Unsigned and Unholy: Rat King, Exhausted Prayer, Core of Io

Rat King aren’t really reinventing the post-hardcore wheel, but there’s something about their sound I find really invigorating. The guitars are big, tight and loud — the production style is closer to AxeFx’ed modern death metal — and the melodies are hooky and instantly memorable, as if these guys grew up listening to The Offspring and Green Day then discovered Converge later on. Dig their latest album Commonwealth below via Bandcamp:

Exhausted Prayer list Emperor, Opeth, Enslaved, Intronaut, and At the Gates as their primary influences, and really that’s not so far off, in that order: the foundation is black metal in aesthetic nature, but little tidbits of all of the aforementioned bands’ styles rear their heads in different ways. Here are some tunes from their Reverb Nation page:

I featured Core of Io here in May, but fuck it, this band rips, so here’s a new song and video of theirs. Protest the Hero, Coalesce, The Mars Volta… Core of Io… you get the idea. The proggy good stuff!