11 Incredible Bands Ignored By The Mainstream Music Press

1. Exit Calm

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ExRI5AQ8xUE Perhaps the biggest sounding of all the bands on this list, Barnsley's Exit Calm are a sound to behold. Encompassing as much reverb as you can fit inside a guitar amp, Exit Calm by their very nature are vast, expansive, and damn well HUGE. Were it not for the gravel-toned vocals of frontman Nicky Smith, one could swear they were listening to rawer, dirtier Verve. But it's Smith's way with melody and lyrics that help push him and his comrades band all the way up the mountain, purely so that they can stand tall at the top and play their massive songs to the listeners below. With two albums behind them, the band have already exhibited a growth normally reserved for bands twice their age. Their self-titled debut was intent on melancholy for the most part, with emptiness and loneliness playing as major themes while guitars wailed from the back, only stepping out when there was enough space to do so. For their latest LP, 'The Future Isn't What It Used To Be', the guitars kicked and screamed to demand your attention, while Smith's audible demeanour turned towards the angrier, more confrontational side for the most part. 'The Rapture' and 'Fiction' are both examples of the amped-up nature of their latest work, with even the usual backseat drums and bass coming to the forefront, creating a wall of sound not heard from a four-piece since Led Zeppelin. Having been playlisted on XFM - as well as headlining gigs to celebrate Liam Gallagher's Pretty Green clothing label - it's not as if the band are going totally unnoticed. Like many on this list, they may have had their songs played on a TV show somewhere, and they may have had their obligatory wrong NME review (describing them as 'a goth-pop Johnny Vegas'...), but it's the wider attention that is missing for the band. After all, why make music that's designed to be sung back by 50,000 kids in a field if you aren't actually going to go and attain just that? It's the belief that they can and will that keeps so many bands like Exit Calm going on a day-to-day basis, and you'd be damned to try and stifle that. What other bands are out there that deserve a lot more coverage and success than they currently have?