As 2024 draws to a close, we're taking a look back at what has been a blinding year for heavy music - and few scenes have been as prolific and stacked with great releases across the last twelve months as metalcore. It's safe to say the genre is in the midst of another major resurgence right now, with British mainstays like Bring Me The Horizon and While She Sleeps continuing to evolve and put out top-tier material and young bands across Europe, the US and beyond shaping the sound of metalcore to come. Hell, even Poppy decided to make a full-on metalcore record this year and absolutely smashed it. With all that in mind, here are the ten best metalcore albums of the year, in reverse order of greatness.
BONUS ENTRY: Kaonashi - The Three Faces Of Beauty...
Not a full album but we had to shout this one out: the first of a three-part conceptual EP series dealing with themes of racism, homophobia and family dynamics, The Three Faces Of Beauty: A Violent Misinterpretation Of Morgan Montgomery is a startlingly emotional and visceral mini-journey with one of modern metalcore's most insightful and creative bands. Frenetic, scything mathcore riffs, some dazzling drumwork and those trademark, wretched shrieks of Peter Rono make for a listening experience that is equal parts compelling and deeply uncomfortable.
10. Make Them Suffer - Make Them Suffer
The Aussie ragers reached peak performance with their fifth, self-titled studio album, honing their increasingly polished sound while still layering in bowel-churningly heavy breakdowns, bursts of scatty tech metal riffage and some gorgeous melodies. New member Alex Reade fits the band like a glove, her clean vocals swirling around Sean Harmanis' guttural roars with ease as Perth's finest bash out some of the biggest hooks of their career.
9. Bring Me The Horizon - Post Human: Nex Gen
The much anticipated sequel to 2020's Post Human: Survival Horror project, Bring Me The Horizon's latest offering is a sprawling, chaotic mish-mash of an album, taking just about everything that has defined the Sheffield trailblazers' career so far - crushing modern metal, glitchy edm-core, anthemic radio rock, hooky alt-pop - and throwing it at the wall. Most incredibly of all, it absolutely works, nodding towards almost every era of the band while still pushing forwards with the giddy abandon of a toddler who's chugged a pint of sugar syrup. If the toddler made a banging metalcore album. Which is what this is, to be clear.
8. While She Sleeps - Self Hell
The moment that the South Yorkshire five-piece finally collated the myriad influences they have been dabbling with over the last decade, stuck them all in a blender and poured the results into their boldest, most expansive work yet, Self Hell feels like the endgame of everything While She Sleeps have been building towards since they first blew up the British metalcore scene in the early 2010s. Packing elements of heavy metal, punk, alt rock, EDM, hip hop, pop and stadium rock into 45 breathless minutes, Sleeps' sixth album emphatically outlines why they remain one of the most ambitious metalcore bands of their generation.
7. Alpha Wolf - Half Living Things
Merging snotty, antagonistic hardcore with the grubbier end of nu metal, Alpha Wolf's third album is a relentless barrage of big riffs, even bigger breakdowns and braggadocios mosh calls. A couple of strays into more anthemic territory with Whenever You're Ready and Ambivalence point towards the Aussies' grand ambitions, but for the most part, Half Living Things is pure, thuggish rage and we wouldn't have it any other way. Plus, Ice-T's 'This is Alpha Wolf, motherfucker! You wanna die?!' on Sucks 2 Suck is one of the metal mic drops of 2024.
6. Imminence - The Black
Showing immense promise across their previous four albums but perhaps guilty of leaning just a little too vigorously into their more obvious influences, Swedish quintet Imminence struck gold with this year's The Black. Flexing their now well-honed songwriting chops while broadening their sound to make the most of those signature orchestral elements, tracks like the pummelling Desolation, visceral Death By A Thousand Cuts and the emotionally devastating title track are proof that this is a band reaching for greatness. A particular shout out to frontman/violinist Eddie Berg, too - surely in the running for the title of best vocalist in metalcore right now.
5. Scene Queen - Hot Singles In Your Area
Scene Queen's debut album is about as subtle as a sparkly pink stiletto to the nuts, merging sugary-sweet pop hooks with big-ass metalcore riffs and twerkle-pit-ready breakdowns. Cynics would love to write off 'Bimbocore' as a cheap gimmick, but make no mistake about it: Hot Singles In Your Area is one of the most righteously furious albums of 2024, a knife held to the throat of music industry misogynists as its owner dishes out some of the most effortlessly catchy metal bangers you've ever heard.
4. Poppy - Negative Spaces
Anyone who's followed Poppy's career to date will be well aware that she knows her way around a killer metal riff, but teaming up with former Bring Me The Horizon man Jordan Fish for her latest album was a stroke of genius. Negative Spaces harnesses a dizzying array of influences from Bring Me themselves to Architects, Slipknot, Evanescence, Avril Lavigne, Hole, Disturbed and Deftones, all sprinkled with Poppy's own unmistakable touch of eccentric excellence. The result? An outstanding modern metalcore record that more than lives up to the sum of its inspirations.
3. SeeYouSpaceCowboy - Coup De Grâce
Guest spots by Spiritbox's Courney LaPlante and nu gen star Kim Dracula may have grabbed a few headlines, but Coup De Grâce's brilliance is all SeeYouSpaceCowboy's, a fearless, sprawling blend of post-hardcore emotion, metal rage, indie rock exuberance and the kind of pop savviness that will surely carry the San Diego natives to bigger stages than ever. Throw in a newfound sense of life-affirming lyrical urgency from frontwoman Connie Sgarbossa and you have all the trappings of an album of the year contender.
2. Heriot - Devoured By The Mouth Of Hell
'Metalcore' was never going to be able to contain a band like Heriot for long, and on their first studio album they've taken their already devastating and expansive sound into fascinating new reaches. Death metal, sludge, shoegaze, industrial and electronica combine to mould one of the best debuts from any British band in recent memory - metal or otherwise. From the pitch-black, tar-thick darkness of Foul Void to the guttural, grinding dirge of Mourn, there isn't a second wasted on this absolute beauty.
1. Knocked Loose - You Won't Go Before You're Supposed To
There comes a time in most rising metal bands' careers when they have a choice to make: do you reel back the heaviness and start polishing up your sound to appeal to as large an audience as possible, or put your foot to the fucking floor? Like Pantera on The Great Southern Trendkill and Slipknot on Iowa, Knocked Loose took the latter road and refused to compromise. Where many bands would introduce cleaner vocals and bigger melodies, the Kentucky crushers went harder, gnarlier, uglier than ever, producing both their heaviest album yet and one of the most devastatingly on-point albums of 2024. The results speak from themselves: months after the album's release, Bryan Garris was dropping pig squeals on Jimmy Kimmel Live. You Won't Go Before You're Supposed To is proof that you can resonate with people on a wider level without sacrificing an inch of your vitality or urgency. An instant classic.
