Hello, and welcome to the second installment of the “Signmeto” Unsigned Band of the Week, the weekly profile of a little-known unsigned band for you to check out.  As I have said before, the material here will be of varying quality, but in every case you’ll have the opportunity to listen to whatever music the band has available at this point in their career; my hope is, maybe you’ll find something you really dig, which you might not have heard otherwise. Then, when they explode in popularity and sell a million records, you can scoff at all the bandwagon-jumpers, saying you’ve been a fan since their first demo recording or whatever.

Once again, for those who might not have been paying attention: “Signmeto” is a division of the Roadrunner Records website, where unsigned bands get the chance to upload their recordings for other users to hear and rate, as well as (hopefully) to catch the ear of a label representative (hence, “Sign Me To Roadrunner Records”). I don’t know if anyone who uses that website has ever gotten a record deal out of it, so I don’t have any idea how useful it is from that perspective. However, as a music fan, it can be a good resource for seeking out new things to listen to, and perhaps in that way it can be good for the bands as well. That is, maybe they won’t be picked up by Roadrunner, but maybe putting their songs out there will help attract some sort of attention anyway, and get a little bit of publicity for themselves. That’s how I intend to use it, at least; I’ll be digging through the Signmeto archives for some hidden gems, and then sharing them with you, dear reader.

Today we’re talking about a band called Necro, from the Dominican Republic. I have to be honest with you, I don’t really know a whole lot about what that metal scene is like, outside of the information I learned about through this interview Invisible Oranges did with Archaios, who are also from there. However, by way of a biography, Necro says they are “One of the biggest metal bands in the country. Been playing since the 90’s, banned [by] the performing arts authorities for one year due to lyrical content.”

As far as an overall sound goes, I’d say these guys have combined some elements of death, thrash, and death ‘n roll.  Sometimes they throw in some tribal-sounding drumming or percussion, reminiscent of somebody like Sepultura, perhaps.

Their artist page at Signmeto (here), features three different songs, pulled from all across the band’s long history.  First, “Dead Man Running” is pretty straightforward death ‘n roll; nothing real fancy or unique, but enough to get your head nodding.  “Slay” takes it up a notch with a little more variation in the arrangement, some cool bass parts, and a nice slow-down in the middle that allows the listener a chance to recover for a minute before being pummeled by the rest of the song.  But to me, “Infierno Tirano” is definitely the cream of the crop here.  It starts out with some chilling movie-soundtrack synth-strings and what sounds like some sort of bells (or perhaps a toy piano? Whatever.)  Some clean guitar arpeggios drop in, building up the tension; then slowly the metal kicks in with the drums fading up, then suddenly exploding with thundering double- and triple-kick drums and some furious speed/thrash picking on the guitars and bass.  The song also features some exciting guitar parts as it progresses, including the use of some exotic-sounding middle-eastern style scales at times.  This last one was only song of the three to be in Spanish, as far as I can tell, but despite not quite understanding the words, these vocals/lyrics are the best of the bunch, to me.  Like all the songs found here, the singer doesn’t exactly employ a deep death-growl, but instead has a sort of scratchy snarl, sounding a bit like a tracheotomy patient who had been attacked by a cheese grater. Good stuff all around, but I found it to sound just a bit more vicious on “Infierno” – perhaps a product of the native tongue thing? I don’t know.

Anyway, check out Necro at Signmeto, and if you dig these tunes, head on over to Myspace, where you’ll find more- almost a dozen total. According to the Encyclopaedia Metallum, the band split up in 2001, but apparently they got back together since then, because they contacted me from their Signmeto account around mid-2011, and their bio on that site also claims a new album is in the works. I hope this is so!

UPDATE 25 Jan 2012: I have been contacted directly by the band once again. It turns out that they are, indeed, working on new material. I’ll be sure to post any news I hear, but if you want to stay on top of things, it turns out they also have a Facebook page, so you can check them out there.

I hope you enjoyed this post – please let me know what you think in the comments below.  Until next week… if you happen to stumble across something you think is worth sharing (or if you are in a band that is trying to get your music heard), just drop me a line here. Thanks for reading.