Quote Originally Posted by Shadow of the Sun View Post
"Stump the thread" was a reference to a game I play in bars called "stump the bartender"- it's amazing how many bartenders in my town don't know how to make an Old Fashioned.
I'm not even going to pretend I know what that is.

The "local" bands I mentioned were only "Local" in the sense of "The same continent", and one of them wasn't even that. I suppose I should have said "There are some really unknown bands out there, lets spread the word!".
Indeed. So let's do this thing!

First-up: Amplifier.
Sure, they're not ultra-obscure, but the only people in the playground I've seen mention them are me and Moff Chumley so I'm going to bring them up anyway. They really deserve far more attention than they get, prog or not. I mean Riverside are better known than they are, which is not a statement you can make very often. Unless of course you're talking about:

Indukti. Prog metal with a capital prog. Not technically an instrumental band, but less than half of their songs have vocals. Can also sometimes get a bit epic.

Tribe
Sometimes called 'The most under-rated band in music', Tribe were an American group from the late 80s-early 90s. Interestingly enough, Tribe's keyboardist Terri Brosius supplied the voice of SHODAN in the System Shock games before going on to found Harmonix with her husband (and former bandmate) Eric. The Tribe song Outside was included in the original Rock Band game (where it served as the bane of drummers).

Rajna
French group in the World-Darkwave-Ethereal-Neoclassical kind of new age-esque-but-not sort of hybrid/fusion ..genre... thing? You know, that whole type of stuff Dead Can Dance are considered pioneers of? Screw it, whatever it is these guys are fairly good at it.

Irfan Bulgarian group, in a similar genre as the one above (if not just straight world). Again, good atmospheric stuff.

Rhea's Obsession Canadian semi-experimental Darkwave group. They haven't released an album since 2001, although it seems like their style of music has been adopted by a number of film soundtracks in that time period.