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

I'm weirdly intimidated by this record, one day I'll finally listen to it

You're supposed to be intimidated while beholding the Arctopus iirc.

love it. an already exciting and mind bending project made even more interesting.

Totally forgot to check that one out.

This one snuck in at the last minute at the bottom of my ballot. The highs are there, but it doesn't hold together the best.

Yeah that was my feeling as well. Much like the Cryptic Shift, in fact.

#26

Faceless Burial – Speciation

245 points, 7 votes

https://f4.bcbits.com/img/a1236080079_10.jpg

https://facelessburial.bandcamp.com/album/speciation-2

Sometimes you know within seconds that an album is going to absolutely rule. I knew it when I heard the chimes in Desolate Endscape. I knew it when I heard the first riff of “Cognitive Sedation Butchery.” This time I knew it when I heard three notes – guitar, bass, and snare – and fell into a tetanic stupor, fists clenched in ecstasy, tongue projected out to the state line. Faceless Burial just made a modern classic in old school death metal. With Speciation, the Australian trio have split with the simplistic forms of their Grotesque Miscreation debut and evolved into something else entirely, a bellowing, beastly, brainy band that draws from the best of the old school but brings more than its share of new ideas. Speciation is a riff masterclass of Unfathomable ruinaproportion, endlessly offering up new licks to wreck your neck to. It’s a lot to wrap your head around, and the band are happy to bludgeon that cranium with a new weapon whenever it moves.

To that end, Faceless Burial have no shortage of instruments at their disposal. While I’ve never met a caveman riff I wouldn’t invite to fenestrate my skull, Speciation employs a few more subtle ways to get into one’s head. The band switch from cudgel to trephine a few minutes into opener “Worship,” and the record suddenly expands from grimy death metal to trippy prog-death. But the band know what bloodies their bread and maintain a balance between butchery and surgery for the whole runtime. Single “Irreparably Corpsed” compresses a near decade of Death riffs together in sequence, starting in the gunk of Leprosy, bounding out into a proggy Human lick, and continuing into an almost melodeath riff that’s just far enough from “Without Judgement” to not trigger a compulsory spin of Symbolic.

https://www.angrymetalguy.com/faceless-burial-speciation-review/

This was my actual #24 (lol), and it probably should have been higher. Just a phenomenal record all around.

This was my #8. Just a monster of an album.

yeah, sick record, def in the upper echelon for me as well

#25

Sólstafir – Endless Twilight of Codependent Love

254 points, 7 votes

https://f4.bcbits.com/img/a3480903237_10.jpg

https://open.spotify.com/album/7Gz2aaP3iC3eEzoNaMno4E?si=gcYddOAYS0iuvQw36rfHVw
https://solstafir.bandcamp.com/album/endless-twilight-of-codependent-love

It seems like Icelandic black metal has only recently caught on, far after Sólstafir left the genre behind. The band’s roots in progressive viking metal seemed farther away than ever on 2017’s Berdreyminn, but that release’s emotive vein of post-rock still met the high standard of quality the band has maintained during its evolution. Though comparable to their countrymen Sigur Rós in terms of scope, Sólstafir’s hard-rock crunch draws a line in the sand between the ambient trends of modern post-rock. This amalgamation of grandiosity and viscera continues onto Endless Twilight of Co-Dependent Love, with a more polarized twist. Sólstafir’s massive arrangements and rustic grit reach notably accessible territory, rounded off by some callbacks to a savage past.

After many years, “Akkeri” sees drummer Aðalbjörn "Addi" Tryggvason bring tremolo picking and blast beats back to the Sólstafir sound. The burst is short-lived before a return to a standard backbeat and, yes, cowbell, but it provides a satisfying precipice within a 10-minute labyrinth of explosive dynamics, infectious leads, and passionate vocals. Similarly, “Dionysus” begins and ends with vocalist/guitarist Aðalbjörn Tryggvason screaming bloody murder over wall-of-sound guitar chords from him and guitarist Sæþór Maríus Sæþórsson. This barbaric barrage becomes a springboard for galloping NWOBHM riffage and even a jammy, disco-beat-infused instrumental, putting it in the upper echelon of intense Sólstafir songs.

https://metalinjection.net/reviews/solstafir-endless-twilight-of-codependent-love

Still not as good as Otta, the band's high watermark to my ears, I was surprised by how much I loved that one.

I found their previous album kind of middling so I didn't bother with this one. Should I?

A cracking album nonetheless

xpost - I think so, yeah. I was let down by the previous one too, it wasn't bad but it never grabbed me like Otta did.

Cool, thanks. I'll give it a belated shot.

#24

Necrot – Mortal

274 points, 8 votes

https://f4.bcbits.com/img/a3627892011_10.jpg

https://necrot.bandcamp.com/album/mortal

People are never satisfied. They are saturated with options, and with choice comes entitlement. Corpulent technicality and aimless dissonance have somehow convinced people that songwriting isn’t necessary. Fucking die.1 Whatever happened to the basics? But not just the basics, the fucking basics. Evolution is key, but nothing can replace those original elements that, when correctly combined, elicit such a chemical crush. Oakland’s Necrot have been descanting the insalubrious since 2012 and boast members of Mortuous, Vastum and Acephalix. Their 2017 record Blood Offerings rampaged through the underground with an electric take on no-nonsense death metal. Follow-up Mortal continues the trend, but this beast has refined its approach.

Great writing and a firm sense of self defined Blood Offerings‘ success. Necrot‘s material combines the original Floridian flavor with a palpably dark mood. The result is not unlike the legendary Morgoth (and, therefore, early Death). Mortal maintains the same framework as its sibling but it demands a higher standard. Feral riffing has always reliably buoyed Necrot‘s writing. Mortal ensures that “feral” ascends to “predatory” with a celebratory killing spree. An attack that requires no genetic reconstruction of the band’s identity, just a flattening of emotions.

https://www.angrymetalguy.com/necrot-mortal-things-you-might-have-missed-2020/

I voted for this because I ended up revisiting it way more often than I expected.

Solstafir was my #25. Lovely stuff, reminds me a bit of Tribulation, except the vocals of course.

#23

Duma– Duma

275 points, 8 votes

https://f4.bcbits.com/img/a3289675772_10.jpg

https://nyegenyegetapes.bandcamp.com/album/duma

The duo of Martin Khanja and Sam Karugu make music that’s manic, heavy, and impossible to categorize. It’s electronic and caustic, though it can also feel pensive. Machine-gun drums and piercing shrieks form the foundation of most songs; there are occasionally little ribbons of melody to cling to, but more often than not, static, synth drones and sculpted feedback provide the only adornment. This is music that comes apart at the seams, that glitches and convulses, that revels in the sounds of people and machines stretched to their breaking points.

Both Khanja and Karugu are veterans of Nairobi’s thriving metal scene. Khanja’s previous band, Lust of a Dying Breed, pushed speed metal into industrial territory: their final release traded in blast beats for the jittery sound of programmed drums. Duma goes even further, dispensing with any allegiance to genre, though the band draws liberally from black metal, power electronics, grindcore, drone and even hip-hop. As a composer, Karugu is an agent of chaos: these songs are crammed full of pummeling bass hits, stacked polyrhythms and other violently rhythmic sounds—it’s easy to picture an Ableton grid crowded with overlapping drum tracks. He sometimes employs recordings of hand drums as well, though even these are usually played at inhuman tempos. Khanja, meanwhile, can howl like a black metal vocalist, bark like a metalcore singer, or even yelp with a kind of frenzied glee. His throat-shredding vocals are often the only constant in these songs as tempos shift, tracks drop in and out of the mix, and waves of noise advance and recede.

https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/duma-duma/

Sounds amazing on paper. Too bad I haven't felt compelled to revisit it at all.

I think it made The Wires EOY list

same boat as pom

One of the best covers of the year for sure. I liked this enough to throw it some points, but will agree that it doesn't quite live up to the album that was in my head when I first read about it.

Yeah that cover art is amazing.

Wow, didn't expect this to be so high. Or even place. It's only tangentially metal but it's weird and dark as hell. Closest I'm going to get to listening to power electronics

#22

Hail Spirit Noir – Eden in Reverse

298 points, 8 votes, 1 #1 vote

https://f4.bcbits.com/img/a2317890106_10.jpg

https://agoniarecords.bandcamp.com/album/eden-in-reverse

Hail Spirit Noir is no stranger to experimentation. Right from the get-go with their first full-length album Pneuma, the Greek trio (now sextet) introduced a blend of black metal, progressive rock, and psychedelic music. Regardless of this apparent contradiction, their sound was fresh, intricate, and captivating. The subsequent albums maintained this very trend. By Mayhem in Blue, however, some of its tracks were developed in a more collected and deliberate fashion. Enter Eden In Reverse: an album that is as bizarre as their preceding efforts, but not in the way that one might think.

From the first few notes of the opener “Darwinian Beasts”, one might assume that Eden in Reverse would become yet another consistent record for their already solid repertoire. Yet as the song progresses and transitions onto the second track, “Incense Swirls”, there is an evident change of pace. Instead of their familiar black metal endeavors, we are greeted with… Kraftwerk-esque synth leads? This is quite a departure from their earlier efforts, though do not let that become a hindrance. These two tracks are a daring milestone for Hail Spirit Noir, as Eden in Reverse is a surprisingly expansive record where dynamics and textures are favored over the perceived abrasiveness found in past records.

https://everythingisnoise.net/reviews/hail-spirit-noir-eden-in-reverse/

yeah I did vote for this. they are so cool

I missed this one – adding it to my playlist.

Nobody excited enough about it to post?

There's been a lot of unclaimed #1 votes between yesterday and today, too, including this one so far.

If memory serves, the same thing happened last year.

I've tried with some older HSN albums, given the descriptions I always feel like I should love 'em, but I can't get into them at all.

I would have this down as 'very great fun' rather than 'amazing' but is IS fun. Try 'Crossroads' if you haven't

I thought someone would mention Ulver for sure

There's been a lot of unclaimed #1 votes between yesterday and today, too, including this one so far.

― Judi Dench's Human Hand (methanietanner), Thursday, 11 March 2021 21:39 (two minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

If memory serves, the same thing happened last year.

― pomenitul, Thursday, 11 March 2021 21:40 (one minute ago) bookmarkflaglink

Every year

If Panos Cosmatos decides to do the 80s rather than the 70s he should rope this lot in

This one's perhaps a bit different, less theatrical and more brooding, further from metal before but more genuinely psychedelic. Kind of slick but in a way that works.

I remember liking Oi Magoi okay, but found something about the genre fusion a bit shallow, idk.

Looking at my ballot, I definitely had this about 10 places too high haha. IT'S STILL GOOD THO

If Panos Cosmatos decides to do the 80s rather than the 70s he should rope this lot in

did you mean this the other way around as both Panos movies have been set in 1983?

The album is a bit scooby doom in places

oh shit haha. well in that case get 'em involved

idk why I assumed both Cosmatos movies were set in about 1978

Heh, I just assumed Mandy was present-day.

they're both as if the 70s never ended, nor will end, tbf

Or rather, I didn't think it had a 'date'. I think of it as its own fantasy world.

#21

Krallice – Mass Cathexis

299 points, 9 votes

https://f4.bcbits.com/img/a1618789199_10.jpg

https://krallice.bandcamp.com/album/mass-cathexis

Krallice’s post-hiatus work has been focused on surprise releases, organized entirely around particular themes; whether it is the heavier, Dave Edwardson focused Loum or the second-wave influenced Go Be Forgotten, the Brooklyn black metal explorers have percolated experiments into crystallized experiences. Mass Cathexis, the band’s ninth album, feels both a return to their original trajectory— before Ygg Hur and it’s heavier oddities—and a new phase in its own right. Mass Cathexis takes the salient lessons learned in Krallice’s experimental years, like shorter song lengths and more diversified riffing, and applies it to the quirky metal of their Interdimensional Bleedthrough and Years Past Matter era.

To be fair, the movement of Krallice’s abject sound has been minimal over their career. The riffs and production are still clinical and sharp, with Colin Marston and Mick Barr conjuring the same technical guitar and bass interplay that’s defined the band. This laser focus and obsession with an overtly “technical” sound are felt most strongly in the rhythm section, which Mass Cathexis features, again, quite prominently. Maybe this is controversial, but the aforementioned riffs and rhythm have always given Krallice the implication of a black metal band. The pieces and parts are there, but It became clear with Years Past Matter that Krallice was doing something different in black metal, especially since heading in a death metal-lite direction. Luckily, Mass Cathexis continues that trend while retaining the sort-of kvlt flair born in Go Be Forgotten. But make no mistakes, despite re-visiting familiar ground, Mass Cathexis is Kralice’s strangest and most unwieldy collection to date.

https://www.sputnikmusic.com/review/81933/Krallice-Mass-Cathexis/

Spotify Results Playlist

Their latest seems like a more successful iteration of what they attempted on Mass Cathexis.