Artist Highlight: National Sunday Law

Key Release: La Storia di Cannibali

It's astounding how often mediocre bands consistently become huge while far more interesting artists remain in the shadows. Sure, there are the heavyweights of progressive metal like Tool and Mastodon, but the vast majority of bright ideas aren’t coming soon to a music store near you. Unfortunately, National Sunday Law’s work has so far fallen into that vast majority. National Sunday Law’s sound fluctuates between sprawling post-rock complete with GY!BE-style samples (“City Dwellers”), and what sounds like a Baroness record played at half speed. Songs evolve over several minutes, with dissonant guitar riffs skittering over thunderous doom-metal chords; acoustic guitar interludes tread lightly over Derek Donley’s seismic drumming as he maximizes the impact of each tom hit and cymbal crash. There are a number of ideas that permeate their lyrics, including paganism and spiritualism, supported by cave painting-esque bucks on their most recent alsbum cover and the occult-nature song titles (“Theriocephaly” means having the head of an animal, while “Antoillier” is Old French for “antler”).

Artist Highlight: Kalmah

Key Release:
They Will Return (2002)

Few bands have exemplified the maxim “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” better than Kalmah. Since 1998, Finland’s answer to In Flames and At the Gates has been machining high-octane death metal with commendable consistency, with a slight turn towards thrash in the middle of its discography. Now on its seventh album in fourteen years, Kalmah seems to have flown under the radar somewhat compared to contemporaries such as Dark Tranquility and Children of Bodom. Perhaps it’s because Kalmah arrived on the scene a few years late, or because they’re from Oulu instead of Gothenberg, but this oversight certainly isn’t due to a lack of quality material. It wouldn’t be hard to make a case for Kalmah’s second album They Will Return being a genre classic, and five of its six full-length efforts are generally held in high regard (with 2008’s For the Revolution perhaps falling short of the rest). Kalmah’s core lineup of brothers Pekka and Antti Kokko, bassist Timo Lehtinen and über-drummer Janne Kusmin have been together since 2002’s and that quartet is still keeping the band going strong.