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Broken Vow - Anthropocene (2023, Triple B)

This band, and in particular this album, has grown into one of my favorites. I was lucky enough to catch one of their last shows a bit on a whim, a bit because it was one of the few hardcore shows around on the dead of winter. It's really in the time since then that this band has vaulted itself into a special place in my heart. Firstly, the lyrics have cut into me pretty deeply. Broken Vow was a singleminded band, with all their songs being about environmental collapse or social wrongdoings in one way or another. But I think Tommy Hart's lyrics, while not subtle (not the genre for it), are often very poignant and show a lot of thought around these subjects. "1.5" is a song that has started ringing around in my head all the time at work, thinking about humans changing the environment for the worse. These songs are made of skeletons cribbed liberally from edge metal bands (think xrepentancex, Arkangel, etc.). But you do find a bit of a different strains of hardcore in moments like the breakdown of "Shift Tactics" and maybe even a bit of a youth crew impulse in the middle of "No More Air". Great album, great band. I truly hope they come back one day. - Héctor

Purgatory - Hate and Fear (2002, Hate and Fear)

The influence of Kickback once again rears its head! It’s uncanny how similar the vocals are to those of Bessac’s. This exists on the wavelength of the Arkangel style of euro hardcore which was huge for much of the 90’s and early 2000s. However, these guys are not afraid to throw in some gang vocals to drive this into beatdown territory. I don’t really know how to express it but this record feels very French (the band is French but I digress), the very sick album art feels typically French. You get some cool spoken word rapping parts thrown in, it weaves the whole thing together and takes it a step away from being Arkangel style worship. Not much information is available about this band but three of the members of Purgatory are in a band called “Death Cult” who have dropped something in 2026!

Hate and Fear was released through the label SXC Kartel, which seemed to exists purely to serve as output for Purgatory’s discography. Shoutout to the insane audio issues on “Extraction” on the bandcamp version. - Kaust

Dying Wish - Fragments of a Bitter Memory (2021, SharpTone)

One of the big bands in this space, Dying Wish have always struck me by how much they just deliver the type of parts that people go crazy for live. Hardcore generally is music made to activate and provoke reactions from live audiences, and Dying Wish feels like an overpowered optimization of that. On later albums, they split more time between clean and harsh vocals. This is a delicate balance that most often than not tips over into some cringe places. Musically, this is a huge throwback to the big scene music of the 2000s. It's hard to grab just one example to point out how indebted this is to bands like August Burns Red and All That Remains. This album is honestly one of my go-tos in that style, partly because the cleans are pretty subdued and nicely done. - Héctor

Prayer for Cleansing - The Rain in Endless Fall (1999, Tribunal)

This is a late 90s effort and it sure feels like one. I listened to the 1999 original mix so I was greeted with the tinniest snares ever recorded in what feels like mud. The production quality is low to say the least. However, I think this all adds to the experience. Prayer for Cleansing bring a lot of influence from the Gothenburg scene, reminiscent of early In Flames and At the Gates with tinges of black metal. This is also quite amusing and compelling to listen to with its very rough production. The classic In Flames, Bon Jovi style arpeggio guitar work is rampant here and I love it! I’ve always loved it. I think this album won’t be for everyone but it really resonated with me. It could probably do with being shorter but the last 4 tracks make this a favourite. They tap into a darker element with those numbers. - Kaust

Black Cross - Art Offensive (2003, Equal Vision)

Looking in from the outside, metalcore seems like a subculture within another one. I used to believe it was a genre with very incestuous lineages and codes. Nothing could be more wrong. In fact, The influences of most good metalcore bands are wildly diverse. In the case of Knocked Loose, the biggest band in the genre at the moment, the influence of their local Louisville oddball scene is clearly present. While Black Cross may not be exactly the band Knocked Loose would cite (possibly too old to overlap with them), Art Offensive is one of my favorite albums that came out of midwest hardcore. This is oddball punk in the vein of contemporary bands like Black Eyes or Enregistré par Steve Albini. If you squint, the love of dynamics and tempo changes that gave rise to the most memorable moments in KL's discography can be found here. But instead of their pummeling heaviness, you get a propulsive jamming that characterizes what is usually called "post-hardcore". Unlike other bands grouped under this label, this is thankfully music to move around to. It is a disservice to this album to write about it only by comparison to KL but I wanted to give this a shout out in our zine and that's the link that brought Art Offensive into the fold. "We must create, we must create!" - Héctor

Thirty-Two Frames - Thirty-Two Frames (2002, Ruse)

Okay it is not metalcore but I discovered this during the dig of Louisville for our Knocked Loose episode. It’s also our fucking zine, this has been approved! Thirty Two Frames’ self titled is emotional hardcore with its leanings to punk moreso than hardcore. While Louisville Hardcore has become more synonymous with beatdown/heavy style of hardcore recently, the scene would have been related to sound more like Thirty Two Frames in a pre-Knocked Loose era. We have gang vocals and lyrics about losing friends, this is really what drives it to being a punk record. This might make you think of Pennywise but it does not sound like that at all. The vocalist is a bit more bassy than what would be associated with the genre, I think it works really well. It’s emotional in an unconventional way. You can two step while you ponder.- Kaust

Until the End - Blood in the Ink (2001, Eulogy)

One of the fastest OG metalcore bands I came across. This is really vicious music with a real hxc outlook and feel. The thumping fast parts with caveman drumming and chainsaw guitars are very different from most of the other stuff we have covered here, where you have "better" musicians doing more metal-adjacent stuff. "I'll die for my beliefs!" It is wonderful, I love hardcore and I love fast music. It is in the slow parts where the metalcore really comes in, with the drums really placing this in the same space as From the Dying Sky and such bands. This music must have gone off like a bomb in moshpits in the early 2000s. This fits in perfectly with the punk taste in vogue in the 2020s. If you love TUI-core, you will like this. - Héctor

Cold as Life - Born to Land Hard (1999, CTYC)

The band’s history is as depressing as this album is great. I would say this is the best beatdown album of all time. Naturally, the St. Anger style tin can snare is all over this record which really compliments how fucking aggressive this album is. It’s quite cathartic to listen to, it feels like the band is dealing with a painful turmoil and this record was the only way to rid themselves off this burden. The snare makes it feel like your skull is being bashed with a pipe. As expected, the topics covered on Born to Land Hard mainly cover the police and living in crime and the toll it takes. Stories of Cold as Life are all pretty well documented, I don’t think i really have anything productive to add to that conversation but I can say I believe Born to Land Hard deserves its place as a hardcore classic. - Kaust

Morning Again @ Le Cirque Électrique, Paris (10 April 2026)

A set done as part of Arak Asso's United We Stand festival in Paris. For the 10th edition of this fest, they went all out with some big names on the lineup including Lima's Tomar Control and Bologna's Nabat. Morning Again was probably the highlight (can't say for sure since I missed day 2!!). A bit of a legendary band from Florida, Morning Again is a straight edge metalcore band with a slew of EPs and single legendary album to their name ("As Tradition Dies Slowly", released in 1998). Kaust is really fond of this one. Paris is a city that is particularly devoted to metalcore, and as such Morning Again had a very warm welcome. Nevertheless, the energy was quite different from the frenzy of that night where Whispers covered Kickback in a bill including the most hyped bands in the current hxc scene (covered in page 1 of this zine). I saw a few different generations (young kids and grey-haired veterans) devoted to singing and moshing their way through deep cuts from this beloved band's discography. In this setting, in a festival with a bill mixing oi, fastcore, metalcore and regular punk bands, this music made more sense than ever. What better way to grow old than crowdkilling your friends. - Héctor