Crown the Empire don’t expand the boundaries of metalcore so much as plough right through them. Recorded in 2012, with the Dallas band’s members barely out of their teens, The Fallout is a bold full-length debut: a dizzying rush of clean/dirty vocals and breakdowns smothered in synth-infused pop hooks, EDM beats and a sense of the theatrical as dark and grandiose as anything from their peers in ICE NINE KILLS. But while 2016’s Retrograde and its 2019 follow-up, Sudden Sky, find them pivoting to a mix of dystopian electronic music and hard rock, both albums prove that Crown the Empire refuse to be hemmed in by genre.