later In Flames and early Meshuggah are somewhat core, not Mastodon nor Baroness.

Not gonna pretend I read the entire thread, but I have two major problems with this thread. It's under metal, when it should be under hardcore. And OP seems to think that the more hardcore influenced bands are less innovative than Killswitch Engage or As I lay Dying, when obviously the reverse is true.
The original metallic hardcore bands of the 90s are what give the genre any real music credibility, for example bands like Starkweather and Ringworm. Bands nowadays all sound pretty much the same.

Hardcore punt definitely goes in the punk forum, but when something has 'metal' in it's name I think it can definitely stay here.

Even though stylistically and structurally most metalcore is closer to hardcore than it is to metal?

It's all about preference really, I also think It's kind of a battle of new school against old school. For kids that were born in the 90's, the mainstream metal that has been made available to them is the tail end of the nu-metal era and obviously the rise of melodic metalcore...and most seem to love it. I'm sure if you pulled a 16 year old kid aside at a Bring Me The Horizon show and told them to listen to a Venom or Metallica record from the 80's, they would more than likely have something negative to say about it.

As a side: you seem to be a black metal fan, there's nothing wrong with that but black metal isn't necessarily where I would go if I were in search of innovation and the ability to distinguish between bands

Nothing metalcore about Mastodon and Baroness! These are staright up progressive metal bands with a big sludge metal influence.

ringworm: soo sick!!

As a side, you obviously have listened to very few BM bands.

Let's be real, in the black metal heyday of the early 90's it was hard to tell the difference between bands. Just as metalcore has the gruff vocals with the chug riffing followed by the melodic chorus and breakdown formula- your standard fare black metal has the ****ty production value, unintelligible shrieked vocals, and non stop tremolo picking formula.

Now I will give credit where it's due and say that black metal is pretty cool with added elements; like Agalloch has the whole ambient folk thing going for them, Equilibrium has a symphonic twist on their black metal sound, and Wolves in the Throne Room combines so many influences its hard to name them all.

Basically what i'm getting at is that black metal isn't a very good antithesis against the metalcore formula

At the end of the day, I still love metalcore