I've Got this huge fucking bag full of promos from unsigned bands.  There is no method for who gets picked, I just grab whatever, but I am doing my best to expedite this process. It's a bitch because I do the whole zine myself, but I want it to reflect my taste in music and to back the music I believe in. That said, here are some bands I believe in, some more than others.  Read on and spread the word…

When the three dudes of Dirt Worshipper look in the mirror I don’t think they see an accurate reflection of themselves. Chances are they have the wrong idea of what they sound like too. This Philadelphia trio has a bit of an odd sound you see and in their MySpace page they are self described as thrash and downtempo. Maybe it is just the production (raw and lo fi) or lack thereof, but their material doesn’t thrash around like a throwback act or any Testament worshipper and it surely doesn’t slug around like most self proclaimed downtempo acts. On the contrary, this is loose and messy metal. Some of the musicality is perhaps marred by the aforementioned raw approach to recording, but to yours truly, Dirt Worshipper has quite the blackened sound. Lyrically, they may be in an entirely different trip (the recording is titled The Misadventures of Dirtbag the Clown), but musically this sounds like a black metal band from the first half of the 90’s. Nothing polished about this trio, just riffs and more riffs and very hungry vocals. MySpace

One reason why I don’t like a lot of industrial metal is that usually the music feels and sounds too cold and soulless. Inswarm from Brooklyn make of the industrial aspects a great deal in their music, but somehow they make the stuff work by way of really good sludgy riffs, organic drum patterns and vocals that sound like they come from a suicidal space monster. Surely Death is No Dream (how about that for a pessimistic title?) is a pretty great record, where Inswarm have let that inaccurate spirit of organic music invade the proceedings and have concentrated solely in the power of each plodding track. The songs hammer away midtempo like a machine that’s too big and heavy to move any faster and the balance between what’s programmed and what’s strummed, banged and screamed in the end tilts to the doom. This record comes to a close with the stunning “Desperation for Oblivion”, a fourteen minute mindfuck, if there ever was one. Inswarm is the duo that also functions as the backing band for Jarboe, in Surely Death is No Dream they show that on their own they can deliver the goods just as well. MySpace

Fade Kainer, also from Inswarm, is now the vocalist of Batillus, who will be recording an album this May with Sanford Parker. A few months ago Batillus embarked on a tour named The Beard Destroyer alongside Hull and Salome  during which this three-song EP (that’s not the cover on the right) was sold.  For those unfamiliar with Batillus’ first recording, well nevermind this Ep is a giant step in the right direction. Where the first recording was solid and promising, this one blows it out of the water. The difference is not in the intensity of the delivery but in the atmosphere it creates.  And when I talk about atmosphere, I mean, it looks like it is going to rain fire on these dudes. Key difference being the presence of vocals which Fade provides…slowly, like a never ending frog croak (in my world that’s a compliment) he takes the natural doom sounds of Batillus into the twilight zone, or the realm of the wicked, into the kingdom of the uncomfortable. Holy shit, I don’t know how he never stops, but his vocals extend like elastic not so much vocalizing but just slipping into your nightmares. These awesome three songs shall be just a presage, the shape of blackened doom to come… MySpace

I have no clue how to pronounce the name of the Minnesota band Cwn Annwn. Their MySpace says that it is pronounced Coon-uh-NOON which doesn’t really help. Blood of the Djinn is their first Ep and it follows a 2006 full-length titled The Method of Murder, which was also self-released. The band plays traditional heavy metal with power metal leanings, which they do quite well. It is the modern and more contemporary stylistic insertions that substract some of the quality. The counteracting dual (female/male) vocals in “Calypso” and “The Djinn” are nothing short of obnoxious and a few metalcore additions don’t help, but to Cwn Annwn’s credit they keep the shit down to two songs. Vocalist Julie Schultz is the star here. Her melodic prowess makes this band perfect fodder for a label like Napalm Records. And if you know what I am saying, then you know that I don’t really dig this style.  Well-played, professional, clear recording, but not my thing at all. Not at fucking all.  Official Site

Miss Sheavy? Get some with Trippy Wicked & The Cosmic Children of the Knight. Actually, this is just as good as the sorely missed Canuck (still active but criminally overlooked) quartet. I tell you what is criminal, that Movin On, the band’s third full-length and fourth release, is being released independently, with no backing from any label. This Cosmic offspring play the type of lazy laid back hippy stoner that could appeal to those into the Rise Above catalogue, or those who think that Trouble with Kory Clarke at the mike is going to blow lots of dicks. No annoyance in the high pitch mike here either. Vocalist Pete Holland has this sometimes soothing, sometimes cracking range, he could be fronting a classic metal combo. Plus, I am not sure what’s going on with these songs, the more I listen to them, the heavier and more furious they get. The guitars just erupt! First time I listened to “Sea Shanty” I thought it was good, but today it sounds fantastic, blistering, an enduring classic of timeless stoner. MySpace 

Hails to Teeph from Chico, CA. At first I thought this was going to be a straight up sludge affair, then this trio reared its ugly grinding head. Teeph traverse many extreme genres, they fuck around with them all, they canoodle with the death and grind, pet the doom, master the sludge and caress the downtuned. Literally, one second they are an angular machine taking sharp turns like Tron in its motorcycle (or whatever that was), the next they are letting the notes fall into a dark abyss. That it works, is an accomplishment. And so Teeph’s appeal is pretty damn broad. Their songs are acerbic, like noise rock gone metal, like metal that knows no NWOBHM, like punk that’s gone awry and hardcore that’s way too dense for the chugga chugga heads, but somehow these songs don’t provide for a fractured listening experience.  This is their first self-titled release and Teeph are packing. Nine powerful beasts.  Cool cover artwork. MySpace

Expectations, like rules, were made to be broken. In the case of music reviewing, there are two types of expectations when it comes down to new bands; the kind of music they play and the quality of the music. With a name like Drowned Sorrow I actually had pretty low expectations.  I typically dislike monikers that have figurative meanings. You know, sorrow can’t be drowned, only in figure of speech. This entails certain romanticism or abstractism, which is put in evidence via song titles like “Alabama Come Clean”, “Deception Waves Hello” and “We’ve Contracted Death, Visit Often”. Quality-wise, Long Island’s Drowned Sorrow exceeded my expectations by far. Their first recording Fittings at the Coffin Shop is a bit over spastic, yes, excesses can exist in the most absurd of music genres and Drowned Sorrow exemplifies this, but these beardos have the chops and that’s undeniable. Drowned Sorrow shows that they can play what they want so this is a fine card of presentation, it is just a matter of shedding some of the excesses and focusing on more quality songs. Official Site  

Cool artwork man, I’ll give you that. Really nice cover adorning Black Sexual Blasphemy, the full-length debut of Idolater, a one man misanthropic black metal project out of Santa Cruz, CA.  And with it, comes a press sheet highlighting a few reasons why we should care about Idolater. The first one is the abundance of guitars and melodies, which yeah, you might notice…or not. As angry and intense as The Idolater himself is, most of what constitutes these songs won’t exactly represent a, let’s call ‘em, ‘melodious melodies’, these are more like sub melodies. As for the several guitar parts, perhaps, Black Sexual Blasphemy is not over charged with sounds. On the contrary it is quite stripped down, with two distinctive guitar lines. ‘High strings of the guitar are played virtually every second of the album’, that’s the second reason to care and it is true. In this recording the high pitches dominate, not only in the un-heavy guitar sounds, but in the vocal delivery also.  The latter though hateful to the max, is Idolater’s weakness. If all you are interested in delivering is hatred then you might end up with a one sided monochromatic recording and for the most part this is just that. The third reason is the predominance of minor-second chords which the artist argues ‘creates hatred’.  Maybe so, but there should be more to black metal than just hatred and high strings.  MySpace

This next one is a bit of an oldie. Vindicated Carnage was actually recorded in 2007 and the copy I now hold boasts a cooler artwork than the one displayed in the Final Redemption’s Metal Archives page, which actually has a pretty Disney looking cover. All bad jokes aside, this Maryland quartet plays what is now known as deathcore, which is a subgenre I have struggled quite a bit to pinpoint and quite a lot to dig.  I guess, it is just death metal with breakdowns, or death metal played by young dudes with short hair. What I dislike the most about deathcore is the presence of chugga chugga riffage, which in the case of Final Redemption is smartly balanced with speed and this bouncey lockdown of riffs and double bass drums, but for the most part this is just textbook deathcore, competently played but average nonetheless. MySpace