Lesser known bands that you think people should know about.

[J_Tweedy]

I thought it might be a good idea to post some less popular or underground baands/ artists that you think people should know about. Often (actually always) the best music is the stuff most people haven't heard of.
Ill start the ball rolling.

Neutral Milk Hotel: An aquired taste, lead singer Jeff Mangum uses his strained and frankly 'interesting' voice accompanied by some very different instruments, to pull off some of the most beautiful music that i have heard. This guy can write a song.

Iron and Wine: American folk/ indie/ blues/ alternative country that is extremely well written. Who could have thought an album with just a guitar and a banjo could be in my top 5 of all time?

Hive (before he was DJ Hive): Amazing Hip Hop/ Drum and Bass music that helped define the proper genre of stateside DnB (NOT JUNGLE!!!)

Off the top of my head that's all foor now, im not saying people haven't heard of these, they just deserve FAR more recognition than they get.

[vsaravia]

Power Metal Bands:

Blind Guardian
Rhapsody
Luca Turilli
Sonata Arctica
Sentenced
Pagan's Mind
Elvenking

[Absinthe]

Hive (before he was DJ Hive): Amazing Hip Hop/ Drum and Bass music that helped define the proper genre of stateside DnB (NOT JUNGLE!!!)

:) :cheese:

Right on.

[ComradeBadger]

Neutral Milk Hotel: An aquired taste, lead singer Jeff Mangum uses his strained and frankly 'interesting' voice accompanied by some very different instruments, to pull off some of the most beautiful music that i have heard. This guy can write a song.

Iron and Wine: American folk/ indie/ blues/ alternative country that is extremely well written. Who could have thought an album with just a guitar and a banjo could be in my top 5 of all time?
:imu:

Nice choices. I recommend... The Kills: sorta rocky, edgy, garage rock, with a femal vocalist. Interesting stuff.

[Lucid]

Lacuna Coil(Not alot of people around my area know about them atleast...) They're goth rock.

The Black Dahlia - Death metal.

Jack Off Jill / Scarling - I'd say these guys invented a new genre, I'd call them ...Pop-Metal :P

[Hazza]

Sine Star Project (http://www.sinestarproject.com)

[Recoil]

Tito & Tarantula

[IonizeMyAtoms]

Wow, too many, I should just post my whole playlist
A Northern Chorus
Arcade Fire
Barcelona Pavilion
Bicycles
Broken Social Scene
The Burdocks
Camera Obscura
Cap'n Jazz
Castanets
Contrived
Constantines
Controller.Controller
Cuff the Duke
Decemberists
Devendra Banhart
FemBots
Femme Generation
Final Fantasy
Frog Eyes
From Fiction
Gentleman Reg
Grandaddy
Holopaw
Iron And Wine
Jim Guthrie
Joan Of Arc
Jon-Rae Fletcher
Kun Ruins
Les Savy Fav
M83
M. Ward
Mark Inside
Mates Of State
McLusky
Microphones
Most Serene Republic
Neutral Milk Hotel
One Candle Power
Paper Chase
Q And Not U
Raising The Fawn
Ryan Stanley
Sourkeys
SS Cardiacs
Tarkio
Ted Leo/Pharmacists
Thunderbirds Are Now!
Ugly Casanova
Unicorns
Vermicious Knid
Wintersleep
Wolf Parade

[sea]

Hammers of Misfortune - an amazing power/progressive metal band. These guys are not just talented with their instruments, they're amazing songwriters as well. The August Engine is one of the best progressive metal albums ever made, and their first album The Bastard is better than most power metal releases I have heard in the past while. Amazingly addictive style.

The Lord Weird Slough Feg - the band that the singer/guitarist from Hammers comes from. They're much more power metal in style than Hammers, but also feature doom and folk elements as well. Again, a very addictive style. Albums like Traveler and Down Among the Deadmen are excellent. I'm surprised they're not more popular, because with their talent they should be.

SuidAkrA - excellent death metal band with lots of folk infleunces. Nothing bad to say about them except that they do use clean vocals about 50% of the time (at least on their newest album), so that could turn off a few people. Great band overall. Their best album would be Signs for the Fallen, which is what you'd want to check out first.

Gorguts - Canadian death metal band with two very solid standard death metal releases and two amazing avant-garde ones, though I have only heard one of these, Obscura. Obscura is essentially an album that abandons any sense of conventional songwriting. It lacks choruses and instead of featuring instruments playing in harmony together, it features the exact opposite: instruments playing the most disgusting sounds possible - shrieks and scratches and slides from the guitars and some of the strangest off-tempo drums ever, not to mention the vocals are just plain deranged. And yet they combine all of these things and come up with something that sounds very much like music. Genius songwriting on this album. Definitely recommended if you're tolerant and open to different styles of music and want something new.

That's all I can think of now.

[KagePrototype]

A few british bands that deserve attention:

Sikth (www.sikth.com)
Mad schizophrenic metal; you can listen to their music here (http://myspace.com/sikth) (I recommend Skies Of The Millenium Night for the sheer rush; the others are more anthemic, but still good)

The Eighties Matchbox B-Line Disaster (http://www.eightiesmatchbox.com/newsite/site.php)
Brilliant punk/stoner band, with a frontman from Brighton who thinks he's Nick Cave.

Amplifier (http://amplifiertheband.com/)
Great spacy rock, with more effects pedals than you can comfortably shake a stick at. Even more impressive that it's only 3 people.

Oceansize (http://sizeofanocean.com/)
As above, but with 6 people and slightly more "out there".

Reuben (http://www.wordsfromreuben.com/)
If you like enjoyable rock songs that are easy to get into, look no further.

The Cooper Temple Clause (http://www.thecoopertempleclause.co.uk/home/)
Same as Oceansize, but more NME friendly.

Kasabian (http://www.kasabian.co.uk/kasabian/)
A bunch of cocky northeners being brown nosed by every indie snob on the planet, but this time with good reason. It's basically a stoned mix of massive attack and oasis.

Amen (http://www.comaamerica.com/)
OK, they're not british, but they're overlooked. Basically a very, very angry hardcore punk band. I think they're gonna pack it in soon.

[DeusExMachina]

Wow, too many, I should just post my whole playlist
A Northern Chorus
Arcade Fire
Barcelona Pavilion
Bicycles
Broken Social Scene
The Burdocks
Camera Obscura
Cap'n Jazz
Castanets
Contrived
Constantines
Controller.Controller
Cuff the Duke
Decemberists
Devendra Banhart
FemBots
Femme Generation
Final Fantasy
Frog Eyes
From Fiction
Gentleman Reg
Grandaddy
Holopaw
Iron And Wine
Jim Guthrie
Joan Of Arc
Jon-Rae Fletcher
Kun Ruins
Les Savy Fav
M83
M. Ward
Mark Inside
Mates Of State
McLusky
Microphones
Most Serene Republic
Neutral Milk Hotel
One Candle Power
Paper Chase
Q And Not U
Raising The Fawn
Ryan Stanley
Sourkeys
SS Cardiacs
Tarkio
Ted Leo/Pharmacists
Thunderbirds Are Now!
Ugly Casanova
Unicorns
Vermicious Knid
Wintersleep
Wolf Parade

I agree with that entire list.

Animal Collective
Belle and Sebastian
Elf Power
The Microphones/Mount Eerie
Of Montreal
Tilly and the Wall
Wilco

[Axyon]

Gorgots - Canadian death metal band with two very solid standard death metal releases and two amazing avant-garde ones, though I have only heard one of these, Obscura. Obscura is essentially an album that abandons any sense of conventional songwriting. It lacks choruses and instead of featuring instruments playing in harmony together, it features the exact opposite: instruments playing the most disgusting sounds possible - shrieks and scratches and slides from the guitars and some of the strangest off-tempo drums ever, not to mention the vocals are just plain deranged. And yet they combine all of these things and come up with something that sounds very much like music. Genius songwriting on this album. Definitely recommended if you're tolerant and open to different styles of music and want something new.You surely mean Gorguts, yes? Brilliant band, by the way.

[00dave]

John Butler Trio, O.A.R

[Evo]

4ft Fingers-Great UK Punk band saw them on tour at Cardiff Barfly couple of weeks ago 4ft Fingers website (http://www.4ftfingers.com/)
Source 5-Young Welsh punk rockers supported 4ft Fingers Source 5 site (http://sourcefive.co.uk/)
Covergirl-Rock/slight EMO'ness, very good band
Ironfly-Some more Welsh punk rockers, supported Neil's Children at BarflyIronfly site (http://ironflyonline****/)
WhoKilledFrank-A high quality indie/rock band, after two Barfly gigs have a headlining date 4th August, have an EP out very soon whokilledfrank site (http://whokilledfrank.com/index.php)

[TheAntipop]

Agressor - If you thought Sepultura was the best thrash to come out of Brazil, check out Agressor. Excellent stuff.

Bells Of Insanity - French thrash/death. Google it, I forgot their website. Get 'Thousand Years of Destruction' - great stuff. Not great recording, mind.

[Icarusintel]

Adam Day (http://www.adamday.net) - a good friend of mine, the guy writes some great lyrics, and his skill with writing music has skyrocketed since he first picked up a guitar, he knows what he;s doing and has made some excellent music, his songs were all accoustic but he has added several other instruments, very emotionally charged, but also very fun at times, wish I could remember some artists to parallel him to
his CD is still pending but he has some tracks on his site to listen to, and if anyone's really interested I can send you the files on his newly released EP
The EP has 7 songs as opposed to the 3 tracks you'll find online

here's some direct links to tracks of his -
http://www.myspace.com/adamday
http://www.purevolume.com/adamday

[sea]

You surely mean Gorguts, yes? Brilliant band, by the way.Oh dear. Yes, I'll go edit that. :B

[Pressure]

Metallica

[Ennui]

God damn it pressure, we've talked about this.

[kaf11]

ionizemyatoms already listed several bands i really like, heres a few other bands i like, some probably repeated:


The Shins
The Decemberists
The Futureheads
Interpol
Black Rebel Motorcycle Club
Pink Grease


ill post more later

[J_Tweedy]

Im going to see Interpol in August- they're coming all the way to NZ! Woohhooo!!
They're pretty well known tho aren't they? So is BRMC and the Shins.

[Revisedsoul]

3 inches of blood

[willyd]

Adam Day (http://www.adamday.net) - a good friend of mine, the guy writes some great lyrics, and his skill with writing music has skyrocketed since he first picked up a guitar, he knows what he;s doing and has made some excellent music, his songs were all accoustic but he has added several other instruments, very emotionally charged, but also very fun at times, wish I could remember some artists to parallel him to
his CD is still pending but he has some tracks on his site to listen to, and if anyone's really interested I can send you the files on his newly released EP
The EP has 7 songs as opposed to the 3 tracks you'll find online

here's some direct links to tracks of his -
http://www.myspace.com/adamday
http://www.purevolume.com/adamday


Wow youre friend is... ****ing awesome

[Icarusintel]

Wow youre friend is... ****ing awesome
thanks, like i said if you want all 7 tracks from his EP i can get them to you

sorry for plugging him on the board, but, well, he's a good guy and deserves my support

[Pressure]

God damn it pressure, we've talked about this.
You've heard the name Metallica. You've heard about Metallica. Have you listened to their music or know anything about them? The common person has only heard one song (Enter Sandman) and bases their opinions on the napster deal. Therefore, Metallica to me is a lesser known band. They rock my world.

[Evo]

Enter Sandman=OVERATED!
Master of Puppets (Album)=Underated
Metallica=Metal Legends until St. Anger of course

[Pressure]

I like these albums:

Kill 'em All
Ride the Lightning
Master of Puppets
...And Justice for All

The album everyone else loves:

Metallica (The Black Album)

[sea]

Metallica had four good albums with a 50/50 good/bad song ratio. Once they hit the self-titled, they just ceased to be good and have gone downhill since then. They're good, but hardly the gods they are made out to be.

[J_Tweedy]

Guys, dont let this turn into a MEtallica debate- if he thinks one of the biggest rock band in the world is a lesser known/ underrepresented band, then so be it- although how he came to that coonclusion i have no idea. :)

[slicktick]

National Holiday, they are amazing to see live and have a great song selection, there new album Transmission is amazing.

Check em out at www.nationalholiday.net

edit: ignore the crapiness of some of the site, they are awesome, trust me

[IonizeMyAtoms]

You've heard the name Metallica. You've heard about Metallica. Have you listened to their music or know anything about them? The common person has only heard one song (Enter Sandman) and bases their opinions on the napster deal. Therefore, Metallica to me is a lesser known band. They rock my world.
Any band whose name and genre is widely recognized is definitely not a lesser known band, whether you've heard one song or a hundred.

[RoyaleWithCheese]

thanks, like i said if you want all 7 tracks from his EP i can get them to you

sorry for plugging him on the board, but, well, he's a good guy and deserves my support


holy crap, I need this music on my mp3 player I'm buying tonight! It's great!

[Icarusintel]

holy crap, I need this music on my mp3 player I'm buying tonight! It's great!
PM me with an email account i can send the files to and I'll get them to you either tonight or tomorrow, whenever my internet at home is fixed

[Shamrock]

Brand New
Motion City Soundtrack
IMA Robot
Hellogoodbye
The Blood Brothers

[MrWhite]

I thought brand new and the blood brothers were pretty damn well known.

For rock... I only have one - Circa Survive ( http://www.circasurvive.com/home.html ) Normally, I don't like newer music, especially rock, but Circa Survive, though the vocals sound a little weird and hard to get used to, theres so much feeling, and because the singer doesnt sing in falsetto, but his actual voice. I fell in love with them when I saw them live at warped tour

As for what I really think, anything by Peter Tosh. Everyone rememebrs bob marley, but no one remembers bunny wailer or peter tosh.