Metalcore vocalist renounces old lyrics

In a time when culture is evolving faster than ever, Emmure vocalist Frankie Palmeri is sharing his regrets over past lyrical choices.

When Frankie Palmeri’s band Emmure burst onto the music scene in the late 2000s, nobody was ready for the band’s brutally honest lyricism and devastatingly heavy sound. Throughout multiple releases, many under the Victory Records banner, Palmeri wrote about heartache and the anger he felt toward the world around him without consideration for how his word choices might impact listeners. He spoke of murdering exes, hurting his enemies, and having sex with his listeners’ girlfriends with total disregard for how his art might make people feel.

But that was another time. The world has changed a lot since Emmure burst onto the scene, and the affinity for ultraviolent, highly-profane lyricism fans of heavy music once enjoyed has waned. Some may see that as a bad thing, but others believe that creating music with more awareness of how things impact listeners makes the heavier areas of music more accessible to more people.

This week, Palmeri took to Twitter to renounce his past lyricism. In a multi-tweet post, the Emmure frontman wrote:

“Hanging out with someone who only listens to metalcore made [me] realize why regular people with healthy neuroplasticity don’t fuck with that genre of music and gravitate towards pop/rap. Talk about a fucking unnecessary onslaught of bullshit emotions.

“Trust me when I say; I emotionally and spiritually reject almost every lyric I’ve ever written. It all stems from material pain, a fragile ego, an inability to cope. It’s unfortunate anyone has ever identified with any of what I’ve said in my music. A lot [of] people are/were hurting.”

Frankie Palmeri via Twitter

You can view Palmeri’s original tweets below.

It’s hard to know what the lead Palmeri to make this announcement, but rumors of a new Emmure record being on the way have circled the internet for months. If so, Palmeri’s comments could signal a departure from the group’s previous efforts, which fans may or may not embrace.

More importantly, it’s is refreshing to see an artist reconsider their past actions through the lens of cultural acceptance and emotional maturity. Palmeri once wrote, “ask your girl what my d-ck tastes like,” and now he’s apologizing for it. That’s character development, and we could use more of that in the metalcore world.