I think Creed just put out an album. It is fucking hard to think of a time when a band that awesome and rocking was unsigned. But they were. And rock they did, carrying the message of Jesus like a breastless Amy Grant times four to an undivided crowd of about ten Florida rednecks. Fuck, they are awesome!  Here are some more unsigned bands you may hear about in the near future. I hope you welcome them with arms wide open. Read on and spread the word…

The promise of this Swedish band is blatant. But it’s just going to take them some time to establish a more personal sound, because judging by some of these songs and discounting their clear chops some of these tunes sound like they are comprised of the leftover scraps of the work of bands like Messhuggah, Origin and other more melodic-leaning metal combos. Musically, for such a young quintet, some of the arrangements are impressive. The prog leanings of “The Kraken” are as good as anything any band on Sensory ever recorded, only more hard-hitting. However, it would serve them good to avoid the hysterics exhibited in opening song “Iron Cross” where the vocalist goes ballistic and only manages to crack us up with lyrics like, ‘I’ll fuck you motherfucker, I will break your leg…. I hate everything you represent…don’t move, don’t fucking move, go back to where you came from…’ Oooh, feisty. To that all I can say is, guys, you are too young to have all those negative sentiments bottled up. Yeah, it’s metal, but Prowess can escape all these clichés by developing a more personal sound. Maybe, stop listening to Origin. (Not actual cover on the right) (MySpace)

These mates hail from down under and make some pretty grouchy doom sludge. The vocalist sounds like he is being tortured, slowly and at length by some sort of big dicked beast. It’s cool, his name is Benny and you can perfectly picture him on stage, retorting his body in funny ways and growling like crazy when needed and when not, all the same eliciting lines that make no sense. Such is the sound of pain. Grim, Drunk & Frostbitten is the awesomely titled second self released recording from Fattura Della Morte. Guitarist Troy tells me that he reckons this EP came out a little muddy. I beg to differ.  This sounds mighty fine to me. It features a crunchy sound that’s as grim and in your face as it needs to be. Sounds better than some of the stuff established producers work on. Fattura Della Morte rock on doom through organic sounds too.  And so, their songs move in equally organic fashion with slow to mid tempos that are never obtuse enough to make the transition to a faster beat awkward. At the end of “Burning Convictions” Fattura Della Morte inject some speed, and it still sounds like the same band. Very promising band. (MySpace)

Sesta Marconi (pictured above) is a doom metal four piece from Italy. Ritual Kamasutra Kitsch is their first EP and has since its release in 2008 been followed by a full-length titled Where the Devil Dances.  I see that the line up used to include a keyboardist.    Whatever happened to the dude, I hope the band keeps this format as their doom metal needs no fluffy aggregations. It's just fine as it is.  This five song Ep comes to a lazy start with an intro of news samples and the generic, must have tempo of “In Gloom”.  “Skeletons Party” stirs the pot a little better. For a doom band this is rather upbeat. It does for doom metal what “Dead Man’s Party” by Oingo Boingo did for Halloween music. Whatever that was, it is an unexpected turn for the better.  It is also as accessible as doom metal shall ever get.  The influence of Candlemass is a little clearer on “LSWD” where there is an ageless side to the riffs and the closer title track is propelled by one of the coolest most epic trad metal riffs I have ever heard. It is hear that I can see, how good can Sesta Marconi really be. (MySpace)

I assume that fans of Lacuna Coil and the multiple likes may dig Florida’s Oblivious Signal. I am not 100% sure on that because I have only heard about half a song from that band. The singer is hot though. Like their Italian counterparts, Oblivious Signal is led by a looker. Her name is Cristina Feliciano and she has enough range to pull all the operatic sticky melodicisms of a gothic rock band without a flinch. She can also pull the heavy parts, which quite frankly are not that heavy. Some of the riffs are straight out of the melodic Swedish death metal school, with an emphasis on the ‘melodic’. With Feliciano’s vocals on top though the music comes out as soft and mushy. That’s softer and mushier than I like my noise. For the sake of objectivity though, I don’t see why Oblivious Signal may not compete. Their four song demo shows promise, which is something considering the band members look like they are straight out of high school. (MySpace)

Vomiting Skulls hail from Finland and call their music ‘true and pure Finnish black metal’. I am not going to disagree because this four song demo kills and it shows a hungry and talented bunch with a feral sound. I have no doubts labels will be knocking at these puker’s doors anytime soon. Theirs is an utterly brutal and a subliminally melodic style. For a demo, this recording is a more polished than usual, but the songs show maturity. The guitar arrangements are at once majestic, catchy and slaying. The vocals are the vomiting slurs of a fucking maniac. Vomiting Skulls keep their music under control though. This isn’t chaotic black metal, but a killer balance between rawness and precisely decorated blasphemy. This may be the result of the conjuring of people with a death metal background and a black metal future. Maybe, it is just that experience yields good results. Expect good things from this band. (MySpace)

Last Rizla hail from Hermoupolis, Greece, and if you haven’t got an idea of what their music is like just by looking at their name then you may just be a retard. Last Rizla play stoner rock. Thankfully, they do not sound like Kyuss and by using vocals that almost go spoken achieve a sound that’s kinda their own.  The combination not always works because the vocalist (Zak) doesn’t have a great voice and he seems to know it. Apparently, he is quietly telling a story, other times he elevates his voice to an almost laughable scream. And by the time he decides to sing (patched up reggae cut “On Earth”) we are so used to his previous delivery it just sounds odd. The music rocks though. It is at times spacey and trippy, with a very nice layer of effects making it psychedelic. And the string work is stellar, as in ”Duality” and “Nine One One” where Last Rizla achieves admirable grooves, with throbbing basslines and restrained guitar work.  Maybe some clarity could help Last Rizla achieve a greater sound. Skip the pot for a couple of days, maybe. There are definitely great ideas at play in this six song demo.  (MySpace)

Kauze hails from Hollywood. Epiphany is their second EP and it bring us five songs of clean death thrash metal. The band’s MySpace claims they play experimental metal but I don’t hear much in the way of experimentation. The only aspect of their music that would sort of grant that tag is the unorthodox vocal approach of Lane. His tone is gruff and he seems to be singing inwards in several passages.  He also gets melodic with a totally clean voice and growls a bit here and there. There is something really ‘alternative’ about the way in which Lane delivers his lines. And when I say alternative, I mean the hard alternative wave of bands that took the radio waves sometime in the first half of the 90’s. The influence of Layne Staley seems obvious. The music is almost state of the art metal. It is not too technical, but it is polished and tight with a heavy emphasis on grooves and the locked tempos between strings and percussion that Pantera popularized. Epiphany is what it is. There is a big audience for this. To me, it sounds a tad too controlled and err…alternative. (MySpace)

Wraptors come from Malmo, Sweden and plays a pretty accomplished hybrid of fragmented psychedelic rock. By fragmented I mean that the songs do not have a linear structure that would make it easy to remember a melody.  The sound is hard and the musicianship is superb. So is the recording, which has just the right girth. This six song demo sounds polished, but it also has organic power. The music of Wraptors is quirky, jagged and angular without being plain serpentine wankery. The arrangements, the moods, the melodic swings are a bit disconcerting though, and leave the listener a little cold.  That shouldn’t be an issue for prog rock fans. The fact that there aren’t any virtuoso indulgences is appealing. The songs only last between three and four minutes, so there really isn’t time for any insane guitar solos or slow build ups. If there is anything immediate about the Wraptors’ sound is that they cut to the chase and finish off the songs in the same way that they start them; elusive from beginning to end. (MySpace)