Unsigned and Unholy: The Toontrack Edition, Part II, Featuring Hozo Okazaki, Internal Empires and Cognition

As part of our partnership with Swedish recording software makers Toontrack for Metal Month 2013 we’ve compiled another special edition of Unsigned and Unholy from bands featured on Toontrack’s Jukebox — check out the first edition here if you missed it a couple of weeks back. Submissions for the jukebox came from Toontrack’s entire customer base and were hand-picked by their staff to cover all styles of metal and be as varied as possible. And now we whittle those down even further! Here are three of my personal favorites.

Hozo Okazaki sounds kind of like Dream Theater’s softer side without the vocals, the prospect of which should excite James LaBrie anti-fans the world over. Right down to the buttery smooth guitar leads, the searing keyboards, and… alright, the drums aren’t as complex as DT. Think of this as an instrumental Dream Theater ballad.

Internal Empires kind of remind me of a more death metal version of Norway’s Shining. There’s no saxophone and no industrial element, but there’s a similar wonky sense of rhythm and composition that I’m digging.

The intro of this Cognition song puts in focus just how blurry the line is between doom and breakdowns. The rest of the song leans more towards the breakdown side of things, but isn’t that an interesting point? Doom = slow breakdowns. Check it: