Chris Brown’s ass is as flat as his band’s career trajectory since 2002’s “Headstrong.” Brown’s racist MAGA rants have earned him verbal beatdowns from the likes of Power Trip’s Riley Gale (R.I.P.), The Acacia Strain’s Vincent Bennett, Every Time I Die’s Steve Micciche, I Prevail’s Eric Vanlerberghe and more. Like we’d start with anyone other than the genre’s one-hit wonders whose greatest crowd-puller these days is the Twitter meltdown du jour (We’re expecting a block in 3…2…1). In that spirit, we embarked on a noble study in order to objectify and rank the butts of butt rock, from flattest to fattest, to determine who is really deserving to wear the crown, errrrr pants, of the genre. The singers only show how they REALLY feel when they unveil their deep-seated hatred via some classic toxic oversexualization that often doesn’t just flirt with misogyny it proudly forces itself on it. One of the more defining features of butt rock is intense self-loathing that is, more often than not, redirected from inward to everywhere with aggro machismo. The easiest example to give, without outright naming the acts who appear below, is James Hetfield’s legendary YEAH-EE-YEAHHHHH - without the cool that comes with, you know, being a member of Metallica. The timbre is deep and marked by over-annunciation.

It’s the kind of term you might not know, but as soon as you hear it, you recognize it.

Beyond the collision of grunge-inspired clean passages and alt-metal riffs is the defining vocal attribute: the yarl. The music, for the uninitiated (or those mercifully too young to remember), is the kind of post-grunge hard rock that takes out the, well, grunge and replaces it with a radio sheen. Nothing but Rock.”) quickly morphed to butt rock - and the butt of rock jokes was born. Apparently shit-posting existed before it took over the internet, as the 1990s radio tagline (“Rock. It’s a vast gulf between Imagine Dragons and the “fucking rock” that relegates all other stations to “whimpy little snowflakes for not playing rock like we do.” The joke’s got a basis in the real world campaign that purportedly named one of guitar-based music’s most maligned subgenres: butt rock. There’s a sort-of-meme that’s been doing the rounds that highlights the hilarious disparity between what “rock” stations claim and actually play.

All shinedown albums ranked