Man Will Destroy Himself

If our world were to vanish in a fiery conflagration (rather than with an impotent whimper), it might sound like Man Will Destroy Himself. This is what God meant when he unleashed metalcore on the world. Not a breakdown-laden brand of emo, but ferocious hardcore shadowed by black metal malevolence. Violent bracing rhythms boil over as singer Earthworm howls in an old-school hardcore screech—not as guttural, feral or generally indecipherable as your typical extreme metal vocalist. While the thundering rhythms set the pace, the guitars hold much of the flavor. There's plenty of hard-charging variety, from strutting Sabbath-y riffage to chiming post-punk slashes, noisy swelling maelstroms of distortion and deep-rutted undulating throb. While they're undoubtedly not as adventurous as Mastodon, they do bring surprising texture and dramatic flair to hardcore's gray, post-industrial institutional conformity. You can hear it on tracks like "Empty," which starts like something Ministry shat out before morphing to incorporate cacophonous slices of Sonic Youth-style distortion and building to a muscular piston-pounding rumble worthy of Big Black. The resulting sound is less portentous and sludgy than metal while less nondescript and dynamically monotone than hardcore.

The quintet formed around former Corrosion of Conformity drummer Reed Mullin in 2002, and in 2007 they released their only full-length album, Nation of Ashes. The album's since gone out of print, and for a while it was made available for free download (so it's out there somewhere). There have also been a handful of other tracks released on compilations such as Relapse's This Comp Kills Fascists and a couple by Unity & Strength Records. They're working on their second album, which is scheduled to come out later this year. Judging from tracks such as "Oh Lasting Hope" (posted to their Facebook), it's going to be even noisier and more in your face with greater reliance on its SST roots than its metal antecedents. —Chris Parker