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17th Street has a very diverse collection of songs that pulls from influences throughout time and the world. At first listen, Hammers Of Misfortune even sound like a quasi-folk metal band from one of the more icy regions of Europe which makes it hard to believe that the band is actually rooted in San Francisco. The album touches on doom, thrash, folk, NWOBHM, and even bits of black metal all with a very classic prog rock attitude. This is certainly a disc, nay, a band worth giving your time to.

Pick up 17th Street by Hammers of Misfortune via Metal Blade Records.

Apparently is album came out back in June via Rising Records but is just finding its way to American radio thanks to Metal Blade which is neat. Noctem is a blackened thrash/death metal band from Spain that sounds kind of like Chthonic or Dawn of Ashes. They include a handful of clichés like a bed of symphonic keyboards that one could easily miss or creepy filler tracks to cut the unrelenting heaviness into more easily digestible chunks but it’s alright because these guys are very very cool. It’s nice to hear Spain finally represent in metal.

Pick up Oblivion by Noctem via Rising/Metal Blade Records.

I can’t tell if the current metal scene trend of djent is on its way in our out but regardless Volumes always seem to be one of the bands that comes up with the topic. Their music conforms to the typical non-pattern complex rhythms with melodic into heavy then back to melodic song structures, and roaring to soaring vocals techniques of your standard djent. To say that the album does exactly what one would expect is by no means a jab because everything is done very well but I can’t say the territory is new. The music IS still great on VIA. This will keep modern prog metal peeps satisfied in between Textures’ Dualism, TesseracT’s One, or Born of Osiris’ The Discovery.

Pick up VIA by Volumes via Mediaskare Records.

Hear all these and more on Far Beyond Metal Monday’s 3-5 PM PST on KSSU.com