Unsigned and Unholy: Giza, Persefone, After Earth

“Ambient doom” is the first thing that came to my mind when listening to Giza‘s Future Ruins. To some extent all doom is ambient, but Giza take it to new levels with lush, ethereal soundscapes underscored by delicate guitar passages that are usually played by bands at twice the BPM found here. Press play on the Bandcamp embed below and allow yourself to sink into an alternate dimension of dreamy, post-doom:

Persefone, from the tiny, landlocked European nation Andorra, play a brand of traditional progressive metal that feels both like a breath of fresh air and comfortingly familiar. Their music isn’t too far of a stretch from Dream Theater except that it’s more modern (read: more screaming vocals), but there also aren’t really any new bands making music like this amongst all the my-dick-is-bigger-than-yours proggy wank fest newbies of today (even though I dig many of those bands!). Check out “Spiritual Migration” below from the album of the same name, out March 29:

There’s something I really, really like about After Earth‘s approach. It reminds of Enslaved at their most progressive (Vertebrae in particular), with elements of death metal and other disparate sub-genres in play (this is hardly black metal at all). Songwriting is very good. It’s also really raw, but with a better mixing job this record would be top-notch. Here’s Ruin via Bandcamp: