The Used

About

Alternative Press once called them the kings of the 2000s emo scene, and The Used more than earned it. The Orem, Utah quartet built their reputation on Bert McCracken's raw, throat shredding vocals and a sound that blended post hardcore intensity with genuinely catchy melodies. Their 2002 self titled debut went platinum and launched singles like The Taste of Ink and Buried Myself Alive straight onto the charts. Their second album, In Love and Death, grew out of genuine tragedy and became one of the defining records of mid 2000s emo. The band kept pushing through lineup changes and stylistic shifts across nine studio albums, from the heavier Artwork to the more recent Heartwork in 2020 and Toxic Positivity in 2023. The 2020 single Paradise Lost, a poem by John Milton shows they are still finding new angles on the dense, emotionally loaded sound that made them a fixture of the genre.