The great state of Massachusetts has gifted the music world a number of game-changing acts over the years — think Aerosmith and Boston, New Kids on the Block and New Edition, and quiet-loud-quiet alt-rock perfectors Pixies. This obviously also includes a number of metal, punk and hardcore bands — and like a grand slam hammered over Fenway’s Green Monster, the Bay State’s heavy talent pool runs deep.
From defiantly violent early Eighties straight-edge hardcore, to the dawn of U.S. powerviolence, to the D.I.Y. metalcore scene of the Nineties and the mainstream-broaching heaviness of their early Aughts progeny, and onto a theatricore renaissance, bands from not only Boston, but Methuen, Salem, Springfield and more have cratered into our consciousnesses in a wildly inventive and generally crushing fashion.
But who’s the best-ever brutal band to come out of any corner of Mass? The act that hits stronger than cauldron of Dunkins’, or the one that serves up riffs thicker than a hearty bowl of New England clam chowder. We asked Revolver readers this question, and they came up with a wicked nice top five.
Revocation
From a primordial period as Cryptic Warning at the turn of the century, onto a nearly 20-year run as Revocation proper, Boston local Dave Davidson has spent the past 25 years absolutely annihilating our domes with next-level shred, perversely dissonant yet erudite tech-death riffery and more.
Credit that paradoxically sophisticated savagery to the bandleader’s time studying at the iconic Berklee School of Music, which helped inject jazz theory into Davidson’s love of all things brutal. Just like Berklee, Revocation are a beloved Bay State institution.
Cave In
Formed in Methuen, Massachusetts, in the mid Nineties, Cave In have bravely explored all corners of the heavy-music galaxy.
Their earliest material fit in well with the then-developing home-state metalcore scene — making lifelong friends and bandmates out of Converge, in the process — while referencing anything from Slayer to Failure. Their heavy pendulum has also swung through elements of electronic noise, gloom metal, space rock, arena-ready alt rock and more. While the band featured two different screamers in its earliest incarnations, the gnarling roars and alt-yowling melodies of founding guitarist Stephen Brodsky quickly made him one of the scene’s most identifiable vocalists of the past 30 years.
Their prolific, feverishly inspired career at one point had them signed to a major label and touring with the Foo Fighters. Cave In endure as well-respected elder statesmen of Massachusetts-made metal, hardcore and more.
The Acacia Strain
While Acacia Strain vocalist Vincent Bennett would eventually uproot to New York, he and the rest of the group began an impressively heavy multi-decade career apparently pulling disgustingly soupy riffs and vicious beats out of the Connecticut River near Chicopee, Massachusetts.
It’s quite telling that the deathcore favorites named their 2002 debut LP …And Life is Very Long. The band have maintained a prolific, punishing pace while doling out albums full of ground-rumbling blasts, epic doom and bleak-and-bleary lyrical world-building.
Killswitch Engage
Killswitch Engage bassist Mike D’Antonio is a two-time hall of famer in the Massachusetts heavy-music scene. Through the Nineties, he was slinging chaotic rhythms for early metalcore trailblazers Overcast — alongside future Shadows Fall singer Brian Fair — and by the next decade he was selling millions of records as part of the revolutionary Killswitch Engage.
The latter have obviously made a massive dent in our collective conscious, whether exploding into big-time breakdowns, dizzyingly technical riffage, anthemic bangers or heartily-thrashed beaters — and while led by not one but two all-timer vocalists: original and current singer Jesse Leach and Howard Jones, who howled through Killswitch’s heart-aching breakthrough period.
Simply put, they’re one of the most important metal bands of the 21st century, and the votes reflect this.
Converge
If not for Converge, heavy music as we’ve known it for the past 30 years would sound a lot different. And we’re not just talking about how guitarist Kurt Ballou has engineered hundreds upon hundreds of metal and hardcore releases at his esteemed GodCity recording studio in Salem, Massachusetts.
Formed in the late Eighties by Ballou and vocalist Jacob Bannon, the band evolved through a series of Nineties lineups and records that reflected a love for Slayer and Starkweather, then they rewrote the metalcore rulebook with 2001 high watermark Jane Doe, and cemented themselves as one of the world’s premiere heavy forces through every reliably epic and chaotic LP since.
From their home-state fanbase to the faithful around the rest of the world, they’ve yet to fail us.