Ever screamed so long and loud that you suddenly started spitting specks of blood and chunks of lung onto the microphone?
Well, we here at Crossfade are now halfway through an insane screeching spree of exactly that kinda throat-shredding intensity. And it's called the 50 Best Miami Bands of All Time.
Of course, it hasn't been entirely hardcore. We've also gone back to Calle Ocho with Miami Bass Warriors, gobbled a couple hotdogs with Avenue D, rolled deep with Ricky Rozay's Triple C's, and party-partied with Afrobeta's neo-freestyle.
Yet all along, we haven't stopped screaming. Check the cut for numbers 30 to 26.
30. Holy Terrors
Though spawned in the sparkling sonic cesspool of late-'80s post-punk indie rock, The Holy Terrors didn't finally flop into this world until 1990, when a couple of Boston guys (Rob Elba and the late Dan Hosker) decided to abort one band (Inside Outburst) and flee for South Florida ("the land of vacationing French-Canadians, retirees, and the $5.95 early bird special") to start anew.
Here in Miami, Elba and Hosker met future Interpol drummer Sam Fogarino, bass players Frank Labrador and William Trev, not to mention experimental superproducer Frank "Rat Bastard" Falestra. And that's the moment when the Terrors were born. But while the band didn't last all that long (despite intermittent resurrections in recent years), it still created enough immaculate noise -- a pair of seven-inch singles, "Spirit/Shine/Stranger" and "Cigaretello/Bad Thing," and a full-length record, Lolitaville -- to prove that SoFla's urban sprawl is just as capable of breeding existential squall as ass-blasting party music. -- S. Pajot
29. Clay D & The Get Funky Crew
Hypeman and producer Clayton Dixon, better known as Clay D, was one of the most reliable talents of the early Miami bass era, recording a string of seminal singles under various guises between 1988 and 1991. One thing that wasn't consistent, though, was his crew. After forming the original Get Funky Crew with rapper Prince Rahiem and DJ Swift to release 1988's You Be You and I Be Me, Clay D was forced to regroup when Swift and then Rahiem left the fold, releasing 1991's We're Goin' Off with an entirely new posse dubbed "The New Get Funky Crew."
Somewhere amid all this was the Get Fresh Girls and their 1990 single "Trickin' (I Seen Your Boyfriend)," and Clay and Rahiem's 1990 collabo album, Pull It All the Way Down. While this is all very confusing, what's crystal clear is how indebted Lil Jon, crunk music, and perhaps LMFAO's "Shots" are to Clay D's '91 drinking-song masterpiece "Give Me a Bottle." -- Jesse Serwer
28. Laundry Room Squelchers
Are you some kinda sheltered norm whose record collection (or, uh, iTunes library) is just chockablock with Goo Goo Dolls and Enya? Well, it's about freaking time that you got brutalized by Laundry Room Squelchers, "America's Premier Non-Geek Noise Collective" and Miami's most completely unpredictable perpetrator of sonic skull-fuckery. The experience will either change your life or ruin it.
Led by the ever-essential Frank "Rat Bastard" Falestra (who's already been mentioned twice on this list as a member of Scraping Teeth and the producer of Holy Terrors), this so-called collective is basically Rat and a perpetually changing gang of random deviant freaks with an unhealthy interest in making terrible sounds, beating the shit out of amps, and occasionally spilling blood. Unfamous all around the globe, the Squelchers' auditory chaos is the animating force behind the annual International Noise Conference world tour. And it's also a pretty good approximation of the sound you'll hear if the Atlantic Ocean ever boils over onto South Beach and the whole world goes ka-boom before sizzling into non-existence. -- S. Pajot
27. ¡Mayday!
In May 2006, six-man hip-hop crew ¡Mayday! slammed its hustle into warp speed with a sneaky ploy to redirect traffic from porn sites to the official clip for then-new single, "Groundhog Day," featuring Cee-Lo. The result: A massive two-million-views-in-a-single-day viral YouTube hit that earned the outfit a ton of notoriety and even some ink in the New York Times.
Fast-forward six years and the ¡Mayday! dudes -- Wrekonize, Bernz, Plex Luthor, Gianni Cash, Lt. Hopkins, and Nonymous -- still haven't stalled their scheme. They've collabed with Lil Wayne. They've scored a stellar deal with Tech N9ne's Strange Music. They've treked across the continent on two consecutive three-month tours. They've stormed the Billboard charts. And they've recently released Take Me to Your Leader, a slab so sick that it's sucked in hipster hoppers, street heads, and soda-stained ICP fans. From the Gathering of the Juggalos to YouTube and MTV, ¡Mayday! just might be Miami rap's future. -- S. Pajot
26. Poison the Well
At the end of the last century, Poison the Well came screaming and shredding outta the sweaty pits of South Florida's hardcore punk scene with its first burst of recorded noise, The Opposite of December. That album's aggro-emotional explosiveness (not to mention the thick-necked howling of Hialeah native Jeffrey Moreira and the band's intricate, eminently moshable songwriting) helped set the standard for early-2000s post-hardcore, earned PTW an international reputation as the quintessential metalcore crew, and eventually propelled the band toward a shortlived major-label deal with Atlantic Records.
Over the next decade, PTW released another four albums and toured every dirty punk room from Portland to Prague. But they never left Miami. Predictably, there were intraband squabbles and even defections, including longtime guitarist Derek Miller's departure in 2005. Yet the band remained focused and intense, relentlessly reinventing itself while other metalcore-associated acts became lame cliches.
On hiatus since 2010, this band might never reunite. But Poison the Well will never fucking die.
Check out the other installments of Crossfade's 50 Best Miami Bands of All Time:
-From 50 to 46: Scraping Teeth, Frank Williams & The Rocketeers, Iko Iko, ANR, Miami Bass Warriors
-From 45 to 41: Nuclear Valdez, The Goods, Locos Por Juana, Cynic, Avenue D
-From 40 to 36: The Agency, Pygmy, Suenalo, Triple C's, The Crumbs
-From 35 to 31: Quit, Young and Restless, The Reactions, Afrobeta, Cavity
-From 25 to 21: Critical Mass, Phoenicia, The Dogs, Chickenhead, Floor
-From 20 to 16: Buckwheat Boyz, The Mavericks, Against All Authority, T-Connection, The Eat
-From 10 to 6: Murk, NRBQ, Exposé, Poison Clan, Load
-From 5 to 1: KC and the Sunshine Band, Sam & Dave, Harry Pussy, Miami Sound Machine, 2 Live Crew
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