Post Reply - Djent

   Going to correct you all before this gets too deep: djent is not a genre.  The word "djent" itself is onomatopoeia that's used to describe the characteristic tight, punchy sound of a low-tuned guitar with strong pick attack, a tone more or less pioneered by Meshuggah and popularized today by the likes of prog metal acts such as Periphery, Animals as Leaders, TesseracT, Cloudkicker, et al.  It's much more of a tight, rounded "bwwaaaaaoowwhhhh" than your typical chugging noise, and the tone is usually helped with heavy use of digital modification and the assistance of seven or eight-string guitars.
It's become inappropriately associated with a genre in and of itself because a number of the forerunning "djent bands" have a style that incorporates similar elements, most noticeably heavy use of polyrhythmic metering and syncopation in the riffing and oftentimes metalcore or deathcore tendencies.  It's spawned a burgeoning underground scene of closet guitar geeks and has been propagated by swapping riffs and numerating project after project through the internet.  It's an undeniably cool concept but one that I feel at this point has been done to death by misrepresentation (something I'm guilty of myself) and the insurmountable number of cookie-cutter bands and solo projects that pop up like weeds.

It's a tone, folks, nothing more.  The forerunning bands that implement this tone are among my absolute favorites (sh*t, I'm an 8 string guitarist myself), but once you get past those select few amazing bands there's almost nothing to find worth listening to.