And last but not least, we have the rather impressive self-released debut from Mississippi's An End to October, "Dividing the Tide". The band formed in 2001, and I have to say, not only is it rare for a band to wait over four years to release an album these days, but I'm shocked that these guys haven't gotten signed yet, because this is quite a strong offering that seems like it could do very well for any number of labels at the moment. Apparently the band has garnered comparisons to everyone from Refused and Faith No More to Isis and At the Drive-In, but personally I'd have to argue with pretty much all of those claims. Okay, they use a lot of keyboards and they use them well, so I guess you could stretch that into an extremely distant Faith No More tie-in. And there are a couple of quirky, "hip" sounding moments that, if you wanted to, you could probably parallel with Refused. And when some of those "hip" elements get more angular and indie-ish, ehhh, maybe a little At the Drive-In. And I guess since there are some heavy moments... maybe uninformed indie rock kids would jump towards Isis for that? I don't know, but the point is that none of those comparisons are accurate at all. I wouldn't really compare them to anyone, because there's a ton going on, and they pull it off in a way that actually maintains an energetic delivery without sounding jumbled or overly chaotic. There's some sweet jazziness to a lot of the drumming, the guitars are all over the map from dissonant metalcore and thicker power chords to emo-ish melodies and rocked out indie flare, the bass kind of bounces back and forth between it all to maintain prominence, and the vocals are about as schizophrenic as the guitars in terms of flying from singing to shouting or screaming without a second thought. But I love the vocals, and the songwriting is generally pretty damn interesting, too. Hell, even the keyboards work for me, and my ears are dangerously picky when it comes to certain types of keyboard work, so I don't know how these cats pull it off. Since there is such a great deal happening here, the recording does lose some detail on occasion, but it still sounds very solid for a self-released effort of this nature. I'm certainly able to imagine the band sounding pretty incredible were they able to secure a nice recording budget to really iron this stuff out, but... even still, they're doing a great job. Assuming they're looking for label support, if they don't get scooped up within the year then most record labels are indeed fucking idiots that have no idea what good music sounds like anymore.