Hatebreed and Agnostic Front

Hatebreed creates soundtracks for skydiving, with its gruff lyrics providing the confidence boost and its blistering intensity mirroring the adrenaline rush. After all, Vin Diesel parachute-tested the Connecticut band's "I Will Be Heard" in XXX's signature scene. Agnostic Front apparently plays the kind of hardcore that makes people mosh in museums while a freakish female mauls a broken-toothed man in a decorative scarf. So suggests the Cremaster cycle, Matthew Barney's epic art-film series that casts the trailblazing outfit as the Guggenheim's house band. In Cremaster, Agnostic Front repeatedly restarts its songs before reaching any of its cathartic double-time payoffs, building unbearable tension. Onstage, though, the New York thrash thugs race to every bone-crushing climax.