From underwater aesthetics to ear-shattering extremes, the musical world has some truly bizarre corners! Join us as we explore the strangest, most experimental music genres that exist far beyond mainstream pop. These sonic oddities challenge conventional definitions of music itself, creating unique cultural movements with dedicated fan bases despite their unconventional approaches.
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00:00Welcome to WatchMojo, and today we're counting down our picks for outsider music genres that
00:11might be considered strange or obtuse by modern pop-chart standards.
00:1620. C-Punk
00:24The term genre is loosely defined on this list since styles, such as C-Punk, make up a microscopic section of the electronic music iceberg.
00:38This musical movement is obsessed with aquatic and nautical themes and is strongly influenced by 1990s pop culture.
00:4620. C-Punk
00:58C-Punk emerged from the landscape of Tumblr in the early 2010s and doesn't really have a codified sound. Hip-hop, electronic, and 90s style R&B can often all be found mixed together on a C-Punk track.
01:12While it started as a trendy internet meme, C-Punk has largely faded from the public zeitgeist.
01:1919. Kawaii Metal
01:26To paraphrase the New York pop-punk band of the same name, cute is what Kawaii Metal aims for.
01:32The word kawaii translates to a Japanese cultural aesthetic that embodies cuteness and innocence in its design.
01:4019. The band Baby Metal combined Kawaii with Heavy Metal in 2010, and in doing so, created their own strange little subgenre.
01:4920. Kawaii Metal
01:54Kawaii Metal blends those catchy earworm vocal hooks found within most J-pop acts with hard-hitting, modern metal riffs.
02:02The resulting juxtaposition is a sort of musical, you-got-peanut-butter-in-my-chocolate situation, where two great tastes end up tasting great together.
02:1218. Horrorcore
02:21There actually isn't any hardcore punk-rock influences in this subgenre of rap music.
02:32Instead, the term horrorcore basically serves as an umbrella for a lot of darker, death-obsessed hip-hop lurking in the background.
02:41We're not really talking about the more realistic gangsta rap of the 90s, but instead MCs who tend to gravitate toward more fantastical, gory, or metaphorical themes.
02:53The grave diggers were hugely influential to this movement, as were the more supernatural songs of the ghetto boys.
03:04Elsewhere, artists like Necro, Gore-Tex, Mr. Hyde, and others combined macabre lyrics with atmospheric soundscapes and boom-bap beats to create a cult-obsessed awesomeness.
03:1817. Djent
03:23The jury is still out as to whether or not Djent is an actual genre of music or simply a style of guitar playing.
03:32Fans tend to be split on the two definitions, but many agree that Sweden's Meshuggah helped, for better or worse, forge the Djent sound.
03:42It's all about the rhythms when it comes to this approach to technical death metal.
03:53Specifically, a palm-muted technique that emphasizes a complex groove alongside dizzying lead guitar breaks.
04:01There's also a dissonance that tends to accompany many metal bands that are labeled as Djent.
04:08Animals as leaders and Tesseract are considered progenitors of the style, while modern applicants can employ everything from metalcore breakdowns and rap vocals to the mix.
04:20Number 16. DSBM
04:28Themes of sadness, longing, and self-destruction embody this controversial subgenre of a metallic style that's globally known for pushing boundaries.
04:39DSBM trailblazers like Zaster, Silencer, and Shining took cues from second- and third-wave black metal artists like Catatonia and Bethlehem.
04:50These groups incorporated slower tempos, acoustic sections, and even the occasional clean vocal section to create something new.
04:58Make no mistake, though, most DSBM vocals are harrowing shrieks, the sort of gut-wrenching, caterwauling that sounds birthed from absolute, gutter-dwelling madness.
05:19This style of music definitely isn't for everyone.
05:22It's a corner of the black metal world that's always bound to spark debate.
05:31Number 15. Chap-Hop
05:34Keep living life like it's the 1880s, a chap out of time but rising to the top.
05:38Those living outside of the UK might not be familiar with the subgenre known as chap-hop.
05:44This is a style that's both visual and musical, since it combines old-world British aesthetics and steampunk subculture with modern hip-hop.
05:54The end results are as strange as that description implies, with a very limited number of artists laying claim to the chap-hop label.
06:03But first, I've got a bang bang, the boogie to the boogie, say I'll jump the boogie to the bang bang boogie, let's rock.
06:09That said, the music of artists like Mr. B, The Gentleman Rhymer, and Professor Elemental certainly stands apart from the pack.
06:18This is the kind of hip-hop you check out when you're absolutely burned out on every other commercial iteration of the style.
06:26I hope it's safe to assume you won't do it again, set foot on my stage and get ruined again.
06:31Number 14.
06:32Shoe Gaze and Black Gaze
06:39Ask any alternative rocker of a certain age about their favorite cold albums, and it's highly likely that at least some of them will fall under the Shoe Gaze category.
06:49That's because this sub-genre of indie and alternative rock was something fresh and new back when bands like My Bloody Valentine and Slow Dive were defining the sound in the 80s and 90s.
07:08The soft, loud dynamic of quiet, emotional vocals and blasting guitars helped endear these groups to the cool kids of the day.
07:17Meanwhile, UK groups like The Chameleons helped influence the Black Gaze Movement, headlined by France's Alsest.
07:24This take on traditional shoe gaze incorporated elements of black metal into the mix and created something that was both bold and beautiful.
07:37Number 13.
07:39Folk Metal
07:40The world of folk metal casts a wide net, under which many bands of varying styles can be found.
07:46The core of this sub-genre is the embracing of traditional folk elements and tempering them with the aggression of heavy metal.
07:54This could be seen in the Jethro Tullisms found within Britain's Skyclad, or the Scandinavian cultural themes of Ensiferum, Moonsorrow and Bathory.
08:07Finland's folky polka-like style called Humpa is incorporated by groups like Fintroll and Korpaklani.
08:14Elsewhere, Sweden's In Flames took traditional melodies and amplified them within a melodic death metal context.
08:27It's a rich cultural tapestry that's enabled folk metal to gain fans around the world.
08:34Number 12.
08:41Grindcore and Mincecore
08:43The Belgian band Agathocles may be the world's foremost Mincecore band, but their style of politically left-leaning extreme music also serves as an offshoot of basic grindcore.
09:00This is an ultra-extreme combination of death metal and hardcore punk that usually emphasizes overkill amounts of speed.
09:08Napalm Death, Terrorizer, and the early works of Carcass helped draft a grindcore blueprint in the 1980s, while Agathocles' Mincecore sound tends to contain slower, more stomping riffs in its arsenal.
09:23This group's anarcho-punk politics followed Grindcore's UK origins, but grindbands have been known to sing about everything from gory horror movies to hardcore adult films, all in the search for extremity.
09:41Number 11.
09:42Funk Metal
09:43It was a blink-and-you-miss-it affair, the fusion of funky rhythms and slap bass with high-octane thrash.
09:50Funk metal was initially hyped by many underground press outlets in the early 90s as the next big thing, but it didn't really pan out that way.
10:07This was despite funk metal-adjacent groups like Faith No More, Living Color, and the Red Hot Chili Peppers achieving certified chart success.
10:16Dream of California
10:19Today, the term funk metal tends to be applied to more cult artists like Fishbone or Mordred.
10:26The latter's San Francisco roots speak to funk metal's West Coast origins, with their traditional Bay Area thrash riffs being tempered with DJ scratches and emotive, exaggerated vocals.
10:38Number 10.
10:47Vaporwave
10:48Vaporwave
10:57Just as a lot of these genres are tough to define, this format is no exception.
11:02At its heart, a satire of consumerism, Vaporwave emerged as a genre in the 2010s across various online music communities, beginning with artists such as James Ferraro and Vectroid, just to name a few.
11:17And add a heavy dose of 80s and 90s pop culture, then mix samples of smooth jazz and incorporate lounge music while using pitch shifting and loops to achieve a distorted sound, and you've got yourself some Vaporwave.
11:31Vaporwave
11:389.
11:40Lowercase
11:41Today's popular music is all about dense, catchy, overwhelming beats and compositions.
11:47You know, hooks and massive choruses.
11:50By contrast, Lowercase asks listeners to experience sounds drowned out by the auditory clutter of the world.
11:58Lowercase artists digitally amplify natural sounds like anthills and flowers growing, taking a microscope to sounds otherwise imperceptible to the human ear.
12:13Others, such as Steve Roden, isolate everyday situational sound like the handling of paper or the sound of a quiet library.
12:22I'm looking for some sort of enlightenment, where do all these things come together, and I'm not interested in making that easy for people.
12:29Minimalist and ambient it may be, but Lowercase is unlikely to top Billboard charts anytime soon.
12:37Number 8.
12:38NINTENDO CORE
12:40NINTENDO CORE
12:41NINTENDO CORE
12:47In the early 2000s, Horse the band jokingly coined the term NINTENDO CORE to describe their unique style of music, which combined metal with 8-bit video game-inspired synth.
13:00NINTENDO CORE
13:07The term caught on, leading other video game-inspired rock and metal musicians to adopt the term.
13:13Nintendo's ancestry can be traced to chiptune, a genre of music spawned in the 1980s that incorporated 8-bit synth from the video game world and EDM-like tempos.
13:25It's a formula that is just so crazy that it works, leaving video game fans everywhere looking for the nearest mosh pit.
13:40Number 7.
13:42SPLITTERCORE
13:43NINTENDO CORE
13:44NINTENDO CORE
13:45Hardcore techno and gabber were among the first EDM subgenres to push the number of beats per minute in an aggressive direction.
13:52But Splittercore and Extratone make them look tame by comparison.
13:57Both Splittercore and Extratone fall under the larger umbrella genre of Speedcore, which is defined as any EDM where the BPM exceeds 300 BPM.
14:07FIRE IN THE HOLE
14:08FIRE IN THE HOLE
14:09ONTO THE CORE
14:10KILL KILL KILL
14:11THIS IS YOUR DOOM
14:12LISTEN TO THE SOUND OF MY SHOTGUN
14:15SPLITTERCORE
14:16SPLITTERCORE is Speedcore on Amphetamines, usually exceeding 600 BPM.
14:21It pushes the boundary of recognizable EDM to its very limits, and then Extratone demolishes those limits, going beyond 1000 BPM.
14:30In fact, the human brain struggles to keep up, and the individual beats sound like a single pulsating drone.
14:37NUMBER 6 PIRATE METAL
14:47Who were the original metalheads, you ask?
14:52SO METAL THEY WERE METAL BEFORE METAL EXISTED?
15:00PIRATES
15:01PIRATE METAL PAYS HOMAGE TO THE ORIGINAL HEADBANGERS OF THE SEA BY MIXING POWER METAL, THRASH METAL, AND SPEED METAL WITH TRADITIONAL PIRATE BALLADS, CHANTS, AND THE FOLKS SOUND ASSOCIATED WITH SEAFARING.
15:14Lyrically, pirate metal is all about buried treasure, rum, kidnapping landlubbers, and other pirate pastimes.
15:28Pirate metal fans around the world have 80s metal band Running Wild to thank for inventing the genre when they abandoned their satanic imagery for the pirate life, with their third studio album, Under Jolly Roger.
15:41NUMBER 5 CRUNK CORE
15:48There seems to be a clear correlation between weird music and genres that end in core.
15:54In this case, our hybrid genre combines crunk music with screamo and emo.
16:00This is usually achieved by pairing vocal styles more commonly used in emo and screamo with electronic beats similar to those found in southern hip-hop.
16:09That being said, CRUNK CORE really feels like an old pastiche of pop culture from 2005 to 2010.
16:20Throw everything you can find, including hip-hop, scene-kid fashion, emo, screamo, techno, suburban youth, autotune, and Hot Topic into the mix, and you get the neon monster that is CRUNK CORE.
16:32NUMBER 4
16:37NUMBER 9
16:39NUMBER 9
16:40NUMBER 9
16:41NUMBER 9
16:42NUMBER 9
16:43Avant-garde is a term that can be applied to any piece of art which pushes beyond the accepted boundaries of that given art form.
16:51In the case of music, it's difficult to set any specific set of characteristics, but a number of composers from the 20th century rose to prominence by radically altering the definition of music, and came to be commonly known as avant-garde composers.
17:07Among them are Arnold Schoenberg, who worked with serialism, a technique of composition using a series of systematic values, and John Cage, whose most infamous piece consisted of 4 minutes and 30 seconds of sitting in front of his piano in silence.
17:29NUMBER 3
17:31NUMBER 3
17:32CATHOLIC PSYCHEDELIC SYNTH FOLK
17:37Psychedelic synth and folk music feel like an unlikely pairing to begin with, but add Catholic symbolism to the mix and things get really weird.
17:48The 60s and 70s resulted in a lot of experimentation, but this genre stands out from the crowd.
17:54Sister Irene O'Connor's Fire of God's Love Slash Songs to Ignite the Spirit sounds innovative and experimental even today, without considering that it was recorded by an Australian nun living in a monastery in 1976.
18:09Burning, warming, cold hearts
18:14Musicians, Pastor John Rydgren and Emily Bindiger, each made significant contributions to the genre, with their respectively trippy releases, silhouette segments, and Emily.
18:27I must take care of my own head
18:34NUMBER 2
18:36DANGER MUSIC
18:37This is another genre that is more about an idea than any distinct musical characteristics.
18:47It is considered to be a form of avant-garde music, but it pushes the definition of music so far beyond recognition that danger music is also called anti-music.
18:58Confused yet?
18:59You should be.
19:00Danger music is defined by one thing, the theory that some music can be inherently dangerous.
19:06Musicians creating danger music prove this hypothesis in various ways, such as playing loud enough to deafen an audience, attacking the audience, or writing,
19:17The performers should blind themselves five years after performing this piece.
19:21In the sheet music.
19:23Fun!
19:24All of these scores explore the concept of danger, whether to the artist, the performer, or the members of the public.
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19:451.
19:48Japanoise
19:53Noise music is produced all over the world, but no one does it quite as weird as the musicians of Japan, who have developed a distinct and highly regarded noise music culture known as Japanoise.
20:06While the 1980s and 1990s were certainly the high point of the genre, Japan maintains its position as a mecca of noise music.
20:14Come on, that is just noise!
20:16It's not even a song!
20:18The Japanoise movement encompasses many sub-genres of noise music coming out of Japan, from tabletop electronic noise of MSBR or the Incapacitance, to more punk-inspired Japanoise artists like Ruins.
20:33Japanoise has also produced arguably one of the most famous and respected noise musicians ever, Merzbau.
20:40Do you actively seek out others who enjoy a niche style of music?
20:46What are your thoughts on those that gatekeep their love of a particular genre?
20:51Let us know in the comments!
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