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

As are Ulver I guess. FINE

I think it's harder to land a telling debut punch now though maybe!

Is there any older genre for which this doesn't hold true?

mediocre post-punk?

Kill 'Em All far from the best Metallica imo.

Oh most definitely, but imago didn't stipulate that the debut had to be the discography highlight.

How did we compile this list? So glad you asked. We looked at the top 5,000 MetalSucks articles to receive traffic between June 1, 2018 and September 30, 2020 and calculated the total number of pageviews for each post in which the name of the band was contained in the headline. We then added all those pageviews together to come up with a total number for each band. These numbers include headlines that feature a key member of the band — so, for example, any headline with the name “Dave Mustaine” in it was counted towards Megadeth. Any headline which contained the name of the band and the name of a prominent member of that band — e.g., “Megadeth’s Dave Mustaine” — was only counted once.

Doesn't really sound like the most reliable methodology

Previous Metal Poll EOY Results Thread

I know plenty of people who like Kill Em All best of all their albums. Quite a lot of Iron Maiden albums think their debut is best.

Do you?

My fave Maiden is indeed their debut actually, lol

Kill Em All my 3rd fave metallica

"Sanctuary" rocks but obv they got better when they became the Ramones of prog.

Closest thing to a debut in the top 3 of our metal poll 2008-2019 is the Myrkur debut, albeit it was preceded by quite a lengthy EP

Pre poll era but Mastodon and Isis made 2 great debut albums

As did Jesu and Alcest

and the 1st Torche album is still their best imo

their 2nd album won our first poll of course

Was Le Secret the Alcest debut? That is my favourite thing of theirs.

yes

my fave of theirs too

But I don't think there were too many debuts last year that got any coverage due to lack of touring, its true.

Baroness debut album (after 2 EPs) did well too iirc

Yuri Gagarin (SWE) at #1, calling it now

anal stabwound needs to win, not just most promising debut by a middle school aged kid locked down in connecticut of 2020 but of ALL TIME

someone of that age becoming that good at any one of guitar, bass, vocals, drumming and composition is hard to imagine let alone all five

A collective TOO LOW for all the amazing things that placed yesterday that I voted for in higher positions: Boris, Dark Buddha Rising, Couch Slut, Victory Over the Sun, Hail Spirit Noir, Duma.

Listening to Mamaleek again now (which I also voted for) - it's so good and weird. Those anguished vocals screaming 'have mercy' against the little chilled out bluesy piano on Whites of the Eyes.

^^^I am led to believe this person has also now heard Aktor

It is so. It was very very lovely.

Shall we get started then?

Its a split shift with pom today

A reminder that you can subscribe to Spotify Results Playlist which has a huge number of 3 followers. So we might not bother doing it in future polls.

It's kind of impressive how Bandcamp has become The Metal Platform

^

I think we're all listening, just not to the Swedish slime.

And how if you like something enough to listen to it more than 3 times, you have to buy it!

Before I start, it's time for you all to predict your 'locks' for the top 20. I want to see who guesses the hivemind best.

Stoked 4 Poppy

#20

Sumac – May You Be Held

299 points, 10 votes

https://f4.bcbits.com/img/a0004879527_10.jpg

https://sumac.bandcamp.com/album/may-you-be-held

Few bands clad a soft heart in tensile steel quite like Sumac. All of the abstruse metal trio’s four albums over the last five years have been ever more imposing, like self-perpetuating obstacle courses in hell. Ricocheting between formidable doom and barbed improvisation, Sumac sound preternaturally belligerent. But the group’s core is the spiritual yearning of Aaron Turner, who since his later days in Isis has often attempted to repurpose metal’s malevolent mechanics for personal transcendence. Sumac’s May You Be Held might be the closest he has ever come. For a vertiginous hour, Sumac pirouette around riffs and collapse into bedlam, hurtle through feedback and snap back into lockstep. As violent as they may sometimes seem, these songs are timely psalms of perseverance and rebirth, weaponized for whatever comes next.

Three years ago, Sumac traveled to Tokyo to work with Japanese experimental godhead Keiji Haino. That experience not only led to two intriguing collaborative LPs but also challenged Sumac to stretch their parameters; their subsequent full-length, 2018’s colossal Love in Shadow, disrupted their formerly relentless force with unmoored instrumental explorations and extreme dynamics. May You Be Held indulges this tension like a favorite new habit. The metal sections are mightier, tightened with pneumatic precision. The improvisations, meanwhile, are more adventurous, pushing harder against the boundaries of the songs themselves. The uncanny hybrid suggests something Peter Brötzmann’s Machine Gun band might have made in a different setting, or something his son, Caspar, might have eventually found with his own Massaker. Where those splenetic groups decried our failures, Sumac’s tirades ponder fixing them, too.

https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/sumac-may-you-be-held/

Nechoch/Panop, Liturgy, Elder, Slift, ImTriumph, Paysage, Oranssi, Ulcerate, at least one Serpent Column LP, and I have my fingers crossed for Lowrider.

and ^ obvs

Oh I forgot this! Amusing that neither this nor OMG will be Turner's highest placement lol

I voted for this one. Great guitar timbres.

As good as I think May You Be Held was, that 18-min "Two Beasts" EP/single on Sub Pop from the very end of last year was my favourite Sumac output to date.

#19

Napalm Death – Throes of Joy in the Jaws of Defeatism

300 points, 9 votes, 1 #1 vote

https://open.spotify.com/album/3AASIPHf14TujhNRkluEiA?si=EQGwdM0wTaGsJ_RCxVhFQA

https://www.decibelmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/883511-1536x1536-1-820x820.jpg

Napalm Death’s screeds against society's ills have always had a prophetic feel to them. And yet, while they have been fighting against the dangers of capitalism and social injustice since the height of Thatcher’s reign, the Brummie grindstitution have never come across preachy in their efforts to warn us of the precipice humanity has been recklessly dangling from for decades.

As world economies begin to enter a second recession in just over ten years due to an insidious disease that’s currently running roughshod through us, some might say we’ve finally overshot said precipice and are on a rapid descent to a cataclysmic fall – and perhaps we should’ve listened harder to such screamed warnings. But throughout all the sociopolitical upheaval and internal turmoil affecting each and every one of us this year to varying degrees of distress, you can still count on Napalm Death to deliver a grindcore polemic of the highest order – a band acting as a beacon of truth, consistency and stability during the most uncertain times of our generation.

This might not mean much to those who are struggling to pay rent or maintain their (physical and/or mental) health right now, but art – even art of such reality-based themes – can be a source of strength and a welcome form of escapism during even the darkest of days. The aptly-titled Throes of Joy in the Jaws of Defeatism is the band’s sixteenth LP and it’s certainly a cause for celebration. It finds Napalm Death acting as a self-contained sonic firestorm on a record that features furious tracks, as expected, but also some of their finest experiments to date.

https://thequietus.com/articles/28992-napalm-death-throes-of-joy-in-the-jaws-of-defeatism-review

good placement for this, strong album that nevertheless wasn't quite as awesome as the last one imho

I love the Idea of Sumac but both this one and Love in Shadow are in need of some tightening up. With a bit of luck their next LP will be it.

As for the Napalm Death, I think I'm just not enough of a fan to really get into their more recent output.

It was the Decibel Album of the Year.

I don't think the Decibel crew have voted in ILM metal poll for years now though.

how sad

Next up is the long awaited follow up album by a beloved band from yesteryear (face it, you are old)

I'm sure you can guess who it is so no prizes for guessing.

face it, you are old

My belatedly acquired metal habit is all about coming to terms with this.