Remembering Never

Recent advances in the field of metalcore have made the term obsolete, applicable to too many disparate styles. Music ranging from concussive hardcore to technical metal increasingly relies on the same stylistic elements -- dissonant guitar squonks, double-bass-kick chugs, and angular momentum pivots. Remembering Never riffs and roars with the best of them, but metal is notoriously apolitical, and the Florida quintet has a lot to say about the world. So hardcore it is.

The vegan-vegetarian group shares frontman Pete K. with the straight-edge group Until the End. The prescient artwork of the band's second album, Women and Children Die First, features a person bound in rope with an American flag wrapped around his head. The rest of the beefy platter has plenty of genre-neutral material: It's two parts martyr complex ("For the Love of Fiction"), one part that simultaneously invites and laments the utter destruction of the songwriter's body and soul (the satirical "Serenading This Dead Horse"), one part threat ("The Grenade in Mouth Tragedy"), one part self-hatred because they love you so ("All That Glitters Is . . ."), and one hidden thrash track that makes all semantic debates moot. You can't draw a line in the middle of a hellacious pit.