It’s no secret that a number of people on this site have a sizeable admiration for Deftones and a handful of other bands that aren’t quite metal by the standard definition.

I’m a fearless advocator of this clique of bands, and I’m always interested in left-of-center heavy rock bands that aren’t Tool or Deftones but share their inexplicable appeal. It just so happens that one these most delightful discoveries lives only a few hours away from my native Connecticut and has a killer debut album in serious need of some attention.

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A word to would-be U&U submitters: fer chrissakes, I am not “Liking” your band on Facebook just to listen to it. Any band guilty of not checking to make sure the songs on their Facebook music page are available for public listening will be summarily ignored.

Now that that’s out of the way… we’ve got another really good batch of unsigned bands this week with Solace, Mordenom and Water on Mercury. Check ‘em out after the jump.

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There’s more good unsigned metal out there than there’s time to listen to it, so I’ll stop yapping so you can get to listening: this week’s slate features The Armed, This Time It’s War and Vyathist. As it so happens, two of these bands were written about by two separate “Run MetalSucks For A Day” contest winners in consecutive years. Maybe Axl and I should just quit.

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More great unsigned bands! Let’s listen:

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Last time we featured young-gun experimental instrumentalists Chon in December of 2009 you guys seemed to really, really like ‘em, as I did. So you should all be happy to find out that Chon have a brand new song called “O.G.,” which you can stream below:

I can’t find any info about whether this song is part of an upcoming album or not… but who needs albums when each individual song is this good? I did find this tidbit, posted on their Facebook wall:

Yoooooo homies! We are recording and releasing ANOTHER NEW SONG AND AND AAAAAAAND RELEASING A MUSIC VIDEO next month!!!!! You as stoked as we are?

So at least there’s that to look forward to. Enjoy the new song above and let us know what you think.

-VN

Must… listen… to… everything… to… find… the… diamonds… in… the… rough! It’s exhausting but ultimately worth it. These unsigned bands made me raise an eyebrow recently:

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In a perfect world all the bands I feature in these Unsigned and Unholy columns would have legions of fans supporting them, appear on worldwide tours and rake in bucketloads of cash from their music. Unfortunately our world isn’t perfect, but I do what I can to get the word out and hope that all of these excellent bands continue making music despite a market that’s incredibly over-saturated with mediocrity (even amongst signed bands). This week we look at new music from Blue Ox, The Fallen Divine and Damascus.

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Unsigned bands continue to kill it! Three of my recent favorites, Skull Fist, Exemption and Caligula’s Horse, are briefly reviewed after the jump.

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You guys continue to impress me with the caliber of unsigned talent out there in the world. Keep it coming!

In this edition of Unsigned and Unholy we’ll look at ESM, Karhu and Ninjaspy, three of the most talented bands to hit my inbox in recent weeks.

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You know the deal… lots of great unsigned bands, so little time. Let’s do this:

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We’re not just one and done here at the MetalSucks Minister of Unsigned and Unholy Bands; when we feature bands as some of the best, up-and-coming unsigned artists we like to hear what they’re up to months or years after they’ve basked in the warm glow of MS’ readers love/hate. In this edition of Unsigned and Unholy we follow up on some of my past favorites, Dead on Both Shoulders, Burden and Picture It In Ruins.

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Heavy Blog is Heavy recently completed a multi-part series called “Five Reasons Why Metalcore Isn’t Total Shit,” in which they concentrated on some classic (or in at least one case I guess “near-classic”) releases which a) are actually metalcore — which is to say, music that combines metal with hardcore, not just, like, Lamb of God, or whatever idiots often refer to as “metalcore” — and b) were not, y’know. Total shit.

Well, if they do a series on five up and coming bands that make actual metalcore and aren’t total shit, I vote for them to include Cork’s Fat Actress, whose self-recorded debut EP, Hot Rubbish (ridiculously great album art above), is now streaming here.

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Click play on the above YouTube video. Do it if you like good metal.

If “In Crude, I Remain” by Orwell reminds you a tad bit of their fellow Wisconsonians in Iron Thrones you’ve actually hit the nail right on the head: Iron Thrones guitarist Steve Henningsgard produced their forthcoming album AVOHFASIH (out September 6th). No surprise then that Orwell kicks so much ass, as I wouldn’t expect Henningsgard to attach his name to anything that didn’t completely rule. Which isn’t to say that Orwell sound just like Iron Thrones — they’ve got their own thing happening — it’s just that there are clearly some sonic similarities. And that is a good thing.

Listen to the above track and let us know your thoughts.

-VN

Those arguing that streaming services like Spotify spell the death of the music business and therefore good music should take a look at our archive of Unsigned and Unholy posts. We could feed an army of metal-starved heshers for years with all the good shit we’ve unearthed (and bands have sent us) over the years. To that end, this week’s sounds for bleeding ears:

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Germany’s o.68 (short for Odpörovät 1968) make metal I could fall asleep to, and I mean that as a compliment. Sometimes I want metal to wake me up and sometimes I want metal to put me to sleep, ya know? If you were under the impression that gloom, doom and despair with growled vocals would prevent you from reaching dreamy-dream land, you probably haven’t heard o.68 yet. Their slow and soothing brand of funeral death-doom lulls me into a subdued state of relaxation and would have me dreaming of a mystical land of heavy metal vikings and princesses in no time.

While o.68 are technically signed to Ominous Silence, without the backing of a major metal label I feel they’re still a good fit for this column. Check out o.68′s new album Elend on Bandcamp; it’s good stuff!

-VN

I’m going to put about as much effort into writing this intro as Axl does into writing his Cinemetal Round-up intros. All you need to know is that by clicking through the jump you’ll be making yourself privy to three excellent and varied unsigned bands.

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When Hope Can’t Save the Dead‘s Tanner Taphorn (who, based on his name, is missing a seriously righteous career as a pornstar to try and make music) e-mailed us to check out his band, my first was reaction “Oh dear God no.” Why? Tanner described the group as “progressive deathcore” with “insane breakdowns,” which is just not all that appealing to me, and even less so in 2011.

But guess what? Hope Can’t Save the Dead are actually pretty good! They sound an awful lot like The Price of Existence-era All Shall Perish, which is a-okay by me. In other words: I think that Hope Can’t Save the Dead are a deathcore band that even us metal nerds are allowed to enjoy.

Check out Hope Can’t Save the Dead below, then call me a hypocrite and a fraud in the comments section.

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Ready for a few more unsigned gems? Here are the best of the bunch in this week’s mailbag:

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What separates an unsigned band from a signed one? In many cases, a record contract… that’s it.

The quality of the unsigned talent we receive in the MS inbox on a daily basis continues to amaze me. Yeah, a lot of it stinks; most of it in fact. But that we get at least two or three bands a day I could truthfully say are pretty darn good speaks to how modern technology and the Internet have really opened things up. Sure, there’s tons of crap: just ignore it! Record labels absolutely still have value, in the form of marketing expertise, distribution (but not for long), and financing / monetary support, so while I’d love to sit here and tell you that your unsigned band should just go it alone, that isn’t always practical (although sometimes it certainly is). It really does come to “right time, right place” for a lot of bands with regards to record labels / success. AKA, luck. So at MetalSucks we do what we can to help. With that in mind, here are some of the best unsigned bands to come our way lately:

• Butterfly Trajectory: Woeful and aching post-metal that’s delicate yet crushing, understated yet proggy. Kind of like Insomniun or Daylight Dies for the Coalesce-influenced post-metal set, if that makes any sense at all. This is one of the best unsigned bands I’ve heard in some time; the diamond in the rough, so to speak. Make sure you check these guys out!

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