Good evening, readers!  Well, another Monday has come and gone.  That’s okay by me; coming back to work after a three-day weekend is never fun, and I am glad to get it over with as quickly as possible.  Before the end of the day, though, I need to check in with the “Sign Me to Roadrunner Records” website to find something good to listen to, so that I can share it with you!  Today, I found a message that I’d received from Mind Structure, a band whose members come from the Ukrainian cities of Kyiv (Київ) and Kryvyi Rih (Кривий Ріг) asking for a review of their music.  Now, I’m familiar with Kyiv (also called “Kiev”), which is the capital of the country, but Kryvyi Rih was brand new to me.  Thankfully, I have Wikipedia to help me; it informs me that this city is located in the middle of a large iron mining region, and in fact, that it’s one of the most important locations in eastern Europe’s steel industry.  Sounds like a place I can relate to!  Besides that, I had such success listening to Ukrainian black metal last week, I figured it would be a good idea to check out someone else from that country.

Well, checking out the material that’s presented on the band’s Signmeto artist page, I find that they don’t seem to have any black metal influence in their sound.  On the other hand, it seems like that is perhaps the only heavy metal subgenre their music doesn’t cover!

These guys have put together a full-length album titled When Life and Death Destroy, which is due to be released worldwide in the near future via Casket Music (UK).  The first track posted on the site for you to stream is a song taken from this album, called “The Other Way.”  Here they present a nice blend of hardcore/metalcore-style harsh shouted vocals with a combination of tech-metal riffs and prog-metal runs; they do also introduce some cleaner vocals, but these still remain a little on the rough side — I’d say it sounds much more mature than the typical whiny clean singing you might expect from the metalcore genre.  Here we also find occasional syncopated polyrhythmic parts, executed quite nicely.

This song sounds fine on its own, and if I only had this small sample to go by, I could highly recommend Mind Structure to anyone who is a fan of, for example, Lamb of God and Meshuggah.  However, as you’ll soon discover, they have much more to offer.  The second track on the Signmeto profile isn’t another song from the band’s upcoming album — it’s more of a sampler of a whole handful of songs.  Over the course of six minutes, you’re treated to about two or three snippets — around fifteen or twenty seconds apiece — from each of several different songs from When Life and Death Destroy.  And this collection of samples spans all over the metal spectrum, including hardcore, metalcore, tech-metal, prog-metal, thrash, psychedelic metal, djent, power metal, and even hints of NWOBHM and traditional heavy metal.  It feels like the five band members got together and listened to all of their record collections, and took out the best parts from all of it, and then smashed them together into a single album.  They were also kind enough to put together a promo video to accompany this album teaser, so I’m able to embed it here for your viewing and listening pleasure:

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So by now it’s totally understandable if you are salivating with anticipation for the album to be released.  Well, if you can’t wait that long and you are looking for some more Mind Structure, you can also check out their Soundcloud, where not only do they have the two above-mentioned tracks streaming, there’s another song from the album for you to listen to; also, there are demo versions of that song (“The Time Has Come”) as well as “The Other Way” which are both available for you to download for free!  Plus, another free download of their 2011 single, “Bury Me in Lies”!

More info: website, Facebook, Myspace, Soundcloud, Youtube, Signmeto

I hope you enjoyed this post – please feel free to share your opinion in the comments below!  Until next week… if you happen to stumble across something you’d like to share (or if you are in a band and are trying to get your music heard), just write to me at my Signmeto “scout” page.  Thanks for reading!