Thou, "There There"
This is how Thou's album Algiers ends, which is a collection of assorted EPs and singles. There's something so elemental about the way that Thou sounds. Something about the entire sound of the band is downright contemptuous. Lots of bands manage to sound ugly, or grim, or noisy, or just generally awful. Thou somehow manages to sound spiteful, which is a neat trick. Well, I dunno about neat. Anyway, this collection isn't a bad place to start with Thou. Or Heathen, which is a great metal album name.
No Use For A Name, "51 Days"
Southern California punks No Use For A Name kind of sound like so many other SoCal punks from the mid 90s. They're distinguished by lasting a really long time (AllMusic lists 12 albums), which is something. However, I can't say they're really distinguished by much else.
PIG, "The Seven Veils"
The theatricality of PIG is really the best attribute that the band has, because it's just so over the top so much of the time. It often winds up sounding almost show tune-adjacent, in a weird kind of way. Raymond Watts just isn't afraid to sound corny, and bless him for it. KMFDM's loss is the rest of our gain.
Ugly Duckling, "The Takedown"
You know, I really do like the first three Ugly Duckling albums. I do kind of wish that I'd stopped there, though, as their subsequent stuff just doesn't do a whole lot for me. This just kind of comes across as an echo of their previous stuff.
Baroness, "Kerosene"
I kind of love that they just name their albums after colors. I love even more that when they decided to do a double album, they named it two colors. That's committment to the schtick! Purple is the most recent album, made after the band's terrifying bus accident, with the tour bus plummeting through a guard rail and multiple band members fracuring vertebrae. There was turnover in the band after the crash, and so Purple represents a change in the sound of the band. Dave Fridmann (longtime producer of the Flaming Lips) is on hand to fuzz things up, and to my ears, the whole thing sounds more rock and less metal. It's good, but maybe not quite their peak.