A lot of the albums on this list were crucial precedents to the mainstream boom of metalcore in the early 2000s, but it would be understandable if you came to the genre through popular melodic metalcore bands like Killswitch Engage and never felt like these '90s bands could scratch the same itch. That wouldn't be the case with Poison the Well, though. Their 1999 debut album
The Opposite of December was a major milestone in establishing the more melodic sounds that would dominate mainstream metalcore, but still raw enough that it fits in with the more abrasive albums on this list. Crossover between metalcore, post-hardcore, and emo was common, and
The Opposite of December was much more rooted in emo's melodrama than in tough-guy metalcore. They're sort of the connecting tissue between earlier metalcore bands like Earth Crisis and Snapcase and more popular post-hardcore bands like
Thrice and
Thursday. The album constantly goes back and forth between screamed vocals and clean vocals, as most of the popular melodic metalcore bands (and popular post-hardcore bands) would, but it's void of the overly polished and overly whiny tendencies that a lot of their followers had. Listening to the album now, it's fun to hear the kind of music that got
very popular in the 2000s but in this much rawer, much more modest way. And if you're looking at
The Opposite of December through a lens of today's metalcore comeback, it's easy to draw a direct line to this album from current bands like Ithaca and Vein. While Poison The Well may have sometimes been wrongly grouped with the cheesier "mall punk" bands of their time (their 2002 sophomore album
Tear from the Red is a noticeable step forward and just as classic as their debut, and late-period albums saw them doing some pretty cool, unexpected stuff), it seems like the current metalcore renaissance -- and
the band's reunion -- are helping to firmly establish them as the important, influential band they always were. (Also, fun fact: guitarist Derek Miller, who played on
The Opposite of December and left PTW in 2004, later became famous as one half of Sleigh Bells.)