THE 10TH ANNUAL ILM METAL POLL:2017 RESULTS THREAD

It makes me think of the opening to a 90s dystopian anime, but I can see Lynch too.

Nightmare Logic works pretty well as an alternate title for Inland Empire.

Anyway, I hadn't heard the album before but it sounds great. Reminds me of early Sepultura.

I remember telling a co-worker who's mostly into 90s alt-rock and older mainstream metal that I was going to see a band that night, and she asked me who it was, so I sent her a link to "Executioner's Tax." She said, "it's just that same riff over and over!" and I'm like, "I know! Isn't it great?"

21 Spirit Adrift - Curse Of Conception 323 Points, 9 Votes
https://i.imgur.com/dUREZfu.jpg

https://open.spotify.com/album/3h7OBtsmcCxn4HYnIInBSS?si=U5h9ZdDVRCK0UcioBNbWNA

https://spiritadrift.bandcamp.com/album/curse-of-conception

http://www.angrymetalguy.com/spirit-adrift-curse-conception-review/

I didn't hear it on time because I was put off by the Diamanda Galas comparisons but the Lingua Ignota is overwhelming.

Immolation aren't entirely my bag but the feedback solo at the end o the second track was sick, I hope there's more of that

I've been following along and trying to listen where I can. I have a bit of metal fatigue, if I'm honest, and find myself mostly playing a 'this sounds like...' game, which makes me feel old and jaded.
This Lingua Ignota, though. Holy shit.

https://i.imgur.com/ZIw7JwP.jpg

Gotta catch up with Lingua Ignota, shit's fierce.

My hopes of seeing Au champ des morts here are beginning to dwindle.

yeah, I'm listening to Lingua Ignota now and very intrigued

20 Thantifaxath - Void Masquerading as Matter 326.0 Points 11 Votes
http://www.nocleansinging.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/Thantifaxath-Void-Masquerading-As-Matter-e1510623464660.jpg
https://darkdescentrecords.bandcamp.com/album/void-masquerading-as-matter

“Ocean of Screaming Spheres” opens Void Masquerading as Matter with a lenticular Escherian riff that detonates in all directions once the drums, bass and vocals kick in, only to focus back into itself as fast as T-1000 de-obliterating. The energy is supernova, the drums fill out the riffs like some kind of laser-strewn galactic skirmish. Then, four minutes in, everything drops out. Makes way for a rather shy piano part. They’re tricksters, these prog guys.

The following track, “Self Devouring Womb,” offers a more pensive vibe, keeping the fusillade of blasts at bay in favor of stranger beats, sometimes tribal, sometimes jazzy. Swamped in synths and uncharacteristically straight-forward, “SDW” is Thantifaxath’s idea of a catchy song. But they remain at their most potent when they’re shredding impossible riffs, as in “Cursed Numbers.” Introduced by the acoustic guitar/violin outro to “SDW,” “Cursed Numbers” is the obvious finisher. Where those evil circus riffs are at their most sinister, the tension is at its most repressed. And, man, Thantifaxath really know when and precisely how to release that tension.

Obligatory 'too low'.

what sort of sick madness is this? oh, the sort of sick madness i vote for :) 'cursed numbers' is truly insane

Great title too.

Terrifying and incredible and extremely weird.

I don't get what's so special about Spirit Adrift. Thantifaxath is more my thing.

I'm looking forward to the reaction on the next one. Shame I'll only be able to follow it from my phone. back later

I've seen the results for 19-11 and I'm (redacted) about it

Good luck, hope it all goes well and quickly. xp

Yep, best to you Odysseus

happy to see some group love for Thantifaxath, tho in truth getting floored right now by the Lingua Ignota. How did I miss this?

xp
and good luck Odysseus!

Best of luck!

Indeed!

Good luck, Odysseus. And yay Thantifaxath. I was surprised by how eclectic this album was.

Planning for Burial has been in regular rotation btw.

Fuck you guys move fast. Are we finishing this today? Anyway for some reason I have resolved to listen to the top 25 in their entirety, even if it kills me. Won't pretend that I'm not dreading some of it.

Unsane sounds pretty all right so far.

And hope everything goes well Odysseus

we're going to 11 today.

This penultimate track on the Boris album is stunning!

Yeah, I listened to that album last night and really liked it. I never think to listen to Boris but I usually seem to enjoy them when I do.

19 Cleric - Retrocausal 336.0 Points 8 Votes 2 #1 Votes
http://www.nocleansinging.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/Cleric-Retrocausal.jpg
https://open.spotify.com/album/4LUiTgSAzBciSeoFeDcZDc?si=XotAe8okQy20Y1dTIN7Khg

Beyond the accurate comparisons to both Mr. Bungle and Secret Chiefs 3 mentioned above, in both the ambitious scope and multi-genre blender approach to music that Cleric share with them, Cleric have a well-developed, Swiss-army-knife style of metal welded to their theatrical, noisy, and film-score-sounding layers, filtered through atypical labyrinth-like songwriting structures. While Mr. Bungle and Secret Chiefs 3 have always had metal in their blood, they often played it in various styles, whereas Cleric on Regression, and even further developed on Retrocausal, have a highly specific and zeroed-in mesh of metal influences that weave together like sheets of abstract armor on acid, terrifying yet complementing each other splendidly.

On Retrocausal, that takes the form of something akin to Fantomas-meets-Dillinger Escape Plan clashing with Converge, Botch, Meshuggah, and proggy sludge influences. But beyond that, I’ll quote our esteemed overlord Islander’s past description of Cleric’s music at NCS as well, since the music is so vast and expansive, so easily defying any simple singular description. He described them as “something like Portal, Blackjazz-vintage Shining, and Behold… the Arctopus communing in a hurricane. During an earthquake.”

Ah! My #1. A portal into the world of musical chaos I would prefer to exist.

once again resolutely Not My Thing but more power to you goddamn freaks

Of course, it isn't chaos. Everything here is rigorously-composed and minutely thought-out by four mad geniuses

someopick image up off the floor please

(I am pretty stoked to see them live though - with Thantifaxath, appropriately enough)

bloody autocorrect

Cleric/Thantifaxath had best have a UK reprise at some point

Unlistenable rubbish

Lol

I sincerely hope the cover image was taken from their actual studio. 2017 turned out to be a wonderful year for bizarre metal.

Too many ideas for you ultros? ;)

I think the cover is meant to be from the cut-off submarine of the album's concept - a sci-fi idea I came up with independently but which I couldn't have realised half as well as here, in the form of mad, mad metal

Seriously though I still don't really know what to say. It feels like a real achievement and is somehow even better than Regressions. Well worth the wait.

If the length is forbidding, btw...try Ifrit if you like King Crimson gone feral; try Resumption if you like the idea of The Mars Volta being tortured; try Triskaidekaphobe if you like Kayo Dot underwater (my personal favourite) and try Grey Lodge if you like John Zorn - like, the actual John Zorn. He's on it. In fact the whole thing is in some avant-jazz/prog-metalcore crossover, it's bonkers

The Lingua Ignota album is very moving. I wish I'd heard it earlier.

Yay Spirit Adrift! That was in my top three I believe, depending on if I counted Elder for metal poll or not. Probably I did.

I have a bit of metal fatigue

Following the year-end list rollouts, this happens with many people by the second week of December, and albums that I consider "palate cleansers" become more appealing, at least temporarily, such as Lingua Ignota's. Something so absurdly extreme and unique does help reset my brain. However it's not something I return to much later on.

Appropriately enough, our next album should come with a medical warning that anyone experiencing fatigue should probably stay away, especially if they're likely to be operating heavy machinery.

18 Bell Witch - Mirror Reaper 338.0 Points, 10 Votes 1 #1 Vote
https://imgur.com/a/a9S9G
https://open.spotify.com/album/64BDVizsgNdQ1CWeMrh4P7?si=EMS4AnlSSFipPCCAKclieA

Arranged as a single 83-minute track, Mirror Reaper steps back from the resplendent gestures that swept across Four Phantoms. Each beat of Jesse Shreibman’s drum kit, each throb of Dylan Desmond’s six-string bass sounds labored, as though they’ve had to drag the sounds out like lead hammers. Doom metal works with fewer notes at a time than thrash or death metal, so the key to its emotional power is to pour everything you’ve got into each one. Bell Witch do just that in Mirror Reaper’s quiet moments, which are more abundant than their previous albums, and also in its loud ones, where Shreibman lurches forward one kick of the bass drum at a time and Desmond carves mournful leads out of his extra wide fretboard.

Few bassists can make their instrument sing quite like Desmond. About 33 minutes into Mirror Reaper, he climbs a crescendo that, in its tone and its simplicity, sounds like a human voice singing a funeral hymn to itself. He exploits the upper range of his bass, digging out emotional extremes from the notes that could be mapped onto the low end of an electric guitar if they weren’t quite so rich with overtones. He’s newly joined by the sounds of Shreibman’s Hammond B3 organ, whose chords tangle with the distortion on the bass and the echo of the cymbals. Plenty of metal bands play impressively in step, but here, Desmond and Shreibman play as though they are clinging to each other.