Every state thinks they have the best metal band around. They also think your state has the worst metal band ever. Are you gonna let them talk about your scene like that?
Here we present the best and worst metal band from every state, thus settling your little squabble. Luckily for you, we’re experts and we know what we’re talking about, so you can use this list as hard scientific evidence the next time some out-of-towner tries to tell you their state has better metal bands than yours does. And yeah, we picked our bands from the thousands of niche metal sub-genres. Deal with it.
Alabama
BEST: Cancerslug
Cancerslug’s discography covers horror punk, black metal, and death rock mixed with an alarming amount of male rage. The band has a lot of good stuff, but if you happen upon a Cancerslug fan older than 15 or so just put your head down and exit the room without making eye contact.
WORST: Temple of Blood
As is the case with many thrash bands, the excitement of hearing Temple of Blood’s sweet palm-muted riffs is quickly extinguished once the singer begins his clumsy mix of spoken word, pitchy falsetto, and half-baked harmonies. Not only that, Temple of Blood doesn’t even have the decency to adorn their album covers with brightly colored skeletons playing in nuclear waste barrels like a good thrash band should.
Alaska
BEST: 36 Crazyfists
36 Crazyfists is one of those bands you first heard about in high school and then spent the next twenty or so years not listening to them. And that’s okay, there’s a lot of music out there and you have a life to live. As a matter of fact, we just listened to the band for the first time ourselves, and it turns out they play an infectious brand of radio friendly metalcore that should make any king crab fisherman want to drop their nets and go mosh on the poop deck.
WORST: Turbid North
Full disclosure: Turbid North is actually pretty badass, but they abandoned their native Alaska for the warmer pastures of Fort Worth, Texas. Leaving Alaska is a rite of passage for every Alaskan, so we’re not faulting them for that. Hell, even 36 Crazyfists relocated to Seattle in the ‘90s. But Alaska to Texas is a pretty long distance and we’re certain that the band’s parents don’t get to see them nearly as much as they would like to.
Arizona
BEST: Gatecreeper
If you think that Florida is the only laughably conservative state that can churn out top-shelf death metal, think again, because Gatecreeper proves beyond the shadow of a doubt that Arizona brings it. Their 2021 EP An Unexpected Reality features “Emptiness,” an 11-minute death-doom opus that gives the band plenty of room to breathe while moving through wave after wave riffy, doomy goodness. Death metal purists might balk at such a progressive approach to head bangery, but since when have we listened to what death metal purists had to say?
WORST: Gridlokt
Nu-metal is experiencing a worldwide renaissance as metalheads everywhere pretend to enjoy the bands they hated 20 years ago. Gridlokt is not one of those bands. We don’t hold the band’s childish internet-speak spelling against them, but we will make fun of them for basing their awful name around the completely un-metal concept of traffic congestion and poor urban planning.
Arkansas
BEST: Pallbearer
When it comes to modern doom metal, few modern bands command the level of respect that Pallbearer does. You just don’t hear people speak badly about them. Their work has even been praised by The New York Times, NPR, and other publications with way less credibility than The Hard Times. Now if you’ll excuse us we’re going to go airbrush a sweet Pallbearer mural on the side of our van.
WORST: Evanescence
We’re just as surprised as you are to learn that Evanescence is from Arkansas, of all places. They have lots of fans no doubt, but we’d rather listen to Bill Clinton read the phonebook than endure another play of “Bring Me to Life.”
California
BEST: Testament
Testament is the single best metal band to ever emerge from California. For more than 40 years the band has consistently released ass-kicking albums that never sound dated or out of time. Even my non-metal-fan girlfriend couldn’t tell the difference between old and new songs when we saw them last year.The fact that Testament is not considered one of the so-called “big four” of thrash is nothing short of a travesty.
ACTUAL BEST METAL BAND FROM CALIFORNIA: Metallica (their ’80s output is like early seasons of ‘The Simpsons” it just can’t be denied)
WORST: Ratt
The Hollywood glam scene in the 1980s was full of burnouts and straight up sexual predators. But Ratt was different. They were good kids from good families, and had they stayed in school they could have worked hard and really made something of themselves. Instead got way into partying and became just another group of has-beens. These days Ratt can be found desperately hoping to book county fair gigs opening for much more successful bands like Dokken, Winger, and Nelson.
Colorado
BEST: Cephalic Carnage
Punishing mile-high metalheads since 1992, Cephalic Carnage is easily the best metal band from Colorado. Furthermore, they’re one of a small selection of metal bands with something of a sense of humor, which is odd considering the whole genre is such a big joke.
WORST: Dogs of Pleasure
This forgettable Colorado-based glam rock outfit only released one album before doing the rest of the world a favor and breaking up before anyone realized what was happening.
Connecticut
BEST: Hatebreed
On top of being named the best metal band from Connecticut by The Hard Times, Hatebreed was recently given a lifetime achievement award by the New Haven Crossfit branch as well, further cementing their legacy.
WORST: Crossing Rubicon
Crossing Rubicon is doing their part to make sure that glam rock remains dead, buried, and where it belongs, because there’s no way in hell anyone ever listened to Crossing Rubicon and thought “more of this please.”
Delaware
BEST: Foreign Hands
Foreign Hands plays the kind of hardcore that was popular in the early 2000s. With chugging guitars ready to break down at any instant, soft interludes, and a mixture of clean and screaming vocals. Now we’re suddenly feeling nostalgic for those hardcore shows in high school that featured like 25 bands for five bucks.
WORST: Vinne Moore
Vinnie Moore is a great guitar player, don’t get us wrong. But great guitar players are dime a dozen, so who gives a shit? We’ve always wondered why great guitarists release albums that sound like metal albums with all the evil-sounding stuff taken out, and the UFO guitarist’s solo records are no exception.
Florida
BEST: Death
Death’s impression on the modern metal scene is undeniable. Formed in 1983, Death would become one of the most influential metal bands of all time, evolving from the punk inspired “Leprosy” into the more technical overtures of “Symbolic and The Sound of Perseverance.” Regrettably, band leader Chuck Schuldiner succumbed to brain cancer in 2001, leaving behind a trailblazing discography that inspired an entire subgenre full of bands that are much, much, much worse than Death ever was.
WORST: Six Feet Under
Included among bands that are much worse than Death ever was is Six Feet Under. After being replaced in Cannibal Corpse by George “Corpsegrinder” Fisher’s neck, vocalist Chris Barnes created Six Feet Under and has underwhelmed audiences ever since. This, despite the fact that nearly a third of the band’s discography comprises covers from bands that are much, much, much better than Six Feet Under ever was.
Georgia
BEST: Mastodon
One thing that sets Mastodon apart from other stoner metal bands is that they feature elements of that “fuck you” feeling you get from other genres like punk or thrash without sacrificing the melodic grooves that stoner metal is known for. The band’s albums have garnered near universal acclaim since their first full length was released in 2002. Many of Mastodon’s records are concept albums centered around themes that include Moby Dick, being stranded on a mountain, and getting lost in the desert. They also have a whole album about a paraplegic that travels the universe through astral projection and gets sucked into a wormhole after having his golden umbilical cord burned off by the sun, maaaannn.
WORST: Fozzy
If you think that Atlanta’s Fozzy is going to be terrible just because it’s led by pro wrestler Chris Jericho, you’re right. They’ve released eight studio albums since 2000, and each one is worse than the one that came before it. Though we must admit that sometimes even a blind squirrel finds a nut, as we’ve had Fozzy’s “Judas” stuck in our head for years.
Originating as a project to cheer up Mike Watt, we guess you could call this their, thankfully brief, concept album phase. It’s essentially a one hour long tribute to Madonna where even the self-deprecating moments feel congratulatory and the cringe is seemingly endless. Listen to this one and you’ll see why they didn’t release it under their own name.
Can you still be punk while creating deep, melodic tracks? No, of course not. Don’t be stupid. So, with “Bad Moon Rising,” Sonic Youth began to cast off the shackles of genreism (is that a word? If not, can we get credit for creating it?) and began defining a unique sound that would inspire post-grunge about 10 years later. Okay, maybe that’s not such a good thing.
A certain clout-chasing writer for a website we won’t name here tried to boost his profile by giving this album a zero. While by no means in the upper echelon of Sonic Youth’s body of work, the review was an obvious publicity stunt that conveniently overlooked the fact that SY had to start from scratch after all their customized gear was stolen. And we all know when your gear is stolen so is all your creative energy. It’s kind of like when a witch curses you.
Look, not every debut album can be [Don’t forget to add iconic debut album of highly influential band.] This one is their most rooted in the No Wave scene that they emerged from and, thankfully, left behind. There’s an almost sinister sound to this one. Maybe too sinister. Like, hey, my life might be in danger, kind of sinister. But of course this was back when you had a not insignificant chance of getting stabbed in the Lower East Side of New York.
This one feels like Sonic Youth’s most introspective work and I guess that’s kind of fitting for their penultimate album. While they wouldn’t break up for another five years, this one has an “Abbey Road” type feel to it in the sense that you get the sense that they’re all kind of sick of each other. Had we listened to the lyrics a bit more closely, perhaps we’d have caught on that Thurston and Kim’s marriage was in trouble.
Fun fact: “Kim Gordon and the Arthur Doyle Hand Cream” was originally named for Mariah Carey, but they had to change it for legal reasons. We’d like to think Mariah would’ve been cool with this given her appreciation for alt-rock that Ed Templeton liked to use in skate videos, but this was coming not long after “Glitter” so you can forgive her for not being in the best headspace for playful ball-breaking.
SY’s second album for Geffen and first post-“Nevermind” isn’t bad per se, but feels more as if Sonic Youth is trying to replicate the bands that they inspired rather than the other way around which is why it’s not ranked higher. Check out the Spike Jonez-directed video for “100%” to catch a pre-movie star Jason Lee skateboarding.
When released, we weren’t aware this was going to be Sonic Youth’s final album as of the time of this publication and it received average to good reviews. Much like David Bowie’s “Black Star,” this one is worth reevaluating and is much better than the tepid reviews of the time will have you believe since most critics, not us though,, suck at life. This was also the only album featuring Mark Ibold as an official member of the group.
Sadly my editor wouldn’t let me put every album in a six-way tie for first, so here’s the band’s final album in last place. While it features all of the trademarks of a late-period Dillinger album – a mix of mathcore hissy fits, soaring rock choruses, and virtuosic instrumentation – it never truly shocks you with something you’ve never heard before from the band. Granted, with it being their final release, looking back into their two-decade history and mining it for inspiration makes it an apt swansong. There are some quirky left turns like Mahavishnu-esque strings and a trippy IDM detour that sounds like a rejected Aphex Twin B-side. There’s also that scream in “Honeysuckle.” You know the one.
Replacing a beloved frontman isn’t easy. However, when Dimitri Minikakis left the group after only one album, Dillinger knocked it out of the park with the addition of human bicep Greg Puciato. Not only could he deliver a deranged scream like his predecessor, the Italian stallion can croon like a lounge singer with a martini in his hand. His clean vocal chops are showcased most notably on “Setting Fire to Sleeping Giants” and “Unretrofied,” two tunes that have more in common with Faith No More and Nine Inch Nails than anything else in their catalog at that point. This pissed off a bunch of cranky metalcore dudes and set the precedent for future Dillinger material that would resemble actual music.
“One of Us is The Killer” answers the question “What if the Dillinger Escape Plan made another record that’s just really fucking good like their previous ones?” “Prancer” and “When I Lost My Bet” might be the best opening duo of the band’s career and the whole record masterfully blends their more melodic tendencies with the chaotic hardcore of their early days. Killer also features one of their better token instrumental songs in the wonderfully janky “CH 375 268 277 ARS” (rumor is that if you can guess what the title means, they must reunite). My money’s on Billy being the killer, by the way. It’s always the unassuming ones.
There are several dudes out there who smell like garbage and have Man Is the Bastard neck tattoos who will tell you that this is the only good Dillinger Escape Plan album because it’s the gnarliest. There’s no clean singing, no quasi-radio-rock bangers, and the instrumental interludes feature looped samples, squelching noise, and grinding machinery. Is it Dillinger’s best album? No, but is it their most important album? Absolutely. It kicked off a legendary career with one of the most deranged and unique debuts in the history of punk and metal. “43% Burnt” is also a great song to put on at a party when it’s 3:00 a.m. and the only people still there are three weird guys doing key bumps in the kitchen and you want them to leave.
While every Dillinger Escape Plan album is varying degrees of weird, this is the weirdest one by a significant margin. While Miss Machine introduced some new flavors to the Dillinger recipe, “Ire Works” swung the fridge open and started throwing everything into the pot (I shouldn’t write these when I’m hungry). There are straight-up pop-rock songs, Warp Records-style electronics, Indonesian gamelan bells, Latin percussion, and all sorts of other silliness. “Ire Works” can be a bit of a jumbled mess at times, but that’s what makes it so compelling considering it’s from a band known for its robotic precision. The promo cycle for this album also yielded Greg singing on Conan O’Brien’s desk which gives it substantial bonus cred.
Very fitting that this record is called “Option Paralysis” as that’s what I experienced when deciding what to put at number one. In revisiting the discography, it was this record that made me go “Wow, that was fucking cool” more than any other. While albums like “Ire Works” and “Miss Machine” tracks can be organized by the heavy songs, the pretty songs, and the weird songs, the bulk of “Option Paralysis” blends all three vibes seamlessly within the same compositions. It stuck a middle finger to the rearview and firmly told anyone hoping for a “Calculating Infinity” Pt. 2 that they would never get what they wanted. It’s the heaviest, catchiest, and most adventurous album by a band that does all three things better than anyone else.
