The Batlord's Thread of Metalcore that Doesn't Suck but In Fact ****ing Rules

[The Batlord]

Facedown - Beyond All Horizons (1998)

This is one o' them post-Earth Crisis, chug-tastic, ultra-aggressive, breakdowns-as-a-way-of-life, almost certainly straight edge and vegan bands that were like a fungus in the mid to late 90s. And for some reason Belgium (where hails Facedown) and especially the Netherlands was thick with the ****ers. It's sort of like German thrash where the American bands were smarter but the Euro trash was meaner. I guess. Anyways...

This **** is ****ing sick as ****ing ****. The breakdowns are brutal as ****, the vocalist sounds like he eats broken bottles, and the guitar tone is gloriously cheap and abrasive. So who cares if there's little to no variation* or originality? All we want is to have our asses smote, right?

*There's a random acoustic song for no apparent reason that might give you the mistaken impression that this was a post-hardcore band, and the last track is pretty standard 90s techno, just with a real guitar thrown in and... Star Wars samples. Yeah.