00s

Evoken is a funeral doom metal band from Lyndhurst, New Jersey, USA, one of the earliest U.S. doom/death metal bands that are still active today along with Novembers Doom and Rigor Sardonicous. Evoken are highly inspired by the Australian band Disembowelment. The band name Evoken is taken from the Thergothon song found on Fhtagn-nagh Yog-Sothoth. The band was founded by guitarist Nick Orlando and bassist Rob Robichaud under the name Funereus in April of 1992 and released a demo which sonds like extremely slow, dark brutal death metal with super deep growls.

Read more about Evoken on Last.fm.

Circle Takes the Square (often abbreviated CTTS) is a band from Savannah, Georgia, USA. The band formed in 2001 as a four-piece and after their first two releases they lost a guitarist but gained another in late 2004. What listeners tend to notice first about the band is the loud screaming of both male and female vocals that often function in a kind of call and response. Skillful, chaotic drumming coupled with intense, highly technical bass/guitar work have served to separate the band from most others in the screamo genre.

Anonymity has become both a gift and a curse for the blogosphere — a “gift” for feeding our hunger, and a “curse” for, well, not informing us as to who is feeding us. Burial has the world eating out of his hand, picking and choosing various publications access and admitting truths like “only five people know I make tunes.” Argh. And then there are the artists that leave you a message that reads: “If you are wondering who we are, we will soon reveal all.. we are planning some wonderful all night parties, we wear belts with huge buckles and we play the best music ever.

On first blush, this sounds like the latest gorgeous, jangly guitar pop record from somewhere north of Manchester. Belle and Sebastian meet the better moments of the Lightning Seeds, with Aztec Camera's Roddy Frame strumming away. But on closer listening there's a certain local twang to both the voices and the music on the second production from this unheralded Brisbane six-piece. There's nary a foot, or a note, wrong on this, and the Zebras can lay claim to being, if not the heirs, then at least the love child of the Go-Betweens.