Impressively mature and adorably juvenile at the same time, the Italian upstarts deliver a fresh set of mosh-friendly riffs and quirky, creative songwriting
This one is a bit late (the album dropped in March) but I haven't really seen anything about it, so I'm taking it upon myself to get the word out about these guys, because they kick ass. They're called Destrage, and they're an Italian group who have been around since 2007 or so.
Ostensibly, they make "progressive/alternative metal", but those classifications don't really do them justice. If by "progressive" you think keyboards, long songs, and cheesy lyrics, then these guys are 0 for 3; "alternative" works better, but it still makes me think of stuff like Tool, Jane's Addiction, and Fishbone, which these guys are, again, not really like. Basically, they're progressive in the sense that their songs jump all over the place and the music is pretty intense, technically-speaking. Thankfully, though, these dudes know how to trim the fat: the longest song of this set comes to just under 8 minutes, with the rest hovering around the 5 minute mark. The short song lengths aren't the only thing that sets these guys apart from other progressive bands - the vocals here are almost exclusively harsh.
In addition to the rougher vocals, the music here is much closer to Between the Buried and Me than Dream Theater - plenty of breakdowns, monster riffs (seriously, they're real good), and crazy lyrics. There are some slower and quieter parts for variety, for the most part this is very good and very groovy drive-around-with-the-windows-down metal. For such a young group, Destrage show a lot of songwriting skill, and are definitely a band worth keeping an eye on.
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