Terror With Emmure, After the Burial, Miss May I, and Thick as Blood

Los Angeles-based five-piece Terror formed in 2002, after the '90s golden years, when hardcore was still hard. Still, burly frontman Scott Vogel and company have from the beginning fought the good fight, keeping the music pummeling and punishing but without any of today's trendy death-core trappings. Whenever Terror flirts with metal, it's how it should be done properly in hardcore – with lightning-speed riffs and solos, harking back to classic thug-thrash acts like MOD.

For being something of lone wolves in a pack of weak puppies, Terror has been rewarded with a fiercely loyal following and relatively high sales for its scene. The band's 2006 album, Always the Hard Way, even hit the Billboard Heatseekers and Top Independent Records charts. Of course, it helps that Vogel was long popular for fronting legendary Buffalo, New York, bands like Slugfest, Despair, and, most famously, Buried Alive. Live, he is notoriously, gleefully erratic, spewing commands that are collected on the internet as "Vogelisms." Sample: "If you know the words to this song, come up and help me sing along — it's called, 'Keep Your Mouth Shut!'" Get more on Twitter at @vogelismsdotcom, and hear the band live at Culture Room on Tuesday.