What's working in Metalcore
This page turns into a live chart of real metalcore songs, ranked by Songbrain's virality score.
No metalcore songs on the public leaderboard yet — the chart opens at 10.
Counted: real uploads whose artists put them on the public leaderboard. Last update Oct 19, 2026.
Metalcore basics
General genre knowledge — not from the chart above.
4 things that make a metalcore track work
- 1Get to the first breakdown early. A short clip usually starts at the top of the song, not at the bridge.
- 2Write a clean chorus that still works sung alone, without the wall of guitars.
- 3Keep the guitar mids forward. Scooped tones turn to mush on phone speakers.
- 4Leave a beat of silence before the drop. The gap is what makes the hit land.
Metalcore questions
Is djent the same as metalcore?
No. Djent is a production style — palm-muted, syncopated riffs on extended-range guitars. Plenty of metalcore uses it, but metalcore is defined by the breakdown and the clean-versus-harsh vocal contrast.
How long should a metalcore song be?
Most land between 3 and 4 minutes. If the first breakdown arrives after the 1-minute mark, a lot of listeners never hear it.
Where do the numbers on this page come from?
From Songbrain's public leaderboard: songs that artists uploaded for analysis and chose to show publicly. Reference tracks from commercial releases are not counted. Each song gets a 0–100 virality score from its audio. The page refreshes weekly, and a genre's chart opens once it has 10 songs.