Matsuri - Endship

 listen to Cling to Your Lungs (Part III) by Matsuri

Matsuri (website) is a modern screamo  band, with a refreshing approach to the typical shifting between singing and screaming/melody and chaos. One moment they’re chanting some catchy lyrics with a sweet lullaby of melodic emo music, and the next everything  builds up, and eventually explodes, in a sonic chaos of manic screaming, hysterical percussion and wild guitars all clashing against eachother in an emotionally tormented cacophony of mathy screamo. Or the other way around. This band sounds like it’s a big step ahead of present-time 5KRAMZ bands, with elements that come much closer to the ancient and traditional TR00 screamo bands.

Last fm tags as screamo, usa, ambient, american, real screamo

buy this release or other stuff from their label via de link in the image above

Thou - The Archer And The Owle EP

 listen to Voices in the Wilderness by Thou, as a preview to this record

BWOOOOAAAAAHHHHH))))
Thou (site) play some uh-masing mix between drone, doom and sludge, with a melodic kind of groove that is  so catchy, it will guarantee to get heads a-boppin, but won’t get boring when stretched on for almost 10min. On this record, they included some covers from Pygmy Lush’s briljant sophomore record, to the point where the members from that band, themselves, would never recognise it.  The voice is down right gritty and create another layer of noise to this, otherwise minimalistic, raucous sound. This band has been my revelation for music coming out of the hardcore scene, for 2011. Although they have been active a lot longer. at least I got in to it in time to catch them live on tour.

Last fm tags as sludge, doom metal, drone, doom, sludge metal

too many records on too many labels, to track them all down. found most via the link in the image above

Loathus - Self Titled

listen to The Dream of The Fisherman's Wife by Loathus

kind of late, to post about a DIY band that has been defunct for so long, but Loathus (myspace) were a Belgian band that played the Screamo/Post-Hardcore splendor. apocalyptic and melodramatic down tempo Hardcore, like City Of Caterpillar or Funeral Diner. not the Envy post-rock, but the Mihai Edrisch epic screamo style. with only 3 members, they had dual-vocal elements, very diverse drum patterns and the guitar and bass sound very asymmetric, individually. the sum of these elements gave the band a very 'full' sound and would give today's bands in the broad spectrum of this style quite the run for their their money. 2 members went on to form a (modern) Post-Punk style band OLD WOUNDS (myspace)
Last fm tags as screamo, belgian, hardcore, need to download,real screamo

click above to order a copy that I found, online. I'd imagine that's extremely rare, by now. OBSCURE!

Out Of The Box On Sunday XVI

 listen to Thieves by The Funeral Pyre, as a preview to this record

With all the shoegazing black metal-influenced bands popping up, I start turning back tot his release. The Funeral Pyre (blog) is a long active band that had symphonic elements on their previous releases, but dropped those for an extra  guitarist and a butt-load of melodic influences. When bands, coming out of  some sort of black metal scene, turn to the melodic approach, they seem to lose most of their oomph, to make room for that very melody. Leave it tot his band, coming out of metalcore,  to discover and display a seemingly perfect compromise between grim black metal and dark melodic metal(core). No children of bodom guitar wankery or soilwork whining vocals. Just straight up blastbeats and 180 BPM tremolo picking, that occasionally blends into an atmospheric sound which could appeal to people who prefer that side of blackened metal. In their later releases, they added some sludgy downtempo interludes and build-ups to the mix. But this is surely the highlight of their oeuvre.
Last fm tags as melodic death metal, black metal, death metal, blackened death metal, metalcore  

click the image above to support this band, by buying stuff directly from them