2020 Metal ’n’ Heavy Rock/Heavy Music Poll: RESULTS – Top 100 Countdown

Oh wow! This was my #5. The riffs are so proggy and memorable and almost every track comes in so hard. Yeah, Golden Words is a great sampler track if you are not sure whether this is for you.

I also really quite like that Raspberry Bulbs record - it nearly made it on my ballot, but I didn't really return to it after a 2/3s listen. Not as strong as their previous offering imo.

Screamo vox are usually a dealbreaker for me but there's no denying Eleni Zafiriadou is damn good at them.

Some of the heavy bits of this Azusa remind me of Anata, which is about the highest praise I can give any techy metal, but it's def gonna need some revisits for me to get through the genre whiplash. Interesting, to say the least.

Pyrrhon is the first on the list that I actually disliked. I tried to get into it....my reaction was similar to Simon's. I'm into abrasive, dissonant, avantgarde death metal, but this just left me cold.

#64

Fuck the Facts – Pleine noirceur

137 points, 5 votes

https://f4.bcbits.com/img/a4033250053_10.jpg

https://open.spotify.com/album/1xYIL1XIodBfdYTGfPCZ4W?si=g-EJX02JQJG1JQ3Uo24HPg
https://fuckthefacts.bandcamp.com/album/pleine-noirceur

Frankly, I’m not the kind of person to go around and brand every living thing as ‘legendary’, as that experience tends to be subjective at best, and the sentiment loses value when thrown around carelessly. On some more niche genres however, that status can be reached so that it doesn’t evade all reason, and on that note, I’m going to dare myself today. Fuck the Facts are a prolific Canadian grindcore unit and, while being loyal to that description, refuse to be limited by it, as they venture outside those bounds quite frequently (although keeping their core sound firmly rooted somewhere within that particular orientation). Even if it sounds cocky, I’m confident that everyone familiar with that genre or its related branches have heard of this band, and most of those people are inclined to agree with me, when I say that Fuck the Facts are legendary.

So what is it exactly that grants this band the access to that partly shady and controversial nook of existence, you may ask? Well, if you would’ve asked that prior to this moment, I could’ve offered you examples from their career – spanning over two decades – during which they haven’t really taken a single misstep, or even talked about their unyielding approach to their own, indisputably unique craft. But when you ask that from me now, on the brink of the release of their new album Pleine Noirceur, I can simply give you twelve damn good reasons why.

Pleine Noirceur is a shiver-inducing, unrelenting aural assault that is as solid as it is vivacious, throwing punches constantly, and most importantly, grooving like a moose. Throughout its 40-ish minute duration, we’re met with rage and a rampart of cacophony, at times mounted by soothing melancholy. The contrasts are great and far apart, but everything’s cohesive and kept together in a seamless fashion. On the album, Fuck the Facts bring in fresh angles and unexpected turns, keeping the listener in their clutches effortlessly throughout, with the individual track lengths fluctuating from 38 seconds to nearly seven minutes. And even though you can pick a single song from here and another one from there for quick relief, Pleine Noirceur is best enjoyed exactly as it is served – as an entirety.

https://everythingisnoise.net/reviews/fuck-the-facts-pleine-noirceur/

yay! Loved this one

Very good album, proof that Ottawa is metal af.

Catching up, just reminding myself how great the Dola album is. Love that spoken word shrieking.

Yeah, they really nail it. Furia's latest LP, which treads similar ground, is put to shame by their less well-known countrymen.

It is possible that I am always confusing Furia and Turia.

Furia = Polish four-piece

Turia = Dutch three-piece

Haha why did I think Fuck the Facts were Torontonian?? I saw them live (in Toronto) in 2013 and they were great but I never kept up. I recall now that one of them even works at a local club.

xp Thank you! I may or may not remember that.

'Box in My Head' is nice, but it is also 'The Greatest Love of All'.

not quite as great as Desire Will Rot imo, but a more than worthy return

"The Greatest Love of All" is "If You Could Read My Mind".

#63

Blues Pills – Holy Moly!

139 points, 4 votes

https://static.metacritic.com/images/products/music/9/a4082760ba275ab8d1dd3170ba497f56.jpg

https://open.spotify.com/album/5q42nCZVvcbvSLIX2zxvkQ?si=_igiAaAtRgWyjgpsh1-jLA

Sometimes, it’s not about where you are, but where you’re at. Even if, in the case of Swedish retro-rockers Blues Pills, where you are is already rather covetable. To record the follow-up to 2016’s magnificent Lady In Gold – an album which took them to Number One in Germany – Elin Larsson and her be-flared band headed to Närke, far out in the Swedish countryside, where they could freak out in (relative) peace, in their own analogue studio, with no distractions, recorded by guitarist Zack Anderson. But as idyllic as this sounds, on Holy Moly!, Blues Pills are actually miles and decades away from where it was created. This is actually the super-swinging sound of 1960s California, a sunny delight that invokes the golden age of psychedelia, the Playboy Mansion party from Once Upon A Time In Hollywood. There’s even a song called California that rivals Red Hot Chili Peppers for invoking their home state’s hot spirit.

What Blues Pills serve up, like The White Stripes or Rival Sons before them, is a perfect transmission of warm rock’n’roll from a time gone by that effortlessly slinks along with natural swagger, without ever feeling studied. The opening stomp of Proud Woman and the fuzzy heft of Low Road immediately open the door on a place where rock’n’roll is full of soul, the riffs are from that sweet spot where the blues was getting faster and louder, and the best occasion in which to have a good time is all of the time.

https://www.kerrang.com/reviews/album-review-blues-pills-holy-moly/

Based on that description, I'm gonna carpe diem the other way.

Yeah, I was about to say. Fantastic artwork though.

Fair, it's an acquired taste, though I have no idea why they'd namecheck the White Stripes, of all bands. Larsson has a killer voice though, which automatically elevates this above lots of the dreck in this vein.

Tbf "If You Could Read My Mind" is the best song ever written and the rest of popular music is trying to catch up (although usually not in as lawsuit-worthy ways as "The Greatest Love of All").xps

the blues pills album is great and I voted for it

I'll give it a shot.

I had never heard about that! I don't think I even know the song. Added to post-metal listening. xp

*after-metal

the taser track for the boris & merzbow record was pretty dreamy but I found the whole thing to be a bit of a slog

haven't heard most of these but the fuck the facts record is the one I'm most interested in from the last couple. interesting that it's 40-ish minutes -- grind double album!

2 more to go tonight then I hand you back to my lovely co-presenter for tomorrow

Turia are certainly anguished!

Just the way I like it.

😎

It is almost like you are racked with Romantic grief at our collective existential fate!

Me? Never!

Blues Pills makes me wish I'd nominated and voted for Wailin Storms (my trve scruples got in the way).

oh is THIS 2020's Reveal

It just might be. The punker side of metal is where it's at.

I decided that Geld weren't QUITE 2020's Reveal in the end, but they were pretty cool

#62

Kaatayra – Só quem viu o relâmpago à sua direita sabe

144 points, 4 votes

https://f4.bcbits.com/img/a3070884902_10.jpg

Só Quem Viu o Relampago a Sua Direita Sabe is an obvious anomaly in the genre and takes a risk omitting the distortion and replacing it with acoustic guitars. Kaatayra’s two previous albums that were released just last year also had Brazillian-folk influences at the backbone of it but this album takes it to the next level. I was admittedly worried upon reading that this was going full acoustic because this has been attempted a couple of times by other bands and have fallen flat. This choice is anything but a gimmick, enhancing the aesthetic and themes that the band is at its core. It works surprisingly well and sounds quite inherent to the band's already established style. It is a gamble that pays off in more ways than one, as it doesn’t feel like a grand departure from the band’s previous work and it's their most accessible album yet.

Kaatayra’s last album, Nascido Sob o Signo Incivilizatório was vicious and angry. But this album is ‘softer’ and it’s not that way solely because of the obvious; the compositions soar more often utilizing clean vocals in the distant background with most songs materializing into cascading crescendos. The harsh vocals, the blast beats, and overall aggressive song structures are still present and come off as more vengeful rather than malicious. This is a band that revels in the beauty of the colors within a rainforest and the serene tranquility of it all. Picture this: the goddess Gaia appears in a great storm, laying down her thunderous wrath in response to an army that burnt down a large portion of a rainforest, killing most of its inhabitants. Melting the men with the sheer heat of the lightning she strikes them with; the meat and skin falling off their bones so quickly even if they could run away, their own bodily fluids and liquified muscle tendons would plaster them in place. Leaving their phosphorus skeletons left frozen in position, to just disintegrate into dust by the storm’s winds, thus becoming sedimentary nourishment for the forest mixing in with the ashes of the fire, divinely part of something they destroyed. The fire only sparing the young inhabitants of the forest to take up the responsibility of preservation and starting anew.

https://www.sputnikmusic.com/review/81144/Kaatayra-Só-Quem-Viu-o-Relâmpago-à-Sua-Direita-Sabe/

Very good album, although I voted for its August follow-up.

This polls equivalent of Sault?

RYM rightly went gaga over Kaatayra last year but there are almost no echoes of this in the metal and/or indie press.

xp precisely!

Although Untitled (Rise) only made it to #70 on RYM.

And Kaatayra is much better (*ducks*).

Oh what the hell I totally forgot to vote for both of these. ;_; The other one takes the sound further though and would have been higher on my ballot. Hope that's represented here!

Need to catch up with this one. I liked their debut a lot when it came out 2 years ago, but haven't checked out any of the 3(!) albums they've released since then.

Finally getting around to the whole Melted Bodies album - Funny Commercials is perhaps the cutest song in the poll rollout so far. Regret sleeping on this, it's so so fun.

Oooh nice, all 4 Kaatayra albums are PWYW on their bandcamp.

Oops, I forgot to add the link when preparing that entry. Here it is:

https://kaatayra.bandcamp.com

#61

Drown – Subaqueous

147 points, 4 votes

https://f4.bcbits.com/img/a0205873920_10.jpg

https://open.spotify.com/album/3wrEBttssUrLtEhFBaja0A?si=jWmSrmQ7RQ61shNIszzWVA
https://markovsoroka.bandcamp.com/album/subaqueous

Funeral doom was never a genre I willingly embraced or ever truly “got,” but as I grow older I seem to be finding more and more affinity for it. Perhaps that’s because I’m getting closer to picking out caskets for my own funeral, or maybe age has slowed me to the point where I can better appreciate other slow things, like turtles and the US legal system. Whatever the case may be, Subaqueous, the second album by Drown, is helping bring me around on this most niche of genres. The solo product of Markov Soroka (Tchornobog, Aureole), Drown is charting its own unique path, incorporating a great deal of melodic elements to make the heavy, plodding style much more palatable to the casual funeral goer. Yet Subaqueous is a purebred funeral doom album through and through, composed of 2 songs, each running over 20 minutes in length. It has an interesting aquatic theme and actually manages to bring it across in the music. But what really sets Subaqueous apart from genre peers is the inclusion of a wealth of goth and dark wave elements which provide a melodic buoyancy to the heaviness, allowing the listener to appreciate the crushing depths as well as the beauty hidden within the swirling currents.

https://www.angrymetalguy.com/drown-subaqueous-review/

This should be my cup of oceanic tea 100% yet it didn't click somehow.

Lol as if there's just a cover of 'The Rat' on the Melted Bodies album

I liked it but forgot to vote for it

I liked the Subaqueous record, but I was never in the mood to go back to it. Just missed my ballot.