably the most popular artist is this genre.
  • Avant-Garde Metal thrives on this trope. Bands either combine lots of genres, or combine a few genres and have a really odd way of putting it all together. They also often abruptly switch between styles.
  • J Pop is characterized by sounding perky and glittery, while mixing techno/electronica, hard/soft rock, and another random genre with nonstandard, but still poppy, chord progressions.
  • Electro Swing combines swing and house music. And sometimes techno and hip-pop.

Artists

  • Todd Rundgren: more on the page.
  • New Kingdom: Psychedelic Rock, Jazz, Funk, Soul, Hip Hop and poetry thrown into a blender.
  • Alter Bridge Myles Kennedy's voice is essentially hard rock wailing a la Robert Plant, grunge breathiness with a hint of soul. Mark Tremonti's playing is basically proggy Alternative Speed Metal with just a bit of blues, Spanish guitar and southern twang making surprise appearances. The rhythm section can have some progressive tendencies as well. All while being considered a swan song to 70's classic rock and a spiritual successor to Led Zeppelin.
  • Igorrr neatly stitches together Baroque Classical, Breakcore and Death Metal
  • Firewater mixes Klezmer, Punk, Gypsy music, Jazz, and just about anything else Tod A can think of in pretty much every song. And they were one of the first.
  • Electrocutica is a Japanese band using a strange but wonderful blend of classical, electronic, rock/metal music and alternating between human and Vocaloid singers. The end result is usually something extremely amazing and Mind Screw-y.
  • Dr. Carmilla & The Mechanisms are self described as "Dieselpunk Cabaret", with the former also Identifying as Visual Kei and the Latter as Space Folk. Influences from Cabaret, Psychedelia, Classical, Jazz & Rock music can also be identified.
  • Bauhaus mixed punk, glam, krautrock, dub, and Looks Like Cesare. Some people were very enthusiastic about the end results.
    • Tones On Tail, formed by former Bauhaus members Daniel Ash and Kevin Haskins, were psychedelic/surf/goth rock.
    • Somewhat ironically, many of the bands that initially inspired Goth have very little to do with any cohesive, named genre, including the one they helped create. The Birthday Party were more like a de-funkified version of The Pop Group (see below), while The Virgin Prunes were essentially performance artists with a post-punkish musical element.
  • Skindred is a mix of reggae and metal. In their song "Nobody", they refer to themselves as "Ragga metal punk hip-hop"
  • Several classically artists have begun incorporating different musical stylings into their music. Some famous ones, Vanessa Mae combined classical violin with techno, and the girl group Bond has combined classical with rock, pop, world, and pretty much everything else. It actually caused a problem for Bond, they were trapped in a "too pop for classical charts, to classical for pop charts" conundrum for quite a while.
  • The Clash were punk/everything else, at least on their later albums.
    • Sandinista! in particular. Highly underated. Lots of fun dub experiments. Perhaps copying PI Ls Metal Box?
    • In fact, the New Wave movement in general can be described as punk/everything else.
  • Public Image ltd. - - so much, in fact that alot of their songs were aimed at weeding out the punks who complained about Johnny Rotten's new sound. See Albatross, Foderstompf, This is what you want, this is what you get.
  • Nearly every Beck album contains some flavor of Neoclassical Punk Zydeco Rockabilly, to the point where you could say that Mix and Match Musical Genres is his genre.
    • "I've always dreamed of being a music/poet that transcends genres even as he reinvents them."
  • The Dresden Dolls, in their own words, are "Brechtian punk cabaret", something they made up because they didn't want anyone to use the word "goth" when trying to label them.
  • E Nomine's music is a combination of techno and Ominous Latin Chanting.
  • KOMPRESSOR is an industrial/novelty one man band.
  • Nouvelle Vague, quite possibly the world's only bossa nova New Wave cover band.
    • Dread Zeppelin is a reggae Led Zeppelin cover band with an Elvis impersonator on lead vocals.
  • Rasputina and Apocalyptica are rock WITH CELLOS!.
  • Electric Light Orchestra started off as a mix of prog-rock and classical chamber music.
    • And gradually mutated into a technopop band with a string section.
  • Clutch mix doom metal, a little thrash, blues, southern rock, a little rap, and whatever else they feel like almost seamlessly.
  • Havalina Rail Co. (later just Havalina) mixed up the styles with every single album they did:
    • Their self-titled debut was a mix of zydeco, folk, and swing.
    • The Diamond in the Fish was a mix of Rat-Pack jazz, rock, and blues.
    • Russian Lullabies mixed rock and blues with East European folk influences (the band read about Russian folk music, but they deliberately didn't listen to any of it, so the end result was something else entirely).
    • America had the band playing rock, bluegrass, surf rock, country, jazz, Latino rock, Hawaiian, blues... one gets the impression they were trying to cover every single genre that could be considered uniquely American.
    • Space, Love, & Bullfighting was a mix of space-rock and Latin music.
  • 16 Horsepower mixed country, bluegrass, rock, and European folk music.
    • And Woven Hand, one of the spin-off bands, adds Medieval and Native American influences to the mix.
  • Xera is Asturian folk (think Celtic music and you won't be too far off) mixed with techno.
  • In their last two albums, the White Stripes have had Jack White playing a marimba on several tracks on one, and two songs with BAGPIPES on the other, one of which was a heavy, "White Rabbit"-esque psychadelic freakout. With a bagpipe.
    • Though hardly critically acclaimed, Korn beat them to the punch by years.
  • Songs to Wear Pants To is a website which produces songs, in pretty much every genre imaginable. A lot of them are genre blends as well, when they're not being outright silly. One of the site's more popular songs, "Celtic Techno Burrito," is pretty much what it sounds like—techno and Celtic. And it is awesome.
  • There's an artist named Bud Melvin who combines Game Boy chiptunes with banjo and steel guitar.
  • Bristol post-punk band The Pop Group were by design a fusion of punk rock, hard funk, dub reggae and free jazz, with bits of West African ritual drum music, surf-pop, Captain Beefheart (see below), early hip-hop and psychedelic noise. In spite of many imitators, it is generally agreed that there has been no-one quite like them since.
  • Flight of the Conchords is New Zealand's fourth most popular guitar-based digi-bongo acapella-rap-funk-comedy folk duo.
  • Emilie Autumn mixed influences from classical and electronic music to create a genre she calls "Violindustrial" or "Victoriandustrial".
    • Emilie's music during the Enchant era is also very hard to classify. It could probably be described as a mixture of pop and jazz, with classical violins.
  • Soul Coughing were (and still are) so hopelessly sui generis that they had to invent a genre name for themselves -- "deep slacker jazz."
  • Van Canto are an capella power metal band from Germany. They have five vocalists four whom just make instrumentesque noises, a singer and a drummer. Check out their cover of Metallica's "Battery". Also Nightwish's "Wishmaster".
    • Actually, this is a primarily cover band and despite unusual (lack of) instrumentarium, they do not differ stylistically from any heavy/power metal band.
  • Tom Waits is his own genre. Enough said.
    • To eleborate his voice sounds like a mixture of Louis Armstrong and Bob Dylan with the style of Frank Zappa, Voltaire, and a Lounge Lizard. He then harmonizes his voice in a Jazzy way. It's probably called Neo-Gothic Rock.
  • Gazpacho has been described as "classical post ambient nocturnal atmospheric neo-progressive folk world rock."
  • If you happen to be listening to a band who can go through funk, pop, jazz, soul, swing, alt rock and death metal in the same song and think "Business is usual" you're probably listening to something by Mike Patton (Faith No More, Fantomas, Mr. Bungle).
  • A Day To Remember from pop punk to death metal with post-hardcore and metalcore in between... well it's something.
  • The 90's underground band Switchblade Symphony mixed hip-hop with wailing goth. Your Mileage May Vary.
    • One review described Switchblade Symphony as "Gothadelic Trip-Hop."
  • If music reviewers are any indication, every band who ever existed mixed krautrock into their music.
  • French band Magma can best be described as Progressive/Symphonic/Gospel/Jazz fusion with vocals sung in a made-up language called Kobaian. So unusual and unique, that bandleader Christian Vander came up with a new word to describe it: Zeuhl, which means "celestial music" in Kobaian.
  • The band Primus would count, as their music is kind of like thrash metal crossed with psychedelic... funk... polka?
    • Related note: "...have you heard the brand new sound? It's a cross between Jimi Hendrix, Bocephus, Cher and James Brown. It's called Heavy-Hometown-New-Wave-Cold-Filtered-Low-Calorie-Dry" from the Primus song "Mr Krinkle"
    • Useless trivia fact: Primus are the only band to have a genre in Winamp's drop down list named after them.
      • The programmer for that menu justified the band's inclusion as a genre into themselves by saying:

"You show me another band whose sound is based on a classically trained banjo player treating a four-string bass guitar like a banjo, and we'll call it a genre. Until then, Primus is Primus, and nobody else is."

  • Les Claypool's (bassist and vocalist of Primus) solo career is made of this trope. Only weirder.
  • The band Sub City Dwellers refer to themselves as "Ska Soul Reggae Rock 'n' Roll". They are also well known and loved in the Winnipeg Punk Scene.
  • The band In/Humanity jokingly called themselves "Emotional Violence" or "Emo Violence" to make fun of both the genre names for Emo and Power Violence, two horribly named but decent genres they drew much of their influence from.
  • Ayreon is a rock opera with prog metal, symphonic metal, prog rock, folk music, and pretty much everything else at some point. The vocalists range from extreme metal growlers to more typical rock singers to very operatic singers.
  • The Pixies are what would happen if you put Talking Heads and The Velvet Underground into the Brundlefly machine.
  • Jethro Tull combine hard rock, the blues, jazz, English folk music and progressive rock styles, and combine electric, acoustic and electronic instruments on the same tune at the same time. The lead singer plays flute, which is more of a lead instrument at times than the electric guitar. The band have also dabbled in pop, East Indian and Arabic music, new age, electronica, new wave synth-pop, symphonic rock and bits of psychedelia. Despite this, they have their own style, and very few bands have been successful at copying them.
  • Your average Bela Fleck and the Flecktones song will combine at the very least Jazz, Funk, and Bluegrass. Some go much farther than this—on varying albums, they've added everything from Indian traditional music (on Shanti) to Classical (Fugue from Prelude, their heavily latin-inflected take on a Bach piece) into the mix. The apex of this is their take on "The Ballad of Jed Clampett," which featured both hip-hop vocals and scat singing over a funk/bluegrass beat with elements of jazz dissonance. While this all might seem a little odd, it usually works beautifully- the Flecktones may be the most Better Than It Sounds band in existence.
    • Likewise the Dregs/Dixie Dregs. Classical Southern Prog Rock Metal Jazz Fusion, often all in the same song.
  • The Veronicas Acoustic synthetic classical pop rock
  • The World/Inferno Friendship Society play "cabaret punk" or "circus punk" with plenty of references to Weimar Germany and smashing the state. Oh, and they did a tribute album about the life of Peter Lorre. Of course.
  • Jaga Jazzist is one of the most prominent bands in the Nu Jazz scene. They started off by mixing big-band jazz with drum-n-bass and trip-hop. On later albums they also incorporate elements of post-rock and prog-rock.
  • The Cramps pretty much were Neoclassical Punk Zydeco Rockabilly.
  • Big & Rich's first two albums featured country, metal and rap all rolled into one. And many critics said it was great, although Your Mileage May Vary.
    • Similarly, Big & Rich protegé Cowboy Troy performs country rap, although he's hardly the only artist to do so.
      • And have you heard the solo album Big Kenny put out before Big & Rich existed? That's something along the lines of synthpop, lounge lizard and British invasion, with happy country lyrics.
  • John Zorn, the producer of Mr. Bungle's first album, known for blowing the minds of music nerds with his free jazz/metal/surf/western nonsense albums like "Torture Garden" and "Leng T'che", featuring Boredoms vocalist Yamatsuka Eye.
    • Mr. Bungle themselves too, most apparent in their song "None of Them Knew They Were Robots," on their albun "California."
  • Dwight Yoakam is highly eclectic himself. His style is reminiscent of Buck Owens' "Bakersfield sound", but with several rock influences ranging from Elvis to Queen to Cheap Trick. Yes, he actually did a country cover of a Queen song.
    • Granted, the song in question ("Crazy Little Thing Called Love") certainly has a rockabilly feel to it in the first place.
  • That's how the Polyphonic Spree's sound got built up: The lead singer, bassist and drummer were members of the alt rock band Tripping Daisy, the flautist was big into avant-garde progressive stuff, the percussionist & harpist were clearly classically trained, the synth & theremin players brought some electronica influence, etc...
  • Sufjan Stevens' first album, A Sun Came, mixed rock with American and Middle-Eastern folk music. His breakout hit albums, Michigan and Illinois, mixed rock and folk with neoclassical orchestrations of varying levels of bombast. The Age of Adz was a mix of orchestral music and Synth Pop.
  • Calexico mixes rock, country, Mexican folk (particularly mariachi), post-rock, and occasionally funk or jazz. Any given song may feature trumpets, accordion, violin, cello, steel guitar, synthesizers, or any combination of the above.
  • Queen are an incredibly versatile band, going from proto-metal to heartfelt piano ballads to gentle folk to blues rock to punk-tinged hard rock to synthpop to prog rock epics to arena rock to funk rock to disco to what could almost be called proto-rap.
  • Ozric Tentacles combine space rock, progressive rock, dub, jazz fusion, world (Indian, Moroccan, Algerian, you name it), electronica, and tea.
  • Over the course of their career, Led Zeppelin did folk, country music, gospel, synth-pop, reggae, punk and heavy metal while incorporating Motown, Middle Eastern and South Asian influences. And yet, they're still seen as a heavy blues-rock band.
  • Opeth. "You got your progressive rock in my death metal!" And vice versa. Not only that, but it works.
    • Your Mileage May Vary, as they fit quite neatly into prog-metal territory.
  • Frank Zappa is practically a genre unto himself. Rock-funk-classical-bluesy-jazz-fusion-pop-lounge with unusual time signatures, frequent tempo changes in strange keys leading into what sounds like freeform fusion guitar noodling solos that are in reality all entirely written out as complete compositions—all in one song. There's no easy way to describe the kind of music Frank made, except to call it Zappa.
    • He also retired from rock for a while to do orchestral music. He said in an interview that he returned to rock because he used a section of prerecorded music in a classical concert, and the critics couldn't tell the difference.
    • Notable among his classical influence was Edgard Varese. His 15th birthday present was a long-distance call to Varese's house. He also admired Anton Webern, Igor Stravinsky, many jazz and pop artists, his friend Captain Beefheart (found below), and well, many others. Hence this trope.
  • Captain Beefheart, a frequent collaborator with Frank Zappa, is simiarly eclectic. Starting with a base of psychadelic rock and blues, he went on to incorporate jazz, boogie, avante-garde, and experimental styles with discordant and dissonant riffs; combined with a unique lyrical style that blended the poetic, humorous, and surreal.
  • Japanese band m-flo mixes rap and hip-hop with a number of things, including jazz, techno, Barbara Streisand ("The Way We Were"), among others, depending on the album/song.
  • Add to all this the possibility of being in the Contemporary A Cappella genre—that is, being a jazz musician (or rocker) (or folk musician) (or whatever) but being too cheap to buy instruments and having to sing all those parts instead. (The theme from Where In The World Is Carmen Sandiego is probably the instance you personally are most familar with.) With a little creativity, you can do just about any genre you want in a cappella: witness, for instance, the death-metal barbershop quartet.
  • Of Montreal's recent albums, especially Skeletal Lamping, where, as one reviewer stated, "Barnes leaps through genres that don't even exist, from acid glam psychedelia to sixth dimensional heroin pop." This is a bit of an understatement - listen to "Id Engager," keeping in mind that in its place on the album, it comes off as extremely restrained, an obvious radio single. The other single from the album has the last minute or so replaced with a loop of the chorus to hide the Mood Whiplash.
  • Mago de Oz is normally just a Spanish language guitar rock band... but has numerous songs that have a Celtic rhythm, 80's guitar band power chords, and lyrics in Spanish.
    • Actually it's a Folk Metal/Heavy Metal with Classic, Celtic, Symphonic Metal and Hard Rock influences, open to new styles
  • Sleepytime Gorrila Museum is a combination of epic metal, folk, choir music, and nightmares.
  • Some of Estradasphere's members have been trained in metal, jazz, and classical music. They also have a guy who plays keyboards and shamisen. The result is cool and wierd.
  • The Beatles themselves went from '50s-influenced rock to Merseybeat to jangly folk-rock to swirly psychedelia to acoustic pieces to blues, soul, jazz, pop, music-hall, country, rockabilly, the avant-garde, reggae/ska, Beach Boys influences, proto-punk, proto-metal, proto-prog, proto-funk... and yet, they developed their own distinctive style(s), and distinctive slant on the styles they tackled.
  • The Swedish band Movits, who recently appeared on the Colbert Report, blend hip-hop with the swing jazz popularized by Benny Goodman and Cab Calloway.
  • 127 mix rock, jazz, punk and Iranian dance music. And they sing in Farsi, English and French.
  • Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds are bluesy, semi-gothic, gospel, funk folk rockers. With the occasional sea shanty.
    • Well Nick Cave was the lead singer for the Birthday Party. Check out The Friend Catcher, Release the Bats, Mr. Clarinet, and Mutiny in Heaven. Plus now he has Grinderman, which is Noise and blues and whatever else it is.
  • The Cat Empire are a mix of jazz, hiphop, funk, and flamenco.
  • When the Australian hip-hop group The Herd aren't doing political songs, they mix polka and rap. Unpredictable even has rap verses in Czech and Spanish accompanied by a traditional folk song that's slowly speeding up.
  • Between the Buried and Me has described their fourth album, Colors, as "new wave polka grunge" and "adult contemporary progressive death metal".
  • Discounting flirtations with harsh noise, jazz and post-rock, Caïna's core sound consists of a fusion of ambient black metal, shoegaze, The Cure-esque goth rock and acoustic folk. And it sounds AWESOME.
  • Look at this: on the one hand, you've got black metal, which consists of fuzzy, distorted guitars, insanely fast drumming, demented screaming vocals and a focus on a dark, evil atmosphere. On the other hand, you've got post-rock, which consists of a base of clean, slowly picked guitars, mid-tempo, carefully played drums, no singing whatsoever, eccentric song structures and what music critic Ciarán Tracey called "the redemptive note common to all post rock": a vaguely hopeful atmosphere. Despite the obvious contradictions, in recent years bands combining the two have become increasingly common, most notably Wolves in the Throne Room and Irish band Altar of Plagues.
    • Interesting note: A lot of Wolves in the Throne Room's songs cover environmentalist topics. (Insert green metal jokes here)
    • Drone metal progenitors Sunn O))))))--originally an Earth tribute band, but whose reputation has far overshadowed their obscure early influence—have been inching closer to post-rock territory, with such recent efforts as Monoliths & Dimensions. Don't mention this to purist fans; they might be offended (though their hearing is so damaged, they'll probably never notice).
      • Even farther away from drone-metal is Deep In Ocean Sunk the Lamp of Light by Æthenor—a side-project, including O'Malley from Sunn O))))))--which serves up disturbing random-noise glitch with (almost pretty!) twinkling music-box chiming, then dumps it all into the Pro Tools Cuisinart set to Liquefy.
      • Earth themselves fits sort of into this field, as while their earlier albums was pretty standard drone doom, with the release of "Hex: Or Printing in the Infernal Method," they have essentially become a drone-western band.
  • Finnish band Alamaailman Vasarat jokingly refer to themselves as "kebab-kosher-jazz-film-traffic-punk-music." This is about as accurate a description of them as you're going to get.
    • If you're curious: most of their songs kind of sound like the Beetlejuice theme with a distinct oompah klezmer vibe. They've done heavy metal tracks and ballads as well, and the band members primarily play horns and strings. They're really cool.
  • Blood Stain Child are a Japanese band who make a mix of Melodic Death Metal and Trance. It's awesome.
  • Prince. His style (now nicknamed the "Minneapolis sound" since others imitated it) can basically be summed up as: funk + pop + rock + heavy metal + New Wave + whatever the hell else he decides to do (soul, jazz, hip-hop, ambient, electro, etc).
  • Omodaka is a collaboration between electronic musician Soichi Terada and enka singer Akiko Kanazawa. The two genres combine surprisingly well, it turns out.
  • Ian Dury's first group was a pub act called Kilburn and the High Roads, which combined the rockabilly stylings of Dury's hero, Gene Vincent, with the New Wave punk influences which were popular in the pub rock circuits. With the Blockheads, he started to incorporate rock 'n' roll, jazz, folk, reggae, ska, a bit of disco and old vaudevillian, music hall comedy songs into the repertoire.
  • Travis Shredd and the Good Ol' Homeboys, the first and (likely) only "country metal rap" band.
  • Bjork's Medúlla is esentially a capella electronica. Highlights include "Oceania", "Who Is It", "Where Is the Line", and "Triumph of a Heart", which is an a capella dance song.
  • Tori Amos' "Professional Widow" combines elements of blues, industrial, medieval, classical, and rock. In other words, imagine an alternative rock song with a harpischord instead of an electric guitar. Also, the song goes from harpischord rock to bluesy piano ballad a couple of times during the song.
    • The Beekeeper is a mixture of baroque pop, R&B, and blue-eyed soul.
  • Canadian band Enter The Haggis combines traditional Celtic music with rock, pop and jazz influences. The band includes a full-time bagpiper.
  • Another Canadian band, going by the name Unexpect, is a great example of this trope. Here's what The Other Wiki has to say about them:

Unexpect often is an avant-garde extreme metal band from Montreal, Canada with an amalgamation of different styles of music, including black metal, death metal, progressive metal, melodic heavy metal, European Classical music, opera, medieval music, jazz, electro, ambient, noise, gypsy music, and circus music.

    • Although the band perfers to just be called a "metal" band. They, like a few other bands these days, can't understand the bizzare genres like "New-Wave of American Psychedelic Rap Metal".
  • The debate rages on to this day as to what exact genre you can call Children of Bodom. Considering they've done covers of songs by Britney Spears and Kenny Rodgers, you can see their influences are far and wide.
  • Although commonly associated with Progressive Rock, influential Canadian band Rush has seen considerable variation in their sound. Starting out as a straightforward Hard Rock/early Heavy-Metal band, they evolved through Prog Rock and Synth Rock, while incorporating elements of Jazz, Reggae, Pop, and even Rap; before returning to their hard rock roots, including releasing an album of classic Rock covers.

This trope is actually made into lyrics in Rush's song 'You Bet Your Life': "...light pop hip-hop metalist..."

  • Diablo Swing Orchestra are making a name for themselves in the avant-garde metal scene by combining, of all things, swing and metal. They dislike genre classifications, but if pressed will describe their sound as "riot opera," which they feel is the best description of their sound. Let's put it this way: the band posted some details about their upcoming third album on their Facebook page, including the statement "Expect some Turkish pop mixed with black metal and Chinese boy choirs among other things." They received numerous comments about how excited people were about the album, but none expressing any disbelief at the mixture.
    • Not to menton throwing in some jazz, tango and big band.
  • Before they were Mute Math, they were Earthsuit, whose musical style was a mix of rap, rock, electronica, jazz, and reggae. And it was a Christian band.
  • John 5. Industrial Bluegrass. Yeah.
  • In the same vein, Greg Koch. Instrumental Country-Blues-Metal-in-the-vein-of-Steve-Vai. Also yeah. Not to mention his comedic talent.
  • Music professor Gil Trythall released an album in 1971 titled Country Moog. Yes, that's country as in the folksy musical genre, and Moog as in the space-age synthesizer.
  • The Tiger Lillies are... well, okay: the lead singer is a raw falsetto who can make his voice sound like Louis Armstrong's, only six octaves higher. The bassist plays a thin standing base like it's a cello. The (brush) drummer has a suitcase full of discarded toy cars, rattlers, firecrackers, baby dolls, rubber chickens and dildoes, which, yes, he uses to make noise. They perform in whiteface and bowler hats. Their songs range from serious ballads about sailors dying alone on the ocean to manic screaming being in love with a giraffe's vagina up in the sky. Their material is written by Edward Gorey (among others). Their fans include Terry Gilliam, Matt Groening, the Franz Ferdinand guys and John Cameron Mitchell. Marilyn Manson and Dita von Teese got married to their music. And they called themselves "Brechtian Punk Cabaret" long before it was hip.
  • Short-lived band 38th Parallel was a combination of Linkin Park-esq Nu-metal and... Contemporary Christian. They released one album in 2002, then broke up.
    • There were a shit-ton of Christian nu-metal/rapcore bands before them. P.O.D, Pillar, Project 86, PAX217... the list goes on. The only thing that made 38th Parallel original was that their name didn't begin with a "P" and they barely squeezed by on that.
    • Linkin Park themselves, switching from nu-metal with prominent hip-hop and electronica influences on their first two albums to synth-rock with elements of reggae and rap on their latest.
  • The three members of Italian instrumental experimentalists Zu play bass guitar, drums and a (highly distorted) baritone saxophone. They frequently feature guest musicians, including The Melvins' guitarist King Buzzo, Mike Patton of Faith No More and Japanese electronic musician Nobokazu Takemura. The result is a groaning, squealing and cataclysmic semi-improvised fusion of Metal, Noise-Rock, Free-Jazz, Mathcore, and No-Wave Punk. Compared by one struggling and confused music reviewer to 'Lightning Bolt covering Trout Mask Replica in the middle of a knife fight'.
  • Dr. Steel has been described as hip-hop industrial opera, much to his enjoyment.
  • U2 in The Nineties: Alternative Rock + Funk + Madchester + Industrial Metal + Shoegazing + Electronic Music + Techno + Dance.
  • The Suicidal Rap Orgy, a group of Australian noise artists who inexplicably decided to make a, uh, rap collective. Basically, imagine guttural 'or' shrieking male vocals, absurd shrieking female vocals, and lyrics based entirely around various creative combinations of human waste, sex, and violence. It's... I'm not sure if it's Better Than It Sounds. "The band are often known for their disgusting liveshows in which they wind up naked and horribly grotesque lyrics that are in a similar vein to GWAR and GG Allin."
  • Dälek combines Hip Hop with Shoegazing, Noise Rock, and Industrial and has occasionally been dubbed as metal-shoegaze-hip-hop, but not by themselves. They just prefer to be called hip-hop.
  • Meet Slaughter of the Bluegrass, a band which makes death metal song covers... in bluegrass style. It's pretty awesome.
  • The pAper chAse make post-hardcore/classic emo with minimalist classical structures, accompanied by heavy industrial beats and sampling, in a heavily-orchestrated style with touches of jazz and blues on literary Noise Rock concept albums heavy on the Nightmare Fuel.
  • Bone Thugs-n-Harmony combines barbershop doo-wop harmony, with speed rap, with tinges of Jamaican patois in their rhyme scheme.. Usually within the same song where they change the tempo of their delivery mid-verse.
  • Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann got my opera in someone's rap. I suddenly find myself liking rap.
  • How about Klaus Nomi. It's a mix between opera and electronica. Think Pavarotti meets Depeche Mode.
  • This trope is just one reason why Yoko Kanno is the goddess of anime music. Seriously, she does everything. All at once. Awesomely.
  • The Doors were made up of a jazz drummer, a flamenco guitarist, a classical organist, and a poet-vocalist.
  • Gentle Giant: What happens when you get together three brothers out of a soul group, a classically trained keyboardist, a blues guitarist, and a volatile series of drummer, and they all start playing recorders? You end up with Gentle Giant, whose songs ranged from quasi-medieval violin-powered tunes, to entirely percussive pieces, to a capella ballads.
  • A professor of mine used almost this exact phrase to describe the sound of the band Lucero.
  • Body Count deserves a mention, having been a thrash metal band fronted by Ice-T, with gangsta-ish lyrics to match.
  • Alabama 3(you'd know them for the Sopranos theme) was formed in an attempt to prove that it was possible to combine country with acid house.
  • Blondie started out a Reggae-influenced Punk band, added synthesizers and Pop hooks and moved into New Wave, and in the process incorporated elements of Funk and Rap.
  • British rock group Motörhead blended heavy metal and punk rock in an unprecedented manner, giving birth to a genre variously known as "speed metal" or "punk metal". They are notable for being one of the few bands to straddle the fierce punk/metal rivalry of late 70s/early 80s Britain, well respected by the most die-hard fans of both camps.
  • The New Orleans sludge scene drew inspiration from grunge, hardcore punk and doom metal to create a unique style of slow, gritty metal. No one band can be said to have invented the style, with various groups often sharing members and engaging in frequent collaboration, although The Melvins and Black Flag are both noted as major precursors.
  • The Band Morphine mixed Lounge, Blues, Jazz, Rock N' Roll and Indie Rock with a Two String Slide Bass, a Baritone Saxophone and Drums. They invented Low Rock.
  • Vernian Process are described as mixing punk, classical, industrial, trip-hop, dream pop, goth rock, darkwave, cabaret, deathrock, goth and more. They call it "steamwave".
  • Afro Celt Sound System is Exactly What It Says on the Tin: A mix of African folk, Celtic, and electronica.
  • Iwrestledabearonce mixes Deathcore/Mathcore with random other genres ranging from Trip Hop to Country Music in every song.
  • Industrial Rock one-man band Celldweller fuses genres to the point that it's almost impossible to keep track of all the genres that are being mashed together.
  • Waltari are a perfect example: Alternative metal, punk, techno, electronic, rap, death metal, grindcore, hard rock, symphonic, folk, thrash, pop, funk, industrial and drum 'n' bass are all quite merrily put together on the same album. And the best part is it actually works.
  • Scissor Shock, who have even managed to combine this with Genre Roulette.
  • One of the reasons we still keep Kanye West around is because his music quite awesomely mixes different genres he likes, not to mention his "baroque pop" excursion 808s & Heartbreak. To date, he sampled King Crimson, Michael Bolton, Bette Midler, The Doors, Shirley Bassey, Elton John, Daft Punk, Labi Sifre, Can, Nina Simone, Tears For Fears, The Alan Parsons Project and the list goes on...
  • Guns N' Roses. The bands classic lineup were all into rock music but the band members each had their own style influenced by a different genre. Axl was included by more melodic and heavily arranged music like Queen, Slash was based in blues and ratty hard rock like Aerosmith, Izzy edged more towards simple acoustic song writing like Bob Dylan, Duff was punk and Steven was the hair metal scene. Together these influences came together and made Appetite For Destruction what it was. They replaced Steven with Matt Sorum, which swapped the hair metal vibe for a big epic arena sound which added a little flair to Use Your Illusion.
    • And that's before getting into the new release, Chinese Democracy, where Axl is the only member of the original lineup left, and a rotating cast of musicians contributed to the album. The album has more of an Industrial Rock feel, helped by the fact that Nine Inch Nails guitarist Robin Finck is one of the few to perform in all songs.
  • Mangue Bit is a musical movement from the Brazilian state of Pernambuco which mixed traditional music styles, mostly maracatu, with hip hop, punk rock and trash metal. It's awesome!
    • Also from Brazil, two bands (one with a comedic vein, and another straight satire) embodied this in the 90s: Raimundos played "Forrócore", mixing traditional rhythm forró with hardcore punk, and Mamonas Assassinas had along with straight comedy rock (or in one case, comedy metal), rock parodies of Brazilian country, forró, pagode and Portuguese music.
  • No love for Thrice? They started out your typical hardcore metal band - and then, with the release of their later albums, moved into far more experimental territory. Some songs on the Earth disk of the Alchemical Index sound like Bluegrass and Jazz!
  • How about Stewart Copeland?
  • Gorillaz; their music is a mix of Hip Hop, Rock, Rap, Electronica, Soul, Country and many many more.
  • Delhi 2 Dublin plays a mix of Indian Bhangra and Celtic jigs, with some ragga thrown for good measure.
  • Rabbit Junk is essentially Hardcore Punk, Industrial, Black Metal, and Hip Hop. Different songs tend to focus more on one genre than the other (though usually two at once), their early stuff is mostly Hardcore Punk Industrial.
  • With so many references to "Thrash crossed with..." it's possibly easy to forget that Thrash itself was a cross between early 80's British Metal and the Punk music.
  • Abney Park is a Seattle-based band that does steampunk music, to brilliant effect.
  • Chillwave is a new genre termed to describe a recent crop of musicians who make Retraux 80's-inspired synthpop but with lo-fi/shoegaze/psychedelic production values. Possibly the closest we will get to a sonic embodiment of the Nostalgia Filter, as the genre deliberately attempts to sound like old, warped cassette tapes one might randomly find in the house or car. Lyrical themes include drugs, the beach, and just chilling out in general.
  • The Yoshida Brothers fuse rock stylings with the distinctive sounds of the shamisen, a traditional Japanese instrument that looks something like a three-string banjo. They've been called the "Jimi Hendrix of the shamisen", just to give you an idea.
  • Candiria plays something they like to call "urban fusion", which draws influences from metalcore, jazz fusion, hip-hop, and ambient.
  • Caravan Palace is a French band that combines French house music and Gypsy jazz and American swing.
  • Voltaire (the musician) calls himself a "Neo-Victorian gypsy pirate vaudeville band." ...and that seems to miss out quite a few genres fans of his notice.
  • Kid Rock can turn out some songs that certainly feel like this. Rock, rap, blues and country influences kinda mix together in a way that allows his material to be played on a majority of major radio stations without fully breaking genres. It's so bad that some people classify him as his own genre at times to make things simpler.
  • Brazilian band Pato Fu is pop rock mixed with just about any rhythm conceived. It culminates in an album recorded with toy instruments.
  • The Kentucky Headhunters. At first glance they seem like a Southern rock band, but closer inspection shows plenty of soul and bluegrass influences. Who would've ever thought that traditional country like "Oh Lonesome Me" or "Only Daddy That'll Walk the Line" could fit on the same album as covers of "Spirit in the Sky" and "Let's Work Together"?
  • Sugarland seems to be heading towards this. Although mainly a more acoustic bent on modern-day Country Music, their song "Stuck Like Glue" features a prominent accordion line, as well as a reggae-rap breakdown and a pinch of Auto-Tune near the end.
  • Type O Negative's music is a mixture of punk, doom and thrash metal, goth with a hint of Beatlesque melodies.
  • CAKE combines jazz standards, country, crooning, funk, soul, and alt rock beautifully.
  • Deerhunter call themselves "ambient punk" (?) and sound like neo-Shoegaze/indie rock/trippy weirdness (varying wildly from one track to the next).
  • Mindless Self Indulgence refer to their genre as "Industrial Jungle Pussy Punk." It's as close to accurate an adjective you'll find for it.
  • Singer-songwriter Michael Gira's first (and current[1]) band Swans. Each album essentially has its own genre distinction, the most inexplicable being their first (1982's Filth) and "last" (1997's Soundtracks For The Blind). The latter, in particular, has no sense of genre distinction whatsoever and is best described as a 150-minute sonic Mind Screw (see Hell Is That Noise, Last-Note Nightmare, Lyrical Dissonance...). To many, proof that True Art Is Incomprehensible; to some, proof that Michael Gira is God. Whichever.
    • This trope is applicable to all of Michael Gira's projects, as well as almost everyone he's been associated with. Look at Akron/Family. Or David Coulter. Hell, Fire On Fire...
  • The Style Council. Just the Style Council
    • Just look at the list of genres wikipedia lists: Rock, New Wave, synthpop, Sophisti-pop, deep house, Avant-Garde, Classical, Jazz, Funk. And they leave out rap, acid jazz, and many others. And everytime they do something new, it is epic. Can you say nearly 8 minute long funk songs?
      • 8 minute funk songs are typical for P-Funk.
  • Stoner metal band Monster Magnet are primarily based on Hawkwind and Black Sabbath, but also include elements of NWOBHM, glam, surf, Delta blues, The Doors, garage rock, and the occasional Latin-tinged ballad.
  • Brave Combo made their name playing polka versions of Jimi Hendrix songs.
  • The Kronos Quartet are a string quartet who, along from works from the classical tradition, have also covered Jimi Hendrix and Thelonious Monk tunes.
  • Electro Funk (aka Boogie): Which was/is a mixture of funk, R&B and electro. Arguably The Zapp Band was the prototypes.
  • The Red Hot Chilli Pipers, inventors of "bagrock". Let's play rock music on the bagpipes! Then let's play rocked-up versions of traditional pipe tunes! Then let's play both at once! (For instance, "Long Way To The Top - If You Wanna Bagrock" is a medley of "The Old Hag At The Churn", the titular ACDC track, and "Steam Train To Mallaig".)
    • There are now two bagrock groups: former Chillis guitarist Gregor McPhie recently formed Bags Of Rock.
  • Kaizers Orchestra can most easily be described as Tom Waits-esque Gypsy Punk with a profound respect for untraditional percussion.
  • 311 is well-known for their blend of rock, reggae, rap, and funk.
  • Put Fela Kuti-style Afrobeat, Brian Eno's electronic treatments, Americana, and the energy of The Clash into a blender, and you get the Talking Heads.
  • The Velvet Underground took standard pop and brought in the influences of classical composers such as John Cage and La Monte Young. The result? They spit out distorted jams like the 17-minute "Sister Ray," now considered a masterpiece. And, of course, they also wrote a lot of nice little pop ditties as well.
  • Vektor fits under the progressive thrash metal label, but there's so much stuff going on with them that "progressive" is almost an understatement. You've got thrash, yes, but they also throw in technical death metal, black metal, 80s shred, progressive rock, post-rock, power metal, Florida-style death/thrash, and even some down-'n-dirty Motorhead/Venom-style riffing. It has to be heard to be believed.
  • BrokeNCYDE shows how not to do it.
  • The Forgotten Archetype parodies this by mixing grindcore, rap, pop, electropop, chamber, jazz, power metal and many more genres.
  • Nobuo Uematsu surely gets an honorable mention for his most famous Crowning Music of Awesome piece, One Winged Angel (Final Fantasy VII), which is basically the bastard love child of Carl Orff's "Carmina Burana" (from which it borrows lyrics) and Jimi Hendrix's "Purple Haze".
  • Japanese Black Metal band Sigh invoke both this trope and Genre Roulette often within the same song. Not only do they frequently incorporate influences from Progressive Rock, Psychedelic Rock, classical, Thrash Metal, jazz, and a number of other styles within their songs, but they often shift entire music genres on a dime, with oddities like dub reggae or disco breaks thrown into the middle of songs, or classical snippets overlaid with what appears to be samples of hundreds of giggling babies used to close albums. Imaginary Sonicscape is probably their most blatant use of this, but pretty much all of their works starting with about Infidel Art clearly invoke it, and there were suggestions that their sound would develop in that direction even before that.
  • Mr B. the Gentleman Rhymer combines rap with the posher version of British Music Hall. And the banjo.
    • To be fair, Professor Elemental came before him with chap-hop, it's recognised title.
  • Italian parody metal band Nanowar of Steel mostly aim their arrows at either Manowar or Rhapsody, but in Odino & Valhalla they manage to parody Ennio Morricone, the lambada, Pink Floyd and System of a Down, all in the same song.
  • HORSE The Band combines an unlikely mixture of Post-hardcore and Chiptune, occasionally with a post-metal vibe.
  • Vanilla Ice started out with radio-friendly pop-rap on To The Extreme, then switches to funk/jazz/rap on Mind Blowin, and then he went for a Nu-Metal sound on Hard To Swallow, since then his music has been a combination of industrial metal, nu-metal, punk, gangsta rap and hip-hop, Ice himself describes his music as "Molten Metal Hip-Hop".
  • The Prodigy became one of the greatest electric acts of the 90s by Codifying the genre of music called "Big Beat" out of Acid House, Drum'n'Bass, Jungle, and Breakbeat on the electric side, and Punk, Metal, Progressive, and Psychedelic, on the rock side, along side the heavy use of sampling from such diverse genres as Funk, Jazz, and Reggae.
  • Sting & The Police threw jazz, reggae and punk into a blender, adding New Wave into the mix later on. And that's not counting the other styles that Sting has explored in his solo career.
  • Ludo is, well... something like this. There really is no way to describe it. The Other Wiki has them down as Power Pop, Pop Rock, and Alternative Rock; TV Tropes lists them as Alternative Rock, Geek Rock, and Rock Opera.
  • Progressive Metal band Painted In Exile are an almost ludicrous example; Skylines travels during its 9 minutes through hip-hop, extreme metal, jazz, progressive rock and melodic, poppy material and manages to remain a somewhat cohesive song.
  • Kylie Minogue's 1994 single "Confide In Me" is a mix of trip-hop, baroque pop, dance pop,Rn B, and new jack swing.
  • The 1970's group Dr. Buzzard's Original Savannah Band mixed disco with 1930's big band swing.
  • Singer/composer Akiko Shikata 's music is a combination of neoclassical, darkwave, medieval, Renaissance, folk, ambient, Celtic, pop, and symphonic metal.
  • Balkan Beat Box mixes klezmer, Arabic, and Balkan music with hip-hop beats. It's Better Than It Sounds.
  • Russian band Xe-NONE mixes Eurodance and Heavy Metal. Yes, really.
  • The band, Friends of Dean Martinez, are a good example of this. Two of their members composed the soundtrack to Red Dead Redemption, and their music certainly carries some of the spanish/western feel present in the game, but there's also a classical touch, and a little Post Rock, surf rock, and psychedelic rock thrown together. And it's awesome.
  • Kagrra,, combines Visual Kei/rock and traditional Japanese music. They call it "Neo Japanesque".
  • Dorso combines Heavy Metal, Grindcore, Thrash Metal, Jazz, Progressive Rock /Metal and his last album is mixed with Industrial Metal.
  • The Egyptian artist Mohamed Mounir combines Egyptian pop, Funk, Jazz, Reggae, Blues, and traditional Nubian music. He is therefore one of the most popular—and definitely the most enduring—contemporary artists in Modern Egypt.
  • Enter Shikari embodies this trope perfectly. Get post-hardcore, stick a load of electronica in, add a twist of metal, flavour with dubstep and such as needed.
  • Electric Six. Disco, metal, funk, garage rock, New Wave and lyrics based chiefly around sex, drugs, dancing and FIRE.
  • Rolo Tomassi. You got your mathcore, your acid jazz, your experimental rock, your 8-bit Nintendo synths, your grindcore and your Soprano and Gravel singing styles both coming from the same girl.
    • Perhaps their music could be termed "dreamgrind"
  • Streetlight Manifesto mix ska, punk, acoustic, big band, funk and hardcore. Fans of Streetlight Manifesto, and frontman Tomas Kalnoky's side project Bandits of the Acoustic Revolution (another genre-splicer, fusing acoustic, ska and Middle-Eastern influences), sometimes refer to this as "the fourth wave of ska".
  • British genre-hoppers Sikth were described in one review as "speed metal, progressive metal, thrash, nu metal, metalcore, and cock-rock". Add in the lightning-speed jabbered vocals that border on scat-singing and the haunting piano melodies and you're halfway there.
  • Kvelertak mix black metal, rock 'n' roll, power metal, prog, disco, hardcore punk, folk, hard rock and acoustic passages. And scream in Norwegian. And play almost entirely naked.
  • Keelhaul play a bizarre fusion of mathcore and stoner metal, like Dillinger Escape Plan meets Kyuss with a shedload of marijuana. And it is awesome.
  • Slipknot. No, don't look at me like that - before Corey joined the band, they were the Mr. Bungle of nu-metal, mixing the genre with death metal, groove metal, industrial metal, funk, jazz and disco of all genres. This style can be seen on their demo album, Mate. Feed. Kill. Repeat.
  • Cattle Decapitation started out as fairly typical deathgrind with some noise influences, but as their career went on they grew more and more eclectic. As of now, they blend together deathgrind, technical death metal, post-rock, darkwave, noise, post-punk, free jazz, progressive rock, and various other genres into one very unpredictable package.
  • Blur. They went from shoegazer band to Britpop and then basically became a noise rock band with influences from grunge, gospel, trip hop and Pavement style lo-fi indie rock, before finally finishing up as something resembling Albarn's other project, Gorillaz - influences from jazz, hip hop, dub and world music.
  • The Crystalline Effect. Techno, trip-hop, EBM, industrial and electronic, and you never know what they'll come up with next.
  • Richard Hell and the Voidoids' first album Blank Generation mixes the stripped down punk sound with the minimalist jazz/prog of Hell's former band, the Art Rockers Television. The second album, Destiny Street, included different styles including blues covers(I Can Only Give You Everything, originally by Them and also covered by MC5, and I Gotta Move, a Kinks cover) pop punk (Kid With The Replaceable Head) a sentimental punk ballad (Time) and the title song, Destiny Street was a seven minute funk song. And every bit sounds just as Punk Rock as the Sex Pistols or the Ramones.
  • Zdob si Zdub. The Other Wiki lists them as "Ska-punk rapcore" which they may very well be. Let's just say there's a lot of guitar riffs, rapping, trumpets, sampling and Moldovan folk music. Just...just go listen to them.
  • Space are generally classified as indie, but draw influences from hip-hop (particularly on Spiders), film soundtracks, big band, rock 'n' roll, techno, and electronica, with Tin Planet being the most noticeable example of this. It's kind of expected, really, since the band had a singer who was more influenced by films than music, a classic rock fan guitarist, one drummer into jazz and another one into hip-hop and loops, a keyboard player who was seriously into dance music, and a bassist who liked literally anything. Jamie's songs were more indie/rock oriented, while Franny's tracks were almost entirely electronic instrumentals. Spiders made heavy use of loops and samples, Tin Planet was noticeably poppier, while Suburban Rock 'n' Roll and the never-released Flies had a harder edge to them. The lost album Love You More Than Football was somewhere in between.
  • British expatriate Edward Ka-Spel—of The Legendary Pink Dots, The Tear Garden, and Mimir—is fond of blending multiple musical styles and influences in his various projects; to the point where his music is typically categorized as "Experiemental" or "Neo-Psychadelia", as it tends to vary widely between Post-Punk, Post-Rock, Psychadelic, Industrial, Electronica, and so on.
  • This is one way to describe the awesomeness that is OutKast. Another way is "Southernplayalisticaddilacmusic."
  • ZZ Top was one of the few bands that managed to pull off New Wave electro-Blues Rock in the 1980s, with the albums Eliminator and Afterburner.
  • John Paul Larkin started off simply doing scat-style jazz music. His manager suggested that he combine that with hip-hop and modern dance music. While hesitant at first, he later warmed up to it and it was this combination that would earn him fame as Scatman John.
  • A Hawk and a Hacksaw are pretty strictly folk music, but they mash many different folk traditions—Balkan, Turkish, Romani, Klezmer, Mariachi—into something unique.
  • Sound Horizon is usually a Symphonic Metal band. Sort of. It's not unheard of for them to dip into baroque, pop rock, choral, orchestral, Russian folk, jazz, and, facetiously in one live concert, chiptune.
  • A Day to Remember is a mix of metalcore, alternative metal, pop, pop-punk, post-hardcore, emo, a bit of death metal, and who knows what else??
  • Vanessa Amorosi: "Hazardous" included Rock, Power pop, Synth pop and rap. "Mr Mysterious" is proof of this.
  • Bear McCreary combines Western and Eastern melodies with rock and chorus on Battlestar Galactica.
  • Namgar combines traditional Buryat-Mongolian Folk Music and chants with modern rock.
  • Foster the People seems to be electro/folk/industrial/dance/progressive alternative rock. One song on their Torches album is called Call It What You Want.
  • Revocation is technical/melodic death metal at their core, but in addition to copious amounts of thrash, they also throw in jazz, blues, Southern rock, first-wave metalcore, grindcore, math rock, 70s hard rock, 80s shred, surf rock, funk, 70s prog, and pretty much whatever the hell they feel like putting in. And it works.
  • Pop Will Eat Itself. British punk + goth rock + electronica + hardcore gangsta rap. YMMV, but it is popularly Worse Than It Sounds.
  • Kerli refers to herself and her musical style as Bubble Goth, a combination of Bubblegum pop and Goth music.
  • 30 Seconds to Mars combines Progressive Metal, Alternative Metal, and Space Rock with elements of Emo, Post-hardcore, Progressive Rock, Hard Rock, Screamo, Synth Rock, Post-Grunge and Alternative Rock.
  • Bal-Sagoth is the ultimate epitome of this trope: Epic Black Symphonic Power Metal. Their singer also doubles as a narrator with a deep, sexy voice.
  • Fleshgod Apocalypse - Symphonic technical death metal. Classical music at 300 BPM.
  • English singer-songwriter Alex Clare combines soul/R'n'B influenced vocals and instrumentals with deep dubstep bass rhythms and drops. A first-time listener doesn't expect the dubstep section, and it works so well.
  • One of the several groups going by the name "Doppelgänger" in the late 2010s-early 2020s is a Philadelphia-based Irish-German Oompah-Rock band. You've never heard Springsteen's music until you've heard it played on acoustic guitar, accordion, clarinet and tuba by men in lederhosen.

Others

  • This trope can be applied to food as well as to music. The (fraternal, not identical) twin Louisiana styles of Creole and Cajun cooking can be described as French/Spanish/African/Native American/Caribbean.
  • "Fusion" cuisine in general tends to be this trope. Not so much when it involves related styles (eg. Chinese/Korean); but many forms incorporate multiple completely unrelated cuisines.
  • Fictional example from Daisy Owl: ElectroFolk ClassicAlt is pretty cutting edge.
  • A fictional example: the Kabbage Boy in Brutal Legend are a "Second Wave of American Tween Melodic Rap Metalcore" Boy Band.
  • Another fictional example, probably: Although we never hear it, Rastabilly Skank in Red Dwarf sounds like it should be a cross between reggae, rockabilly and ska punk.
    • It's a rare genre, but "Skabilly" fits that description.
  • Querty's and Dvorak's music experiments from Freefall include Cyber Rap, Cyber Rap and the Digital Symphony Orchestra and Epic Rap Yodeling Operas. Oh, and Orbital Bombardment in D minor.
  • In one segment of the NPR radio-show This American Life entitled "By the Numbers", host Ira Glass commissioned a song combining the most-hated musical elements as voted by the public - it featured, among other things, an opera singer rapping a cowboy song accompanied by a tuba and a children's chior singing about Labor Day!!! AND IT'S AWESOME
  • Although not a full genre or a full band example, the Pogues in concert brought Lynval Golding up onstage to play "A Message To You, Rudy" in a Celtic Ska style
  • Webcomics Subnormality has the Generals - military themed rap-metal band - in this strip.
  • Delhi 2 Dublin is a band that mixes traditional Indian music (sitars and the like) with Celtic fiddles and whistles, and filters the lot through a little bit of techno.
  • Seattle over Memorial Day weekend hosts the Folklife Festival (the largest folk and eclectic music festival in the US that's still free admission). Expect a lot of experimental bands and equally experimental descriptions in the guidebook. It's not uncommon for one to find sea chanties rendered in chiptune or bagpipe and steel drum covers of Beatles songs.


  1. ↑ Reformed with a new line-up in early 2010; have another album in the pipes.
This article is issued from Allthetropes. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.