Metal Country #7

And now we move into the frozen reaches of the vast northern wastelands. No, not Viking wastelands. The other ones. The ones over this way.

#7 Canada

Favorite bands:
1. Woods of Ypres (blackened progressive doom)
2. Strapping Young Lad* (see below)
3. Gorguts (death metal)
4. Kataklysm (death metal)
5. Kälter (melodic death metal)

I've expressed my opinions about Woods of Ypres elsewhere on this blog, so instead of discussing them I'll jump straight into explaining the SYL asterisk. I'm considering SYL a sort of conglomerate entry. As you may have noticed, Devin Townsend's other projects don't appear on this list. Well, I enjoy most of what he does, but I didn't feel like populating the entire list with his various "different" bands. I also didn't feel like trying to decide which I prefer between such arbitrarily separated groups as the Devin Townsend Band and the Devin Townsend Project. So, I decided the #2 entry will just cover the whole lot of his various bands, as well as Strapping Young Lad itself.

The band I expect to be the least familiar on here is Kälter, who are a relatively new band. They started in 2006 as a Children of Bodom tribute group, and though they play their own material now, the influence is still evident. That said, they keep enough of their own identity to avoid clone status, and now they sound much better than any of the current material released by their heroes.