Gym Class Heroes - Musical Style and Influences

Musical Style and Influences

Gym Class Heroes is noted for displaying hip-hop influences while performing alongside artists who are mainly considered to be rock, pop-punk, and metal bands. McCoy says of the band's musical style, "We've been the proverbial sore thumb our entire career. Even before we got signed to Fueled by Ramen, we were playing shows with death metal and hardcore bands and whoever would let us play with them. I wouldn't even consider us a hip-hop band. Musically, it's just all over the place." The band acknowledges '80s funk-influenced R&B acts such as Prince and Ready for the World as major influences on its sound. Each member draws from different types of music for inspiration, with drummer Matt McGinley saying "there aren’t many we agree on." McCoy cites 1970s blue-eyed soul group Hall & Oates as his biggest musical influence.

Guitarist Disashi Lumumbo-Kasanga is mainly influenced by rock music, citing Jimi Hendrix and Muse as an inspiration for his guitar playing. Bassist Eric Roberts incorporates elements of reggae into his playing, as well as styles influenced by metal bands such as the Dillinger Escape Plan and Meshuggah. McGinley favors funk and rock stylistics inspired by groups such as Green Day, Red Hot Chili Peppers, and 311. Additionally, the band is noted for not using samples in its music, a practice commonly used in hip-hop. McCoy states that "It’s more fun and organic in the live show. There’s definitely a lot of acts that can pull off a DJ/MC thing but then a lot that can’t. Also I guess it’s all we know." However, As Cruel as School Children does contain samples, with McGinley commenting, "We’ve always been a band and we never did sampling at all before but within the last couple of years we’ve embraced it more. In the songs we did with Patrick Stump we used it."

Read more about this topic:  Gym Class Heroes

Famous quotes containing the words musical, style and/or influences:

    A pregnant woman and her spouse dream of three babies—the perfect four-month-old who rewards them with smiles and musical cooing, the impaired baby, who changes each day, and the mysterious real baby whose presence is beginning to be evident in the motions of the fetus.
    T. Berry Brazelton (20th century)

    Carlyle must undoubtedly plead guilty to the charge of mannerism. He not only has his vein, but his peculiar manner of working it. He has a style which can be imitated, and sometimes is an imitator of himself.
    Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)

    Without looking, then, to those extraordinary social influences which are now acting in precisely this direction, but only at what is inevitably doing around us, I think we must regard the land as a commanding and increasing power on the citizen, the sanative and Americanizing influence, which promises to disclose new virtues for ages to come.
    Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)