Rate my music taste: these are my five favourite metalcore albums ever

Metalcore. Depending on your age, tastes and relationship with heavy music, that word could spark any number of reactions. For many, it means a generation of killer bands that soundtracked their youth. For others, it's become a dirty word, shorthand for metal that started to stop really being metal.

For me? Metalcore was a foundational part of my journey into metal itself: after discovering heavy music through nu metal heavyweights like Limp Bizkit, Korn and Linkin Park, it was 2000s metalcore bands like Killswitch Engage and Avenged Sevenfold that weaned me onto a different part of the scene.

Since then, however, only a small number of metalcore bands have truly impressed me - artists that have done something genuinely exciting and different with the sound and defined metalcore for their era.

With that in mind, here are my personal five favourite metalcore albums of all time. What do you think of my choices? (Side note: if you're expecting true, OG metallic hardcore here, you'll be disappointed I'm afraid. No Earth Crisis for me! Sorry!)

Killswitch Engage - Alive Or Just Breathing (2002)

This is one thing I will not budge on: Killswitch Engage perfected metalcore in the 2000s. No band before or since melded the raw intensity of hardcore with the searing urgency of heavy metal more emphatically or more beautifully - and while many would fairly point to the banger-stacked The End Of Heartache as Killswitch's defining moment, for me, its predecessor is event better.

Not only do I think it genuinely matches ...Heartache song for song in terms of sheer quality (Numbered Days! Fixation On The Darkness! Life To Lifeless! Fucking Last Serenade!) but there's an extra rawness to Jesse's vocals and more of a jagged edge to the album as a whole that elevates it just that little bit more. A perfect record and the best metalcore album ever made.

Killswitch Engage - My Last Serenade [OFFICIAL VIDEO] - YouTube

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Avenged Sevenfold - Waking The Fallen (2003)

Here I am again, picking earlier albums by bands who have more celebrated releases in their arsenal because they happened to be the records I got into first. But I believe wholeheartedly that Waking The Fallen remains Avenged's greatest record and as much as I've enjoyed their evolution, there's definitely a small part of me that wishes they kept this sound just for another album or two.

Avenged always blazed their own trail, though, and I think it's taken for granted just how out there some of these songs were at the time for the scene they were operating in. Nine minute epics and heavy metal twin guitar harmonies from an OC core band? Hell yeah! Plus bangers like Unholy Confessions, Chapter Four, Remenissions and Second Heartbeat - packing some of the all time great metalcore 'WOAAAAAH!'s, by the way - are as good as this shit gets.

Avenged Sevenfold - Unholy Confessions (Original First Cut Music Video) - YouTube

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Trivium - Ascendancy (2005)

Full transparency: I nearly didn't include this album because Trivium so quickly moved on from being tied to anything in the metalcore scene that Ascendancy only just about squeaks into the conversation. Plus, this isn't even my favourite Trivium album (Shogun, if you're asking, closely followed by In The Court Of The Dragon).

But I am gonna include this album because a) it absolutely, relentlessly fucking slaps and b) it was the perfect bridge between metalcore's all-conquering 2000s era and the rise of 'proper' metal later in the decade. I think Ascendancy helped facilitate bands like Machine Head and Lamb Of God becoming more popular than ever, which to be clear, is a Very Good Thing.

Plus, having seen it performed in full earlier this year, I cannot overstate that the whole thing fucking slaps!

Trivium - Pull Harder On The Strings Of Your Martyr [OFFICIAL VIDEO] - YouTube

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Bring Me The Horizon - Sempiternal (2013)

I've been working at Metal Hammer for almost 15 years now and I have no doubt that this still feels like the definitive, scene-shaking metal album that has come along in that time. Sempiternal's impact was so great that metalcore bands are still ripping it off to diminishing returns twelve years later.

But, to be fair, you can understand why: Terry Date's production still sounds state-of-the-art, and my god, those songs. Eleven tracks, no misses. Every one of them single-worthy. Whatever you think of their journey since, Sempiternal was the moment that BMTH were unquestionably the most important, influential and vital heavy band of their generation.

Bring Me The Horizon - Shadow Moses (Official Video) - YouTube

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Architects - All Our Gods Have Abandoned Us (2016)

Architects' bounce-back after the big miss of Daybreaker needs to be studied: within two years of that album they'd released the far superior Daybreaker and the magnificent Lost Forever // Lost Together, quickly and firmly reinstating themselves as one of UK metalcore's most important and exciting voices.

Then came All Our Gods Have Abandoned Us. On musical merit alone this album deserves its place in the metalcore hall of fame, but the sheer depth and emotional candour of Tom Searle's writing makes it one of the most impactful (and, quite frankly, devastating) listens in modern metal. That we'd lose him mere months after the album's release make songs like Gone With The Wind all the more poignant.

Architects - "Gone With The Wind" - YouTube

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....so, how'd I do? Agree with my choices? Think I've missed out something essential? Let me know in the comments below, I'd love to hear your picks!