~~~ 15 YEARS OF ILM POLL!!! ~~~ (Metal & Heavy Rock [+ related sub-genres] Edition) VOTING & DISCUSSION THREAD. ALL ILXORS WELCOME TO PARTICPATE!! Voting Ends 11.59pm UK Time September 9 2016 .

23 you mean :P

nah You usually have 10 real metal albums you like!

imago are you familiar with cynic - traced in air?

ooh, i am not

i'll take it to be a homework assignment :)

yeah it seems up your alley

omg listen to that record immediately lj

am listening! it's like the mars volta read what death metal was and tried to recreate it :)

you have a unique way of putting people off listening to a band LJ lol

he's right tbh

yeah, it's v good, added to ballot. took me 1 1/2 listens to work out quite why it's good - it seemed a bit unadventurous on first listen but the second spin is teasing out its yearning melodic heart. plus the fade segue from track 4-5 is awesome

if you like anything that quickly have you tried the Corrupted albums?

sometimes i add things to ballots based on the first 20 seconds. i suspect that corrupted is more of a three-hour job tho lol

really cynic strike me as a much more concise BTBAM, which means better albums if not better outrageous hail marys

Corrupted albums are long tracks but then they do 2 min singles. Must be quite amazing live.

Pretty damn sure you would dig the albums.

You cant tell me this isnt imago music

The band's sound is characterized by down-tuned guitars and bass playing slow, monotonous riffs under deep layers of feedback. The vocals are harsh, guttural growls, and the music alternates between long instrumental sections and sections with vocals which go for long periods of time without rest. They have been described by one writer as "some of the heaviest, gloomiest doom/sludge around, distinctly cacophonous, layering feedback pulverizing progressions into a distinctly cacophonous rumble."[3] However, some songs feature long acoustic sections, spoken-word interludes, and unconventional instruments. An example of the latter can be found on their 2005 album El mundo frio, which is a 72-minute song with extensive sections of harp. As another writer notes, "Right when you think you can peg Corrupted as an all Doom band they release a lush acoustic set within their bleak musical landscape."[1] To this effect, they recently added a keyboardist, Takehito Miyagi, to their lineup, which had previously consisted only of guitar, bass, drums and vocals.

Corrupted has a few idiosyncrasies. Though they are from Japan and their members (including lyricist/drummer Chew Hasegawa) on most releases are all Japanese, they sing almost exclusively in Spanish, though some songs contain sections in Japanese or English. In addition, the band has never taken promotional pictures nor do any of the albums contain group photos. The only known existing photographs are taken by fans at concerts. The band also never does interviews. Corrupted's albums typically contain extensive liner notes in the form of bleak black-and-white photographs, often real-life scenes of war-torn areas or other depictions of human suffering.

Much of Corrupted's discography appears on split albums, which they share with other doom metal bands or often with grindcore bands. The band is known for its ability to produce songs of virtually any length; their longest album El mundo frio consists of a single song substantially longer than an hour, while their shortest song, "Reset", recorded for a homeless benefit compilation, lasts less than two minutes.

I do wish a label could compile all those single and EP releases on a 2xCD set but the releases are all on different labels and noone can come to agreement

Imago did you check out the 5ive albums?

all in time, all in time!

i did check out at least one tbf, might delve a bit deeper

cynic album is growing on me with each listen

I think we are nearing 40 ballots. Think EOY poll gets around 60 each year so maybe we can get near that?

As for predictions, I think Electric Wizard, ISIS, and Agalloch will place. Converge maybe, and possibly Baroness.
Knowing ILM I'm sure a Jute Gyte album will show up. I hope an Andrew W.K. album makes the cut, but I kinda doubt it.

Clear 1st place winner: Deafheaven - Sunbather ;P

If the last couple of yearly metal polls is any indication then ILM collectively likes a lot of retro/doom/stoner stuff I'm not really fussed about so I expect a lot of that sort of thing to appear. I think Boris should still do well, at least Pink will I reckon, my highest placed Boris album is the one nobody likes though haha.

Black metal usually does better than doom actually but there's been a lot more death metal recognised in recent years but the only thing is that the high profile DM fans on rolling promo thread hate polls and refuse to vote and that's a good few people but what can you do?

If I ever do a 90s metal poll I'd expect DM to dominate (Id do a 70s then 80s series of polls first btw) so dont expect anything for a year or 2 on that front.)

I like Pink (and voted for it, albeit towards the bottom of my ballot) it was the first Boris album I heard, it's a fun record.

(xxpost)

Boris mostly bores me, except the opening track of Pink /hipster

have you heard the classic stuff they made before Pink?

a bit

I like their flamboyant J-rock album way better than anything else I've heard by them

Have you heard
Absolutego
Boris at Last -Feedbacker
Dronevil
Flood
Akuma No Uta
Heavy Rocks (the 1st one not the 2011 one)

Carcass - Surgical Steel must be a contender?

yeah i think "Flare" is my favorite boris song. kick me out of the metal club if you wish

Prediction: Primordial won't make it and I'll be pissed.

I voted Primordial!

Maybe late voters will all vote for Primordial!

i did...

Submitted a list of 100. Grueling.

It started out sensibly enough but went deep into the weeds. Somehow I've ended up with albums that should be on there but aren't. Oh well. I realized I forgot quite a few bands that I love, but didn't feel like reshuffling and working them into my ballot. (Sorry, Vektor, Hour of Penance, and Gojira, among others.)

And I have no clue why I never nominated Watain's Sworn to the Dark, Mgla's With Hearts Toward None, DSO's Si Monumentum..., and Funeral Mist's Salvation; I had to go back and find my initial submissions to verify that I indeed forgot them. Oh well. I didn't vote for them, needless to say.

Fun!

oh right, meant to put Primordial on there too, ha

to quote Carl from Aqua Teen Hunger Force, "it don't matter; none of this matters."

So how do I indicate a mixed ballot - on top the weighted list with a heading "weighted", leave a blank line, and then a list under an "unweighted" heading?

select 'mixed'

on the drop down menu

http://i.imgur.com/3Tpr14H.png

is there a holiday in the US today? ILX is awfully quiet with only 30 active users

Labor Day

OK, voted!

ahh, cheers brad.

thanks Siegbran!

Brad what has been the best death metal albums of 2000-15 in your opinion?

what should everyone listen to before voting?

or indeed any DM fans reading please chip in

my usual 2 cents:

for DM that still carries the old school American sound (ie: Morbid Angel, Incantation, Immolation), it's gotta be the 3 D's: Domains' Sinister Ceremonies, Disma's Towards the Megalith, and Dead Congregation's Graves of the Archangels. And speaking of the classics, Immolation's Close to a World Below and Morbid Angel's Gateways to Annihilation started off the new millennium in a very good way.

For a couple that sound old and dank but lack very obvious lineages, there's Lantern's Below and Begrime Exemious' Visions of the Scourge. The former is very aptly titled because it has a grainy, subterranean sound that makes you feel like a tentative, torch wielding player in a DOS Roguelike. I suppose this could apply to Begrime Exemious as well, except in that case you're madly running from whatever horrible thing you've found at the bottom of the dungeon.

Ataraxy's Revelation's of the Ethereal doesn't have much in the way of song distinction, but it's got a churning, Finnish quality to it that makes for good death metal ambiance.

For maybe the single most relentless, massive, and crushing thing, Lost Soul's Immerse in Infinity is tough to top. It's modern death metal with everything pushed to the red, but sounds clean, clear, and cosmic.

The two best death metal bands of the post-00's (in my opinion) are Anata and The Chasm. The first is Swedish and technical but unlike any other "Swedish" or "technical" band out there: groovy but always shifting percussion, alien guitar melodies and harmonies, and an overall feel of madness dueling with sanity. The Chasm have a vague resemblance to Dissection, in that they take a traditionally listener-unfriendly genre and load it up with more inclusive, almost anthemic qualities -- and every album of theirs feels like a trip into the outer limits. Listen to everything by both of these bands.

Two outliers are Sarpanitum's Blessed Be My Brothers, a sort of cross between Nile's debut and Mithras' Morbid Angel spaciness, and Sickening Horror's The Dead End Experiment, which is very Demilich and oddly swinging.

If you like the meatheaded stuff that still manages a little catchiness, there's Cannibal Corpse's Bloodthirst, Sepsism's Distorting the Mortal Visage, Abnormality's Contaminating the Hive Mind, and maybe Septycal Gorge's more recent two albums.

And finally, for the hallucinogenic occult thing, Obliteration's Black Death Horizon and Swallowed's Lunarterial should send you to a twisted, happy place.

(There have also been Horrendous, Tribulation, and Morbus Chron, the darlings of the underground, but their music goes all over the place.)

for DM wholeheartedly cosign Domains, which IMO is one of the best records period of the 21st Century.

Also repping Khthoniik Cerviiks, all Stargazer, Gorguts' Colored Sands and Immolation's Close to a World Below and Unholy Cult. Also sorry for not voting yet, home internet access down, only have phone and frankly doing a ballot like this seems like torture. Hope to be reconnected soon!

yeah I kind of glided by that Domains but it was my #5 of the past decade and a half. There's a musicality in it that lays to waste almost of all of the formless death metal of the 2000-2010s. If they can top Sinister Ceremonies with a sophomore album I will just combust.
https://domainsofdeath.bandcamp.com/album/sinister-ceremonies

And Colored Sands was my #2. It's in a genre of its own. It's the second most tremendous album of the last 15 years behind Ordo ad Chao. Just pure visionary greatness.