All three were pretty good, although the third one had absolutely crap sound quality (due to Youtube, I assume). I really like the Archangel track. It's funny how I've always assumed that I don't like metalcore, but when done right, I evidently enjoy it more than regular old death metal.

Basically, Archangel is awesome and I need to get one of their albums.

Go for Dead Man Walking. It's violent metalcore with the best Slayer leads, as opposed to most of those bands who just used Slayer riffs. I basically wore that album out a couple years ago. And that Maroon album just didn't have the best production. Maybe the video was bad quality, but a lot of those bands just didn't have the money for good production. The kind of bands who release a lot of splits, nawmsayin?

Holy crap I suck at this. I want to get back to it, but I've forgotten where I even got to, plus all of those Youtube videos are killing my PC when I try to leaf through the pages and catch up. I think I'll catch up by being selective like a dirty little cheater.

Some recs I'd like to see your opinion on:

Weezer- The Blue Album
Weezer- Pinkerton
Hum- You'd Prefer An Astronaut
The Dwellers- Whatever Makes You Happy
Shai Hulud- My Heart Bleeds The Darkest Blood
Saves The Day- Through Being Cool
The Get Up Kids- Something To Write Home About
Alice In Chains- Dirt

Most of these are on YouTube, except for The Dwellers album

Just a few random recommendations I thought you might like.

I have no idea if you'll like this, but try "Land of the Dead" by Summoning. It has synth/symphonic parts you might like, but idk if you'll like its harsh vocals or harsh black metal guitars. I also don't know what bm you already know, but this is a starting point.

He already knows BM. If he's turned off by anything considered "harsh" with Summoning then Mic is truly a vagina.

Harsh is fine. It's the being boring part that bothers me about most BM.

Summoning is more like D&D dungeon crawl soundtracks with black metal vocals than actual black metal.

Summoning's synths certainly mellows their sound by a lot, it's just the production and layering of the tremolo riffs on Land of the Dead are particularly harsh for them as a band, not so much compared to other black metal. All I knew about Mic's taste was he liked some symphonic metal, so something like LotD could come across as relatively harsh if his perspective hadn't been tempered with black metal or something harsher before.

I personally find this song I'm about to rec less harsh than LotD, but it is more energetic for bm.

"The Wealth of Darkness" by Keep of Kalessin