Unsigned and Unholy, Special Dirt Fest Edition: Beast in the Field, Gift Giver, Ana

Dirt Fest has become an institution: the Michigan metal and hard rock festival has been running for longer than I can remember (since back when I lived in Ann Arbor, and that was a long fucking time ago!). If you live anywhere in the vicinity of the Mitten State and you’re a metalhead, Dirt Fest is where you’ll be tomorrow, end of story. Killswitch Engage headline this year’s fest, and other MS-approved acts include Battlecross and Chimaira. Dirt Fest has always been great about featuring the area’s best unsigned talent, so we’ve teamed up with the organizers to present a very special edition of Unsigned and Unholy. 

It’s kind of hard to believe there hasn’t been a band named Beast in the Field yet, but there you have it. Chances are you know what these guys sound like without hitting play (it’s all in the name), but I promise you it’s worth it to so do anyway: they’re all about the groove and the vibe, and I bet they’re a blast to watch live.

Gift Giver have a technical deathcore kinda thing going on. They also seem to really like weed a lot, so they’ve got my vote.

We need old-school grungey bands like Ana around to keep us grounded and to remind us that music wasn’t always so brutal. They do a good job of harking back to the era when Nirvana were the coolest band on the planet, but filtered through a modern prism that, thankfully, doesn’t call to mind buttrock radio bands like Seether and Theory of a Deadman.