Shaved Orange.

4 full-length albums... splits with Mastodon/Foe/Art of Burning Water... why isn't this band enormous? "Too mathy" is a common sentiment regarding American Heritage, but if you appreciate the more technical aspects of Mastodon or Keelhaul, you will love this band.
Sean from Scenepointblank puts it simply,

"...And, to me, that's what it boils down to. This is fucking metal. Forget Lamb of God or Trivium, which I'm sure most people will in three or four years. American metal is a band like American Heritage, Mouth of the Architect, or Cable..."

Well said.
My favourite tracks are posted on their myspace page,
straight rock, all the time.



Enough has been written about Pantera, so I'm going to keep it short. I'm lucky, as I can view Pantera with an outsider's perspective. I completely missed the boat on this when I was younger, and only now am fully appreciating their talent. This song just came on randomly on iTunes (made more crushing by directly following "Parasol" by the Sea and Cake), and it just made me realize how incredibly groundbreaking they were. Remember that this song was released on Far Beyond Driven in 1994.
In 1994, I was watching Fresh Prince and thinking about candy bars.
In 1994, Pantera was one of the heaviest bands in existence.

Think about all the breakdown "hardcore" bands that are watering down the heavy music scene right now,
they owe everything to this.

1994.
Totally insane.

[MP3] Pantera - Slaughtered
from "Far Beyond Driven", 1994 Atlantic