2015 POLL RESULTS COUNTDOWN - ILM Metal(ish) Albums of the Year

not necc this

they are one of the bigger extreme metal bands, imago

not obscure enough for you to try?

68 Shining - International Blackjazz Society 214 Points, 7 Votes
http://i.imgur.com/XyOqSSn.jpg

https://open.spotify.com/album/5rvlfsiQskxsiRmct4xZ9H
spotify:album:5rvlfsiQskxsiRmct4xZ9H

http://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/21106-international-blackjazz-society/

By Brad Nelson; October 22, 2015
7.0

On their 2010 album Blackjazz, the Norwegian jazz/prog collective Shining absorbed metal into their aesthetic, and it seemed to focus them. On earlier records the band, organized around multi-instrumentalist Jørgen Munkeby, were more elusive, but Blackjazz was an album made entirely of jagged shapes, like the irregular, violent architecture of a cliffside. It feels aggressively assembled, as if its ideas of metal and jazz were less harmonized than magnetized together. The follow-up, 2013’s One One One, reduced them into an atomically unstable industrial rock band. While thrilling, the album could have the remoteness of a formal exercise.

International Blackjazz Society sounds like a compression of these two approaches, but it evolves into something distinct as you listen. Unlike One One One, the songs here don’t simply accelerate until they expire. There’s more space in the arrangements, and the songs expand into the room they’re afforded. Some of this shift can be credited to new drummer Tobias Ørnes Andersen, who plays industrial music with more patience and tension than previous drummer and founding Shining member Torstein Lofthus. "Thousand Eyes" feels like stoner metal, of all things; the riff is a little more drunk than the band usually allows. "House of Warship" is free jazz, which is actually new territory for Shining; even their freest moments on previous records seemed premeditated, a kind of organized collapse. Whenever Munkeby plays saxophone on International Blackjazz Society the songs sound as if they’re sprouting fractals.

Still, even as the band relaxes into new atmospheres there’s an extreme, ascetic discipline on display. The architecture of their music is modernist, a series of inelastic and inorganic shapes colliding with the velocity of a distant level of "Tetris". On International Blackjazz Society’s final track, "Need", you can feel this refined performance begin to rupture. It’s as unhinged as it is straightforward; as it acquires mass in the choruses it seems to list off the ground into some new, uncertain gravity. For all the blur and motion of their music, this hint of deeper chaos might be the album's most exciting moment.

this record is good but i wanted more from it. miss old shining

also not to pretend i know anything about drumming but i like their new drummer way less than their old drummer

that sulphur aeon record is the shit though

I too miss old Shining

I remember when Shining placing used to get you lot excited

67 Tyranny - Aeons in Tectonic Interment 220 Points, 7 Votes
http://i.imgur.com/6NiVfTi.jpg

https://darkdescentrecords.bandcamp.com/album/aeons-in-tectonic-interment
TYRANNY -- featuring within its ranks current and former members of Corpsessed and Wormphlegm among others -- will unleash their first new studio offering in a decade this Fall via Dark Descent Records. Titled Aeons In Tectonic Interment, the record offers up five diseased psalms of slow, tortured, epically bowel-rupturing grimness. Composed, performed and tracked by members Matti Mäkelä and Lauri Lindqvist with additional percussion by Jussi-Pekka Manner and mastered by D. Lowndes at Resonance Sound Studio (Absu, Pallbearer, Profetus, Sigh, Wodensthrone etc.), Aeons In Tectonic Interment is at once spiritual and ill-omened; a fifty-one-minute soul-searing sound apocalypse where misanthropy, suffering and imminent ruin become one achieving purification through sonic decay.

http://www.metalinjection.net/reviews/album-review-tyranny-aeons-in-tectonic-interment

I once heard funeral doom as a genre that can be measured in beats per hour. I don't disagree, for the most part. The down trodden, doomy slowdown the last few years have seen has been something of a breath of fresh air. But one that also crowds the lungs and verges on breaking the rib cage. Tyranny, however, come from a time when doom wasn't all the slow pitched, stoned out rage it is today.

With track record of playing about as fast as they release albums, Tyranny don't have much to answer to in terms of a discography (specifically, an EP and an LP). It's been ten years since the Lahti, Finland duo broke ashore with Tides of Awakening. And their crushing, slow-as-hell approach hasn't changed much as they've moved, albeit slowly, into Aeons in Tectonic Interment.

Aeons in Tectonic Interment as a title certainly represents the album well. For one, it has been, again, ten years. And ten years ago I was twenty and in college. That does seem like at least fucking aeon ago. Concerning tectonics, Tyranny are heavy, crushing bastards when they play. And not dispensing with the Lovecrafian feel that the band has carried, this is a release that solidifies what Tides of Awakening set up. Though the production has been significantly cleaned up, much of everything else remains the same.

If you're new or a bit unfamiliar with funeral doom here's a tidbit: the genre is far more focused around mood and slow tempos. And if a band can't nail mood then there's likely little the album has to offer. Tyranny are, luckily, the kind of band that can hold a mood most of the time. Aeons in Tectonic Interment isn't just a heavy record, it's something that broods and bleeds as it puts one heavy foot in front of the other. When “Sunless Deluge” starts you'll notice Tyranny getting down to business a lot faster than they had last time. The song gets noisey, then gets heavy and drones. The vocals are still dig straight down to the pits of Hell, or the shores of Rh'leyah. Take your pick.

There's a lot of bands that shoot for the H.P. Lovecraft theme these days (e.g.: Electric Wizard, Portal, Coffinfish, Temple of Dagon, etc.) but Tyranny feel like they're really pulling off a summoning ritual. Like some Eldritch horror is about to come crawling out of the speakers and break your mind. The thing is, Tyranny have a tendency to fall out of the loop, and in turn fall too harshly on drone. Don't get me wrong, the album can be plenty moody, and when it pulls it off, the band is a force of otherworldly nature. But there's points where the piece simply over-cook their moods and burn out too quickly.

Aeons in Tectonic Interment is a good album. It has some killer vibes and manages to bring a real bleak feel to some of their songs. Is it the kind of album a funeral doom fence sitter would wanna walk in to? Not so much. Tyranny has a good thing going on but casual listeners might find themselves wondering if the album is ever going to pick up steam. The answer is here and there, but not enough that it's going to drag a lot of new fans into its watery, crushing clutches. Funeral doom fans, well, you're probably already on this (as you should be). Aeons in Tectonic Interment is a good representation of how the genre can crush stones underneath its hopeless, heavy, grim sound.

been a great year for some of the original funeral doom bands

probably the least known and lowest selling subgenre in metal , yet somehow more popular than it ever was yet stil the least known etc

Too brutal for those who only want fast guitars

oh hey i definitely want to hear this tyranny record

hmmm, do I detect sarcasm young brad?

nah i love funeral doom

66 Midnight Odyssey - Shards Of Silver Fade 236 Points, 7 One #1
http://i.imgur.com/K4R10Ov.jpg
https://open.spotify.com/artist/3rTyM1AkQ1ymEyP3DxhiqL
spotify:album:4ujXxE5P4c49hUOhAfoU3R

https://i-voidhangerrecords.bandcamp.com/album/shards-of-silver-fade

If MIDNIGHT ODYSSYE's previous work, 2011's "Funerals From The Astral Sphere" has become a cult release and today is cherished as one of the finest examples of atmospheric black metal, 'Shards Of Silver Fade' is certainly going to break new grounds and to impose the Australian act on a wider audience, independently from metal sub-genres and styles.

The funeral doom grandeur of Tempestuous Fall and the dark-wave vibe of The Crevices Below - sole member Dis Pater's past projects - have been successfully injected into Midnight Odyssey's cosmic black metal body, redoubling the emotional intensity and dark majesty of its melodies.
The result is nothing short of an epic masterpiece, a visionary night voyage of approximately 2 hours and 20 minutes connecting our ancient pagan past with the apocalyptic feelings of a cosmic death.

But as much as death chants, these are also songs of rebirth, hymns to a new life and awareness for Humanity, under brighter stellar lights. "It is exactly like finding a place in the universe, being given a spiritual connection with everything around you, making you feel alive and very much part of the existence around you," Dis Pater explains. "But making you feel somewhat important too, and not just another speck of dust."

The Australian musician thinks of 'Shards Of Silver Fade' as the crowning achievement of MIDNIGHT ODYSSEY's brilliant career. "I can say that each song has taken an immense amount of time and energy, so much that I have been left with little to no desire to even listen to music over the last 12 months or so. It combines elements of all my previous releases, from all my previous projects, a true convergence of styles and musicality. If this was the last Midnight Odyssey release, I would be very proud for it to be so."
credits
released June 8, 2015

http://www.angrymetalguy.com/midnight-odyssey-shards-silver-fade-review/

Ok, be honest. If I told you today’s review was for a double album that clocked in at nearly 160 minutes and consisted of atmospheric blackened doom metal, what would you say? Well, if you’ve heard of Midnight Odyssey, my guess is that you would either say, “No shit, it’s out?” or “Fuck, not them again…” If you don’t know of the band you might say, “Oh wow, I gots to hear me some of that” or “fuck that dribble.” Honesty from Honest Abe Grier, my initial thought veered to the latterest of the latters. The idea of sitting through slow-building atmospheres, auditory representations of depressive landscapes stitched together with heavy synths, wannabe Quorthon-meets-David Gold clean vocals, and some tunnel shrieking seemed overwhelming and exhausting. Not to mention that I could drive halfway across the State during the runtime. But after releasing a very respectable one-hour demo in Firmament and having already tackled a two-hour epic with Funerals from the Astral Sphere (hehe, I said “sphere”), there are definitely things in their sound that work. But can they do it again with Shards of Silver Fade? Will I get lost in this new release like I did Funerals? Should there be a government-controlled cap on album length? Stop with the questions!

Because you have to put up with over two hours of music, I’ll just give you the short answers, sorta. Like many of the one-man bands reviewed this year, Midnight Odyssey’s Dis Pater clearly dumped every damn ounce of his soul into Funerals. Nearly four years after that, Pater crafts you another 2+ hour slab of sadness, darkness, and ambiance that comes close to topping its predecessor, but I still feel that Pater’s ultimate achievement remains Funerals (even though Funerals… has its share of filler and could have been a great 1-1.25 hour album). Regardless of length, Pater’s sound requires intense steeping and only after your bones are finally saturated with the doom and gloom, will you find your inner Dr. Downer.

Unfortunately, Shards of Silver Fade feels long and lacks some of the originality and the somber efficacy found throughout Funerals. Like that opus, this still has some semblance of a midway point in its eight tracks for a quick breather, but these two discs feel like, well… one really long album. Some of this lengthy feeling may also have to do with its eight tracks versus the sixteen found on its precursor. Having more actual song and directions changes throughout its length somehow made Funerals more digestable and memorable.

Midnight Odyssey Shards of Silver Fade 02The first four tracks of this album (technically, the first disc of this two-discer) are actually quite good. “From a Frozen Wasteland,” “Hunter of the Celestial Sea,” “Son of Phoebus,” and “A Ghost in Gleaming Stars” build from a slow moving train of Viking-era Quorthon vox and a doomy pace before growing into a powerful momentum that’s killed off and resurrected in the form of Wintersun-esque keys in “Son of Phoebus.” This enveloping sadness is then transformed into beautiful, piano-driven depression in “A Ghost in Gleaming Stars” before the song slips off into oblivion.

The second half, on the other hand, opens with some crushing, melodic black metal (rasps included) that swaps aggression for peace in the intro to “Starlight Oblivion,” and then resumes its wispy, blackened atmospheres. After mingling with moody atmospheres, it strips down to simplistic acoustic-guitar work as mournful Woods of Ypres character builds it back up into the blackened, gloomy tower that most songs on the album strive to be. After some massive drum work, a final transition occurs in the title track as Pater’s morose Moonspell vocal approach finally puts this giant to sleep.

Shards of Silver Fade is a journey. There is no other way to describe it and it must be taken as a whole to absorb its mood and atmosphere. With that, it’s difficult at times to remember the beginning once you’ve reached the end. Even after listening to this release nearly a dozen times, the only way to pass its substance onto the reader is by following it as I write. Shards… has moments of beauty, moments of captivation, and moments of splendor; however, it’s so long it becomes a chore to come back to and combining the first half with “Starlight Oblivion” and maybe the title track would have been sufficient to make this a strong album. Thankfully, the DR9 rating gives it great listenability but this redundancy brings makes it less enjoyable than the regular variations and majesty found on Funerals from the Astral Sphere.

http://www.themonolith.com/music/review-midnight-odyssey-shards-silver-fade/

http://yourlastrites.com/reviews/8645/midnight-odyssey-shards-of-silver-fade

I really liked that Dispirit tape, I didn't hear it until last week or so but it still managed to claw its way to my #11.

I kind of liked the Absconditus record, too. I might go back to it and try it again later when the rollout is but a distant memory.

I love that Melechesh. Make my DM exotic please.

cant say I'd heard of Midnight Odyssey until this poll.

Which one of you had it at #1?

not me.

^ and the Midnight Odyssey sounds like something I'd enjoy, or possibly something that would bore the hell out of me. I have in the past liked black metal with alien planetscapes on the cover (Petrychor, Spectral Lore).

65 Bosse-de-Nage - All Fours 237 Points, 7 Votes

http://www.invisibleoranges.com/bosse-de-nage-all-fours/

The 2012 Deafheaven​/​Bosse​-​de​-​Nage split 12″ was a 20 minute meetup of two precocious experimental black metal bands from the San Francisco Bay Area. Deafheaven had debuted their Roads to Judah full-length the preceding year, and Bosse-de-Nage had a trilogy of self-titled albums prior to the split 12” (referred to as Bosse-de-nage, II, and III, respectively). A year later, Deafheaven unleashed Sunbather. With that album, Deafheaven took musical cues from non-metal acts like Mogwai (they covered their track “Cody” on the 2012 split) and Slowdive. The public’s response was gargantuanly worshipful, and Sunbather was the most favorably-reviewed album of 2013.

Bosse-de-Nage are now releasing All Fours, a spellbinding follow-up to their split with Deafheaven. Unlike Sunbather, All Fours doesn’t occupy a gigantic amount of sonic space; the record’s sound is tight and unadorned, similar to Steve Albini’s classic production style. “Washerwoman” takes direct influence from Slint, a group who were produced by Albini. The guitars are slow and tip-toey, yet slightly on edge. Frontman Bryan Manning has a jaded spoken-word delivery towards the beginning of the track, very similar to Brian McMahan on Slint’s legendary album Spiderland.

Also, lyrics have an especial emphasis. The promo copy came with an attached PDF lyric sheet, unlike other promos I’ve downloaded. Manning’s vocal poetry is grotesque and frightening, but masterfully constructed. For example, the villainous female subject of “Washerwoman” has wicked, sexual intentions: “The light grows dim, and with her mouth full of lather she announces, ‘I come from the City of Hair beyond the Wrinkled Mountain and I will not rest until I’ve washed every penis in this room.’”

“At Night” is suffused with earthquaking drums and disturbing, tremolo-picked progressions, along with a zest of Swans’ monumental tumult. Manning growls about Marie, a recurring figure in Bosse​-​de​-​Nage’s repertoire. On past tracks like “Marie Pisses Upon The Count” (Bosse-de-Nage) and “Marie In a Cage” (II), she is painted as a foul and lustful display-piece. In “At Night,” Marie serves as a ghastly, erotic outlet for Manning’s speaker: “The ashes cling to the urine on her torn clothes forming new, amusing patterns each time. / At night she reenacts scenes from her passion. / She kicks and screams on all fours – her violent dressage thrills me.” Darkly sexual descriptions like this ring similar to the lyrics of Pig Destroyer’s JR Hayes, who pens about similar subject matter.

Bosse-de-Nage and Deafheaven are zealous about artistic, evocative lyrics and compelling melodies; relentless black metal energy helps accentuate their attributes. However, out of the two, Bosse-de-Nage is closer to the ethos of black metal. All Fours’ music is fucking grim, while Sunbather is frequently major-keyed and blissful-sounding, and All Fours’ tight production style was intrinsic to black metal ancestors like Darkthrone and Burzum.

On top of this, Bryan Manning’s stanzas turn the album into a hellish beauty. His lyrics, an integral aspect of Bosse-de-Nage, warrant an extensive literary theory essay. Y’know, we’re actually learning about poetry in English this semester – maybe I’ll analyze All Fours for my final paper.

puke

says the Liturgy fan :D

fine line, my friend

a good album!

did not need to know those lyrics tho

I haven't heard this album I dont think but it doesnt seem offputting

is it because deafheaven got mentioned in the review?

the lyrics and the entire concept are extremely offputting

i dunno their last few were good but they're starting to sound like a boring postrock band

the lyrics and the entire concept are extremely offputting

― La Lechuza (La Lechera), Monday, December 14, 2015 9:04 PM (11 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I prefer III but it's still a good album

also that album cover, dear god, it's a like a misogynist kayo dot vomiting at you

it's disgusting
i can't think of a boring postrock band who would write an album with this concept or lyrical content

the cover is very bad indeed

The next album is coming to you via a large mug of this
https://www.fortnumandmason.com/products/rose-pouchong-20-large-leaf-tea-bags

We need more tea friendly metal

love the Midnight Odyssey album, it's basically sleep metal

Midnight Odyssey was the only new metal album I heard this year. Adore the style, like the album very much, but yeah, some tracks are too long and needed more complexity.

64 Mastery - Valis 241 Points, 6 Votes
http://i.imgur.com/V02fjSP.jpg

https://open.spotify.com/album/7aewpt4khNEBJQ4sSlFJBM
spotify:album:7aewpt4khNEBJQ4sSlFJBM

https://theflenser.bandcamp.com/album/valis

http://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/20272-valis/
8.0

Among many other projects, Bay Area vocalist and multi-instrumentalist Ephemeral Domignostika puts out solo material as Mastery, including splits with Skullflower and Palace of Worms as well as a 2011 demo compilation Barbaric Usurpation of the Hypereonic Black Metal Throne. These early releases suggested a budding technical brilliance and a desire to take black metal as far as it could go, but none were adequate preparation for Mastery’s first full-length. Valis is an exercise in hyperactive neuron overload, one of the more challenging black metal albums in recent memory.

This is the first time Ephemeral Domignostika’s vision has been so clear; the memorable riffs are here, but he pushes them all to their breaking point. He plays with the velocity of Orthrelm's Mick Barr and the inventiveness of Gridlink’s Takafumi Matsubara. To call this music "dense" would be an understatement, as he piles on the skronky twists and synapse-melting tapping, pausing only for a couple of ambient interludes ("A.S.H.V.E.S.S.E.L." and "I.L.K.S.E.E.K.E.R.") and moments where the electrified spasms give way to acoustic strumming ("V.A.L.I.S.V.E.S.S.E.L.") while frantic drums and scowls continue. Mastery is polarizing, but unlike Ephemeral Domignostika’s one-man-band project Pandiscordian Necrogenesis, the music is much more than a cheap spectacle.

Because for all of Valis' chaotic energy, Ephemeral Domignostika remains a keen tactician, with each improvised freakout compressed, cut up into dizzying pieces, and put in place. It sounds like it was created in one take, with no edits, which would be impossible. But the knowledge that he composed the album from jams, integrating the best of improvisational spontaneity and metal’s tradition of rigid composition, and in the process making sense of his own madness, is just as staggering.

There are sections where a righteous black thrash riff will come in, something that demands only your most vigorous headbanging and your fists raised as high as you can raise them—the opening pummel of "V.A.L.I.S.V.E.S.S.E.L.", which he also revisits in "S.T.A.R.S.E.E.K.E.R."—but just as soon as these come to fruition, Ephemeral Domignostika will break it down and switch to another sequence equally as turbulent but even less comprehensible. While Mastery never abandons black metal, his ability to nod to catchy riffs while also surgically dismembering them is what elevates him above would-be avant-metallists.

Valis appears just as one-time Bay Area compatriot Leviathan is gaining attention—and in some eyes, redeeming himself—for his latest, and most accomplished, record, Scar Sighted. Both are triumphs of singular visions, the ethos of one-man black metal fully realized. While Scar Sighted is an examination of a troubled self, Valis is a warning to let you know just what Ephemeral Domignostika is capable of and how far he’s willing to scramble his mind for his music. It’s not an album for the stubborn traditionalists, nor is it for the newcomers who preach open-mindedness but are too timid to really engage with the art.

holy shit what the fuck is this

BM of the kind brad likes
BradMetal

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i mean this isn't even necessarily up my alley, it's just extremely confusing and awesome

I just bought it for $5 from bandcamp

it's like the riff manifestation of an irrational number, nonrepeating decimal shred metal

This was my #6, it's awesomely chaotic. I kind of thought it would do better, but I am more surprised by Imperial Triumphant not making it into the 40s at least.

yeah I'd a voted for that if I'd known about it. what's already cool on the first listen is that you can hear classic thrash riffs amongst all the chaos, many gold stars

ive told you before that if you want people to listen to albums you really like you have to campaign hard for them then people will get to hear them

My #4.

Fucking astonishing.

Discovering this alongside my gf (whose #4 or #3 it was too) in the final week before this poll was just the most intense experience, like it just kept getting better and better. The opening track is some hall of fame shit. It feels like a sort of inscrutable demonic intelligence come to taunt us

63 Mare Infinitum - Alien Monolith God 244 Points, 7 Votes
http://i.imgur.com/FFVlZgL.jpg

https://open.spotify.com/album/3n2Il5fcLmHspCn0nZbhyo
spotify:album:3n2Il5fcLmHspCn0nZbhyo

https://mareinfinitum.bandcamp.com/album/alien-monolith-god

http://www.metalsucks.net/2015/04/24/mare-infinitum-the-best-new-band-you-will-hear-today/

The best bands are the ones that completely defy classification. Sure, you can point to specific elements of their sound that might loosely fit into a predefined genre box, but taken as a whole there’s no simple, reductive way you can describe the band’s sound.

Mare Infinitum are one such band, and I’ve been completely hooked ever MS Mansion indentured servant Kelsey introduced them to me earlier this week. There are elements of death metal, doom, prog, sludge, trad metal, shred and goth present in their music, but at no moment does the finished product sound like any one of those. It also doesn’t sound like a jumbled mish-mash of genre tropes: everything works within the context of each song, and it all flows together seamlessly. Earth-shaking death growls right into soaring, Dio-esque highs? No problem. A sludgy doom riff with an epic guitar solo on top of it? Psssh, got it. In short, the whole is much, much greater than the sum of its parts, so much so that Mare Infinitum may have created a genre all their own.

Stream their new album Alien Monolith God below. It just came out this week, and can be purchased on Bandcamp for less than five bucks.

Metal Archives tells me that Mare Infinitum released another full-length in 2011. If any MS readers are hip to that one, holler below in the comments and tell us how this one compares.