Eyes Set To Kill are a Tempe, Arizona band whose music helped define a melodic, emotionally charged lane between screamo, post-hardcore, and metalcore. Formed in 2003 by sisters Alexia and Anissa Rodriguez with early collaborators, the band developed around the contrast between Alexia's clean vocals and guitar work, heavier screamed passages, and dramatic arrangements. Reach, The World Outside, Broken Frames, White Lotus, Masks, and later releases moved the group through scene-era post-hardcore, heavier metalcore moments, and alternative rock textures while retaining the Rodriguez-led identity. Eyes Set To Kill fit metal and hardcore scope through metalcore breakdowns, screamed vocals, post-hardcore structures, and a long touring history in heavy alternative scenes. Their music is often remembered for its blend of vulnerability and aggression: melodic lines that carry heartbreak or defiance are set against riffs and rhythms built for impact. The band also mattered as a visible female-led presence in a scene often dominated by male voices. Their strongest songs turn melodrama into momentum, using contrast as the engine that keeps beauty and heaviness in constant argument.

Albuquerque's Eyeslit arrived in 2021 trafficking in psychedelic experimental metal that defies easy genre placement, operating on the weirder fringes of New Mexico's underground. Their music weaponizes texture and disorientation, built less around conventional song structure and more around the unsettling potential of sound pushed to strange places.