Integrity

About

Also known as: Integrity 2000

Few bands have left a fingerprint on heavy music quite like Integrity. Formed in Cleveland in 1988 around the singular vision of Dwid Hellion, they took hardcore punk and dragged it somewhere far darker, pulling in heavy metal, gothic rock, industrial noise, and a fixation on doomsday cults and western esotericism. Their 1991 debut Those Who Fear Tomorrow was universally panned on release, with critics warning it would "ruin hardcore". Instead it helped birth metalcore, and bands like Converge, Hatebreed, and Killswitch Engage owe a serious debt to what Integrity laid down in those early years. The band went through some wild lineup shifts over the decades, including a stint as Integ2000 with members of Mushroomhead, before settling in Belgium in 2003. They kept releasing records well into the 2010s, with Howling, For the Nightmare Shall Consume arriving in 2017. Writers have thrown labels like "apocalyptic hardcore", "thrillingly nihilistic gothic hardcore", and "Southern Gothic" at them, which gives you a fair sense of what you are in for. Musically they pull from an enormous range, stretching from Black Sabbath and Celtic Frost all the way to Joy Division, Bauhaus, and Howlin Wolf.