TOP FIVE EQUAL VISION RECORDS RELEASES

Founded by Ray Cappo (Youth of Today, Shelter) in the early 1990s primarily as an outlet for Krishnacore, Equal Vision has gone on to become a legendary label not just in hardcore, but beyond, starting in the late 90s with emo (Saves the Day) and metalcore (Converge), into the mid-2000s when the label was at the forefront of the post-hardcore explosion, down to today, where they remain as relevant as ever. A look through their back catalogue reveals a veritable who’s who in numerous bands that are on the A-list of their respective genres. Here we consider the Top Five of Equal Vision Records, truly spoiled for choice, with my taste per usual the "finger on the scale."

5. Gideon-MORE POWER. MORE PAIN. (2023)

Firmly embracing their Southern roots, this extremely hard-hitting record follows the narrative arc of a Hank Williams, Jr. interview about his life and struggles with expectations, mental health, and fitting into a pre-determined image of who he should be, with excerpts from the interview speaking to the themes of the songs they come before or after. Given the band’s emergence in the Christian metalcore scene and now having essentially walked away from that, although I don’t know the members of the band personally, I can imagine many of the experiences Williams describe mirror those of Gideon, and that was in large part why it was chosen to help form the backbone of the record’s narrative. The music itself is punishing at every turn. "Take Off" is an absolute banger that heavily mines Korn, where elsewhere the band looks to more of a For the Fallen Dreams sound ("If You Love Me, Let Me Go" for example). I look at this album as the sonic culmination of the different eras of Gideon, while they publicly declare they’ll be walking their own path, thank you very much.

4. Glass Cloud-The Royal Thousand (2012)

These guys were too far ahead of the curve to get the full credit they deserved. There’s some djent and prog mixed into the concrete of the foundation of post-hardcore meets metalcore. This album still sounds like the future, combining dreamy melodicism with insane heaviness in a unique fashion that has yet to be—and probably won’t be—replicated. Vocalist Jerry Roush does his best Jekyll and Hyde, with his clean singing and his screaming that sounds like a feral animal simultaneously trying to climb out of its own skin and scrape its way out of a cage by any means necessary, while the guitar work from Joshua Travis (The Tony Danza Tapdance Extravaganza, Emmure—he also produced the album) is as usual superb and always interesting. The whole unit is firing on all cylinders here, in fact. The lifespan of Glass Cloud was far too short, and leaves us with a "what could have been?"

3. Converge-Jane Doe (2001)

Speaking of feral animals on the mic, we arrive at the seminal Jane Doe from Massachusetts’s Converge. Equal parts raw and intricate, expansive and explosive, Jane Doe is at once a definitive metalcore record and much more than that. To me, this is the album where Converge becomes Converge. The ambition and scope are impressive, as is the pure, distilled savagery exemplified on tracks like "Concubine." Complete auditory mayhem meets surgical precision, Jane Doe is, like Dillinger Escape Plan’s Calculating Infinity, one of those records that crystallized the innovation in heavy music in the 1990s and blew the doors off what was thought possible in the "core" equivalents of Roger Bannister’s four-minute mile.

2. American Nightmare-Background Music (2001)

Another legendary band from the Massachusetts hardcore scene, no one has done this style of hardcore better than American Nightmare. I have a soft spot for this band as one of the first to make me fall in love with hardcore, and therefore while it isn’t as innovative as the one above I gave such gushing praise to, it has to go here for me. Just because it isn’t reinventing the wheel doesn’t mean it isn’t an exceptional album, though. Emotionally wrought and lyrically powerful, American Nightmare (who went by Give Up the Ghost for some time after legal struggles with another band of the same name forced them to change it) are firing on all cylinders here, led by vocalist Wes Eisold’s pen and torn throat screaming. One of those bands like Have Heart and Killing the Dream that inspired such fiercely-loyal passion from their fans as it felt like every fiber of the band’s being went into these songs.

1. Saves the Day-Through Being Cool (1999)

A little before my time in terms of where I was at in getting into alternative music (I was eleven when this came out), but my understanding is that this album had a seismic impact on the scene and was instrumental in bringing large numbers of fans into contact with the more abrasive sounds and images of labelmates and contemporaries. Particularly for their demographic, the lyrics and the "feels" were very relatable, and also crucially the songwriting on this album is exquisite, with hooks for days. Quite possibly the best emo album of all time.