Semifinalists Announced for Disc Makers Indie Musician's Bundle

Hear Top 5 contenders: from Texas melodic death to New Jersey post-metal sludge. Sponsored by Disc Makers

Listen, we know it's tough for up-and-comers to catch a break. If you play heavy music in 2018, you gotta hustle to be seen and heard. But Revolver and Disc Makers are here to help with the Indie Musician's Bundle giveaway.

Last month we announced that we'd be awarding one lucky unsigned band Disc Makers' Indie Musician's Bundle — a $2,400 package aimed to help give a band the boost it needs. The Indie Musician's Bundle contains:

Full-album Mastering (up to 12 tracks)
300 CDs in Full-color Jackets
100 Vinyl Records in Full-color Jackets
Global Music Distribution (iTunes, Amazon, Spotify, CD Baby & More)
$50 Off Custom Band Merch from Merchly

Click here to learn more about Disc Makers products and services.

Over the past few weeks we received hundreds of demos from bands, painstakingly combed through each and every entry, and narrowed it down to the following Top 5 semifinalists as selected by Revolver. Team Revolver will take these five, examine each on songwriting, aesthetic choices, production and overall presentation, awarding a single artist with the Indie Musician's Bundle.

AMENTHES

Sunny Long Beach, California, doesn't seem like the sort of place that would be the home of punishing death metal, but Amenthes is here to break all the rules. With grinding hate blasts, Amenthes death metal nods to everyone from Krisiun to Napalm Death, all while keeping a black-metal aesthetic throughout the band's 13-minute four-song EP Elysium Defiled.

FALL

Nodding to forefathers like At the Gates, Fall practices a melodic form of death metal that never teeters into corny. The Corpus Christi–based band's The Insatiable Weakness LP brings to mind modern bands like the Black Dahlia Murder and maintains an eerie atmosphere while delivering tons of tasty riffs.

SUNROT

Evoking the heavy vibes of contemporary acts including Amenra and Swans, Sunrot's Sunnata LP was an underground hit, released and promoted solely on their own. The New Jersey–based band's sludgy, post-metal approach utilizes noise, drone and atmospherics to round out the 2017 release.

NIGHTFEAR

Hailing from the surprisingly creatively fertile lands of Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, which has given us bands including Cold World, Title Fight, War Hungry, Nightfear takes some of that hardcore hatred and adds in black metal and thrash for a furious death-metal approach on their 2017 demo Cryptasm. Clocking in at fifteen minutes, the six-song EP is a truly original and furious breath of fresh air.

XAEL

Possibly the most ambitious release sent our way is The Last Arbiter, an LP that is firmly rooted in pummeling death metal in the vein of Nile, but dipping into melodic folk-metal sections, ambiance and Emperor-like symphonic metal. All of these approaches might indicate a red flag to some, but the transitions are surprisingly seamless and well executed.