What Are the Best Metalcore Guitar Solos? Fans on Reddit Debate
What are the best metalcore guitar solos? It's something fans are hotly debating.
With its emphasis on down-tuned chugs and crushing breakdowns, metalcore is not necessarily a subgenre commonly associated with guitar solos. But there are plenty of incredible six-string showcases if you know where to look (and listen).
A recent thread in the r/metalcore subreddit sought to get to the bottom of the issue, inviting users to submit their picks for best metalcore guitar solo. The criteria were simple: “[It] doesn’t have to be the most technical, just the kind of solo that makes you replay it a few times and defines the song.”
Read on to see Redditors’ top picks.
Best Metalcore Guitar Solos: Bullet For My Valentine, All That Remains + More
The most popular suggestion on the Reddit post, with more than 170 upvotes at the time of this writing, was Bullet for My Valentine’s “Hearts Burst Into Fire.”
The song served as the second single off the Welsh band’s 2008 sophomore album Scream Aim Fire, which reached No. 4 on the Billboard 200 and became their bestselling album to date, with over 1.4 million copies sold worldwide.
Listen to the Guitar Solo on Bullet for My Valentine's "Hearts Burst Into Fire"
The second- and third-most popular suggestions both came from All That Remains: “Two Weeks,” off 2008's Overcome, and “Six,” off 2006's The Fall of Ideals.
The former is the group’s highest-streamed Spotify song, with over 107 million plays; the latter appeared as a bonus track in Guitar Hero II and gave many players a brutal finger workout.
Listen to the Guitar Solo on All That Remains' "Two Weeks"
Listen to the Guitar Solo on All That Remains' "Six"
Not all of the picks dated back nearly 20 years.
One user suggested “Snowblood,” a 2021 track by technical metalcore stalwarts Erra, a sentiment shared by several other users.
Overall, though, most of the popular submissions came from the mid-2000s metalcore boom.
As I Lay Dying’s “Nothing Left,” Avenged Sevenfold’s “Second Heartbeat,” August Burns Red’s “Mariana’s Trench” and Trivium’s “A Gunshot to the Head of Trepidation” also entered the conversation.
For our money, there’s no shortage of Avenged Sevenfold songs that could fit on this list. Although they began transitioning out of metalcore on City of Evil, we’d be remiss not to shout out the incredible solos on “Bat Country” and “Beast and the Harlot.”
Unearth’s “My Will Be Done” and Killswitch Engage’s “In Due Time” are full of guitar acrobatics too.
Listen to the Guitar Solos Avenged Sevenfold’s "Beast and the Harlot"
What are your favorite metalcore guitar solos? Let us know!
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Gallery Credit: Jake Richardson