They've also, in addition to the UK Garage, Drum & Base, Grime, and other electronic genres, have brought in elements of ambient music and even R&B. To further this growth, these artists have dropped down from the usual 140 BPM's to 130 beats per minute as their tempo.

It's an attempt at maturation and forward movement by the intellectuals of the genre. Post-Dubstep is the cultural and philosophical advancement of the typical Dubstep sound. I have to urge you to check out Skrux, pronto. It's got a lot of fantasy elements to it's lyrical content. But soon the prophecy will be fulfilled and solace will return to the land. It's like being in a psychedelic forest like you might see in the movie Avatar, but it's all somber and makes you reminisce of days when the kingdom was at peace. The picture above captures the feeling perfectly. My absolute favorite sub-genre of dubstep. The cognitive dissonance of being chill but needing to head-bang will confuse and excite your brain and ears.īenga is the Half-Step go-to guy and Loefah offers just as much. It can feel less aggressive and demanding of your energy, but can still give you that adrenaline rush. By programming the drums at half-time, the other elements of the song feel like they are at twice the tempo at times. Half-Step produces an interesting feeling. Skrillex is the Brostep poster child, but Datsik and Excision are other great examples. While some don't like the progression of the sub-genre, it simply feels mature and has widespread appeal. It focuses on the glitches and blips with lots of syncopated drum breaks and dynamic fluctuations in the feel of the song. I love the hip-hop influence and vocal samples. Purists hate it, call these guys sell-outs, etc. That's Glitchstep's feel.įor a good time, call Bassnectar. Think of the sound you hear when Neo first gets sucked into the Matrix when he touches that mirror. The glitches are the high frequency, fast paced sounds that you'd expect to hear in a UFO. One of my personal favorites, Glitchstep puts the fancy drum patterns and wobbles in the background and really spends its time focused on the glitches. This makes Wobblestep the most disorienting yet enjoyable sub-genre in the list.Ĭheck out Caspa if you want to jump out of your seat and do the dance above (zebra costume not included). Here, it's accentuated and placed up front. The wobble is the heavy synthesizer bass line with smooth pitch bends that drives the low-end of the frequency spectrum. Wobblestep focuses on the wobble aspect of Dubstep. Try out 16Bit for an example of this style. The other is that its very noisy and rhythmically aggressive and not very melodic. It sounds like a 5th generation copy of a cassette tape half the time. It's somewhere between Nerdcore and Seattle garage band music. Filthstepįilthstep is the lo-fi, Super Nintendo cousin of Dubstep. Great examples of the classic style are Rusko and Kode 9. Classic Dubstep uses all of the wobbles, wubs, glitches, and blips you hear in all of the sub-genres and other genres of electronic music. You'll feel small, a little nervous as the song builds up the first rise towards the drop. It'll most likely be of the classic style and it'll be like nothing you've ever heard before. This is what it feels like the first time you hear dubstep. Also, you'll find links to artists that specialize in each sub-style. So what I've done is include a picture or GIF to describe it visually. It requires a bit of acquiring the taste and then becoming accommodated enough to notice the differences.

It's hard to describe each of these by their subtly unique sounds. So without further ado: The All Encompassing Dubstep Sub-Genre List Gorestep is one like this that I included because it's gaining in its influence and will lock it's place in this list soon enough. Some are just demeaning names for other sub-genres and some are just too unique. Regardless, I've put together a list of 17 sub-genres, although I encountered even more names like Cackstep. I guess it's clever marketing, carving out your own path and being a big fish in a small pond. Everyone and their mom can now buy dubstep creation software for cheap, watch a few tutorials, create their own special snowflake style of Dubstep, and upload it to Soundcloud and Reddit. You could go as far as to call these sub-sub-genres, or as I like to call them: Sub-Dubs. Believe it or not, there's a boatload of sub-genres in Dubstep, which is itself a sub-genre of Drum & Bass.