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

This album absolutely whips

The Pallbearer rules, you all nuts. Incorporated more 80s goth influence in the hooks, still no less heavy.

Also yay for the Triptykon. I want to make love to Tom G Warrior

I loved the Azarath. I still haven't played it the amount it deserves. It's just a frenzied ball of hyperkinetic evil energy

It was high on my ballot I think

a frenzied ball of hyperkinetic evil energy

Indeed.

whips >>> rips >>>>>> slams

azarath was my #2, so killer

IT'S TOP FIFTY TIME

That's right! Let us open it with The Guardian (Graun for the Brits) metal –

#50
Sightless Pit – Grave of a Dog
177 points, 5 votes, 1 #1 vote

https://f4.bcbits.com/img/a0214365868_10.jpg

https://sightlesspit.bandcamp.com/album/grave-of-a-dog

‘When shall we three meet again in thunder, lightning or in rain?” That’s what you can imagine this decidedly witchy trio saying to each other after finishing this study in brutality. They are an underground supergroup of Kristin Hayter (AKA doom-laden torch singer Lingua Ignota), Lee Buford (drummer from the utterly brilliant outsider metal duo the Body) and Dylan Walker (vocalist from the equally brilliant grindcore band Full of Hell).

The trio subvert expectations by doing away with guitars and live drums altogether, instead using drum machines, samples and more obscure means to scorch the earth. As ever, Hayter sound like she’s delivering a benediction in a church on fire, and she’s trying nobly to withstand the flames. When the group’s productions pare back to quivering ambient drift and pulsations from far below, on Violent Rain and Love Is Dead, All Love Is Dead, she seems to regard the wreckage around her sadly. Walker, meanwhile, is the sound of the violence that got us here, his unhinged howl often fed through a mesh of static.

Hayter brilliantly conjures atmosphere, but could perhaps hone some more arresting melodic progressions like her lament on Kingscorpse. It is Walker’s voice, blasted beyond melody into pure ranting expression, that seals the record’s strongest moments: pairing it with minimal techno grooves and explosions of noise on Kingscorpse, Immersion Dispersal and Drunk on Marrow, the group create the sound of the lid being removed from a coven’s cauldron, and all hell breaking loose.

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2020/feb/21/sightless-pit-grave-of-a-dog-review-lingua-ignota-lee-buford-dylan-walker

I worship Lingua Ignota but this didn't entirely do it for me. Def one of her better collabs, however.

Azarath record is great. I threw a bunch of carrots at it and it julienned them for me.

Shame that the best 2020 album she's on won't place tbh

Azeroth is great. Why didn't I listen to this more and vote for it?

Sightless Pit started out on my year's best list and just kind of slid down until it fell off.

(oops, -e, o + -a x2 -- my World of Warcraft knowledge betrays me.)

A+ typo.

I haven't gone back to the Sightless Pit record either. I think I listened to it 3 times? I remember liking it, but that's about it right this second. I bet if I listened again I'd be into it.

same boat here

yeah, the Azarath is good as hell, but I didn't vote for it for some reason (probably cause it came out so late in the year that I only gave it a couple spins).

The Sightless Pit sounded good the one time I listened to it way back in Feb. 2020, but I never returned to it, even though Caligula was my #1 last year.

It's more like a set of rough sketches compared with the wild ambition of the Lingua Ignota albums, but I really liked it.

gonna work out my entire personal cosmology of metal verbs

bangs >>>> fucks >>> slays = kills >> whips >>> rips >>>>>> slams

#49
Machine Girl – U-Void Synthesizer
182 points, 5 votes

https://f4.bcbits.com/img/a1542473049_10.jpg

https://machinegirl.bandcamp.com/album/u-void-synthesizer

Since their inception, the Pittsburgh duo Machine Girl have put upsetting images of dogs at the heart of their symbology. Some of their album covers are straightforwardly terrifying—their 2014 album WLFGRL features a blown-out image of a snarling beast, fangs bared, poised for attack. Others are more surreal, like ...BECAUSE IM YOUNG ARROGANT AND HATE EVERYTHING YOU STAND FOR, which trains a video-game firearm on the face of a canine. For the cover of 2018’s The Ugly Art, vocalist and producer Matt Stephenson said he wanted to make “a fucked up Deep Dream sort of image but with dogs,” and so he stitched together a bunch of pictures of gnarled beasts to make a dizzying collage in the shape of an even bigger dog. U-Void Synthesizer, the duo’s newest album, continues this tradition, editing a regal image of a pup into a demonoid monster wearing a spiked collar that reads “GOODBOY.”

The music has changed a lot over the years—from Stephenson’s solo experiments in the early days of the project to the crushing noise and shredded EBM punk he started making once drummer Sean Kelly joined the band—but the dogs on the covers hint at the spirit that’s united all of Machine Girl’s mutations. No matter the style, their music is designed to be unpredictable and dangerous, full of animalistic rage and uncontrollable energy. You’re meant to be afraid of its bite.

Even with volatility as one of the band’s core values, however, they’ve rarely felt as wonderfully feral as on U-Void Synthesizer. The music that Stephenson and Kelly make together has always been chaotic, but they try out more sounds and styles across these 11 tracks than seems possible. Take the immense first track, “The Fortress [The Blood Inside]”: In just under four minutes, Stephenson and Kelly squeeze in ecstatic trance synths, grinding noise-punk passages, open-hearted sacred-music harmonies, gargly grindcore vocals, half-stuttered rapping, and, yes, the sound of a barking dog.

https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/machine-girl-u-void-synthesizer/

I KNEW IT'D BE THIS

this album.......fucks

🤐

my #6. MG has taken digital hardcore by the scruff of the neck and made it dangerous again. pitchfork otm about that opening track but it's all insane. 'fully in it' is a grotesquely brilliant deep cut

this is the "too hot for me" to melted bodies' "just right", if you catch my drift

so much false metal

otm

if it's hardcore, it's metal ;)

its neither

its false

I first found out about Pissed Jeans because of this poll back in 2009. ILM has always had a rich history of false metal

Well, unless we ban Imago, it will continue!

We need a proper metal bandname up next

I like all the false and flat out not metal in these roll-outs, because it's cool to see what else all you metal loving nerds listen to and it usually doesn't overlap with the main ilm countdown anyway.

I'm way behind today's rollout, but just popping up to say glad to see Gulch here. Heavy hardcore but not exactly metal, admittedly, and more of an EP, but has a very satisfying ratio of ideas to running-length.

and it usually doesn't overlap with the main ilm countdown anyway.

True. Marnie Stern, Zombi et al dont tend to get near the general poll

we did get uncle acid & the deadbeats in the top 10 once

The days of Boris getting in the big poll are long gone too. Did Earth ever get in the main poll? I think they must have

#48
Esoctrilihum – Eternity of Shaog
183 points, 6 votes, 1 #1 vote

https://f4.bcbits.com/img/a3230531509_10.jpg

https://i-voidhangerrecords.bandcamp.com/album/eternity-of-shaog

Esoctrilihum is a French avant garde black metal project signed to I, Voidhanger Records. This project has been making waves for a few years now. The unique mix of rich songwriting and epic concepts has made Esoctrilihum one of a kind. This is perfectly showcased in their new record, Eternity Of Shaog. Asthagul, the man behind the project, has gone above and beyond even the levels he's set for this project. He has created his most fully realized work yet. Eternity of Shaog acts as part of a diptych with his last album The Telluric Ashes of the Ö Vrth Immemorial Gods. This record is a part of a much broader overarching journey that explores demonic possession and insane deities. There is simply so much to unpack from a project that has fascinated underground metallers across the globe.

Many bands attempt to conjure up hellish sounds. However, few succeed the way Esoctrilihum does. Some tracks like "Exh-Enî Söph (1st Passage – Exiled From Sanity)" impress with their black metal intensity. Others such as "hayr-Thàs (6th Passage – Walk The Oracular Way)" dazzle with psychedelic violins. The violins are in fact showcased throughout the album. They really add to the magic of what they are creating. As a rule, the band thrives on off kilter songwriting, weird harmonic approaches, and unholy testaments to gods gone mad. There is such power to the production though that makes it all possible. For years Asthagul has been working at pulling it all together, but it is on this record that it finally has started to click. Eternity Of Shaog is perhaps the first Esoctrilihum record that really showcases Asthagul’s potential at its fullest.

https://metalinjection.net/reviews/esoctrilihum-eternity-of-shaog

His best tracks so far, some of the finest of 2020, but his previous LPs were more consistent.

I worked my way through this guy's entire discography last year, nothing clicked though. The riffing style is so fucking plain.

Pom didn't make this band up. It really exists https://open.spotify.com/album/3XOHlh0kHUHKhXiMTgCMRK?si=KllY0uNUTh-evHBw7YbNOQ

esoctrilihum was my #1, loved it

strong year for i, voidhanger

also lol great cover

cover art looks like one of the title cards from adventure time

hell yeah, that's more like it. This was my, checks notes, #18. I've always enjoyed this guy's stuff and his albums just keep one upping each other.

#47
Void Rot – Descending Pillars
184 points, 6 votes, 1 #1 vote

https://f4.bcbits.com/img/a0569123194_10.jpg

https://everlastingspewrecords.bandcamp.com/album/descending-pillars

There are a small number of times a year that a listener who delves into the great milieu of Bandcamp and who eschews algorithms and instead scours the bottomless depths of Spotify, makes a mental note to continue tracking the advancement and activity of a band. One such time occurred for me in late 2018 when I came across Minneapolis, Minnesota based quartet Void Rot. They had just that moment released their debut EP, Consumed by Oblivion. Said release featured only three tracks and barely a quarter an hour of music, but it knocked me sideways.

I love death metal. I love doom. But ‘death doom’ was always a genre I enjoyed, but where I found the sub-genre title fanciful – it was always a death metal band who threw a doom-influenced riff into the mix on the final, invariably longest, track. Or, vice versa, a doom band, who had some gurgling vocals or who may feature the occasional visceral, jagged riff. I had never found many bands who invested in truly warping the two seemingly disparate genres into something new, blurred and delightfully horrific. Enter Void Rot.

https://echoesanddust.com/2020/09/void-rot-descending-pillars/

Best cavernous atmosphere of 2020 imo.

Ooh, I voted for this one, too. Smack dub in the middle of my ballot. Def my fav doomy death and/or deathy doom release this year.