Chiodos, a sextet from Michigan (vocalist Craig Owens, guitarists Pat McManaman and Jason Hale, keyboardist Bradley Bell, bassist Matt Goddard, drummer Derrick Frost), joined the crowded ranks of screamo/emocore with the EP The Heartless Control Everything (Search and Rescue, 2003) and the full-length All's Well That Ends Well (Equal Vision, 2005). The latter tempered the hardcore fury with synthesizer and piano. They basically grafted screamo vocals, metalcore attitude, and heavy-metal bombast onto Mars Volta's theatrical progressive-rock.

The producer added strings and horns to the more elegant Bone Palace Ballet (2007), that included the power-ballad Intensity in Ten Cities and especially Lexington. But Chiodos continued to waste too many ideas in pointless song structures that cannot accomodate them.

Jason Hale was replaced by Thomas Erak of Fall of Troy.