The 20 Best* Metalcore** Albums*** of the Last 10 Years****

*Favorites, **up for debate, ***mostly albums, ****fight me at a show

[INT. MUSEUM FILLED WITH ‘REMEMBER SOME METALCORE’ PARAPHERNALIA - DAY]

A gormless dork walks through the exhibit complete with PBS-ass b-roll. It’s like Sister Wendy Beckett but in camo shorts and a Hatebreed tank.

Oh, hello. Another list. But first, we start with a question. Metalcore: What the hell is it? Like any subgenre old enough to drink, metalcore has undergone a number of iterations to the point where it's more pertinent to talk about its permutations. Any metalcore test of purity is usually thoroughly diluted by its impending (de)evolution. That is, if you can even track such a thing. I mean, what is even the mainline progression? Is it bands that sound like Integrity? Rorschach? Is it the MMA emo of Killswitch Engage? Is it the melocore of Undying? Is it the micromath of As the Sun Sets? Is it the chaos of Converge? Is it Botch? For a long time for me, it was Botch. But Botch is just a branch on the tree. They're all branches on a tree that's camouflaged by other trees. Because, really, besides the name being used like a slur on Encyclopaedia Metallum, does metalcore truly exist?

I don't know. It's a weird one. There are really no distinguishing characteristics beyond vague RIYLs. Like...it's metal...but also...hardcore? OK. Whatever that means. Is Dying Fetus metalcore? No. Is The Red Chord metalcore? Yes. And that makes sense to dorks who have listened to this stuff for years despite the music generally sounding the same to a dog. And yet, you, yes you, by dint of being a music nerd, can hear the distinctions. There's a distinct metalcore-ness floating around in the breakdowns. You know it when you hear it, as the paraphrased statement goes. And here are 20 albums from the last 10 years that I'm sure are 100 percent metalcore.*

*I'm not sure about that.

Like with the brutal death metal list, here are some caveats and stipulations up front to cull the herd of inevitable complaints.

1. I don't care.

2. I'm only interested in listing the more obscure variants of metalcore. No nu-core. No whatever it is kids listen to. As an old person, I'm going to assume all of it is terrible without listening to it.

   1. Most of what I'm listing probably isn't strictly metalcore in the traditional or nowadays sense. We'll get to that.

3. There, uh, are some EPs on this album list. Deal with it.

4. Rules are meant to be broken.

5. I'm not including any album released in 2025, mainly because I only listen to Suffocation now. The new Trauma Bond record is good. We'll get into it a little bit mainly because I don’t want to do more work than I have to.

6. At some point I’ll inevitably hit a writing wall and, because I’ve written about most of these albums before, I’m just going to use those blurbs. The great thing about having a lot of clips is that you only have to think once.

7. I don't care.

Finally, I've once again called on Metal Clippy to act as an audience surrogate for normal people.

Hi, Metal Clippy.

Hey, bud!

I see you survived the brutal death metal list.

Nope! That was my brother…who you murdered.

…ah. Hence the pretentious glasses. I see.

All good! He signed the waiver so we didn't get any money after his untimely demise, which ruined his family financially. I raise his kids now.

Yeeeeeeeaaaaaaah. Legal drew that up. You'd be surprised how many lawyers there are in metal.

I hope whoever wrote that waiver gets eaten by an eagle.

Cool. Not overly aggressive at all. So…you're also named Metal Clippy?

Do you name each individual staple in the stapler you gigantic idiot?

Well, this is going great. Anyway, I'm enlisting you to provide a common sense perspective detailing why whatever album I've chosen isn't actually metalcore. Can you do that?

Fuck you.

Excellent. Do you mind signing this reimbursement form for your lunch? Cool. I appreciate that. SIKE. IT'S THE WAIVER. WHO IS THE IDIOT NOW? YOU SHOULD'VE UNIONIZED BECAUSE COLLECTIVIST ACTION IS THE ONLY WAY TO THWART THE CONSTANT ENCROACHMENT OF WORKER RIGHTS PERPETRATED BY SMALL BUSINESS TYRANTS SUCH AS MYSELF.

20. No Note - If This Is The Future Then I'm In The Dark (2020)

From: Baltimore, Maryland
Label: self-released

You may, ahem, note that No Note, a mathcore-curious screamo trio, has titled every track on If This Is the Future Then I'm in the Dark after a Red Hot Chili Peppers song. There's a reason for that. Here's drummer Robert Murray to Sputnikmusic:

There wasn’t much of an idea. I had a really bad mental health episode in the months after the recording of the album and we weren’t really practicing and I wasn’t going into work. There were issues within the band that mostly stemmed from us not having a bass player. This led to tension about what we were doing sonically to create a fuller sound. Songwriting was becoming less fun and was feeling less organic. The space that was provided by not practicing for a bit led to a decision of either keep going or just call it good. I bit the bullet and said I wasn’t happy and would most likely be moving back to Minnesota. We were sitting on the release for a couple months and I sent a group email asking what we were doing with the record. Dave stated he was waiting on song names and lyrics from Nate. I think Nate was a bit annoyed and just gave all RHCP song titles even though he of course worked very hard on the great lyrics. Which, I’d like to say I think that’s one of the most impressive parts of your review is that you seemed to pick up on that without having any clue how things went. The name No Note came along from me laying in bed wanting to die and thinking about how I found my mom’s dead body when I was 9. Her death is still listed as ‘unknown’ but I found her face down, naked on the bathroom floor surrounded by pain pills. I started seeing a therapist about it almost the same exact time we started up No Note, which is a funny coincidence I suppose. I realize that’s heavy but I think it fleshes things out a bit.

OK. That is indeed heavier than I intended for this stupid blog. But I think that explains a lot about No Note. It's heavy from all angles, a titanic totality of heavy. But it's sneaky about its heaviness. It's the feelings buried inside, the anger, the sadness, before they explode into the world. It's the blinding fury contained within a cubicle. It's balled-fists, ugly crying but hidden away in a car in the back of the parking lot. You don't know it's heavy until you perceive the heaviness. Until then, it's obfuscated by the wiggy-diggy titles. Which, I don't know, is cool. "I think I was trying to suggest something about the duality of man, sir."

Take "Otherside," and by "take," I mean can you take it? Funny title. Let's check in on the lyrics:

You can take a battering ram
To all the walls in the house
But sooner or later,
realize you'll always be trapped
inside something bigger
Even in these hell fire bedsheets
Every night
And they're hissing like a prayer book
Right at the other end of this tunnel

OK. That is also heavier than I intended for this stupid blog. And once you key into that, it changes the complexion of the album, taking it from 'Oh, this band could've cut a split with We Were Skeletons' to something far weightier. It rolls in like a black cloud. And it rains. It rains real hard. And yet, within that storm is catharsis. But you've got to put down your umbrella and be vulnerable to feel it.

And isn't that the quality of good metalcore, really?

Words have meanings, and therefore genres have meanings. We do not speak Latin even though some of our words are derived from Latin. Ergo, just because mathcore is partly derived from metalcore does not mean it is metalcore. Anyway, this isn't even mathcore! It's so thoroughly screamo that it could travel back in time, rub shoulders with Reach Out, play one basement show with Swing Kids before breaking up, and get called "legendary" by 20-year-olds today who dress like 1940s paperboys. You idiot.

Hear me out. In the same Sputnikmusic interview, Murray said this: “I think a big part of why I'm proud of the record is that we weren't aiming at a sound or style.” So, you can’t say that No Note was not playing metalcore if they weren’t aiming at one sound.

Are you even listening to yourself?

I think it’s a worthy inclusion, standing in for all of the metalcore-adjacent screamo bands over the years like This Ship Will Sink and, to a lesser extent, Phoenix Bodies, whose album Raise the Bullshit Flag is the whole reason I decided to write this stupid blog.

Raise the Bullshit Flag does indeed still bang. Why didn’t you make this the best metalcore albums of the last 20 years, then?

Because I’m lazy.

Of course.

19. Chamber - A Love to Kill For (2023)

From: Nashville, Tennessee
Label: Pure Noise Records

Chamber is a different kind of heavy. A Love to Kill For is getting crushed under a shipping container heavy. It's more visceral, the kind of music that makes bruises appear all over your body. The band knows this.

"Chamber is just crazy, and that's always what we want to be," singer Jacob Lilly told New Noise Magazine. "We were scared to turn [A Love to Kill For] into Pure Noise because it's just all over the place, but we wanted it to be just that. People might expect something, and we just want to be unexpected and do what feels right for us."

What feels right is squashing the listener. Much is made of Disembodied's shadowy hand that has guided the path of modern hardcore, regardless of whether the recipients of that influence know they've been influenced. Chamber is one of the few bands deserving of sitting at Disembodied's table like one of the apostles. I mean, gee willikers, listen to that breakdown on "Tremble" and tell me that couldn't be on Heretic. For slightly younger metalcoreans, A Love to Kill For is the successor to When Knives Goes Skyward you've been waiting for ever since you burned that bootleg CD-R.

I understand this is what qualifies as metalcore these days, but Chamber fails the Integrity and Botch tests that should govern inclusion under the genre umbrella.

And what pray tell are the tests?

Self-explanatory.

How descriptive.

Look, who is the music writer here? Anyway, while I hear you about Disembodied, you’d also have to say that On Broken Wings is the middleman of that transfer of juds, and that’s not something I can give my countenance.

You’re telling me you don’t do your crosswords in pen? …no? Nothing? Not even a complimentary chortle? I hate you.

18. Fuck The Facts - Pleine Noirceur (2020)

From: Gatineau, Québec
Label: Noise Salvation

The thing you have to know about Fuck the Facts is that it's a story band. "Mel, our vocalist, wrote all the lyrics on the album," OG member Topon Das said to New Noise Magazine about Pleine Noirceur. "She's really good at taking in situations or what she's seen around her and turning them around into a story." But it's not just the lyrics. The Québécois trio writes songs that unfold like poetic epics. Take the title track, "Pleine Noirceur," "Full Darkness." It has the twists and turns of a sinuous mountain road that brings you to the top of a melancholic emotional wallop. Once you get up there, I don't know, even if you don't speak French, you just end up relating to it. That's intentional. Here's another quote from that interview:

The album is obviously open to others to interpret and read the lyrics and get what they're going to steal out of it. It's one of those things, the albums that I've enjoyed and have moved me in my life are those albums that I listened to after I broke up with girls, or some shitty happened to me in life, and I find an album that I can listen to and it kind of helps me get through the day. I'm sure you and other people who are obsessed with music kind of feel the same thing. Music is that kind of holy grail that gets us through these tough situations. I feel like what we are putting out there, other people will be able to latch on to, like all of those albums that meant something to me in the past. Those were albums made by people who didn't know anything about my life and I was still able to connect with the music regardless. I think we are just trying to make music that other people can relate to.

Mission accomplished. And yeah, to reiterate, you can tell the track is transporting you somewhere; one of those great moments when your brain perks up halfway through, and, in amiable amazement, asks, "Wow, how did we get here?" It's atypical for grind, which, Das notes in the same interview I'm going to keep mining for gold, has caused some gatekeeping taxonomy from the orthodox. "We're not even that much of a grindcore band musically. Like if you got to a grindcore fan and say, 'Hey, check out this song,' and you play them one of our songs, they'll probably say *lowers voice* 'that's not grindcore'"

So...metalcore, then?

Grind.

We’re down to one-word answers, huh?

Do you want a two-word answer?

Please.

My brother’s final words were “avenge me.”

…threatening.

It’s not a threat if it’s going to happen.

17. Sectioned - Annihilated (2019)

From: Edinburgh, UK
Label: self-released

Yes. All that. Sectioned is the more punishing version of Frontierer, a band that is already plenty punishing. However, the quintet has made it its goal to use its riffs to inflict all of the synonyms listed above. More words, why not: It's excoriating, abrading. Sectioned is a thesaurus of brutality, a non-stop onslaught of outrageous extremity.

That said, part of its strength is how familiar Sectioned sounds, which makes you instantaneously grasp onto it. "We are not unique at all," guitarist and head songwriter Pedram Valiani told Heavy Blog is Heavy, "if anything I see this band as ripping off the best bits of every band we like, adding to them, and then making those techniques and sounds into our own by meshing each element into our own songs."

So, the best bits turn out to be these massive, crushing chugs, a hurricane of pissed-off pummeling where you never reach the eye. And yet, Annihilated could only work if the songwriting was good. "When it comes to stuff like the shock factor of writing a heavier record, it does wear off," Valiani said to Captured Howls, "but you challenge that in different ways. I try not to overthink what it is that I'm trying to do. I'm just trying to write bits and pieces of riffs and music that flow well that surprise me as a listener."

And sometimes, the biggest surprise is just how forceful a band can be.

Forceful, but not forcing its way into the metalcore conversation.

C’mon, this passes the Botch test, sort of!

Yeah, if Botch were a djent band.

What’s…uh…what’s wrong with djent?

You don’t even believe a word of what you’re saying.

Maybe that whole genre is saying “avenge me” right now and I’m just heeding the call.

…that’s low, even for you.

NOT AS LOW AS THESE GUITARS ARE TUNED, THANK YOUUUUuuuuuu.

16. Colonial Wound - Easy Laugh (2023)

From: Jacksonville, Florida
Label: Hex Records

Colonial Wound reminds me of the sludgier metalcore bands like The Esoteric and, to a lesser extent, Breather Resist. There's just a touch of Botch mathiness in the mix, but for the most part, Easy Laugh, the trio's debut LP, punishes you with pounding rhythms. There's also a hypnotic, repetitious quality that may make you think of a specific related subgenre, but that's not intentional.

"I recognize that there's some parts that give off post-metal-ish vibes but that definitely isn't the focus," Colonial Wound said in a New Noise interview. "At the same time, we don't intentionally avoid touching on stuff like that either. Really depends on what the songwriting calls for. We have backgrounds in that style, so it definitely bleeds through but our focus is more rooted in the chaotic side of things. In our mind, we're a hardcore band by nature of approach."

Later on in that interview, the band touched on touchstones shaping that hardcore approach: "Stuff in that arena that I hold in high regard would be bands like Knut, Coalesce, Harkonen, etc." And there's your RIYL if you need it.

If this came out 10 years ago, you’d call it NeuroIsis and delete the promo.

I would not! I caped up for some post-metal back in the day.

Such as?

Abandon!

Not post-metal.

And Buried at Sea!

Also not post-metal. Dude, how did you even become a music writer?

Well! I…uh…failed my way there since I was nice to people and they kept me around because everyone felt bad about firing me.

What a legacy.

15. Mindvac - Mindvac (2023)

From: Charlotte, North Carolina
Label: self-released

Ah, yeahhhh. Mindvac is fresh off an appearance on my A Brighter Light compilation, which you can find here:

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Please check it out.

In the write-up for the comp, I described the trio as so:

Mindvac is the master of the progressive post-hardcore riff. The Charlotte trio is a big ball of energy, forever rolling forward. Other bands might get lost in these knotty riffs, these gloriously entwined head-exploders that somehow exhibit a density along with their fleetness. Mindvac doesn't get lost, though. No, it is music in motion. "Speak Friend," one of the highlights from the band's 2023 self-titled EP debut, which was also my 15th favorite album of the year on Wolf's Week, is that forward momentum in action, taking you on a journey whether you're ready or not.

Of course, Mindvac, the trio's debut EP, runs deeper than that. Here's what I said when it hit a past Refill. Remember Refills? I hope you don't because I'm never writing one again. Anyway:

This post is a PSA for all of my 2000s post-hardcore heads: Haste's 2003 forgotten gem, The Mercury Lift, finally has a successor. It doesn't come from anyone in Haste…that I know of, at least. Instead, it's by Mindvac, a new trio from Charlotte. Using the typically impenetrable vernacular of this newsletter, here's my pitch: This band likes to use riffs to map out journeys. (Riff trips? Is that something?) Mindvac, its debut EP, plops a proggy brain into searing post-hardcore.

"I was looking for an outlet to write more technical music, but made sure to balance the intricate parts with a catchy groove or with a heavy caveman riff or a pretty chord progression," vocalist/shredder Syd Little said to New Noise Magazine. "I basically wanted to have all the contrasting stuff I think makes music cool in one song as seamlessly as we were able to, and that's what we try to in Mindvac."

Songs like "Speak Friend" are packed with cool things, and each new cool thing builds on what came before. At a base level, some of these songs remind me of the great Dischord bands: Jawbox, Fugazi, and the friends they made along the way. But maybe it's just my salad days speaking here, but Mindvac seems inspired by the better post-hardcore/metalcore and adjacent screamers lighting up the scene at the end of the '90s and the start of the second millennium. Haste, Scatter the Ashes, Planes Mistaken for Stars, Jairus, Taken, This Day Forward, and the like. Do those names mean anything to you? If they do, here's a new one to remember.

I can’t believe you’ve decided to punt on your blurb obligations and you’ve resorted to quoting yourself. You’ve pissed me off so badly I lost off my glasses.

Do you remember where you last placed them?

…

Let’s get ourselves back on track. So...this is not metalcore, then, right?

…this is quite clearly extremely good math rock with a squeeze of prog. I think Haste would bristle at the metalcore comparison, too, despite The Mercury Program, which is still a great album, containing a guest spot from Randy Blythe, the singer from Lamb of God, a band that’s popular beyond my comprehension. It’s not that LOG is bad, per se, although everything after New American Gospel is diminishing returns, it’s that how did Burn the Priest blow up? What a weird era for metal.

Huh. That was…insightful…and why I asked you to be here.

Thank you.

So you no longer look like a pretentious nerd, but you still sound like one.

I will send you to hell.

14. Starkweather/Concealment - Split (2018)

From: Philadelphia, Pennsylvania / Sabugo, Portugal
Label: Translation Loss Records

Despite this split being two songs, you're getting a lot of bang for your buck: Starkweather's side stretches out to nearly 29 minutes, and Concealment is no slouch either, chipping in a near-20-minute epic. You could do a lot worse than spending four bucks for a digital copy running 49 minutes. And you'd be getting one of Starkweather's best tracks, too. In my time at The Black Market column, I rarely occupied the premier slot in the top 10 because I figured you were already tired of reading my garbage at that point. But, when the chance arose, I took the opportunity to slide Starkweather in there. Here's what I wrote:

Starkweather's releases have the frequency of certain comets. This split is the Philadelphia quintet's first since a 2011 one with Overmars. This round, Starkweather is backed with Concealment, a Portuguese metal band with a technical flare that's like an earthier Burnt By the Sun raised on, well, Starkweather. That's been the thing about Starkweather over its nearly 30-year career: while it hasn't exactly found the audience it deserves, it has certainly influenced its fair share of bands. Its four full-lengths are considered classics if you ask the right people. They still sound ahead of their time, thanks to a seamless unification of an increasingly disparate set of sounds. It's metalcore if you need a tag, but note that it is, in fact, so many styles of metal combined with an equal number of core variations. The later stuff would find a friend in Gorguts's Obscura, leveraging those dissonances and inscrutable structures while singer Rennie Resmini called upon a thousand voices (screams, yelps, creepy Geoff Tate?) to effectively deliver uncommonly evocative lyrics. The nearly 29-minute "Divided By Zero" is in that mold, and yet it's hard to say Starkweather is in a holding pattern. So many sections explore newly unveiled sounds and interests, though the tightly composed flow of the piece never relents from driving toward its conclusion. That's to say it doesn't feel like 29 minutes but know that I am particularly spellbound by this combination of caustic guitar textures, spidery leads, and limber rhythms. If you're new, I understand: it's a hell of an introduction. I get it. I'm not gonna twist your arm, but hey, maybe expand the lyrics on the Bandcamp page and become acquainted. You've got time.

Since that time, Concealment's star has risen thanks to the reissue efforts of Total Dissonant Worship. Indeed, 2007's Leak and 2011's Phenakism are almost proto-TDW records, showcasing the same squiggly riffs, sour notes, and tech churns that would become that label's hallmarks. Still, while sitting closer to the death metal divide, you can immediately hear why Concealment's "Liminality" was such a good pairing for "Divided by Zero." That more meditative section kicking in around the four-minute mark is pure Starkweather, the kind of thing that Resmini and company would ride for spooky effect. Same goes for that midtrack churn. That's not to say that Concealment is a carbon copy: it obviously has its own voice, one that apparently has waved its shadowy hand over a scene that isn't totally derived from Ulcerate. It's just that they're two peas in a pod. And it's a hell of a big pod.

This isn’t even an album! It’s a split!

Look, I said rules are meant to be broken. And look…you can’t even see without your glasses.

…

That's a joke.

…

Haha?

…

Let’s not go to bed angry.

…

13. Wombscape - Forced Labour Songs (2022)

From: 東京都, Japan
Label: self-released

I've always wondered how many bands December's The Lament Configuration inspired. That album still holds up, by the way. The primary allure of that one is Mark Moots's vocals, this howl from beyond that is a magna cum laude graduate from the Steve Austin School of Demented Distortion. But the riffs also rule, a mixture of grind, metal, and hardcore that zoomed along at death metal speed. What I'm delaying in saying is that Wombscape has some December in it. Another way to think of it is that it's grind Converge, these two core suffixed subgenres crashing together pell-mell to create these skin-rending blasts of song shrapnel. Sonically, it's not altogether different than fellow countrymen Shapeshifter or Palm, the latter of which should probably be on this list instead of some of the screamo I've spilled ink over. But there's a bit more of an experimental streak to Wombscape, not unlike what OG Brutal Truth was doing compared to the rest of the contemporaneous grind scene. Anyway, cool stuff: ultra-distorted vox and sick riffs. What more do you want?

I’d like some metalcore! For once! In this stupid list!

OK. But hear me out: It has all been metalcore this entire time.

It’s not! This is just a list of bands you like that you want other people to hear! You could’ve just written that instead of trying to gaslight everyone into thinking this is metalcore! Wombscape, Shapeshifter, and Palm — and yes, Palm definitely deserves to be here as much as a band like Thin deserves to be here, which is another banger you omitted — are part of the new grind Japan has been churning out. Abort Mastication is in there, too. These bands take the hyper-tech side of Mortalized and filter it through more of a core aesthetic. It’s not really metalcore so much as it is GRIND CORE, if that makes sense. I understand why you’d confuse the two, though, because you are, in fact, a gigantic idiot.

…

Oh, who is angry now?

You’re messing up kayfabe, dude. These are all metalcore. I believe that in my heart.*

*Kind of.

12. Hylda - Juniper Pyre (2021)

From: Connecticut
Label: self-released

Hylda was sold to me as "Krallice but screamo," which is close enough if you needed a three-word hype sticker. (We'll ignore that Krallice has a screamo record.) I even parroted that line in my 2022 year-end wrap-up:

Debatably metal, Hylda fits better in this section, although, truth be told, the Connecticut band will scratch some Krallicean itches almost as good as the genuine article. But yeah, this screamo trio takes the Welcome the Plague Year sort of skramz of yesteryear and augments it with the cryptic metalisms of outre black metal and avant-garde death metal. Something like "Entanglement," with its halting rhythms, displays this fusion best, finally giving black metal fans an inroad to Funeral Diner.

Notably missing from that spew of genres: metalcore. Look, for the purposes of this list, Hylda is hella metalcore, fitting in with, like, [scrolls through an ancient external hard drive] Frodus or...This Day Forward...or something. I don't make the rules. (I did, in fact, make the rules.) Anyway, check out "Gemini," especially its heady middle with the staccato math rock guitars. That's just good, no matter the genre.

You’re not even trying anymore! At least with No Note you offered a defense. This is just “because.” And no one remembers This Day Forward, not even their parents.

Mean. I’m sure they’re very nice. If someone from This Day Forward is reading this, I remember you, and that’s what counts.

This doesn’t even sound like either era of This Day Forward, to boot. It’s blackened screamo. It’s barely even that. Hylda is blazing its own trail, somehow uniting the worlds of, like, Cease Upon the Capitol or Honeywell with Artificial Brain. While I’ll concede that’s screamo and metal, that does not constitute metalcore, which has its own specific aesthetic, even if that aesthetic lives strictly within the ear of the beholder.

Yeah, well…you better…beholding…these nuts.

Very mature.

11. The Heads are Zeros - The Heads are Zeros (2017)

From: Baltimore, Maryland
Label: self-released

"Scream with your eyes closed," singer Olivia Helen Henry screamed on 2014's "Your Footsteps Will Be Washed Away," the closer on The Heads Are Zeros's debut EP, All The Men I Love Are Dead. "Scream with your eyes closed so you can only hear the hell."

That's a pretty good description for the kind of racket The Heads are Zeros got up to, a chaos merchant that could easily slot in alongside Closet Witch, Fluoride, or even pg.99. Speaking of the latter, guitarist David Gill cited that band in a Terrorizer feature: "We're those frustrating people who listen to soft folky bands all the time but then write songs with blast beats and super low tunings. We definitely listen to a lot of heavy music as well though. Bands like Daughters, Capsule, Converge, Pg. 99 and The Sawtooth Grin have been huge influences on our music."

See??? The Converge comp makes this metalcore. While guitarist David Gill may say this isn't as technical as his and drummer Mike Barth's previous band, the math rock American Womanhood, there are still some headspinning riffs among the chaos. Listen to that almost nu-ish one in "V" that soon transforms into a Capsule-esque squelcher. Rips. And Henry's vocals throughout are just the right mix of screeching and anguished. Hearing the hell, indeed. Next stop for one of these members? No Note.

Do you even have your listmaking license?

…you need a license?

So that’s a no. Yes, in the post-Buzzfeed era, you need a license to make lists. Pivot to video, also known as the WatchMojo Dark Ages, was hard on everyone calling for some necessary regulation.

Is…that…like a law?

How dumb are you? Let me try to verify your license. Maybe you were too stupid to remember applying for it. Or maybe Stereogum did it for you. Nope. No license. You’ve been operating illegally for years. My brother died for this.

…and that’s bad, right?

AHHHHHHHHHHhhhhhhhhhhh

10. KEN Mode - NULL/VOID (2022/2023)

From: Winnipeg, Canada
Label: Artoffact

OK. I've written so much about KEN Mode in the past that I feel comfortable just surfing the choppy seas of the C&Ps on this one. Null first:

NULL, the Winnepeg band’s eighth full-length, has two modes: heavily heaving noise rock and industrial-y, no-wave dirges. “Tactics” belongs to the former, building a bevy of textures and rhythms atop Scott Hamilton’s bass and Shane Matthewson’s nifty drumming. Jesse Matthewson’s riffs alternate between off-kilter arpeggios and head-nodding grooves. His vocals add another rhythmic layer that ties “Tactics” together and makes it satisfyingly knotty. And the lyrics ride that line between round-the-gallows funny and gut-punchingly true. “All grow frail and die,” Matthewson roars. “No power lasts. Success is fleeting. Existence: temporary.”

KEN mode’s existence has been anything but temporary, continually reinventing and refining its sound. For example, multi-instrumentalist Kathryn Kerr, who debuted on the excellent Loved, is let loose on NULL, adding a ton of neat timbres. Kerr’s sax on album opener “A Love Letter” squeezes on an acidic contrast. It sounds dangerous and unpredictable, like getting yelled at by a drunk. These extra earworms shine, making NULL the richest album of the quartet’s career sonically and emotionally.

Take “Lost Grip,” the 10-minute centerpiece. It’s a masterclass in Swans-y agony that fits an aching Nine Inch Nails-esque melody atop martial drumming. Jesse Matthewson’s tired, wounded vocals sound like someone’s conscience, while the gang vocals are a Greek chorus that might as well be social media’s id. When “Lost Grip” explodes cathartically, it’s a real release. Matthewson’s howls are one part Steve Austin, one part John Mohr, and two parts end of the world. “We deserve this,” the chorus cries over a guitar lead that sounds like bolts of electricity emanating from a Tesla coil.

Do we deserve KEN mode, though? A loud, noisy band finding critical success that gets louder, noisier, and more uncompromising with every release? That’s not the road most taken. “For me personally, my own concept of success kinda more has to do with the journey rather than the end point and a lot of it is just constantly growing and learning and experiencing new things,” Jesse Matthewson said to Northern Transmissions in 2015. Perhaps that’s why KEN mode have been able to keep their foot on the gas: They’re refueled and reinvigorated by the experiential effects of making music.

NULL is KEN mode at their peak as composers, especially in the memorably lyric department, navigating these songs with old-hand know-how. What blows me away is that it somehow retains that young-band spark. To be continually doing this style this convincingly this far into a career is really something. To not burn out, but burn brighter? To survive the goddamn Velvet Unicorn? I don’t know how KEN mode do it. I respect the tactics, though.

And here's Void:

“I Cannot,” the noise rock bruiser that kicks off the second half of VOID, KEN Mode’s ninth album and a companion to last year’s NULL, initially comes off as a classic KEN Modean trudger. Jesse Matthewson’s guitar alternates between molten-metal juds and numb-to-the-world wails while riding atop a mid-paced churn cooked up by a rhythm section — Scott Hamilton on bass and Shane Matthewson on drums — that is absolutely on one, excelling at subtly stacking ingeniously inventive noise rock rhythms while maintaining the same sonic force as a commercial jet landing on your house. When everyone locks in, the build-up feels unbelievably tense. “It’s never been more apparent that we’ve gotten this all wrong,” Matthewson screams before leveling the listener with the next line: “I don’t think there is valor in making it to the other side with so many that you despise.”

Following a hearty blech and one of the more mosh-ready riffs of KEN Mode’s career, Kathryn Kerr kicks the door down and starts spitting fire from her saxophone, stoking an inferno that’s more Live in Seattle than Coltrane for Lovers. The release is palatable. And in that moment of post-sax clarity, you start taking stock of all the little things KEN Mode do to make “I Cannot”‘s impact so immediate: the lyrics, the rhythms, the riffs, the atmosphere. That’s the story of NULL and VOID, the works of a band that has mastered the intensity of its delivery. There’s what you hear first and there’s the terrifying depth of everything else, and both sides of that whole are uniformly crucial. KEN Mode are a rarity in that they’re equally engaging no matter how deeply you approach their music.

That’s a quality that KEN Mode have been playing with for a bit. For instance, on the surface, it seems like one of those classic noise rock jokes that the quartet’s most recent efforts, two albums that are so musically rich and emotionally resonant, are titled NULL and VOID. If that were the punchline, it’d be one worthy of Big Black, Oxbow, or Black Helicopter. And it fits in with KEN Mode’s previous one-word album-naming conventions, including 2013’s Success, an especially abrasive and wry retort to the band’s commercial prospects.

But, of course, there’s more to it than that. Besides being written and recorded at roughly the same time, if there’s one thing that connects NULL and VOID, it’s that they’re pandemic albums, probing the collective and continually unprocessed trauma of that surreal stretch of modern history. “It’s not like any of the songs are directly talking about stupid-ass conspiracy theories or anything like that,” Jesse Matthewson explained to Exclaim. “It’s all very much an emotional reaction to how we’re feeling and dealing with the crippling depression that came from it, and stripping away all your coping mechanisms.” He’d go deeper in an interview with Collective Zine: “I think people are more detached from one another than they were before that whole mess. I know I’m angrier than I was. I’ve lamented in the press that the pandemic undid 10 years’ worth of self betterment and growth, leaving me just as angry as I was in my 20s, only with a body that can no longer take that kind of stress.”

In a sense, NULL was the initial impact of that stress on the body and VOID is the aftermath, something that Matthewson noted to New Noise Magazine: “There are distinct voices coming from each — NULL has a more frantic, confused, and crazed feel, while VOID has allowed everything to set in; it’s decidedly more melancholy — with a sense of great disappointment. We played around more with melody, and some of our more goth/post-punk influences were allowed to shine from time to time.”

And shine those alternate influences do. Like its predecessor, VOID allows KEN Mode to explore the edges of their style, bringing previously hinted-at elements to the fore. Take “We’re Small Enough,” a more ruminative track that sounds like Frodus found synths while working on an And We Washed Our Weapons In The Sea follow-up. Or sink into the nervily quiet “Not Today, Old Friend,” which reaches Rodan levels of good. “We always want to create a story with our albums,” Matthewson said to Invisible Oranges. “It’s probably a blessing and a curse for a band like us, as we don’t like beating you over the head with the same style song over and over again. It’s clearly something we took to heart a long time ago with influences like the Melvins, Black Flag, and the Dazzling Killmen, who created a narrative with the styles they utilized throughout their records. That diversity is inherently more interesting to us, and as a result, it’s something we’ve always tried to accomplish in our own writing.”

While KEN Mode reach beyond their comfort zone further than in the past, these stylistic shifts aren’t variations for variation’s sake. No matter if they’re exploring post-genres or buckling down to batter a listener with violent grooves, KEN Mode have the same goal of making engaging music. There’s the same push and pull, tension and release, surface pleasures and deeply considered reflections. That KEN Mode can apply what they’ve learned over their hard-won career to seemingly any style they want is the best-case scenario for a veteran outfit. But they also still excel at the core formula. “The Shrike,” with its stellar noise rock rhythmic ingenuity, is prime KEN Mode. “A Reluctance Of Being,” which closes with the devastating lyrics “I’ll never let you be okay/ We’re never going to be okay,” is prime KEN Mode. So, NULL and VOID are the best KEN Mode have ever been at being KEN Mode, and what KEN Mode is continues to expand with every album.

Check it out, I’m just going to C&P the complaint I’m writing to the listmaker licensure board that will put you out of business.

Even under the threat of eagles — which, my god, how were you actually serious about the eagles — my lawyers say I shouldn’t talk to you anymore.

Then why am I even here? What is the point? There’s no metalcore. There never was going to be metalcore. This is noise rock!

…nope. Not talking.

Go birds.

9. Mothmother - \ˈpe-sə-ˌmi-zəm\ (2017)

From: Charleston, South Carolina
Label: Bitter Melody

It's an absolute crime this band isn't big. Listen to that riff at 1:37 on the opener, "Taken." NASTY. Also, totally not my fault this band isn't big. I tried to tell y'all in 2017:

South Carolinian quartet Mothmother is heavy in both sound and theme. Sound: a pummeling combination of metalcore, grind, and powerviolence. Theme: sexual assault. “Taken,” \ˈpe-sə-ˌmi-zəm\’s first track, begins with a chugging rumble before blasting off with a section of speedy rage that leads into some nasty, Swarm of the Lotus-esque grooves. Point of interest: Listen to how the players play around with timbres, switching between round growling bass to incisor-sharp guitars, giving the same riff a different feel. Cool. Let the track transition into the doomier “Pressure” and you have five-and-a-half dynamic minutes of pleasingly dense ear destruction. Of course, there’s a lot of this stuff on the market, so here’s the pitch: the riffs are good, but the flow of this thing puts it on a different tier. In that vein, think Converge before their d-beat addiction, yet with far, far darker lyrics. (In particular, the noise/ambient experiment “Outro” has a repeated line that’s heartbreaking, especially the way it’s delivered.) In lesser hands, this theme would weigh the material down, making it feel more laborious than something to listen to for enjoyment. Not the case here. If anything, the elevated degree of difficulty adds a deeper resonance to performances. If you have any interest in the more aggressive side that emerges when people harness core’s chaos, this is well worth a spin. And there’s some action tied to your purchase: Part of the proceeds goes to People Against Rape.

You’ve completely given up. It’s amazing. I’ve never seen someone punt so hard on their own blog. You know none of this is metalcore and now you’re doing the bare minimum to even justify your own stupid list. This is sad, man. This is why you’re half-assing a Substack you update one a month at best and not out there with a real job making real change out in the world. Hey, are you even listening to me?

…

…are you crying?

You said some real stuff, man.

8. MICO - Zigurat (2022)

From: Cali, Colombia
Label: Total Dissonance Worship

Total Dissonance Worship, back again. TDW deserves some credit for keeping the borders between metalcore and dissonant metal open, allowing such crossover gems like Mico to prosper.

Mico is a Columbian duo that specializes in loud sound maximalism. There’s no other way to explain Zigurat, the band’s second album. If there’s a metal or metal-adjacent genre with a stake in chaos, Mico has messed with it and turned up the volume.

Take “Fauces,” first released as a single back in 2020. It opens with an off-kilter groove that sounds like Coprofago, Cult Of Luna, and Slow Crush getting pulled apart and resembled in accordance to Mico’s blueprints. That’s what I can’t stop marveling at, that no matter where Mico goes or what it experiments with, it ends up sounding like Mico. For instance, “Fauces” develops into something I can only describe as shoegaze cut with screamo’s grindier/PV side. It’s a panorama of sunset-tinged guitar layers while Raise The Bullshit Flag-era Phoenix Bodies rockets out of a time displacement equipment portal and crashes its van right in front of you. That could be a whole dang discography for most bands. For Pablo Miguel Méndez and Iván Mauricio Zapata, it’s just the section before the careening death metal section and spooky black metal clattering that’s also part of the Until Your Heart Stops constellation. What’s all of this called? Well, “Fauces.” The album is Zigurat. The band is Mico. And it rules.

It may not surprise you that Ziguart is a concept album. Mico explained the basics to Idioteq recently. I’m going to quote this entire sentence:

“The gist is that the Judeo-Christian god has decided to answer all of the country’s prayers by sending an angel of death (called the Impious Seraphim in the lyrics), not only to carry out all the massacres and torture and inhumanity, but also to keep us all incapable of communicating effectively with each other despite speaking the same language, living in the same country, how we’re still unable to articulate a common reality, in this modern day Zigurat that is our fragmented world, hyperconnected by algorithms that are nudging changes into our behavior in ways we don’t yet fully understand.”

That’s pretty much the Mico experience: multiple grand observations shrink-rayed down to micro chunks and then stacked into a single maximal statement. It’s the closest I’ve heard a band come to matching Cleric’s Retrocausal, a similarly densely woven album. What unites the two bands is the commitment to playing multiple styles and executing them as genuinely as possible.

Really, outside of that long-ass sentence, the best way I can explain Mico’s approach is that there’s a legit noise track, “Pulso Corrupto,” on Zigurat that sounds like a legit noise track. That is something that non-noise bands dabble with but rarely execute well because executing it well requires the musicians believing it’s a core part of the band’s identity instead of a lark. The reason why Zigurat works so well is because it’s deeply, profoundly Mico. If it wasn’t, the band wouldn’t work this hard to use these songs to channel its anxieties.

“The album is pretty negative overall but I guess if I were to find a silver lining is that there’s an undertone of cathartic purging to it all,” Mico said in that Idioteq breakdown, “scathing, but better out than in, better loud than quiet.” It is, indeed, better loud.

If you’re not trying, I’m not even going to bother anymore, either.

Still not engaging with you about this list. Anyway, there’s a cloud outside that looks like a turtle. Check it out. No, you waited too long, It has a mustache now. Oh, look, that one kind of looks like your dead brother.

How…how dare you.

I mean, no offense, but look at it.

I can’t believe you, one of the lowest living things on this godforsaken hell planet, would even stoop so low to sa-OK, it kind of does.

Yeah, it’s the Mufasa of paperclips. Ask it something.

Ahem…I can’t believe I’m doing this…Metal Clippy, your son Metal Clippy wants to know if you’re OK.

Of course he’s not OK, he’s a cloud, you moron.

[still talking to cloud] I will avenge you.

7. Trauma Bond - Winter's Light (2022)

From: London, UK
Label: self-released

I'm still trying to get a handle on Trauma Bond's newest work, Summer Ends. Some Are Long Gone. I think it's great as a single experience, playing up the noisier and more industrial side of the duo's music, but I kind of missed the riffs. This hit Wolf’s Week a few weeks back:

Summer Ends. Some Are Long Gone., Trauma Bond's third release, is going to have to be a grower. I’m, like, four or five listens deep, so take what I write with a grain of salt the size of Mt. Washington. Overall, I think it's a good album — I don't want that to get lost in my 'it's too early but’ gripes. That said, the songs need more riffs. 2021's The Violence of Spring and 2022's Winter's Light worked so well because there was a lot of riff meat on the riff bone, which balanced out the more avant-garde tendencies. Summer Ends. Some Are Long Gone. is light on the riffs, which works fine for the overall concept, but I wanted an ass-kicking.

Here’s the thing, though: I think Summer Ends. Some Are Long Gone. will break out. Others have made this point, but it seems almost weaponized to appeal to the more industrial-curious side of terranean metalheads. See: Pile, Chat. Still, some of my kind of bruising badassery abounds: the "BLEAH" Eloise Chong-Gargette unleashes on the first single, "Good Grief," goes hard; the breakdown on "Regards" is the good kind of gross. Still, I think Summer Ends. Some Are Long Gone. is weighted down by trying to be an album instead of a collection of moments. That's a bit of a bummer because few bands have been able to make moments recently like Trauma Bond.

Anyway, you know what had riffs, I say in my Casey Kasem voice? Winter's Light.

“The Sea Saw What You Did” has a riff that will incite the biggest pit response at a festival 20 years from now. Tom Mitchell’s guitar dives like Disembodied caught in a death spiral. Eloise Chong-Gargette adds a vocal hit blech like an exclamation mark. It’s one of many moments on Winter’s Light, the UK duo’s second album, where everything comes together to create something memorable. If you don’t like it, I really don’t know why you’re here. For me, it’s what music is all about, that something so aggressive, violent, and loud can also be extremely stick-in-your-head-forever catchy.

Musically, Trauma Bond fit in with the modern multifaceted rippers that unify the shared elements of death metal, grind, noise, industrial, and the more metal-aligned core variants. Like, if Trauma Bond hit the road with Knoll, that would be the Grindcrusher moment for this style. Slicing the meat more finely, a Black Market alumnus described it as what Pig Destroyer should’ve been doing after Terrifyer, and I think that’s pretty accurate. To that end, Mitchell seems commanded by a deep commitment to experimentalism, challenging Trauma Bond on every track, maintaining the band’s inherent sensibility but always finding a different way home. Chong-Gargette feels similarly restless, pulling together many influences into a uniquely commanding performance. There’s that JR Hayes ferocity, but also the compelling character work of Eugene Robinson and even the unnerving intensity of Bodychoke.

According to an interview in Machine Music, the first albums Mitchell and Chong-Gargette purchased with their own money were Nirvana’s Bleach and Big Black’s Songs About Fucking, respectively. “I had to get [my mum] to buy it for me from Virgin Megastores,” Chong-Gargette said. “This would be my introduction to Steve Albini, which ultimately introduced me to everything I’m into today, such as noise and folk.” Talk about setting yourself up for success. Winter’s Light certainly sounds like it was made by people who started establishing their own musical identity with, let me check my notes, Nirvana’s Bleach and Big Black’s Songs About Fucking. Haha, holy hell. I don’t want to invent connections and link those albums to what the two are doing now, but, coincidentally, Winter’s Light also harnesses raw, unpredictable energy and uses it to power hooky songs that are built to last.

That’s the thing I can’t get over. Winter’s Light’s earworminess is remarkable given the context. A lot of grindier fare has a short half-life, feeling bracing in the moment, but its potency quickly dissipates as soon as it’s over. Not so with Winter’s Light. Whole chunks of Trauma Bond’s songs have been rattling around my head for days. “Engine Hum” is full-on Succumb-y in its intensity. “Nails On The Bedside” suddenly abrades the listener with war metal pitch-shifted grunts. “Basking” boasts a pummeling churn that is downright petrifying. Even “The Garden Has Gone to Sleep,” the industrial-tinged instrumental opener that builds tension in a Nurse With Wound way for nearly four wordless minutes — all told, one hell of a flex — hangs around your thoughts like a persistent specter. It’s why future kids will be destroying themselves to Trauma Bond in a pit. They’ll remember it.

…

Soooooooo, we’re not on speaking terms, I take it?

You were the one who said you weren’t talking to me!

Yeah, but then we had that cloud moment…and I felt something there. We have a thing. I feel it in my heart.

We do not!

You thought about it. I thought about it. I thought about you thinking about it. And that’s the kind of delusional behavior I bring to the table. Think about it.

6. New Money - New Money (2024)

From: Copenhagen, Denmark
Label: self-released

In classic me fashion, not only did a split make the albums list, here’s an EP, too.

If New Money were paid by the riff, they’d be rich. Dinero Nuevo, the trio’s debut release, has enough riffs to retire on. But the key to New Money’s success is that despite being rich with riffs and having an established bloodline to boot, they retain an it-wasn’t-promised hunger befitting their name. It’s as if they need to riff this hard to pay off a debt tonight. That urgency imbues these riffs with a fight-or-flight ferociousness. And New Money have a canny way of keeping things fresh, too. But let’s talk about its classic qualities first. Much like Dinero Nuevo‘s pacing, we can wrap that up pretty quickly.

Take “Performancer,” the longest song here, and it doesn’t even clear three minutes. Doesn’t matter. New Money don’t need more time. No, they seemingly pack each second with behavior-altering earworms that make you bang your head until it bids your neck adieu. The riffs indeed rip in that decapitating sense, ranging from Knut-esque sludge annihilators, Botch-y metalcore concussion causers, Swarm Of The Lotus-like sea-sick undulators, AmRep-style noise rock ragers, and more. If New Money were around in the ’90s, they’d be booked on an all-timer tour with Breach and Acme, and future nerds would pay $500 a pop for the shirts commemorating an event they weren’t there to see.

All of this riff par excellence makes sense, naturally. New Money are staffed by Danish scene luminaries. Niclas Jürs Sauffaus (drums/vocals) and Christian Bonnesen (guitars/vocals) played in the expertly named Piss Vortex, with the former also hitting the column last year in Elitist and the latter punching the clock in the Black Market-approved LLNN and the Psyke Project. Simon Tornby (bass/vocals) blows out eardrums in Fossils. That’s a hell of a members-of resume. (Our former leader, Doug Moore, has a guest spot on “Blood Covenant.” Not going to talk about that one for obvious reasons. You’ll see more of Doug in this column next month.) And you can hear strains of the related projects in what New Money brings to the table: Fossils deep bass buzz, Elitist’s go-harder mentality, Piss Vortex’s swirling chaos, and Psyke Project’s 10-ton heaviness.

Right, you could say New Money sound fresh because their sound isn’t biting forefathers. That’s accurate. Instead, New Money sound unique because they synthesize the distinctive voices of their members. Dinero Nuevo is like one big proof-of-concept for tossing out the tropes and letting one’s musical history dictate how to compose songs. Of course, this approach runs deeper than the bands in which these three have logged the requisite number of riff reps.

In an interview with Selvtægt, which I’m unfortunately going to refrain from quoting directly because Google Translate doesn’t know what to do with Danish, New Money revealed their operating principle: not having one. In that absence of rules, of needing to color within the lines of metal or hardcore, the band was free to fill the void with its other interests and influences, allowing, say, funk or trap to work its way into Dinero Nuevo‘s sludge/noise rock context.

Thus, you get something like the riff at 1:21 in “Perpetual Stew,” an askew groover that is the epitome of a Mathcore Index mating call. Think if Coalesce played Car Bomb. Sauffaus’ drums pound, Bonnesen’s guitar snarls, and Tornby’s bass rumbles. The mosh incitement of “As above, so below/ Arf arf” is also one for the books. All of it is metalcore extended universe gold, deserving a bust somewhere between Kiss It Goodbye and Ed Gein. That said, keen ears will hear that “Perpetual Stew,” while exhibiting classic markers, doesn’t sound like it’s cut from the same cloth as those classics. You can tell something else is happening underneath the hood that sets New Money apart. And that engine is fueled by a band that writes riffs not in the key of the style’s history but the history of themselves. Thankfully, New Money are rich with experience, too.

Shout out to the New Money friends who are probably wondering why you didn’t write a more substantial blurb.

The blurb is the riffs and the riffs riff themselves, or something.

Yeah, they’ll accept that.

So, are we talking again?

No.

5. Graven - Heirs of Discord (2020)

From: Baltimore, Maryland
Label: Negative Grade Records

I’ve been citing Swarm of the Lotus up and down this list. Well, finally, here’s a band with SotL members. RIP, Peter Maturi.

First, an offering to followers of the Arcane Order Of The Ex-Member. Graven has two members of Swarm Of The Lotus. On this EP, its second, Teddy Patterson from Burnt By The Sun, Gridlink, and Human Remains plays bass. If those names mean something to you, jaded forum poster from 2004, here’s the spoiled-by-context revelation: Heirs Of Discord is good. If those names are new, know that Graven sits at a table offering seats to sludge, grind, and metalcore. It takes the lunch of most. Patterson is typically dependable as the buzz that’s always in the right place at the right time. Guitarist Peter Maturi’s riffs have gotten sharper with age, all sorts of playthrough-video impressive. However, his tone is still feral, looking to bolt towards noise whenever possible. Chris Csar — also of Quills, which has a similar comet-esque release frequency — plays with a flexibility that helps him direct traffic, but a muscularity to ensure that transitions stick instantly. Jason Borowy has that ideal core howl, Hayes-ian in its vicarious catharsis. “A Failed Mask” kills and states its case far better than most august ex-member bands, actually expanding upon what follow-on fans remember best. The closer, a particularly strong cover of Human Remains’s “Human,” is why Graven should stick around. As a love note to a specific period in extreme music, the kind of primo shit that people would clench their teeth through an entire Hellfest to catch, Heirs Of Discord will find a cult. Deservedly so. Years in the making, with post-reformation recording sessions taking place across America, its existence is an exception to the heap of after-the-classics crap. For the love of god, please don’t break up.

[furiously] No.

4. Agrimonia - Awaken (2018)

From: Sweden
Label: Southern Lord

OK. OK. OK. Let me get ahead of this while my blog compatriot is apoplectic and unable to yap: Agrimonia is [squints] crust? Yeah, that's the first tag on the band's Bandcamp. As a flagrant offender of genre tags, I can't really argue with it. But that lead on "A World Unseen," one of my favorite metal songs of the '10s, sounds so melodeath to me, and if we're counting melocore bands like Undying and Darkest Hour as metalcore, then maybe this quintet can fit in there, too. Plus, in an interview with Vice, singer Christina Blom said, "Even though our music is more metal sounding now than punk, we've mostly played punk gigs so it is hard for me to compare to the metal scene." Ah, denying the punk/metal allegations on two fronts, just like a metalcore band would.

Anyway, in an Echoes and Dust feature, Blom cited cult crust band Lost's Fear-Strach as an influence. For guitarist Pontus, it was Bolt Thrower's ...For Victory. And if you paired the two, that's Agrimonia: crusty melody with massive, battle-ready death metal. To wit, Awaken is the quintet's catchiest album, with the kind of leads that its fellow Gothenburg residents are known for. But it also has that crust grit that has been missing from most practitioners for decades. Best of all worlds, but mostly the metalcore world, right?

[breathing like a hyperventilating walrus] Still no. It’s not even melodeath! Oh god. Everything hurts.

3. Plebeian Grandstand - Rien ne suffit (2021)

From: France
Label: Debemur Morti Productions

I accidentally listened to this at 33rpm the other day and it still went hard as hell as a sludge album. Anyway, I can’t believe I got a hyperobjects reference into the following blurb. The things you don’t remember!

In a recent profile in Wired by Laura Hudson, Timothy Morton, the “hyperobjects” philosopher, said they drew some inspiration from Björk’s “Hyperballad.” Considering the amount of dread that hyperobjects inspire in some people, I gotta say that, no offense Björk or Morton, but Plebeian Grandstand is the premier hyperobjects band. The French experimental blackened math violence everything and nothing band returns after a dread-filled five years with their fourth album, Rien ne suffit. No bullshit, it’s the quartet’s masterwork, an immeasurably 2021 album that will last long past this year as long as people need music that matches the war inside their heads. Upping the noise, and I mean real-deal noise in the HNW sense, Plebeian Grandstand have found the perfect balance of sounds to communicate their chaos. “À droite du démiurge, à gauche du néant” opens with hideous blackened blasts and then tumbles out of the turbulence into a Pyrrhonic noise trudge. It then reroutes the energy of its beginning into something deathier and sludgier, like Ulcerate getting ragdolled within a nightmare, before spending an extended section exploring the kind of wet-meat industrial that swallowed up late-period Scott Walker. It ends with a few seconds of hushed whooshing, like hearing the wind blow through the rubble after a bombing raid.

“We have always been attracted by dark, tortured and extreme aesthetics, whether in music, cinema, literature, graphics, design…” the band told Pierre Avril in a 2019 interview. “The dissonance, the rhythmic traps, but also the voices in colors closer to madness or despair than conventional metal codes, all this is stimulating for us, surprising, perhaps also a form of challenge, it forces us to listen actively. We’re here to stimulate, not to entertain.” I have to say, the reason this is so stimulating is because the musicianship is so good. I don’t remember the band being this tight. Drummer Ivo Kaltchev and bassist Olivier Lolmède are so united they’re like interlocking gears. Guitarist Simon Chaubard — who also plays in Sed Non Satiata, one of the best French screamo bands; we truly all contain multitudes — has found a tone of new ways to tear sounds out of his strings, be it streaks-across-a-night-sky screams, miasmic whole-spectrum fillers, or ruminative strums. Finally, singer Adrien Broué gives maybe the performance of the year, torturing his voice to discover new ways to raise the hairs of listeners. All of this comes together to make a 10-track album so packed with ideas, so rich with minute sonic details, it renders a list like this meaningless. Best metal this month? Bud, this is one of those out-of-time albums we should revisit every month. Let it grow with you as it soaks up your traumas.

DO YOU SEE THE VEINS IN MY HEAD?

Yeah, those look bad, man.

THESE ARE FROM YOU.

Let me WebMD this. I don’t want you to get hurt even if you did sign the waiver.

WHAT DOES IT SAY.

It says those are…avenge me veins.

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHhhhhhhhh

Dude, learn how to take a joke.

2. Cleric - Retrocausal (2017)

From: Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Label: Web of Mimicry

Seven years later, I am no closer to understanding this album. When people talk about a brain-borker, this is the album borking their brain. I mean, look at how I struggled to write about this in 2017 when we decided to shove this into our year-end list:

Well, damn. What Philly’s Cleric has accomplished on its long-awaited second album, Retrocasual, is really…damn. It’s… like…through-composed avant-garde metal that renders most ambitious technical metalcore albums moot because…it’s…all of them at once…and a lot more. Or something. Yeah, this sudden inability to encapsulate a musical experience is obviously not a good look for a supposed music writer (though given this blurb’s byline, who are we kidding, right), but what’s the proper reaction here? Retrocasual is not an album that’s well-suited for the 21st century release cycle. (1) It’s impossible to immediately digest due to its intimidatingly large cache of twists and turns that no doubt ruined the sleep cycles of band members and studio engineers alike, (2) its suite-styled 79 minutes makes it effectively stream-proof, and (3) it’s just goddamn deep, like albums upon albums upon albums all the way down. On a more patient planet, we wouldn’t even approach discussing this thing until 2019. And that’s good! Refreshing, even! Think of how many more albums we’d like (conversely: hate) if we just let ‘em breathe. So, if you’ve ever had even a cursory appreciation for joints like Irony is a Dead Scene or wanted a wilder Breathing Is Irrelevant that owned a more diverse record collection, log some months with Retrocasual, friend, PR-mandated calendar year be damned. But, if you’re still like “…nah,” here we go: “Lunger.” Honestly, you’re better off waiting to listen to Retrocasual in full, but let’s try to crack this nut. Beginning with the kind of groove that elder Meshuggah has unfortunately forsaken, “Lunger” soon goes full space cadet with the sound effects. But listen to the mix, how the bleeps and bloops pan around in 3-D fashion. Jump cut: a stumbling jazz where the piano is set to Monk time. Then, like, two LPs of Until Your Heart Stops played at different speeds. Then, blast off. Then, the blast off blasts off with an extended snare roll that’s a John Longstreth wet dream. Then, all of the juds on the Lament Configuration are fed through an algorithm that really should be analyzed by SETI. I could go on, but why? Because, folks, we’re not even halfway finished with one of the shorter songs. Holy shit. And somehow, despite terabytes of data per second, this flows better than Cleric’s last awe-inducer, Regressions. Words fail, Doug legit should’ve sent a poet. I don’t know. You may hate this. I may end up hating this. But, right now? Total, blissful sensory overload. Like staring into the sun…for your ears. Let’s just reconvene next century.

I'm…so…angry…my head…is going…to…explode.

Calm down.

1. Great Falls - Objects Without Pain (2023)

From: Seattle, Washington
Label: Neurot Recordings

Here it be, the best metalcore album of the last 10 years. And, in a shocking turn of events, it actually is a metalcore album. Ignore the noise rock parts. Don’t argue with me. Anyway, who knew metalcore needed a great breakup album, something I touched on when this hit The Black Market’s 2023 year-end list.

There are breakup albums, there are divorce albums, and then there’s Great Falls’ Objects Without Pain, a set of songs so open, honest, and vividly vulnerable about a relationship imploding that listening to it may qualify as a legal separation in some states. “There is no escape from this place,” vocalist/guitarist Demian Johnston screams on “Dragged Home Alive.” “This is no mistake.” Over eight increasingly volatile tracks, you hear this Seattle trio confront that new reality: a damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don’t scenario where every chapter in the Choose Your Own Adventure ends with someone’s life getting wrecked.

However, the reason Objects Without Pain is such a good album is that even if you haven’t been dashed across the rocks of relationship trauma, there’s something here for you if you like loud, noisy music. Johnston, bassist Shane Mehling, and drummer Nickolis Parks cook up some incredibly aggressive and potent metalcore slash noise rock. When Great Falls goes full tumult, cranking the volume to imminent hearing damage levels, it’s like being dunked on by a tornado. Check out the chaotic closing to “Ceilings Inch Closer,” when the trio plays with the concentrated power of a building collapsing. Johnston’s screams tear through you like bad news. And the music is like Kiss It Goodbye covering Sadness Will Prevail: absolute dejection manifested as insatiable fury. Truly, this album should come with a referral to a social worker.

But Objects Without Pain is memorable because of the catharsis. Great Falls packs an emotional wallop. Whenever guest singer Lillian Albazi comes in during the rest-stop reveries between the roaring turmoil, it’s brutal in a way a lot of music can only dream of being. It’s the perfect aural analog to those quiet, unexpected moments when the life-changing epiphanies hit you: What am I doing? Why am I doing this? Is this a mistake? Those near-universal questions are intense, and thinking about them again, even by proxy within the context of an album, could rip the scab off old wounds, letting past insecurities bleed again. But Objects Without Pain’s misery is more like a salve. The album’s final song, “Thrown Against the Waves,” sets us adrift on a stormy sea with no rescue in sight. Be that as it may, just the fact that someone else has felt these feelings is the life preserver that some of us need. If they can live through their worst days, we can, too.

…

Well, damn. Uh. I see you found your glasses! Oh, damn, is that an eagle?

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