@River Baker

Discover new music from artists we think you'll like. Refreshed every Friday.

As the 2000s began, hard rock had a nu-metal hangover: Limp Bizkit’s rugged riffage still had teeth, while P.O.D.’s thundering anthems and Papa Roach’s slash-and-burn approach rose to prominence. The genre was given an electrifying creative jolt by Linkin Park, a California group whose hip-hop-tinted take on nu-metal—and frustration-filled lyrics that zeroed in on the pain of personal shortcomings—felt fresh and energetic, not to mention all too relatable to a generation paralysed by post-September 11 uncertainty and turmoil. In fact, although ’90s superstars such as Foo Fighters and Red Hot Chili Peppers continued to churn out comfort-food hits, a new breed of ambitious hard rockers captured the decade’s winds of change. Muse and My Chemical Romance unleashed heroic glam epics, Evanescence embraced an operatic vocal delivery and radio-ready acts like Shinedown merged unstoppable hooks with roiling emotional angst.

Skillet specializes in hard-hitting CCM buttressed by alt-rock guitars and John Cooper's gritty howl. After a clutch of albums firmly rooted in the Christian rock scene, the ambitious crew pierced the mainstream with 2001's Alien Youth; the crushing title cut sports burly grooves and riffs plunged in grainy fuzz. They later ratcheted up both the tempo and volume on the 2009 crossover smash “Monster,” a relentlessly driving examination of personal demons and weakness. Showing off their versatility, “Sick of It” retains their trademark heaviness while adding cold, jarring synth work.

The best songs for getting you through that final lap or set. Our editors regularly update this playlist—if you hear something you like, add it to your library.

The commercial resiliency of alt-metal and post-grunge really is astonishing. After all, many of the biggest hits of the 2010s came from veteran hard rockers (Disturbed, Three Days Grace, Breaking Benjamin) rooted in these ’90s subgenres. Exceptions emerged, of course. While Greta Van Fleet’s Led Zeppelin-inspired rave-ups and Ghost’s doom-metal nightmares may seem, at first blush, radically different from each other, the success of both reflected the growing number of young acts revisiting ’70s metal. Even Denmark’s Volbeat, around since the mid-2000s, finally broke in the United States thanks largely to their classic metal riffs. The mainstreaming of metalcore and hardcore also warrants mentioning: Bring Me the Horizon and A Day to Remember gradually attained stardom thanks to their knack for mixing furious breakdowns with sparkling pop productions. It represented a genuinely fresh twist and perhaps a sign of future developments for hard rock.