From what I can make out from listening on the
radio, here's the current formula:
Intro w/fairly clean fingerpick style guitar
Vocalist comes in with much angst in voice
Kick in the drums, heavy distortion, mucho rhythm heading into chorus. Vocalist begins monotonic screaming.
Rinse and Repeat.
Whoooo, maybe I'm starting to get old. That's the same stuff my parents were saying about 80's metal and rock. They just couldn't understand what I saw in Def Leppard, Crue, etc.