CAPRA formed in Lafayette, Louisiana in 2016, founded by guitarist Tyler Harper and drummer Jeremy Randazzo with the aim of recapturing the intensity of late-1990s and early-2000s hardcore. The band signed to Blacklight Media/Metal Blade Records and released their debut full-length In Transmission, featuring vocalist Crow Lotus's corrosive delivery over a dense metallic hardcore framework. They have since toured alongside acts including Eyehategod, Killswitch Engage, and KEN Mode.

Earth Crisis are a metallic hardcore band from Syracuse, New York, formed in 1989 around vocalist Karl Buechner and guitarist Scott Crouse. Combining hardcore's aggression with death metal heaviness and an unwavering commitment to straight edge and vegan ideology, they helped define the metalcore genre and the vegan straight edge movement with albums such as Destroy the Machines (1995) and Gomorrah's Season Ends (1996). Sociologist Ross Haenfler credited them as 'the face of straight edge throughout the 1990s'; after a hiatus from 2001 to 2007, they have remained active.

Enabler is a Milwaukee, Wisconsin metallic hardcore band formed in 2009, led by guitarist and songwriter Jeff Lohrber. The band fuses thrash, death metal, punk, and hardcore into a confrontational, emotionally raw sound that earned them placement on Southern Lord Records for their breakthrough album All Hail the Void (2012). A second full-length, La Fin Absolue Du Monde (2014), followed on Creator Destructor/Earsplit Compound, with the band releasing material across multiple labels and formats.