At the risk of sounding totally corporate, it’s possible that Pig Destroyer’s most recent, most accessible album is also it’s best. It’s a bold claim because the majority of fans will immediately cite 2004’s Terrifyer, regardless of whether they can identify a single song by ear. Instead, Head Cage lets Pig Destroyer be the more cogent alternative to Agoraphobic Nosebleed, guitarist Scott Hull’s typically even more insane outlet. The normalizing song lengths results in something that, outside of knee-jerk genre labels, is not grindcore…but approaches that genre’s hardcore roots, with more recognizable groove metal riffage.

I honestly believe that if the guys down the street from me, who work out in their garage with the door open so we can hear the Five Finger Death Punch a block away, would listen to Crowbar instead that the world would be a better place. It’s no wonder that frontman Kirk Windstein formed Kingdom of Sorrow with Jamey Jasta, because Crowbar is essentially the sludge metal version of Hatebreed (which also makes it the better choice, at least for this appreciator of distortion). This is the rare instance on the list where positivity is the word, and when Windstein runs out of self-empowerment lessons, the riffs continue unabated.

It’s weird that the most un-PC thing I might say in a rundown of albums celebrating death and Satan is my wariness for bands that present themselves like the album cover on The Oath’s self-titled debut. Far too many in the metal and hard rock scenes are going hard for high schooler eyes (which are prevalent in this scene, and all scenes). Sad to say how refreshing the actual songwriting and technical capabilities of Johanna Sadonis and Linnéa Olsson are. The band dresses and plays like Black Sabbath but ultimately delivers dark odes with more sincerity than their icons, as Sadonis’s Lucifer continues to do following Oath’s split.

I once missed the chance to see Kylesa at a basement show on campus because I didn’t know that the venue existed. At any rate, it seems like the Savannah sludge band to see such a band in would have been Black Tusk, whose distorted features never buried the hardcore punk roots, a facet fed by the multi-octave separation of its duel-vocal approach. Bassist Jonathan Athon died in a motorcycle accident prior to the album’s completion, a fact that its remaining members didn’t try to dampen his last living work with. Pillars of ash and Black Label empties collapse and brings the house venue’s ground floor down to match the vibe.

“Leaning deathcore” sounds like a death sentence coming from this critic’s mouth, but it’s not, and this band hardly is. What Gomorrah does that might lead me to lead my misbegotten deathcore friends to Gomorrah as a gateway into trve Death is simply the rounded bass production, and the occasional hawk-scream guitar slides employed here. But otherwise this Canadian group is far too dense (in terms of songwriting, not notes) for late-term Warped Tour acts, with the number of guitar layers occasionally reaching humorous levels and, in doing so, creating a listening experience somewhat like a train tilting precariously on the tracks.