Of all the bands toeing the line between hardcore and death metal, Fuming Mouth stand out as one of the hardest to pigeonhole, and one of the heaviest. Their Kurt Ballou-assisted sophomore album is not only an aural assault of ass-beating riffs and rhythms, it’s also lead barker Mark Whelan’s most devastatingly personal record yet. He rewrote portions of the album after recovering from a nine-month journey with cancer, and he calls the album a “concept-reality hybrid” that was largely influenced by his brush with death. It’s a reminder that nothing is more brutal than real life, and it’s not just a kickass record; it’s also the sound of resilience.

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Chicago legends Racetraitor’s new album is as much a black metal album as it is a hardcore album, so, black-metalcore? For the purposes of this list, sure why not. Whatever you call it, this thing is tremendous. Musically, it’s the heaviest and most extreme thing this band has done since forming nearly 30 years ago, and thematically, it’s just as unflinchingly political as Racetraitor have always been in an even grander sense. It’s a concept album where each song is about a different societal struggle in different locations around the world–the band calls it “a sorta geographic autobiography of Racetraitor”–fleshed out by guest vocals by Dennis Lyxzen (Refused), Tim Kinsella (Joan of Arc, Cap’n Jazz), Stan Liszewaki (Terminal Nation), Sanket Lama (Chepang), and Patrick Hassan (xRepentancex).

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Those of us who miss Every Time I Die and The Dillinger Escape Plan were in luck this year. Former DEP vocalist Greg Puciato teamed up with most former ETID members Better Lovers, and their debut EP God Made Me An Animal (and standalone single “Two Alive Amongst the Dead”) pretty much sounds like an exact combination of those two iconic bands. (Former ETID vocalist Keith Buckley also debuted his new band Many Eyes this year, but no proper release to speak of yet–maybe next year.) Supergroups of veteran musicians go wrong more than they go right, but Better Lovers is exactly the dream come true that it sounds like on paper.

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A lot of bands worship at the altar of early 2000s metalcore, but few modern bands have an arsenal of At the Gatesian riffs as tasty as Dying Wish. Add on top of that one of the most commanding vocalists in the game right now (Emma Boster), and you’ve got a force to be reckoned with, to say the absolute least. Their sophomore album Symptoms of Survival is glossier than the band’s debut, but no less menacing. There’s not an ounce of posturing here; the anger and pain in Emma’s delivery is real and human and you really feel it.

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Forget about what other bands you know these musicians from; at this point, END is just one of the best bands that they’ve all played in. For a refresher, END’s members are/were also in Counterparts, Fit For An Autopsy, Better Lovers, Misery Signals, Shai Hulud, The Acacia Strain, and more, but END stands out from all of those projects. On The Sin of Human Frailty, guest vocalists J.R. Hayes of Pig Destroyer, Debbie Gough of Heriot, and Dylan Walker of Full of Hell add to the madness, and band member Will Putney’s sleek production only makes the band sound even heavier than they did on their debut.

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Pupil Slicer really entered the abyss this year. Kate Davies said the goal for this album was “to further break down the walls between metal, hardcore, shoegaze, electronic music and pop,” and the result is an album that exists totally in a world of its own. It these bright, soaring, airy pop moments, alongside moments that are brutally heavy, and it all swirls together into something completely cohesive. It makes the band’s already-great 2021 debut LP Mirrors seem run-of-the-mill in comparison.

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Death Goals are a UK queercore duo where the “-core” is chaotic screamo and mathcore, and A Garden of Dead Flowers is their second and best album yet. It packs a vicious punch, from the crazed riffage to the abrasively-screamed dialog about gender dysphoria, trauma, violence, and more. With songs that are both brutally heavy and strangely catchy, this record is relentless from the lurching intro of “Genderless Clones of Gameshow Hosts” to the sass/dance-punk closer “Faux Macho.” Passive listening is not an option.

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Year of the Knife’s whole year has sadly had the shadow of the band’s severe car crash looming over it, but 2023 was also the year that YOTK released one of their best albums yet. No Love Lost is their first with longtime member Madi Watkins–who was left in critical condition by the crash–taking over on lead vocals, and Madi’s ferocious screams give YOTK a fresh new appeal. Sanguisugabogg’s Devin Swank and Full of Hell’s Dylan Walker also add their voices to the madness, and the rest of the band just bulldozes through this record, providing a total onslaught for its brief-but-intense 20-minute runtime. It looks like the band is finally ready to play again, so let’s hope 2024 is the year that YOTK get to bring these killer songs to life.

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A lot of modern metalcore gets talked about within the context of its relation to the late ’90s / early 2000s, but Jesus Piece’s new LP …So Unknown sounds like the future. Produced by Randy Leboeuf (Every Time I Die, The Acacia Strain, etc), it’s got a sleek exterior with elements of industrial and noise, and Jesus Piece’s bludgeoning chugs and throat-shattering screams only sound even heavier amidst all the atmosphere. If …So Unknown‘s not the most menacing metalcore album of 2023–and it might be–it’s certainly the most bleak.

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In an era where regional scenes tend to have less of an identity than ever, there’s still no place like Texas, where the metal and punk scenes are one and the same. That’s reflected in so many heavy bands from The Lone Star State, especially the latest Judiciary album. It’s one of the most monstrous thrash albums of the year and also one of the most fiery hardcore punk albums. It’s obviously a line that’s been toed before, but Judiciary toe it in a way that takes me by surprise every time, with songs that will rip your heart out.

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One of the year’s most unhinged post-hardcore debut albums comes from Savannah, Georgia’s The Holy Ghost Tabernacle Choir. Throughout the ever-changing Slow Murder, the band connects the dots between Slint-style spoken word post-rock, Jesus Lizard-style noise rock, screamo, sasscore, deathcore, and more, all topped off with a misanthropic worldview that — on one particular song — imagines a future without the police, the KKK, nazis, confederate flag-wavers, racists, abusers, rapists, misogynists, billionaires, and capitalists. From the album’s calmest moments to its most antagonizing, there’s seemingly nothing this band can’t do. And as if The Holy Ghost Tabernacle Choir weren’t enough of a force of their own, guest vocals from Soul Glo’s Pierce Jordan and Gillian Carter’s Logan Rivera make for nice cherries on top of all of Slow Murder‘s chaos.

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As far as Y2K-style metalcore goes, there might not be a more promising band right now than Foreign Hands. They’ve been grinding for a few years (and vocalist Tyler Norris also plays in Wristmeetrazor), but 2022 has been their moment. They kicked the year off with their Bleed The Dream EP on DAZE, and it offers up five songs of raw, heavy, dramatic metalcore that sounds just like you remember it sounding in 2000, with a freshness that makes it sound better today than some of those now-dated records do. Later in the year, they signed to SharpTone and released the two-song Lucid Noise single, which found them embracing clearer production and huge-sounding, clean-sung choruses that make Foreign Hands sound more welcoming and more expansive without losing any of their original attack.

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At the end of Candy’s 2018, Triple B Records-released debut album Good To Feel, they switched things up from their usual metallic hardcore for a shoegazy noise pop closer called “Bigger Than Yours.” It was a send-off that suggested there would be no limits to what Candy would do next, but not even that song could’ve prepared you for sonic assault of their sophomore album (and Relapse debut) Heaven Is Here. Metallic hardcore is still in Candy’s DNA on this album, but Heaven Is Here veers closer to genre-blurring labelmates Full of Hell than to most of the hardcore scene. Their metallic side is heavier and more abrasive; they’ll break out into circle-pit-opening D-beat on one song and dish out industrial noisegrind on the next. The record was produced by Arthur Rizk (Power Trip, Show Me The Body), who does some of his best work here, giving Heaven Is Here a finishing coat that makes it sound like something from a post-apocalyptic future. “Heaven is here” might by the title of the album, but on the song of the same name, vocalist Zak Quiram cries out, “The hell of myself/I’m burning in hell,” and the utter despair in his voice is like a manifestation of the LP at large.

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On their debut EP Profound Morality, Heriot invite such comparisons as Knocked Loose meets Chelsea Wolfe, Code Orange meets Godflesh, Converge meets The Haxan Cloak. It’s a sick, twisted, futuristic version of metalcore that dabbles in goth, industrial, dark ambient, noise, and more, topped off with the blazing dual vocals of Jake Packer and Debbie Gough, the latter of whom is a master of both piercing screams and haunting cleans. The vibes range from slow-paced sludge to double-time punk to songs that aren’t heavy or guitar-based at all, and it all flows together in a way that makes this 20-minute EP sound as towering as other band’s full-lengths. I can’t wait to see what they do pull off when they finally make a full album; they’ve only got this EP and a few other singles to their name, and they already sound two steps ahead of so many others in the game right now.

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Ithaca’s 2019 debut LP The Language of Inquiry helped usher in the metalcore revival, but on their sophomore album They Fear Us, Ithaca aren’t reviving anything; they’re pushing metalcore to new places. Their perfectly-executed riffage goes beyond mining the depths of Y2K-era metalcore, and the band sounds even tighter and heavier on this LP than they did on their debut. At the same time, vocalist Djamila Yasmin Azzouz leans way harder into balancing out her screams with belted clean vocals, bringing the kind of powerhouse singing that this genre could use a lot more of. Her performances are stunning, and her lyrics are just as impactful. As the album title suggests, this album is often about taking back the power and getting vengeance on those who want to strip you of it, and when Djamila tackles this subject, she sounds absolutely ruthless.

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Emerging from the depths of the Very Online cybergrind community, Thotcrime signed to Prosthetic earlier this year and their label debut is one of the most gripping chaotic hardcore records of the year. They shift from brutal grind to chuggy metalcore to face-melting Dillinger Escape Plan riffs to sneering sasscore to ETID-worthy roars to clean-sung choruses to glitchy hyperpop, and more, and they get assists from The Callous Daoboys’ Carson Pace, Pupil Slicer’s Katie Davies, Dreamwell’s Aki McCullough, and diana starshine along the way. It’s knowing over-the-top and ridiculous, but it’s also super catchy and fun to listen to, and transcends all of the niche microgenres it dabbles in.

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Vein have evolved a lot in the four years since their debut LP errorzone solidified them amongst a new crop of bands redefining metalcore for a new generation. On their sophomore LP This World Is Going to Ruin You, they’ve toned down the twitchy nu metal vibes of their debut, beefed up and modernized their production, and leaned into their bludgeoning heavy side as well as their shoegazy side. World is both heavier than errorzone, and more melodic, thanks not just to Anthony DiDio’s increasingly strong clean vocals but also a guest spot from Thursday’s Geoff Rickly. It’s an immersive listen that you can really lose yourself in, and it sounds as bleak as the title suggests it would.

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As the most chaotic, sassiest, over-the-top, and even downright annoying offshoots of 2000s post-hardcore continue to be mined by a new generation, we’re ending up with a whole new crop of delightfully ridiculous bands and one of the best ones is Buffalo’s p.s.you’redead. Citing influences like The Locust, The Number Twelve Looks Like You, and Death From Above 1979, p.s.you’redead have come out with a shapeshifting debut album that runs the gamut from brutal metalcore to danceable hyperpop, and touches on about 30 other things in between, often during the duration of a two-minute song. It’s not for everyone, but if you’ve got an itch for this kind of thing, few bands scratched it better this year.

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As mentioned in the intro, one of the albums on this list is really more “metallic hardcore” than metalcore, but too good not to include. This is it:

In 2022, the term “hardcore” has come to incorporate a vast array of bands that range from shoegaze to death metal, but if you’re looking for a new album that gives you nothing but no-frills, ass-beating, bark-your-head-off mosh fuel, look no further than New Lords, the sophomore LP from Hudson Valley hardcore kings Mindforce. This record offers up 10 tracks in 17 and a half minutes, and not a second is wasted. Mindforce have built up a reputation as a must-see live band, and what you see live is what you get on New Lords. They’re a razor-sharp band, and New Lords captures that, without any bells or whistles to distract from their pure fury. They’ve got an arsenal of ’80s thrash and ’90s metallic hardcore-inspired riffs, and each one is used as efficiently as possible — no long solos, no patient interludes. And Jay Peta tops it off with tough, shouted mantras that are as aggressive as they are catchy. New Lords feels like a gift to the devoted hardcore scene that Mindforce have been part of for years, and I’d just as quickly recommend it to a metalhead or a hardcore-curious Turnstile fan. I don’t think Mindforce are trying to appeal beyond their core fanbase, but when the music is this undeniable, it just might happen anyway.

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“I’m aiming at pop music, I just happened to take this pretty big left turn,” Carson Pace told us earlier this year, referring to the second album by the impossible-to-pigeonhole, seven-piece collective that he co-founded and fronts, The Callous Daoboys. If there’s one genre that gets thrown at the Daoboys the most, it’s probably mathcore, and they do indeed share traits with a handful of classic bands in that realm (Every Time I Die, Botch, The Dillinger Escape Plan, The Chariot), but that’s a far too limiting descriptor for Celebrity Therapist. The album dances between jazz, blues, showtunes, emo, art rock, and much more, often changing shape multiple times in just a few seconds. It goes from campy and sarcastic to poetic and serious, from personal introspection to socio-political commentary, from abrasive and heavy to clean, melodic, and beautiful. It’s closer in spirit to Mr. Bungle or Cardiacs than to most mathcore or metalcore bands have, and like both of those bands have done, The Callous Daoboys are in the process of carving out a lane occupied by them and them alone.

Listen here. Pick it up on bone & olive swirl vinyl.

On their fourth album, Employed To Serve re-assert themselves as leaders of UK metalcore. They incorporate everything from melodic alt-rock to ’90s groove metal to ’80s thrash, and they do it all within the context of fresh, modern, totally pulverizing metalcore. The album’s eerie atmosphere takes things beyond mosh fuel into darker, more hypnotic territory, and Justine Jones and Sammy Urwin’s dual vocals are as effective and unpredictable as ever.

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fallfiftyfeet’s debut LP opens with a slab of melodic sludge metal, but it turns out to be a red herring. From there, the West Virginia band pivot to bone-crushing metalcore, and throughout the remaining 10 tracks, they incorporate progressive post-hardcore, sass, mathcore, melodic emo, and more. Aided by contributions from members of The Callous Daoboys, Greyhaven, Dr. Acula, and The World Is A Beautiful Place & I Am No Longer Afraid To Die, the record combines elements from all throughout metalcore’s history. From the raw production of the late ’90s to the big choruses of the mid 2000s to the fresh perspective and DIY ethos that many of today’s best bands possess, this sounds like a band on the cusp of something truly great.

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Most members of Hazing Over used to be an excellent screamo band called Shin Guard, but they’ve shifted some people around, picked a new name, and now they’re an excellent metalcore/borderline-deathcore band. It’s hard not to make comparisons to fellow Pittsburgh band Code Orange, who underwent a similar change circa I Am King, and if you like that band’s ambitious metalcore excursions you should definitely be listening to Hazing Over too. With just four songs, Pestilence establishes Hazing Over as a force, capable of connecting the dots between mathcore legends Botch and Myspace deathcore purveyors Job for a Cowboy in ways that feel tasteful and fresh.

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Whether or not you think Oxidized is the best metalcore album of 2021, you’ll probably agree it’s the most purely chaotic. Pulling from mathcore, industrial, nu metal, djent, and more, it sounds like taking a jackhammer to the eardrum and living to tell the tale. It flirts with a lot of heavy subgenres that have crossed over into the mainstream in the past, but there’s nothing radio-friendly about Oxidized. It’s one of the most physically and emotionally taxing albums that metalcore had to offer in 2021, and I mean that in the best possible way.

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UK mathcore trio Pupil Slicer recently did a genuinely killer cover of Converge’s Jane Doe opener “Concubine,” a song that takes some serious chops to cover, let alone do anything interesting with that Converge didn’t already do. That should give you an idea of what kind of band Pupil Slicer are, and if that piques your interest, you need Mirrors in your life. As chaotic as it is devastating, it hearkens back to Jane Doe era metalcore and mathcore without ever feeling like a retread. It’s a dark, bleak album musically and lyrically — with hints of black and death metal and lyrical references to abuse, depression, and oppression — but it’s also crystal clear. When you’re this technically proficient and have this much to say, that’s the way it should be.

Listen here. Pick it up on transparent pink or red/black swirl vinyl here.

After four years of promising EPs/splits/demos, Portland metalcore band Dying Wish finally released their debut album, and it raises the bar for an already-great band. Like their friends in Knocked Loose (whose Bryan Garris appears on this album and who featured Dying Wish vocalist Emma Boster on their 2019 album A Different Shade of Blue), Dying Wish have absorbed the sounds of all of metalcore’s different waves, and they pick their favorite parts and throw out the rest, coming out with an album that feels like a breath of fresh air for the genre. Their songs are in touch with metalcore’s hardcore punk roots, but they also deliver some of the catchiest melodic metalcore riffs this side of Poison The Well. When Emma Boster switches to clean singing, Dying Wish sound catchy enough to compete with the current pop punk revival, and when she screams, she’s one of the most vicious vocalists in the genre. And with her rage always being pointed at meaningful topics (like gender, racial, sexual, and environmental injustice), Dying Wish only sound more crucial.

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When melodic metalcore exploded in the early 2000s, it was often tied right in with emo-pop, but Wristmeetrazor imagine a much darker, gothier version of that genre. Their sophomore LP Replica of a Strange Love is full of infectious riffs that sound like the best parts of the Trustkill/Ferret Records era, but their soaring hooks and creepy industrial sections bring to mind White Pony era Deftones and Downward Spiral era Nine Inch Nails. The ingredients are all familiar, but rarely combined like this, and it’s a testament to Wristmeetrazor’s power that they’re able to offer up such time-tested thrills in a way that genuinely feels innovative. Matching the darkness of the music is that of frontman Justin Fornof’s lyrics, which pull equally from personal experience and classical philosophy and use vivid poetic imagery to tap into the depths of human emotion. On all levels, from the bone-crushing breakdowns to the lyrical melodrama, this album is intense.

Listen here. Pick it up on splatter vinyl here

Getting more accessible after a breakthrough is a common path, but after becoming leaders of metalcore’s current wave with 2019’s A Different Shade of Blue, Knocked Loose have only gotten heavier and weirder. A Tear in the Fabric of Life, their new EP/short film, further explores the death metal influences that poked through on Blue, and Knocked Loose have figured out how to fuse death metal and metalcore in a way that doesn’t sound like “deathcore.” They pull from death metal’s murky atmosphere and dissonant riffage, and they meld those things seamlessly with the crisp metalcore attack they’ve been perfecting since day one. Backing vocalist Isaac Hale and guest vocalist Matt King (of Portrayal of Guilt) bring the subterranean filth, and frontman Bryan Garris contrasts it with the piercing, higher-pitched shriek that’s made him one of metalcore’s most distinct frontmen. This all makes A Tear in the Fabric of Life Knocked Loose’s most aggressive release to date, but it’s their most experimental too, with industrial-tinged passages and a creepy Beach Boys sample that suggest Knocked Loose have ambitions beyond being one of the heaviest bands on the planet. They aim to be one of the most artistic too.

Listen here and pick up a black vinyl copy here.

The metalcore revival is in full swing, and there’s no question that SeeYouSpaceCowboy revive a ton of sounds from the early/mid 2000s — from straight-up metalcore to sass, screamo, emo-pop, post-hardcore and beyond — but nobody back then ever really sounded like SeeYouSpaceCowboy and nobody now does either. They use familiar tricks in unexpected ways; from harsh screams to clean-sung hooks, shimmering clean guitars to bludgeoning chugs, conventional song structure to chaos, SeeYouSpaceCowboy do it all, and you never really know when something’s gonna come in and what they’re gonna do next. On their best album yet, The Romance of Affliction, the band sounds tighter than ever, and Connie Sgarbossa’s lyrics are at their most devastating. She wrote much of the album about dealing with addiction, and shortly after finishing the album, she suffered a near-fatal overdose. The album captures Connie at a very low point of her life, and it’s a brutally honest telling of what she was going through. It’s deeply personal, it’s as real as it gets, and it’s no surprise that people have swiftly latched onto it.

Listen here. Pick this up on limited splatter vinyl here.

20 years into their career, Every Time I Die have made their most vast, ambitious, and quite possibly best album to date. That’s an admittedly big claim to make for a band who helped define an entire wave of metalcore with classics like Hot Damn! and Gutter Phenomenon, but as many of their peers have broken up, plateaued, or faded away, Every Time I Die have kept pushing themselves to get even better. With 16 songs in over 50 minutes, Radical is ETID’s longest album, and it earns its running time by offering up the most musically diverse collection of songs this band has ever put out. It has some of the heaviest, most caustic moments of this band’s career (“Sly,” “A Colossal Wreck,” “All This and War”), and it’s also full of moments that transcend Every Time I Die’s metalcore roots: “Post-Boredom” is one of the catchiest rock songs of the year, “Desperate Pleasures” is as brooding as Swans, and the Andy Hull of Manchester Orchestra-featuring “Thing with Feathers” is a clean, soaring song and perhaps the most gorgeous thing ETID have ever written. Matching the musical ambition are some of Keith Buckley’s most incisive lyrics, from songs that take on the injustices of the world at large (“Planet Shit”) to songs that are more personal, like the aforementioned “Thing with Feathers,” a poetic, heart-wrenching ode to Keith’s late sister. It has all the makings of a classic, and it feels as definitive of today’s metalcore scene as ETID’s early records did in the 2000s.

Listen here. Pick this up on opaque lime vinyl here.

Huntsmen owe as much to 1970s prog like Yes, Pink Floyd, and Jethro Tull as they do to the roaring sludge of bands like Mastodon and High on Fire, and they’ve got all the riffs, folky passages, sprawling prog odysseys, and soaring vocal harmonies needed to pull it off. It’s too metal for classic rock radio and too clean and melodic for the extreme metal crowd, but if your taste exists somewhere in between those two extremes, few albums in 2020 scratched the itch as perfectly as this one did. Huntsmen really make sure there’s strong songwriting at the center of everything they do, which makes Mandala of Fear a record that keeps you coming back for more. These songs stick in your head long after it’s stopped playing.

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A lot of classic screamo bands were short-lived, but Tokyo’s Envy are a rare one who have maintained longevity and everlasting relevance. They helped shape the genre in the ’90s, released splits with Thursday and Jesu in the 2000s, toured with Deafheaven and La Dispute in the 2010s; their influence is felt on so many screamo and post-rock adjacent bands, and they continue to put out new music that keeps them as interesting as all the Envy-influenced bands who have risen to prominence over the years. This year’s The Fallen Crimson — the band’s first album in five years — is up there with the band’s best work, and it feels as fresh as any of today’s newer screamo bands too. The Fallen Crimson finds Envy continuing to explore the prettier post-rock side that they’ve embraced in later years, and it does so without losing the intensity and the ferocity of their earlier work. It can be easy to take a band for granted after 25 years, but when they keep churning out music this compelling, it’d be a crime to stop paying attention.

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Over 30 years since releasing the genre-defining grindcore classic Scum, Napalm Death are still pushing boundaries. Lesser bands start losing stream by the fourth or fifth album; Throes of Joy in the Jaws of Defeatism is Napalm Death’s 16th album, and it sounds as energized and inspired as this band ever has. It pulls from grindcore, death metal, punk, post-punk, industrial, and more, and some even lighter music that you might not hear on first listen like My Bloody Valentine and the Cocteau Twins. “I kind of twist [those influences], make it more abrasive,” Barney says. Throes sounds almost nothing like classic Napalm Death, and it barely even sounds like their last album, yet you’d never mistake this for the work of any other band. It’s no small feat to be able to reinvent yourself over and over while remaining so distinct.

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On their third full-length, Bristol’s Svalbard have evolved from a pummeling hardcore band into a band that swirls together anything from dream pop to black metal. It’s not just post-hardcore but also post-rock, post-metal, post-everything. It’s a gorgeous, futuristic rock record, and though it might shimmer sonically, its lyrics are full of scars. The songs address domestic abuse, sexual assault, depression, and other real-life issues, and Serena Cherry tackles them with incisiveness and fury.

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Toronto’s Respire have been making boundary-pushing heavy music since debuting a half-decade ago, and their third album Black Line just might be their best yet. Previously a band known for introspection, this record looks outwards at “a world growing increasingly ill… a world that abets the rise of fascism and drives climate catastrophe,” and it’s also their most musically ambitious. It’s got melodic black metal blasts that nail the heavy/beautiful divide as well as anything by Deafheaven or Alcest, orchestral post-rock that’s towering enough to rival Godspeed You! Black Emperor, and shouty screamo that brings to mind the emotive yet experimental sounds of bands like Circle Takes The Square and City of Caterpillar. It also works in an array of other sounds, from clean-sung emo to roaring sludge metal, and it does all of this in a way that’s entirely seamless. This is an album where you don’t know if you should call it screamo or metal or none of the above; it can’t be pigeonholed. It’s also an album that feels like heavy music’s answer to Broken Social Scene – like on that band’s classics, almost every individual song on Black Line is a mini epic of its own, and they’re so climactic that almost any of them sound like they could be the grand finale. When do you finally get to the closing crescendo of final track “Catacombs Part II,” though, you’d never argue with Black Line‘s sequencing. There’s no better way this intense journey could have ended.

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If you’ve heard anything about Gulch, you’ve probably heard that they’re known for quickly selling out of limited-edition merch — designed by guitarist Cole Kakimoto, who’s responsible for their artwork, songwriting, and overall vibe — which then gets flipped online for insane prices like a Supreme hoodie. It’s a strange phenomenon that the band aren’t even necessarily proud of, and it caused some people to criticize the Gulch hype for being more about merch than music, but when Impenetrable Cerebral Fortress came out, it silenced the haters. You don’t need to know a thing about Gulch to know that Impenetrable Cerebral Fortress is one of the most adrenaline-rush-inducing albums of the year. Drummer Sam Ciaramitaro always sounds like he’s about two beats ahead of the rest of the band, vocalist Elliot Morrow’s scream is nasty as all hell, and Cole Kakimoto shakes up their hardcore sound with the evil riffage of black and death metal. Part of what makes Gulch so refreshing, though, is that when so many other bands turn music into homework, Cole will be the first to tell you he doesn’t actually listen to the bands people think Gulch sound like. “I didn’t listen to Madball or Terror or Breakdown or any of the staple hardcore bands, and I also didn’t listen to Entombed or Obituary, and I also didn’t listen to Darkthrone or any of that stuff,” he told Bandcamp. “It’s funny, because some guy will be like, ‘This is total Repulsion worship,’ and I don’t even listen to that fuckin’ band.” The similarities exist for one reason or another, but Gulch sound so fresh because they weren’t trying to emulate their heroes, they were trying to recreate the music they were hearing in their heads. Judging by how distinct Impenetrable Cerebral Fortress sounds, it worked.

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Sometimes a great live show makes you fall even more in love with an album, and even though these are album of the year lists, we’d be lying if we said live shows didn’t sway us at all. This year, there were almost no live shows to sway us in either direction, but there were livestreams, and on that front, Code Orange pretty much perfected the form. They did three major livestreams, all of which were inventive and concert film-quality, and one of which was an MTV Unplugged-style stream that became the unplugged album Under The Skin. Every Code Orange stream felt like an event, but none of it could have happened the way it did without the excellent new album Underneath. It’s easily their best yet, their most experimental and their most accessible, with a shapeshifting blend of industrial rock, metalcore, nu metal, glitch, and more. It sounds like Slipknot jamming with Garbage, or Converge covering Nine Inch Nails, or a handful of other “X meets Y” combinations that you really don’t hear everyday. It’s an album that yearns for the days when MTV played heavy bands, but has its sights set on the future. It singlehandedly makes the case that loud, guitar-based rock music can still be both populist and innovative.

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Virginia’s Infant Island put out two records this year, the mini-LP Sepulcher and the full-length Beneath, both of which are very good, but it’s Beneath that turns Infant Island from a great band into an extraordinary one. It’s the kind of album that you can only hear start to finish, as it functions more as one grand piece of work than as a collection of songs. Each individual song is so different — throughout the record, Infant Island touch on screamo, black metal, sludge metal, post-rock, noise, ambience, and more — and they make the most sense when you hear them in succession. At various points, the album finds Infant Island at their most metallic (“Here We Are”), their catchiest (“Stare Spells”), and their most avant-garde (“Signed In Blood”), really scratching every itch you could’ve thought of this band scratching, and a few you’d never expect them to. It’s a record that doesn’t fit easily into any pre-established category, while being able to appeal to fans of all different types of punk, metal, and experimental music at once. That’s a sign of a genuinely great record.

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Few bands who came to prominence within or adjacent to the ’90s nu metal band have continued to push forward in the way that Deftones have, and with Ohms, they’ve made a top-tier album that rivals their classics and sounds fresh today. Deftones (and their own heroes Hum, who also made a comeback this year) might be more influential now than ever, and Ohms will have just about all of the young, hungry, Deftones-inspired bands playing catch-up. It breathes new life into rock music today the way White Pony did 20 years ago, and it’s just loaded with instant-classic songs. I already feel like I’ve known it forever.

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Having gone under-appreciated during their initial 1990s run, Hum went on to influence the entire shoegazey punk movement of the 2010s (and Deftones), and they returned after a 22-year break with an album that might actually be better than their classics. The shoegazey parts are shoegazier, the heavy parts are heavier, the songs are varied but focused, and the whole album is their most airtight collection yet. It scratches the itch that you want Hum to scratch, but it feels forward-thinking and modern, almost effortlessly surpassing so many of the buzzy punkgaze bands who took after them. If only every reunion album could be this good.

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