During the 2000s, melodic hardcore was the domineering strain of hardcore. The various sounds of Have Heart, American Nightmare, Bane, and Defeater incorporated melodic octave riffs, broken chords, and guitar harmonies into hardcore punk‘s fast and abrasive template. Over time, it evolved with various artists absorbing elements of metalcore, screamo, pop-punk, post-rock, and even gothic rock. But by the end of the decade, the genre’s popularity began to fade, giving way to heavier, metal-influenced takes on hardcore.
Hardcore has experienced a meteoric rise in popularity since 2020. Subsequently, the past two years have brought a revived interest in melodic hardcore, fronted by bands including One Step Closer, Hell Can Wait, and Overexposure.
Melodic sensibilities were present from hardcore’s earliest days. Minor Threat, Black Flag, and the Dead Kennedys all had some form of melody, while other bands from that scene laid the foundation for more melodic styles: the Descendents with pop-punk; Bad Religion with 1990s-style skate punk; the Faith and all those involved in Revolution Summer with emo; Hüsker Dü and the Replacements with alternative rock.
Although presaged with similar fusions by Gorilla Biscuits and Verbal Assault, melodic hardcore as we know it began with Turning Point and Inside Out. Both formed in 1988 on opposite sides of the United States and disbanded only three years later. Their styles were the meeting point of the youth crew of Youth of Today, the New York-style hardcore of Killing Time and Breakdown, and the emotional hardcore of Dag Nast.
They created a new sound through melancholic lyrics, melodic octave riffs, broken chords, and guitar harmonies. Although in the following years, “melodic hardcore” came to encompass a variety of different sounds, the defining bands in each strain cited Turning Point and/or Inside Out as an influence: In My Eyes, Lifetime, American Nightmare, Have Heart, Shai Hulud, Strike Anywhere.
During the 2000s, melodic hardcore was the most dominant sound in hardcore. Its rise began with Boston’s youth crew revival of the late 1990s, producing melodic hardcore bands Bane, In My Eyes, and Reach the Sky. One of the biggest catalysts was the 1999 breakup of youth crew band Ten Yard Fight, which led guitarist Tim Cossar and roadie Wes Eisold to form American Nightmare.
The band’s merger of melodic hardcore with influences from post-punk bands, including Bauhaus, the Smiths, and Siouxsie and the Banshees was a turning point for the genre. As the movement spread, so did the sound of melodic hardcore: Carry On’s A Life Less Plagued (2001); Champion’s Promises Kept (2004); Comeback Kid’s Wake the Dead (2005); Dead Swan’s Sleepwalkers (2009).
“Our goal was to rip off Carry On, but we ended up ripping off American Nightmare instead,” says Bren King, vocalist of Chemical Fix, formed in 2016. King discovered the style towards the end of high school, “I missed when these bands were active by a couple of years and kept hearing stories of their live sets by a few older kids at shows. American Nightmare played a local middle school near where I grew up in Doylestown in maybe 2002. Wish I could of been there, the line-up was insane.”
The group emerged from the youth crew revival of the mid-to-late 2010s, with Mindset, Unified Right, and True Love in the United States and Shrapnel, Insist, Rapture in the United Kingdom. “Fading Signal and If It Rains both nail the style. True Love did it best. Time and Pressure were the first band that took us on tour,” says King, but other than Chemical Fix and their sibling band Fixation, “there aren’t any active Philly bands in this niche… I’m the only one not in Fixation at this point.”
During the 2000s, the scope of melodic hardcore expanded, and it became a big tent of diverse styles. The nihilistic post-punk influences of American Nightmare and Dead Swan were rivaled by the rise of Have Heart, Verse, and Final Fight’s “positive hardcore”; Defeater and Touché Amoré pushed the genre to border screamo; Shai Hulud’s did the same with metalcore; Bay Area bands the Nerve Agents, Pitch Black, Scissorhands and turn-of-the-millennium AFI took from gothic rock and horror punk; Only Crime, Rise Against and Strike Anywhere’s created a commercially accessible take on the genre.
The sound embraced an intellectualism that contrasted contemporary hardcore’s usual meatheadedness: Strike Anywhere were discussing social ecology and the Iron Front; the Carrier and Last Lights were writing concept albums; all of Defeater’s albums were told one cohesive story, which was almost Grapes of Wrath meets A Tree Grows in Brooklyn.
“There was something more raw, dark, and emotional than the other hardcore/punk I was listening to at the time didn’t provide,” said King, “It served as a validation for how I felt and helped establish music as an outlet… Panic, American Nightmare, Carry On, Right Brigade, and Suicide File were the ones that resonated. If you listen to Force It Til You Hear It Snap and feel nothing, the style ain’t for you.”
“One Step Closer started because I was obsessed with Turning Point. All I wanted to do was make a band that sounded like that. One day I was listening to them and I texted my friend Tommy [Pisano] to start a band that sounded more melodic” Ryan Savitski, vocalist for One Step Closer, tells over email. However, Savitski’s band began more in line with the same wave of youth crew that Chemical Fix were involved with. “I think our demo sounded like that because I didn’t know how to write what I was so inspired by. I only knew how to write youth crew riffs. Honestly, I don’t even count the first two demos as One Step Closer releases. I don’t think I’d consider ourselves a youth crew band now, but maybe in the beginning.”
“I think we kind of figured it out finally with the promo tape we did before From Me to You… One day, something just clicked, and I was able to finally make more melodic-sounding riffs,” Savitski continues. In 2019, melodic hardcore royalty Have Heart reunited, playing some of the highest attendance shows hardcore had seen. “We played three out of four US Have Heart reunions, and they were all incredible. Some of my favorite shows we’ve ever played as a band. I still think the first night in Boston was the craziest show I’ve ever seen.”
As the 2020s dawned, hardcore reached unprecedented levels of popularity. One Step Closer rode this wave to become one of its faces, thanks to their 2021 debut album The Place You Know, however they were one of the few bands playing melodic hardcore in a sea of metallic hardcore and beatdown bands. “I think heavier hardcore is definitely in right now, but there are so many styles of hardcore bands all co-existing under one umbrella, and I think that’s really special,” says Savitski.
Melodic hardcore still reflects this diversity: from the more pop punk and emo-informed Koyo, Stand Still, Savitski’s former band Anxious, and the Have Heart-Basement supergroup Fiddlehead to the metallic fury of Take It to Heart and Burning Strong. “I think there’s a lot of melodic bands that are starting to bring it back, but in a different way… hardcore is in a really cool position right now, and it’s awesome to see so many mixed bills.”
The hardcore textbooks say Trapped Under Ice ‘killed melodic hardcore’ with their 2009 debut album. While this may be true regarding the mainline hardcore scene, it neglects the success of melodic hardcore bands in the mainstream metalcore scene in the 2010s, like Counterparts, While She Sleeps, and Hundredth.
“Melodic hardcore didn’t die; it just evolved, and bands kept putting their own spin on it,” Luke Buckmaster, vocalist of UK band Hell Can Wait, tells me. “Counterparts and, for me personally, More Than Life and Dead Swans kept melodic hardcore alive by blending it with new influences.”
The last vestiges of the sound continued to develop in Australia and the UK, especially Wales, and were influenced more by Defeater and Touché Amoré’s take on the style. Some of these bands, mainly the ones based around the YouTube channel Dreambound, increasingly leaned into post-rock, with this era’s breakout ‘dreamcore’ band being Casey. As the decade progressed, the hardcore influence in dreamcore dissipated as Holding Absence, Crooks UK, and Endless Heights began creating a sound closer to a commercially accessible version of shoegaze and post-rock.
Hundredth’s 2017 switch to shoegaze and the 2019 disbandment of Casey drew a line in the sand. “Dreambound has done an incredible job of creating a platform for modern melodic hardcore bands, helping them reach fans globally,” says Buckmaster, “Dreambound bands tend to have cleaner production and a slightly more accessible sound compared to the rawness of early 2000s melodic hardcore, but they’re still carrying forward the genre’s core themes and emotional depth.”
“Hell Can Wait formed through a shared love of melodic hardcore and the desire to bring something fresh to the Brighton scene. We met through mutual friends and playing local shows, as well as just hanging out in the same music circles,” says Buckmaster. “I first got into 2000s melodic hardcore during secondary school, mainly through online forums and friends who passed around CD mixes. Bands like Have Heart, Verse, and Modern Life Is War were pivotal to me at that time.”
The group’s debut album, Reaching the Point Where Pain Ends, was released in August 2024, having spent their whole career in hardcore’s current wave of heaviness. “Right now, metallic hardcore and beatdown are very popular, especially in the UK,” he continues. “We have a lot of love for bands like One Step Closer and Anxious, who are pushing melodic hardcore forward in their own ways. They’ve been influential in keeping the scene alive and relevant, showing there’s still space for melodic hardcore in modern hardcore. We feel a kind of kinship through shared influences.”
Nationally, Hell Can Wait found their tribe with a new wave of underground bands: Without Love, Rosehill, and Downpour. “The scene I came up in was mixed, with hardcore, punk, metal, and emo influences intersecting, which I guess has shaped our sound.”
However, during this wave of popularity, an additional sect of melodious hardcore emerged, with Turnstile, Angel Du$t, Higher Power, and Scowl fronting what former Revolver editor Eli Enis coined ‘pop-hardcore’ in a 2023 episode of his Violent Treatment podcast. A style that traces its way to the 1990s alternative metal bands who originated from the hardcore scene (Quicksand, Orange 9mm, Helmet, post-1986 Bad Brains) and the groups who reincorporated that influence back into New York-style hardcore (Crown of Thornz, Snapcase, Alpha Omega-era Cro-Mags), pushing it into an even more melodic direction.
“Turnstile, Higher Power, and Scowl do incorporate melodic elements, but they’re more experimental and boundary-pushing with blending the genres.” says Buckmaster. “Turnstile has a lot of punk, alternative, and even some funk influences that aren’t typically part of classic melodic hardcore. ‘Melodic hardcore’ has a more specific emotional intensity with raw, personal lyrics mixed with hardcore intensity that bands like Have Heart and Verse perfected.”
Since only the end of 2023, melodic hardcore has expanded exponentially. Nick Washington, vocalist of the influential 2000s group Dead Swans, returned to the genre with Still In Love, with former members of Throats, Brutality Will Prevail, and Bring Me the Horizon. In August 2024, members of hardcore tastemakers Twitching Tongues launched their side project Holy Blade, which, along with Overexposure, revive the Bay Area’s goth-horror-hardcore style. Aaron Dalbec of Bane returned to the genre with Be Well. Even Ukrainian band Wallflower released their debut, The Place Where I Feel Free (2024), during the ongoing war with Russia.
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