20 Best Metal Albums Of Summer 2017

There's always been an "anti-metalcore" stigma deep within the elitist rock fandom. Ever since albums like Bullet for My Valentine's The Poison and Trivium's Ascendancy (both 2005), people have taken an immense amount of pleasure in deriding the sub-style as simply "death metal-light", with its emphasis on clean sing-alongs somehow "diluting" the final product.

And while with some bands this can be the case, Miss May I is an act that pumped out an amazing slice of melodic metal in 2017 with their magnum opus, Shadows Inside. A short album at just over half an hour, it is also one of the most tightly composed and focused metalcore records of all time, sticking to its harmonic guns whole-heartedly for its entire run-time.

Whether the music is brutal and thrashy or hard rock-inclined and anthemic, it fulfils the metalcore quota inordinately well, thanks almost entirely to the fact that four of Miss May I's five members lend their vocals to Shadows Inside, making for some of the best and biggest choruses of the year without fail.