MORE UNSIGNED AND UNHOLY: SOME GOOD BANDS AND A GREAT ONE!

• Exist: Forward-thinking, forward-pushing progressive experimental metal with plenty of guts and grit, ala Intronaut or an intensified Cynic. These Marylanders actually remind me a lot of Carnal Rapture, an amazing Italian experimental metal band who sent me their demo last year; they’re jazzy in just the right measures, brutally heavy in others, and sometimes both at once. They know when to turn the brutality on and when to turn it off, and nothing sounds forced or cliche. I’m reasonably sure some of this guitar and bass work is off the cuff, too. This band makes me horny! Listen to their In Mirrors EP at Bandcamp, and download it entirely for free at their official website.

• Benevolent: These Kuwait-based Labanese (!) metallers sound kinda like Scar Symmetry but a shade darker/heavier and a shade less overtly catchy. Pretty good stuff. Their new EP Divided is available at their Bandcamp page for free.
• Synthetic Breed: Similar name aside, these Australians remind me a whole lot of Sybreed’s industrialized crushing metal attack. These guys take it to a whole other level beyond just incorporating industrial elements into their music, though, to the point where they just sound like one super-tight, well-oiled metal-making machine in all regards. Think the tightness / mechanized sound of Fear Factory but without [as many of] the nu-metal overtones and a more Euro metal sensibility. They’re not reinventing the wheel, but they’ve definitely got their own sound.
• Rorcal: Crushing… slooooow…. plodding… dinosaur heavy….. dooooooooooooooooom. With flashes of dissonance and other auditory ear candy in just the right doses. Unfortunately their MySpace page only has two samples, each 2:30 in length, which in Doom Years is like 2 seconds.

-VN