This was all really well compiled :clap:

'Been adding some more songs to the list. The styles have variations, so I had to include some of them.

No. People who never went to college and didn't acquire any job skills other than playing in a band and who will likely be flipping burgers once their band disbands don't count as successful. Unless you can use your musical abilities to break into other aspects of the industry I guess. Devin Townsend produces after all. Of course, he also doesn't have ear gauges.

I'm willing to bet there's SOMEONE who has gauges who also lives under your terms of success.
However what being successful actually means can be argued in itself, but that's off topic

Even if there was no correlation, gauges look hideous. There are better mediums of self-expression than the human body. Tattoos are permanent, but at least they won't go out of style any time soon. Gauges were never in style, and they also **** up your cartilage

Hey beauty is in the eye of the beholder. I've seen a couple of girls where gauges actually looked better.
Anyways can we get back to talking about metalcore, I'll throw out a couple of band names and let me know what you think of em
Trivium
As I Lay Dying
Between the Buried and Me
All That Remains
Killswitch Engage

Not a fan of Trivium. Sylosis does what Trivium tries to do but 10x better.
Examples:


I find As I Lay Dying to be pretty boring, especially their newest. They were ok live.

BTBAM is great. I really like Colors and Alaska. I have yet to hear their 2 new EPs.

I don't like All That Remains. I'd say the Fall of Ideals is their best offering.

KSE's Alive of Just Breathing is fantastic, and then their albums get progressively worse. The one with "Start Again" was REALLY bad. Jesse Leach doesn't sound the same on the newest, and the rest of the band sounds pretty generic despite becoming a little more technical. It's almost depressing to see them fall so far.
Early:


Now:

It's weird because they're Alive or Just Breathing is probably my least favorite. It's one of the most generic things I've ever heard, As Daylight Dies is probably my favorite

Trivium: I used to love them until I got tired of them. They aren't the worst band ever by any means, but their music is just a stale retread of melodic metalcore cliches with some terrible thrash elements thrown in to trick scene kids into thinking they're not listening to generic melodic metalcore. Even then I could have forgiven them if they'd actually expanded their sound. From The Crusade and Shogun you could tell they wanted to break out of their box, but with In Waves they completely gave up and just went back to their dull Ascendancy formula.

Also Matt Heafy is a god awful vocalist. His screams lack any emotion. They're just there because that's what the style of their music dictates. I actually would rather listen to his emo vocals over his screams. And his Hetfield-wannabe vocals are beneath my contempt.

As I Lay Dying: They are the embodiment of the cliched, boring melodic metalcore band. Blech.

Between the Buried and Me: Love them. After a couple months of not knowing what to do with them after buying Colors I eventually fell in love with them. They're not always particularly coherent and I think that they can be rather pretentious, and the brutal mathcore bits right next to melodic prog bits can be rather awkward, but their virtues far outweigh their flaws.

All that Remains: The only song I ever heard from them was that ****ty song that's on the radio right now. Never really had any desire to listen to them after I got bored with metal/deathcore.

Killswitch Engage: Bought As Daylight Dies a few years ago which made me lose interest in listening to them anymore. And please don't anyone tell me to listen to their debut, because I couldn't give less of a **** about giving KE another shot.

The riffs, vocals, and production are what make it better than any of their following releases, and at the time (2000-2002) it was a pretty new sound (far from generic). I wouldn't confuse punishing, straightforwardness with being generic. They helped pioneer the genre, and spawned countless (and more mainstream sounding) imitators. Now it seems they're trying to copy their own imitators! They just make clean, over-processed, radio-friendly songs. 5FDP is probably the most generic and popular band out right now, and I'd say new KSE is right there with it.