YOU SAY TOMATO, I SAY FRANCESCO ARTUSATO

A few questionable signings aside, there’s no denying that Sumerian Records is one of the few modern metal record labels with real, actual A&R and artist development, and one of the only labels that routinely takes chances on far left-of-center acts that wouldn’t stand a chance elsewhere. It’s actually pretty remarkable that wonky instrumental metal is getting such a big push in 2011, some two decades after the sub-genre’s peak. And if there’s any label that can effectively promote this kind of music to the masses it’s Sumerian, whatwith their label+agency+management all-in-one business model and an incredibly strong brand identity of what it means to be on Sumerian (ya know, Sumeriancore, more or less). The only other label with a similar forward-thinking setup is Prosthetic, and hey, lookit, they do well with lots of oddball prog acts too.

Case in point: on June 28th Sumerian released not one but two solo instru-metal records. We gave a fair amount of coverage to Evan Brewer’s solo bass album Alone — a solo bass album fer chrissakes! that such a thing even exists as a signed act is awesome — but the other release, All Shall Perish shredder Francesco Artusato’s shreddy shredsterpiece of shred, Chaos and the Primordial, went a bit overlooked. It’s a killer album, natch — All Shall Perish didn’t import this guy all the way from Italy [via Berklee College of Music] for nothing — so all you guitarists and wannabe guitarists and ex-guitarists best get to checking out the album’s title track above and at the Francesco Artusato Project’s Facebook page and ordering the album here. ‘Cause every shredder has to attach “Project” to their name when releasing a solo record, duh, this is like the #1 cardinal rule of shred records.

-VN