The best album of all time...hands down. TBS' debut on Victory Records, and the only one featuring John Nolan and Adam Lazzara. Great dual vocals, great lyrics, and catchyness combined like none other. Best song: "Cute Without the E"

Hailing from New Jersey, Thursday's second full-length is a post-hardcore blitzkrieg. Beautiful guitar work, poetic and meaningful lyrics, and unabashedly high-tension emotional vocals provided by Geoff Rickly. Released in 2001 on Victory; imitated many times since but never surpassed. Best song: "Understanding in a Car Crash"

Brand New’s sophomore effort, this album represented a hard left turn in comparison with their debut. Released in 2003, it combines folky acoustic-driven heart-on-sleeve ballads with full-on punk rock drive. Certainly an album of yings and yangs, this is often pointed to as the best of the genre. Best song: “The Boy Who Blocked His Own Shot”

Released in 2001, this is the Chicago punk trio’s third full-length. The band has admitted that they really tightened their sound up on this album, and it certainly shows. Matt Skiba is second-to-none when it comes to dark, anxious songwriting. Best song: “Mr. Chainsaw”

A staple of every teen-punk skater kid’s music collection, this is the album that skyrocketed blink into the big time. Complete with jibes aimed at “your mom,” this is the quintessential commercial pop-punk album. Featuring Travis Barker’s one-of-a-kind drumming, this album never slows down for 12 tracks. Best song: “Going Away to College”

The album that started the craze. Exponentially better than its two more mainstream successors, Bullets is a fast-paced kill-‘em-all romp that attracted some serious attention in the scene. Led by brothers Gerard and Mikey Way, this album shows us MCR well before they were a household name. Best song: “Honey This Mirror Just Ain’t Big Enough for the Two of Us”

The ‘59 Sound is a phenomenal sophomore effort by this New Jersey quartet; Brian Fallon shows a knack for working-class storytelling not seen since Bruce Springsteen, a fellow Jerseyite who Fallon taps heavily for inspiration and even quotes occasionally in his songs. Best song: “The Patient Ferris Wheel”

Released in 2001 on Vagrant, Saves the Day’s third full-length shows the band taking a further step away from their hardcore. However, Conley’s tortured and pseudo-violent songwriting remains intact despite a greater emphasis on the poppier aspects of the band. Best song: “Firefly”

TBS’s second album and first with Fred Mascherino as lead guitarist and second vocalist, Where You Want to Be sounds similar to Tell All Your Friends in all aspects besides production. The spitfire back-and-forth raging vocals are still there, as are Lazzara’s sometimes cryptic lyrics. Best song: “Set Phasers to Stun”

Alkaline Trio’s fourth album saw them continuing the trend begun with From Here to Infirmary of refining their sound. This is their last album, however which maintains their old punk sound. It also is the Alkaline Trio album that most evenly divides the songwriting between Matt Skiba and Daniel Andriano. Best song: “Fatally Yours”

Jimmy Eat World’s second album, and their first on a major label. This shows JEW before they refined and softened their sound on Clarity. All the usual signs of early “emo” are here: occasional full-on tortured screaming, generally hard-to-hear lyrics and loud-soft loud-soft dynamics. Best song: “Thinking, That’s All”

One of only two EPs to make this list, Put Up or Shut Up’s seven songs are better than either of All Time Low full-length efforts. A pop-punk band from Maryland in the same ilk as blink-182 or Fall Out Boy, All Time Low is one of the best newer bands in the scene currently. Best song: “Coffee Shop Soundtrack”

On their third full-length, Rise Against still maintained more of a hardcore sound than on later albums. The album is still more refined and focused than its predecessors, however. Also Tim McIlrath’s lyrics are at an all time high on this album. Best song: “Anywhere But Here”

Alkaline Trio’s debut shows the band as the fledgling punk outfit that it was. Released in 1998, Goddamnit has had an immense influence upon all recent artist of the scene. Although Matt Skiba has not yet reached his full songwriting potential at this point, his dark poetic lyrics are beginning to develop. Best song: “As You Were”

Senses Fail’s second full-length and their first with lead guitarist Heath Saraceno, formerly of Midtown fame. Nielsen’s vocals—his screaming especially—has become more refined by this point. Also, his lyrical content has shifted; favoring self-examining confessionals instead of pseudo-violent exposés. Best song: “Still Searching”

The Get Up Kids’ second full-length, released in 1999, has been hugely influential in the same way that Jimmy Eat World’s Clarity has been. Pop-punk in style, Something to Write Home About is widely regarded as a defining moment in the history of the scene, one that neither The Get Up Kids nor any other band has managed to recreate since. Best Song: “Holiday”

Released in 2005 on Equal Vision, this Michigan sextet’s debut full-length was a breath of fresh air into a post-hardcore scene filled with carbon copies and recreations. A unique feature of the band is that they prominently feature a pianist in their music. This album has excellent guitar work, astounding drumming, and Craig Owens superb vocals. Best song: “No Hardcore Dancing in the Living Room”

Jimmy Eat World’s fourth album saw them take a further step away from the “emo” genre they had helped found and towards pop-punk. Featuring a smash hit single—“The Middle”—Bleed American shows JEW refining their sound even further. Best song: “Bleed American”

The second EP to be featured in this list, I’m Sorry I’m Leaving is an all-acoustic showcase of four of the best songs Chris Conley has ever written, as well as one cover. Released between Can’t Slow Down and Through Being Cool, this is still the “teen angst” version of Conley’s songwriting. Best song: “Hold”

Saves the Day’s sixth full-length studio effort and most recent album—released in 2007—is different from the rest of their catalogue; however any true STD fan knows that no two STD albums sound exactly alike. This is due in part to their revolving door of band members and also in part to Conley’s ever-changing songwriting style. Best song: “Stay”