After recording a demo at Why Me? Recording, the band was quickly signed to Harvcore Records and released the Crossbearer LP in 1992. Starkweather made an impression with a succession of 7" single releases. These were followed by their first EP, Starkweather, for Inner Rage Records ; the Crossbearer re-issue, for Too Damn Hype ; their second full-length effort, Into the Wire, on Edison Recordings ; and the 1996 Bitter Frost / Bee Stings and Posion Eggs split with Season to Risk through Supermodel Records. Starkweather released their third album, Croatoan, in late 2005. It was produced by Pierre Remillard, and was released only on vinyl through Hypertension Records. In that year, the band went on their first international European tour, visiting the Netherlands, Germany, Belgium, England and France. 2006 saw the CD release of Croatoan on Candlelight Records. Croatoan features session work from bass player Liam Wilson and guitarist Jim Winters and the cover art was done by artist Paul Romano, who also worked with Mastodon, The Red Chord, Trivium, Earth, and Godflesh. After a period of inactivity, Starkweather's fourth LP This Sheltering Night was released in 2010, followed by a split LP with french band Overmars in 2011. Both recordings were produced by Alap Momin. Following those releases the band had some line-up changes, with founding guitarist Todd Forkin and longtime drummer Harry Rosa leaving the band. The last recordings with Forkin and Rosa were released in 2018 as a split LP with portuguese band Concealment.
Style and influences
Starkweather songs don't follow traditional verse-chorus-verse structure. Songs tend to have "narrative or cinematic flow", the compositions tend to emphasize an ongoing development of themes and motifs. Alex Henderson of Allmusic has described their music as "dissonant, jagged, angular, and discordant as well as abrasive, noisy, violent, claustrophobic, and dense" and an "extreme sensory assault". The band has an unusual and eclectic panel of influences; tapping into the more experimental, angular sides of hardcore and metal spheres as well as other genres. Singer Rennie Resmini's main vocal influences are Sinéad O'Connor, Diamanda Galas, Björk, Michael Gira, Nick Cave, Rob 'The Baron' Miller, and Jaz Coleman among others. The band have acknowledged that some of their primary musical influences include Voivod, Celtic Frost, Gorguts, Articles of Faith, Watchtower, Metallica, Atheist, Minor Threat, Confessor, Morbid Angel, Prong, Fates Warning and Iron Maiden; and have also shown appreciation for avant-garde composers such as Krzysztof Penderecki. Along with bands like Rorschach, Earth Crisis and Integrity, Starkweather is often credited as an early pioneer of the metalcore genre; although the band members don't consider themselves a metalcore band and have showed discontentment with the term. In an interview with Noisecreep, guitarist Todd Forkin commented negatively on the genre, stating, "I've heard the tag on a number of occasions that we, along with a handful of other bands, are responsible for metalcore, but to me that's like being told you're responsible for spreading cancer. You just pray that it's not true." Forkin continued in the interview that he doesn't hear "a direct take on what we've done" in modern metalcore bands. Some of Starkweather's contemporaries include proto-mathcore groups Rorschach, Deadguy, Bloodlet and Converge, who play a similarly angular and unusual style of metallic hardcore. In a review for Starkweather's This Sheltering Night, Cosmo Lee of Decibel wrote, "If one had to assign a context for Starkweather, it would be the late '80s/early '90s, where bands like Only Living Witness and Prong were smashing together metal and hardcore—but not quite making 'metalcore.' 'Metalcore' now implies the worst of both worlds. We're talking about the best of both worlds."
