American Heritage - Sedentary (2011)

From last.fm:


"American Heritage is a band from Chicago, Illinois. The current members are Adam Norden on guitar and vocals, Scott Shellhamer on guitar, Mike Duffy on drums, and Erik Bocek on bass."


I think I saw one of these guys albums uploaded to one of my related blogs on the right hand side and the name caught my eye. I was like you know, whatever, lets give these guys a listen and see what's going on. I decided to grab their full discography and see what's up. To my surprise, they're actually pretty awesome for a rather random pick up. Their earlier albums such as Bipolar and Millenarian were a rather snoozefest but their latest album, Sedentary, is the fucking B O M B! The only thing that comes to mind when listening to these guys is Gaza. Yeah, Gaza. It's almost as if they nabbed the real progressive metal sound and all the sick mathy riffs and threw in some Baroness-esque like vocals. Now, the vocals style isn't my FAVORITE but it closely does has quite an edge to it when the guitar picks up. My favorite part of the band is definitely the guitar player. I give props to you, buddy, whoever you are because you fucking shred on that axe, man. It makes up for the sub par vocals no doubt! I just love the different kinds of experimental and original riffs thrown in with tracks like Morbid Angle (an ode to Morbid Angel I think??), Fetal Attraction, and Vessals/Vassals. These tracks are pretty cutthroat and don't cut out any bullshit when wanting to devastate your ears. On a sort of related note, I thought it was funny to see people comparing this band to Mastodon considering they've had their sound WAAAAAY before those fuckers formed. Anyways, their shit sucks. If you're looking for some progressive metal that doesn't have shitty vocals with some sludge and hardcore thrown in I' advise you to go with American Heritage. Definitely one of the better releases out this year.

Download HERE