So I was at the Demodays this week-end, and talking to some friends about some music they absolutely have to listen to. If I'm going to write a lenghty list of links, might as well make it public so here we go! Kudos to Meteotrix for making me discover most of this stuff.
Metaaaaaaaaaaaal
Yes, I'm a metalhead, so there's going to be a bunch of stuff in this category. I'll skip the extremely famous ones such as In Flames, of course... And obvious big warning for weird metal music videos. You know they're always bad or weird. Or both.
First goes my favorite band: Soilwork. Melodic death metal, means mixing pretty hardcore stuff with complex melodies. Most of the time you get growling for most of the songs and melodic choruses. Their style has evolved quite a bit between albums. The last one, The Living Infinite, is overall extremely good. You might have trouble at first: but give it a week and you'll most likely have it stuck in your head and come back to it. It's all on Spotify and on Grooveshark, and the four best songs are available for free on their website (look at the four "Play" buttons in the header). Do check out the rest though, because there's not much to throw away in their work!
Still in the melodeath range, you should check out MyGRAIN. I highly recommend the album which has the same name as the band more than the others. Highlight: Of Immortal Aeons. Disarmonia Mundi's done some interesting stuff. Highlight: Celestial Furnace, which is a coop with Soilwork's singer. If you have nothing against cheesy lyrics and VERY bad music videos, The Unguided is also worth checking out. They were formed from Sonic Syndicate (which is apparently back from the dead since that happened, go figure). Highlights from The Unguided would be Betrayer of the Code (play gothic bingo while watching that one, btw) and Phoenix Down. Phoenix Down also has an awesome remix by Zardonic.
Another style I like quite a bit is industrial metal (but nope, Rammstein is not my thing). Oomph's Monster album is one of my favorites, along with a lot of stuff from Pain. Highlights: The Great Pretender from Pain, and Sandmann and Labyrinth from Oomph. Don't you dare listen to the English version of Oomph's songs, that's just sad.
Metalish alternative electronic something?
Wikipedia has to place Celldweller in 8 different genres to get anywhere. That's saying something on his style. The vocals can take some getting used to, but Wish Upon A Blackstar is an absolutely smashing album. Celldweller does a lot of music intended for licencing, released in the Soundtrack for the Voices in my Head albums. You'll probably recognize some of them from games, trailers and movies. His debut album, Celldweller, has some great tracks as well. Lots of it on Spotify, Grooveshark and Youtube. My personal favorites would be (no order) Switchback, The Last Firstborn, Own Little World, So Long Sentiment, Eon, Blackstar, Unshakeable. And he likes remixing stuff, including his own, and letting friends remix stuff, so there are entire albums of remixes of a single song.
One of said friends is Blue Stahli, who did the same as other people in this list and named his first album "Blue Stahli". My favorite one would be Takedown. Technically it's listed as indus metal in some places, but er...
Might expand this post with more eventually but that's already quite a lot of stuff. Nice game soundtracks next, maybe?