My Favorite Metalcore: A List
A compilation of my favorite overlooked, obscure, or underrated metalcore records. Some nods to classics. |
| 1 |  | Pale Creation
Twilight Haunt
Moody, gothy, industrial Holy Terror-core. |
| 2 |  | .Crrust
Pain Is A Mere Sensation
Taking you further. Teaching you havoc. |
| 3 |  | Training For Utopia
Plastic Soul Impalement
Hellfire. |
| 4 |  | Sika Redem
Entheogen
Converge, one year in space. |
| 5 |  | Reflux
The Illusion of Democracy
Tosin Abasi's old band with the future founder of Sumerian Records. |
| 6 |  | Starkweather
Croatoan
Slithery and uncomfortable. Hushabye and goodnight. |
| 7 |  | Acoda
Yours To Defend
Splits the difference between Underoath-y metalcore and Oceana-styled post-hardcore. Emotive and earnest. |
| 8 |  | Unruh
Setting Fire to Sinking Ships
A spoonful of tar. |
| 9 |  | And The Hero Fails
Empire Smiles
Swiss watch metalcore. |
| 10 |  | Curl Up and Die
Unfortunately We're Not Robots
Leans about as far into grind as metalcore can go. |
| 11 |  | Anterrabae
Shakedown Tonight
Every Time I Die-lite from the land of Agnostic Front and Vision of Disorder. |
| 12 |  | As The Sun Sets
Each Individual Voice Is Dead In The Silence
Jacobs'-Ladder-core. |
| 13 |  | Beecher
Breaking The Fourth Wall
ಠ_ಠ |
| 14 |  | Comity
The Deus Ex-Machina As A Forgotten Genius (Andy Wa
You can juuust squeeze Comity's sprawling, grind-addled post-metal under the metalcore umbrella. |
| 15 |  | Crydebris
The Severing
A pocket-sized version of Devil Sold His Soul's A Fragile Hope. Their demo is worth seeking out. |
| 16 |  | Rinoa
An Age Among Them
Most of Crydebris moved on to become post-metal band Rinoa, also worth seeking out. |
| 17 |  | Throats
Throats
Converge, one month on acid. |
| 18 |  | Romans
All Those Wrists
"Smear Merchant" is a perfect metalcore song. |
| 19 |  | Scarlet
Cult Classic
Metalcore rebuilt from The Dillinger Escape Plan's writing sessions for "Phone Home" and "Unretrofied." |
| 20 |  | Spitfire
Cult Fiction
Scarlet rebuilt from vegan esoterica. |
| 21 |  | Shaped By Fate
I Fear The World Has Changed
A better Gallows-era Gallows than Gallows. |
| 22 |  | Architect
All Is Not Lost
30 minutes of Architect > 8 hours of Architects. |
| 23 |  | The Blinding Light
The Ascension Attempt
Thrash kids with leftover Converge riffs. |
| 24 |  | Buried Inside
Chronoclast
Left-brain Jane Doe. |
| 25 |  | Norma Jean
Bless the Martyr and Kiss the Child
There's a limited deluxe edition of which about 50 copies are said to exist that features audio clips from Darren Aronofsky's Pi halfway through "Pretty Soon, I Don't Know What..." and at the beginning of "The Shotgun Message," as well as an untitled instrumental between "I Used to Hate Cellphones..." and "It Was As If the Dead Man Stood Upon the Air." I used to own it. |
| 26 |  | Dead Kings
Dead Kings
G'day, Misery Signals. |
| 27 |  | Devil Sold His Soul
A Fragile Hope
Devil Sold His Soul have never managed (or even attempted) to replicate the mystery and yearning of this album. Overwhelming, and in many ways a singular work. |
| 28 |  | Acme
...To Reduce the Choir to One Soloist
Bremen metalcore starts at the top. |
| 29 |  | From Here On
Hope For A Bleeding Sky
> every other pre-BTBAM project. Edgier, nastier, and better-produced than Prayer for Cleansing. |
| 30 |  | Harlots
This Is The Second Death
Botch-core with an ambient side not just for show. |
| 31 |  | Harlots
Betrayer
A swerve into Red Chord-style grind. Post-metal centerpiece "Dried-Up Goliathan" and the hidden cover of Zao's "Savannah" are worth the price of admission. |
| 32 |  | Into the Moat
The Campaign
The spastic tendencies of The Design marshaled into form. A metalcore zamboni. |
| 33 |  | It Dies Today
Forever Scorned
Grimy, raw, embryonic. Not even remotely the same band that wrote The Caitiff Choir. |
| 34 |  | Johnny Truant
In The Library Of Horrific Events
Metalcore, slightly out of focus and covered in blood. |
| 35 |  | Johnny Truant
No Tears For The Creatures
Metalcore, in focus and licking the blood off its lips. |
| 36 |  | Kiss It Goodbye
She Loves Me, She Loves Me Not
Sludgier and more deranged than Fixation On A Coworker. The definitive Tim Singer performance. |
| 37 |  | December
The Lament Configuration
Before "metalcore," December was "aggro-tech." Motion to revive the term. |
| 38 |  | Exotic Animal Petting Zoo
I Have Made My Bed In Darkness
What you thought The Silent Circus was. |
| 39 |  | Orgone (USA-PA)
The Goliath
What you pretended The Silent Circus was. |
| 40 |  | Towers
Bel Air Highrise Plantation
A pocket-sized version of Fear Before the March of Flames's The Always Open Mouth. |
| 41 |  | Fear Before
The Always Open Mouth
A shoulder-mounted version of Towers's Bel Air Highrise Plantation. |
| 42 |  | The End Of Six Thousand Years
Isolation
Isolation. Desolation. |
| 43 |  | Of Legends
Stranded
Deceptively standard-issue metalcore with a degree in Meshuggah. |
| 44 |  | the_Network
Bishop Kent Manning
The skeletons will eat you alive! |
| 45 |  | Duck Duck Goose
Noise, Noise and More Noise
Slick. Slimy. |
| 46 |  | Arbus
A Recess in the Wall
A [metalcore] balloon enters Kyoto. |
| 47 |  | The Secret
Luce
LIGHT LIGHT LIGHT LIGHT LIGHT LIGHT LIGHT |
| 48 |  | Bloodlet
Entheogen
Evilcore. While I find this inferior to the other Entheogen on this list, Bloodlet's debut isn't to be fucked with. |
| 49 |  | Architects
Hollow Crown
I can't imagine a situation where Sam Carter doesn't vent nuclear fumes every time he performs the "AND IF MY LIFE WAS TO END TODAY, IT WOULDN'T CHANGE THE WORLD IN ANY WAY" breakdown on "When Numbers Count For Nothing." |
| 50 |  | Ion Dissonance
Solace
I am giving you a choice. |
| 51 |  | Candiria
300 Percent Density
Metalcore after-hours under a New York City overpass. |
| 52 |  | The End (CAN)
Transfer Trachea Reverberations from Point: False Omniscient
DEP, one month on PCP. |
| 53 |  | God Forbid
Determination
God Forbid used to chew barbwire. |
| 54 |  | Knut
Challenger
The most poignant ass-beating ever. |
| 55 |  | The Sawtooth Grin
Cuddlemonster
A 15-Minute Lecture On The Finer Points Of Instability. |
| 57 |  | Nionde Plågan
Frustration
Another post-metal album that juuust fits. Angst as a worldview. |
| 58 |  | Nostromo (CHE)
Ecce Lex
Meshuggah, but metalcore. A bludgeoning calculus. |
| 59 |  | Harkonen
Harkonen
Transcendently proficient. |
| 60 |  | Bleak
We Deserve Our Failures
Please open your New American Gospel to chapter Botch, verse Gaza. |
| 61 |  | Destroyer Destroyer
Littered With Arrows
White belt as garrote, or: when Myspace-core gets serious. |
| 62 |  | Nights Like These
The Faithless
The original God City Studios recording of this album is out there. All you need to know about this is that "Memento Mori" used to be called "Eggbeater Abortion." |
| 63 |  | Aftershock
Through The Looking Glass
Jabberwocky Engage. |
| 64 |  | Amia Venera Landscape
The Long Procession
The metalcore endgame. |
| 65 |  | Anodyne
Lifetime of Gray Skies
Mastodon, but metalcore. |
| 66 |  | The Luddite Clone
The Arsonist and the Architect
Gnarly and forward-thinking. A match that never found its forest. |
| 67 |  | Wings Of Scarlet
Before The Great Collapse
Crowdkiller p90x. |
| 68 |  | The Jonbenet
Ugly/Heartless
Shares an on-the-fly, whatever-works quality with its predecessor and the least pretentious southern-metal attitude this side of Every Time I Die. |
| 69 |  | Morser
Two Hours To Doom
Half an hour to doom. |
| 70 |  | Sons Of Abraham
Termites In His Smile
Blegh mitzvah. Mazelcore. Chugzpah. |
| 71 |  | Gehenna (USA)
The War Of The Sons Of Light And The Sun
Between this and Rorschach's Autopsy, pick this (but get Protestant too). |
| 72 |  | Day of Mourning
Your Future's End
Holy Terror deathcore. |
| 73 |  | Seizures
The Sanity Universal
A one-hour crash-course in the history of metalcore. |
| 74 |  | Frontierer
Orange Mathematics
Annihilatory. |
| 75 |  | Axis
Show Your Greed
Legitimized the metalcore revival and then put a ceiling on it until Seizures crashed down from the stars. |
| 76 |  | My Ticket Home
Strangers Only
The one-and-only nu-metalcore record truly worth exploring. |
| 77 |  | Botch
We Are the Romans
It's your fault, fucking up the kids. You already know. |
| 78 |  | Converge
Jane Doe
Run on, girl. You already know. |
| 79 |  | Every Time I Die
Hot Damn!
This is a rock'n'roll takeover. You already know. |
| 80 |  | Integrity
Those Who Fear Tomorrow
MICHAAAA. You already know. |
| 81 |  | Playing Enemy
I Was Your City
Dirty and bitter and hurt. Disenchanted with everything. Disenchanted with you. |
| 82 |  | Quell
One Man's Struggle...
Pants ain't tight. Belt ain't white. You've got a lot to learn about rock'n'roll. |
| 83 |  | Zao
The Fear Is What Keeps Us Here
Zao at their most stripped-down and frightening, just an overdriven PA system between us, them, and outer darkness. |
| 84 |  | Remembering Never
Women and Children Die First
Die knowing you lived your life on your knees. |
| 85 |  | Breach
Kollapse
"It's Me God" is the popular pick but "Kollapse" is Breach's most sinister work, a mysterious flag planted at the crossroads of Swedish metalcore and Celestial-era Isis. |
| 86 |  | Martyr AD
On Earth as it is in Hell
Deceptively standard-issue metalcore with a degree in punching you really, really hard. |
| 87 |  | Found Dead Hanging
Dulling Occam's Razor
Seminal. You can find three extra songs recorded around the same time period on their Bandcamp: "Blood Soaked Prom Queen in the Trunk of My Car," "Barcode Flavored Cheetos," and "A Derailed Train of Thought Kills Millions, Film at 11." |
| 88 |  | Since By Man
We Sing The Body Electric
Sass Before the Botch of Skramz. |
| 89 |  | Ire
I Discern An Overtone of Tragedy In Your Voice
Shrill metalcore doom. |
| 90 |  | August Burns Red
Thrill Seeker
August Burns Red struck the right balance between songwriting and technical wank twice in their career. This was the better time. |
| 91 |  | Burst
In Coveting Ways
Burst do not deserve your ignorance. |
| 92 |  | Crowpath
Red on Chrome
Cum on self. |
| 93 |  | Dwell (NC)
Innate
Gorilla Grodd-core. |
| 94 |  | Khann
Tofutopia
Discordance Axis, one year on militant vegan state radio. |
| 95 |  | Thirty Seconds Until Armageddon
Thirty Seconds Until Armageddon
The second of dread between the china crash and the breakdown made flesh. |
| 96 |  | Capsule (US)
Blue
"Determinal" is a supermassive black hole at the center of one of the most jaw-dropping constellations of mathcore this side of ID's Solace. |
| 97 |  | Premonitions of War
Left In Kowloon
Humid. Merciless. You'll never get the dirt out of your fingernails. |
| 98 |  | Name
Internet Killed The Audio Star
Metalcore the size of a city. |
| 99 |  | Serration
Shrine Of Consciousness
The pain of birthing perfect metalcore. |
| 100 |  | Amenra
Mass I (Remastered)
Starkweather worship in a Ken Mode world. |
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