“Squid Game,” courtesy Netflix.

So we’re all watching “Squid Game,” right?

If you missed it, “Squid Game” is a ludicrously violent, ridiculously tense, emotionally devastating South Korean drama about kids’ games to the death to win—if my math is correct—about $38 million. It’s on Netflix and I can never decide whether to recommend people watch it or warn people not to. But either way it’s fantastic.

This also means South Korea is in the American public’s consciousness. The lazy columnist would piggyback off this to list five of the best K-pop groups, but I’m not going to do that, because I don’t like boy bands without nostalgia making them sound better than they are. No. I’m going to be like the slightly less lazy columnist and list Korean metal bands instead.

BURSTERS — “Smell the Rot”

Let’s kick this off far removed from K-pop with a metalcore band.

The band initially got its start on “Superstar K,” because every country has its own suite of TV talent shows that generate essentially all popular music. I only wanted to pick one contestant from the show, so it was between these guys and Season 4 winners DickPunks, and it was a really close call. On the one hand, I like Bursters’ music more. On the other hand, DickPunks’ name is DickPunks, and that’s funny.

ClownUs — “Bring Me To Life”

It’s almost a disservice to symphonic metal band ClownUs to feature this viral cover of an Evanescence song. ClownUs’ original stuff is dark and beautiful and amazing. But… come on, this is so much better than the Evanescence original, right?

I’m just stating facts. The guitars shred harder, the solo is great, the vocals are somehow more powerful than Amy Lee’s, and oh my God is the metal growling better than the wholly unnecessary rapper. It’s what the song has always wanted to be.

Dark Mirror Ov Tragedy — “I am the Lord Ov Shadows”

OK, I may have lied in the first entry. I said metalcore was far away from K-pop, but this is farther. Black metal is as far away from K-pop as is possible. And this is full-blown corpse-painted black metal.

Really, though, you can’t deny that BTS would be improved by corpse paint. I mean, if they change their music to match, that’d be great, but just normal boy band music in corpse paint is the best idea I or anyone else has ever had. Someone call their management.

Crash — “Crashday”

Our tour of metal continues with one of my favorites, thrash metal.

Crash has been around since 1991 and the experience shows. There’s certainly an appeal to a young thrash band, who isn’t experienced enough to have learned the value of pacing yourself and that still have that controlled chaos. That said, there’s also an appeal to a thrash band with 30 years of experience. It’s more precise, it falls into perfect sync and there’s the illusion of chaos created with a tightly choreographed sonic ballet.

Is either better? Go to literally any metal fan message board for some very strong opinions. But I think they both sound great, and Crash is a great example of the latter.

Black Hole — “Rock It”

This was extremely hard to find!

I don’t remember when I was introduced to Black Hole’s 1989 debut album, Miracle, but it’s amazing. It’s this bizarre blend of Kill-‘Em-All-era Metallica, AC/DC, Whitesnake and every other branch of rock or metal of the ’80s. And it’s done incredibly well!

Unfortunately, it’s not as online as I’d like. It’s on Spotify under the wrong title, dated 2005, on a page with an album that I’m pretty sure isn’t theirs. This auto-generated page on YouTube only appears to have the one song. And it’s not like it’s an uncommon search term.

But listen! It’s so good.

Follow editor Daniel J. Willis and tweet column ideas to him at Twitter.com/BayAreaData.