Okay....enough about Manowar.....This thread was about me looking for a band that played on HBB. As stated in this thread it was PROTEST THE HERO. I just picked up the new album today. If you think the song bloodmeat is all over the place, you haven't heard anything yet. I am only about 4 songs into this cd and it is already worth the price of admission.
I will most likely get flamed for pushing this album but I don’t care. If you like heavy prog with lots of time changes and varied vocals (clean,screams,growls) you have to check this out. They are on a tour right now with 3 other bands that I wouldn’t go see if they were playing in my living room but these boys can play.
Edit: Review of the new album
http://www.sputnikmusic.com/album.php?albumid=23330
Parts of said review :
Musically, Fortress marches to a much deeper tune than its predecessors. A result of a conglomerating prominent low-end, unrelenting harsh vocals (we'll get there) and more aggressive songwriting, Fortress is head and shoulders above Kezia in terms of sheer heaviness. It also refines the band's sound into one that is irrefutably metal. While there's no shortage of punk and (post)hardcore, calling this metalcore is to ignorantly shove aside all of the other non-metal influences. Fortress runs up, down and around the gamut, incorporating encompassing influences subtly into a progressive metal setting, one thankfully lacking in James LaBrie and 'it was all a dream' epiphanies.
The vocals, unrelentingly executed by Rody (with some help from the rest of the band, the producer and Ceci the studio cat) deserve their own paragraph. And before I go for the gusto, I'll say it now and get it out of the way: the 11-second scream at the end of "The Dissentience", the guttural "royalty must die" growl on "Bone Marrow" and the seamless high scream to mid-growls placed throughout the album are Rody. Arif, who was previously believed to have performed the majority of the growls, has only one actual recorded line, a brief growl (that's underneath Rody's scream) on "Wretch". This is not as trivial as you'd initially assume, for my point is not that Rody pulls out all the stops (he does) or that he's expanded his repertoire ten-fold (he has), but rather that Rody was given the freedom to do as he saw fit on Fortress. He is the vocalist and it's made abundantly clear, and luckily this time around he's shown not only extensive improvement in his myriad of styles, but in his ability to show restraint and maturely appropriate harsh and clean vocals where they fit. Rody has matured over the course of the band's young career and this is no different, as he vies to keep the harmonies natural this time around and limits the layering that hindered his performance on Kezia. Of course, the freedom does get a little over-exemplified in some instances, mostly in the occasional "fuck yeaaaaah" ad lib or in the girlish, Vince Neil inspired falsettos in "Wretch", which thankfully lasts all of three seconds. His sometimes whiny intonation is almost completely absent without the overly harmonised cleans, and he's expanded his range far beyond his newly honed harsh vocals, pushing out higher notes than you'd expect as effortlessly as you would hope.
FatesFan you have to back me up here...please! Joey DeMaio's bass solos are some of the worst I've ever heard! You talk about wankery....sheeze....
