Utah

Utah:

Subrosa

CITY: Salt Lake City
SONG TO DOWNLOAD: "Attack on Golden Mountain"
WEBSITE: myspace.com/subrosatheatre

WHY THEM: As modern metal bands struggle to get themselves heard over the din of a thousand million Mesa Boogies, some groups are discovering that quiet is the new loud. And indeed, this Salt Lake City doom-pop quintet has found that the addition of acoustics and (ulp!) violin has actually allowed them to up the brutality of their music. Their latest, No Help for the Mighty Ones, is unrelentingly dark but with an epic sense of timeless songcraft baked into each lengthy track, like a battle being interrupted to hear the quiet clarion call of the innocent martyr to remember what the fighting is all about.

ALSO CONSIDERED: Timber! — As beguiled as we were by the female-fronted acoustic metal of Subrosa, we were almost swayed by the more cutesy chamber-folk of Provo sextet Timber!, whose tunes are, in their own way, maybe even more wounded than those of Subrosa.

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Texas