Just finished watching The Rocker; one of those purposely stupid movies that has some great ideas but that crumbles like a hot cake halfway through. I was reminded of how shitty 99% of the cock rock bands were and got me glad thinking of how much better the metal panorama looks like now. Anyway, here are eight unsigned bands, some deserve much attention. Others...not so much. Read on and spread the word…

Six Dead Horses are a sludge/doom/stoner band out of Orlando, Florida with an angry, bitter man at the mike. At least that’s how he sounds like. The vocalist has got this creepy, legit growl that’s 80% pervert, 20% rocker. He doesn’t go the distance, wisely not impairing the classic rock friendly sounds of his cult.  Six Dead Horses remind me of the old stoner bands. And by old I mean the ones that were around during the mid 90’s, a time when most were simply aping the sounds of the 70’s and few were breaking ground. It’s cool though. Don’t get me wrong. This band knows their target, they know where they are pointing instead of pointlessly middling around and experimenting in a dozen futile ways. Where Six Dead Horses departs is on the edges. “Brutalitarian” ends with the echo of their instruments rattling on their own, while elsewhere a mid tempo reigns with a guitar sound that would have been the envy of the Man’s Ruin roster. MySpace

Horsefang come from Charlottesville, VA and even though their first recording lacks punch and power, it would be fair to notice that this is mainly a recording issue. Their 2007 EP shows a band that not only leans towards the sludge but that seems obsessed with twisting and turning their compositions. Taking into account that Horsefang is an instrumental trio then perhaps that’s the best decision they could have made. Sludge stoner bands with no vocalists are as good as David Lee Roth without the Van Halen brothers. Unless of course your band happens to be called Karma to Burn.  That said, there doesn’t seem to be much in the way of melody. There are a lot of passages that last a few seconds only to be reshaped into new passages. Their playing is fluent, but their songs are not, a trait that may prove to be Horsefang’s Achilles’ heel. MySpace

Isthmus is a progressive instrumental quartet from Baltimore, Maryland. They’ve been around for about five years and Land Bridge is their first full-length. Actually, they are not an instrumental band, guitarist Noel Mueller does some vocal work here and there, but for the most part he remains quiet. When not (“Red Shift II”), his vocals have plenty of effects to give them certain surreal and futuristic feeling. There are a lot of current bands that straddle the line between metal and progressive, well Isthmus is actually one of them, but their songs are soft, like a mushier Intronaut or Dream Theater without James LaBrie, John Petrucci and the cash. The sounds of Isthmus move in spasms and draw radical 45 degree turns.  Where Land Bridge gets some of the air taken out is in the recording. I am all in favor of rough, raw, cheap and underproduced albums, but when your music is this refined, it must be paired to quasi perfect clean sounds, which Land Bridge dos not feature. But for an unsigned band Isthmus has done just fine. MySpace

Of Legend is my favorite band of this bunch. Their record Cleric of Samsara is simply excellent. It is indeed one of these records that makes me think about all the big indies and about how shitty and pathetic their rosters actually are. These guys hail from Athens, GA and have their sound down to a perfect balance between heaviness and melody. Better yet, their melodies rise above all the mud only to get into your head like only the catchiest pop can. Of course, Of Legend make noise with every single note, but they are wise enough to know that that’s not it. So the guitars weave sweet sounds and when they weave fat bottom sounds, they do so in a manner that’s so affecting they might as well be playing some melancholic post rock. Which brings me to my next point, I am bored with all these post rock bands like Pelican, who sure thing, are good enough, but dwell too much in developing their songs oh so slooowwwllly. Not Of Legend, they don’t waste time, as direct as they can be, their hybrid of sludge, doom and post rock is absolutely stellar and totally memorable. Someone shall sign this band now. MySpace

El Supremo hails from Fargo, North Dakota, a place that I imagine to be as cold and desolate as the Coen Brothers’ movie of the same name. No wonder then that El Supremo is the one man project of Chad Heille, who plays, bass, drums and rhythm guitar in all the songs and gets some lead guitar guests in every track. It must be hard to find like-minded people in Fargo, but the wait and search, as grueling as it might be, may be worth undertaking as these six songs show such a one-side mind the whole thing gets grueling by the third song. In other words, outside input may add some spice, pizzazz and imagination to this very boring recording.  It is perhaps the prevalent mid tempo that gets the listener tired quite quickly or the fact that all these songs sound dull as a butter knife and lack all groove. MySpace

Speedblow are a quartet from Athens, Greece whose first self-released EP not only boasts great looking artwork but also packs the stoner groove like so many should but none could. Every time I hear about a band playing ‘groove’ metal I veer off far into the distance, but Speedblow literally, do justice to the term. There is certain rudimentary roughness to the sound of Speedblow.  They play with their guts spilled onto the battlefield and as a result their songs sound rough and unpolished, with gruff riffage and solos that come out straight from the encyclopedia of melodic heavy metal. There are also some similarities to the sound of Godsmack. Yikes, I know, but let’s give Speedblow the benefit of the doubt. As long as they keep their sound really dirty and very metal, they are a keeper. MySpace

No Pity is a young Canadian quartet that plays thrash metal the way it was always supposed to be played; thrashy. Iron From Hell is their debut EP and it’s clanky like a beat up Yugo, loose like the morals of a Catholic priest, rowdy like the spirit of a Hell’s Angel, and aggressive like a musclehead on PCP. Iron From Hell contains five songs; each one slightly more acidic than Kreator’s Pleasure to Kill. I bring up the Germans because vocalist Anthony reminds me of a young Mille Petrozza. You can hear the voracious hunger in his angry voice. Respectfully old school is also the drum playing of Simon, a dude that makes it sound like the double bass drums were never invented. The result is a fresh sound that authentically evokes the youthful enthusiasm of a genre that, sadly, has gone in remission twice already. MySpace

Some websites really hold some weight. Every time I cover a band I look for it on Metal Archives. Any loose connection with the genre can almost guarantee their acceptance. So I was surprised I did not find a page for England’s Shaping the End. I doubt they got declined, because their grinding groove metal definitely fits at least in three of the several splinters of metal. All Welcome the End is a three song recording that combines frenetic drumming, quasi black metal vocals and guitars that flash through at the speed of light and alternate with heavy groove. Don’t think the mix is a cheesy mess or an unbalanced conglomeration of genres. Shaping the End wounds up being a fluent band of brutal yet technical death metal. MySpace