5 Metalcore Bands That Went Dad Rock (For At Least One Album)

To repurpose Harvey Dent's most famous line from The Dark Knight: You either die a metalcore band or live long enough to see yourself become a dad rock band — and we've got a list of metalcore bands that went dad rock to prove it.

We don't necessarily blame these bands for the shift. Metalcore is, by and large, a young musician's game. Those larynx-shredding screams, blood-curdling riffs and pulverizing breakdowns are the result of youthful vitriol and a complete lack of inhibition (and, often, a lack of proper musical training). Millennial metalcore classics such as Avenged Sevenfold's Waking the Fallen and Bullet for My Valentine's The Poison were not necessarily written with longevity in mind.

READ MORE: The 'Big 4' Bands of 17 Metal Subgenres

Why Metalcore Bands Make the Jump to Dad Rock

As metal musicians — particularly vocalists — get older and accumulate more wear and tear, it can be prudent to move away from blistering metalcore toward a more anthemic, radio-friendly hard rock sound.

And sometimes those bands just prefer clean singing, anthemic hooks and supersized riffs inspired by the likes of Metallica, AC/DC and Guns N' Roses.

"It's gonna sound bad, but it's so much easier to write riffs and just scream over them," Avenged Sevenfold lead singer M. Shadows once told Loudwire. "When you have to come up with a vocal melody and the chord progressions have to work and the vocal melody has to be interesting, it's so much more challenging. But it's also, to me, a lot more fulfilling once you nail that. And as we were getting bigger, I just kept finding myself being more and more attracted to European power metal that was singing, like the Blind Guardians and the Sonata Arcticas."

Fittingly, Avenged Sevenfold are the most commercially successful act on our list of metalcore bands that went dad rock. Keep reading to see other bands that made the jump.

Want more metalcore? Check out our list of the best album from 11 legendary metalcore bands: