Unsigned and Unholy: The Toontrack Edition, Featuring Kneel, Kalopsia and Engineering the Enemy

As part of our partnership with Swedish recording software makers Toontrack for Metal Month 2013 we’ve compiled a special edition of Unsigned and Unholy from bands featured on Toontrack’s Jukebox. 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.

Portuguese metal outfit Kneel remind of a cross between early Textures, early Mnemic and something far more dark and sinister like Gojira. Check them out on Bandcamp and stream their latest album’s opening track “Murmurs” below:

Kalopsia ought to appeal to fans of Dying Fetus, Obituary and other old-school-ish death metal of the alternately fast and stompy variety. These guys are from right in our backyard in New Jersey and have been stomping faces for over a decade; I even featured them in this space last year. Check ’em out on Bandcamp here and stream “Messiah Complex” below:

At first Engineering the Enemy come off as a modern-day Tool rip, but upon closer inspection there’s really a lot more here. Sure, the riffs are very Adam Jones-inspired, but there’s some ace lead guitar work here too and the song is super catchy. Listen to “Wish” below and check out the band on Reverb Nation:

Listen to Toontrack’s entire Metal Month jukebox here.