Volbeat

Volbeat should not work on paper — Elvis crooning over Metallica riffs, from Copenhagen — and yet they became one of Europe’s biggest hard-rock exports, with US radio numbers most legacy bands envy. Michael Poulsen’s death-metal past (Dominus) keeps the riffs honest.

The lab tracks them as the other Danish node: proof that genre collision, done with total sincerity, out-draws genre purity.