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

locating Trevor Dunn in the Nels Cline singers is the biggest crime of description there imo :P

Moving on, we've got nothing less than a THREE-WAY TIE!

(32 ballots will do that, heh.)

#95 TIE
Worm – Gloomlord
96 points, 3 votes

https://f4.bcbits.com/img/a0527932810_10.jpg

https://ironboneheadproductions.bandcamp.com/album/worm-gloomlord

With the aptly titled Gloomlord, Worm has morphed into a mixture of various extreme forms of doom. The mark of bands as varied as Disembowelment, Mortuary Drape, Goatlord, Unholy, Disembowelment, and Thergothon all are present here but degraded into a shuddering mess of shambling, pounding rhythms and lurching chunk-action chords. They are as slow as you would expect though far from sparse; this sophomore’s sound is surprisingly busybodied in its songwriting, packed to the brim as a skull overflowing with maggots and running out flesh and innards for them all. Whereas most doom, extreme or not, is content to simply ring out a few chords and play a few woeful melodies then stretch either out ad nauseam, Worm attacks with an actively involved sort of aggression normally reserved for far more high tempo acts.

Drumming in particular plays an unusually prominent role to the extent it’s almost counterpointing the guitar work, answering every staggering step through the muddy depths with crashing cymbal attacks, and rolls tumble and fall forth like flesh sloughing off a reanimated carcass. Very rarely does it play “normal” rhythms, always finding some sort of accent or fill to add an added weightiness to the proceedings, almost answering the riffs whenever it can. While I can’t say this is necessarily incredibly technical drumming, it is by and far the most aggressive instrument on this album which is almost unheard of for any of these styles amalgamated onto this album.

https://toiletovhell.com/worm-gloomlord/

#95 TIE
Ulthar – Providence
96 points, 3 votes

https://f4.bcbits.com/img/a3012301573_10.jpg

https://20buckspin.bandcamp.com/album/providence

The work of H.P. Lovecraft looms large within the extreme-metal imagination, and the Oakland trio Ulthar—who take their name from one of the author’s short stories—is far from the first band to fall under its spell. The band’s sophomore LP, Providence, which is named for Lovecraft’s hometown, features album art studded with skulls and plague buboes, resembling one of those cursed Victorian mourning wreaths woven from human hair. Those surface-level clues immediately alert the listener that they’re in for an unsettling ride (and is, artistically, par for the course for Ulthar). There is a certain ghastly air to the proceedings, as though the trio had discovered a nest of eldritch tentacles in the cellar while recording and decided to keep on playing. With Lovecraft himself, the true horror was what a racist, anti-Semitic shitbag he was, but here, that wyrd atmosphere is conjured in good faith, and conducted with blackened grandiosity.

The people involved have decades of experience between them in the study and execution of extremity, from drummer Justin Ennis’s tenure in NYC black metallers Mutilation Rites and current project Void Omnia to vocalist and guitarist Shelby Lermo’s experience with Bay Area death cult Vastum and bassist and vocalist Steve Peacock’s time in off-kilter blasphemers Pale Chalice and Mastery. It is unsurprising that Ulthar is a good band, but Providence is not just a good record, it is a great one, and the reasons for that go far beyond its creators’ resumes.

They couch their devotion to old-school death metal orthodoxy within a modern context; there's no mud, or murk, or self-conscious efforts to sound lo-fi, and the technical aspects are presented plainly, without apology or artifice. Providence allows no time for niceties on its short, brutish opening track, “Churn,” from which “Undying Spear” offers a brief respite before the rippling melody is torn to shreds by an imperious blast. Ulthar’s sound mingles black metal, death metal, doom, and thrash, and they skitter between genres in the leaps of a scale. But Providence owes a particular debt to Finish masters like Demigod, Convulsed, and Demilich, an earlier cohort who innately understood the importance of tempering technical flights with grounded riffs and headbanging tempos.

https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/ulthar-providence/

#95 TIE
Vile Creature – Glory, Glory! Apathy Took Helm!
96 points, 3 votes

https://f4.bcbits.com/img/a4014851458_10.jpg

https://vilecreature.bandcamp.com/album/glory-glory-apathy-took-helm

A couple of years ago, I saddled myself with the record Cast of Static and Smoke by Ontarian duo Vile Creature. It turned out to be perhaps the most memorable 3.0 I have reviewed these past 4 years. Despite its flaws, it was an ambitious record that thrived on hideous, grimy textures, hypnotic repetition and glacial progression, rather than hooks or energy. A bit over 2 years hence, and its follow-up graces my inbox, with a disturbing, Midsommar-esque cover and featuring the unwieldy title of Glory, Glory! Apathy Took Helm!.

Vile Creature’s sound has remained intact since Cast. From drummer Vic’s hellish opening scream of “WE DIE!” it’s immediately clear the sort of experience he and guitarist KW envision. Glory, Glory is a grimy, nasty, suffocating record. The riffs move at a slow, deliberate, battering clip, millstones grinding your teeth to meal, at a pace too slow to be called energetic but too steady to be called funeralean. They come at us like ocean waves, each movement a rise to a crashing crescendo that washes over us and drowns us. Vic’s drums are tone-setting, the percussion almost melodic against the wall of distorted guitars, accentuating the peaks and valleys of the crushing, churning riffs, while their vocals shriek and wail like an anti-siren, filling the salty air with throat-ripping desperation.

https://www.angrymetalguy.com/vile-creature-glory-glory-apathy-took-helm-review/

Forgot about Ulthar. Good stuff

xxp great Ian Miller cover art for the Ulthar record

I quite liked the Worm, but not enough to vote for it, I'm afraid.

The Ulthar put me off for purely subjective and somewhat indefensible reasons: I'm not a huge fan of metal bands with dual vocalists, it just sounds too music hall-y for my tastes. Def a Me Problem.

I forgot to check out the Vile Creature, so I'll be making up for that pronto.

Oh yay!! The Vile Creature album is lovely. Such mantric intricacy despite the crushing heaviness. I really liked this - my #23.

And that's the first thing I've heard of these so far. That Worm artwork is delicious.

Vile Creature TOO LOW, my #3. Killer record. I missed their livestreamed set around the release of the album, unfortunately.

Listening to it now. Right off the bat, I'm hooked.

Spotify playlist btw https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6BISg6zJeLzumnfHfMfcbG?si=ccns5k-JQbKz96exWkLLKQ

I voted for Undergang, but it was in the bottom half of my ballot. I found it a bit disappointing after Misantropologi, which was one of my favorite albums of 2017. The songs didn't seem to be there for me this time. The Worm, otoh, placed very high in my ballot. One of my favorite discoveries of the nomination/campaigning process. I also voted for Ulthar, again in the lower part of my ballot. Dan Weiss sounds interesting and I've admired many of the musicians in that line-up, but didn't get to it in time to consider voting for it.

Primitive Man album hitting the spot right now

We've got another tie coming up btw. A 'mere' two-way.

Hadn't heard any of the last three, though that Vile Creature is definitely on my list now.

#93 TIE
VoidCeremony – Entropic Reflections Continuum: Dimensional Unravel
96 points, 3 votes

https://f4.bcbits.com/img/a3337286041_10.jpg

https://20buckspin.bandcamp.com/album/entropic-reflections-continuum-dimensional-unravel

Their name may look unfamiliar to many readers, but some of us have anticipated the arrival of the debut full-length from Voidceremony since the California prog-death four-piece released their Dystheism demo in 2014. Forming from the ashes of their high school band the year before, Voidceremony have put out EPs only up until now. Three of them, in fact, and to witness the band’s growth from one to the next was truly a thing to behold—although nothing compares to the growth spurt they had before recording the album in question. But as the death metal trendscape shifted from death-doom to death-thrash and now to something like brutal death metal, Voidceremony remained dedicated to honing their not-quite-technical-but-definitely-progressive sound into something formidable and memorable.

Reunited with West Coast drummernaut Charlie Koryn, Voidceremony absolutely reign over their contemporaries on this debut. However clunky the title may be, Entropic Reflections Continuum occupies a new level of modern death metal power. From the very first part in opener “Desiccated Whispers,” which hits like a lost Death or Atheist moment, to the slow unraveling of the record’s tightly wound aggression that occurs at the end of closer “Solemn Reflections of the Void,” this album reeks of perfection. Okay, occasionally session bassist Damon Good (Mournful Congregation, StarGazer) goes a little overboard with his fretless soloing, but as always with Voidceremony, no one part gets too much spotlight before it’s quickly pulled back down into the ever-shifting tumult. When you hear the guitar solo at the end of the third track, you’ll be a confirmed believer. This isn’t just Voidceremony at the top of their game; this is the pinnacle of death metal in the year 2020.

https://www.decibelmagazine.com/2020/06/29/album-review-voidceremony-entropic-reflections-continuum-dimensional-unravel/

#93 TIE
Bell Witch & Aerial Ruin – Stygian Bough Volume I
97 points, 3 votes

https://f4.bcbits.com/img/a0339555290_10.jpg

https://bellwitch.bandcamp.com/album/stygian-bough-volume-i

The popularity of Bell Witch is one of the more surprising and remarkable phenomena of the past few years. In this day and age where humans are outpacing goldfish and fruit flies in the lack of attention span department, for a band to issue a single 70+ minute track of sludgy funereal doom as Dylan Desmond (bass/vocals) and Jesse Schriebman (drums/vocals) did with 2017’s Mirror Reaper – to say nothing of previous compositions which regularly shattered the ten-minute mark – and have people not only pay attention but laud them for a job well done, still makes cynical heads spin. Even if a large number of those folks who would trumpet the band are on par with ‘coffee shop black metallers’ – i.e. “I have black metal records, but spend more time name dropping and talking about having them then actually listening to them” – that a band that wears the term “slow burn” with the same irreverent pride that Cliff Burton wore bell-bottoms has attained their success is astounding.

Stygian Bough Volume 1 isn’t the first time Bell Witch has teamed up with Aerial Ruin – a.k.a. Eric Moggridge (who also plays in Old Grandad with Death Angel’s COVID-19 killer Will Carroll and is an ex-member of ‘80s thrashers Epidemic). Moggridge has regularly joined Bell Witch on stage and been a guest vocalist on each of their three full-lengths. This album, however, appears to be a more fully-fleshed out pairing and equitable collaboration in which the acoustic and electric guitar wealth and a preponderance of clean vocals that are predominately Moggridge’s work in interweaved tandem with the duo's bass and drum throb. And, of course, there are probably a small warehouse of effects pedals at work and humming the background.

https://metalinjection.net/reviews/bell-witch-aerial-ruin-stygian-bough-volume-1

The VoidCeremony just narrowly missed my ballot and I already regret it because that bass was phat.

As for Bell Witch, I'm a naysayer. Just terminally boring stuff, sorry.

I really dug that Bell Witch & Aerial Ruin, the acoustic guitars gave a nice balance to Bell Witch (who, as much as I love them, could clearly be self-indulgent as all get out).

Wow lots of ties. I didn't expect both Stygian albums to place in the 90s lol. Too low! Glad the Wormlord made it into the rollout though, I really liked that album.

none of the artsy doom records from lat year really struck me tbh, I'll give the longeuil lads another try tho

All right, I'm starting with VoidCeremony. Definitely heavy so far. Achieves total heaviosity.

However clunky the title may be

lol @ Decibel Magazine daring to adopt this angle of critique.

Ulthar, VoidCeremony, and the Bell Witch/Aerial Ruin were all albums I dug enough to consider voting for and that probably would have made my top 100, but I just didn't have space for them in my top 50. I am wearing a Bell Witch longsleeve at the moment so I feel the need to disclose this fact in the spirit of transparency as if it is a conflict of interest.

Yet you did not vote for them. Now that's impartiality.

Unfortunately I forgot to save my ballot after I made a few last minute shifts/additions, so I can't remember exactly where a lot of my votes fell.

well, I am wearing sweatpants from my #1 vote getter so it balances out.

xp

i am wearing a shirt my mother got for me that just says #metal because I am an impartial lover of all riffs metallic, except if u r a false

^^^ how I break it down to an extent.

Next up: not a tie.

I am eating my breakfast cereal with a metal spoon.

#92
Lamp of Murmuur – Heir of Ecliptical Romanticism
100 points, 5 votes

https://f4.bcbits.com/img/a0291658041_10.jpg

https://lampofmurmuur.bandcamp.com/album/heir-of-ecliptical-romanticism

Is straightforward, raw, second wave-inspired black metal still worth making, listening to, and celebrating in 2020? Isn't it all played out? Why should we care about Lamp of Murmuur's debut full-length album, Heir Of Ecliptical Romanticism? Hasn't it all been done, and overdone, so many times before?

While this is true in a sense, it has a few problems. First of all, if you're old enough to remember the early-to-mid 90s, the style may in fact be played out for you, because you really have heard it all done too many times before. But for a new band trying out the style today, this indictment doesn't hold much water. It's not a musician's problem that you're tired of whatever style they play, and it should be none of their concern. Second of all, think of a younger listener, or someone your own age listening to black metal for the first time. That person is discovering Darkthrone, Mütiilation, and Immortal at the same time they're discovering the new wave of raw black metal that's emerged in the last few years.

It's not new in an ontological sense, but it's new to them. That's the key distinction. And there's not much reason for them to care unless they're trying to prop up a mask of superiority over other people (in which case, get a life). Finally, with any established style of art, there's always room to imprint your own soul into the work, making the stale fresh again, the staid thrilling again, and the tired vigorous once more.

https://metalinjection.net/reviews/album-review-lamp-of-murmuur-heir-of-ecliptical-romanticism

Opening paragraphs of that review are very much otm.

I didn't vote for this – I found it a bit overhyped tbh – but it's a good one, no doubt about it.

voted for it on the lower end as I liked it a lot but didn't return to it much, but it's good stuff.

yeah, I liked this a lot, but it's another one I couldn't fit in my top 50. Would have made my top 60ish though.

^^^ same xp

I am realizing that anything that came out around April to like, July or August I listened to way more than anything after. when I started my vinyl collecting I pretty much was buying mostly old music, so new releases (which I usually bought digitally) were car listens, and I don't drive much.

Napalm Death an exception, played the hell out of that one. and the Cadaver one.

I think my top 50 is spread somewhat evenly, chronology-wise, although December did get snubbed a bit, of course.

I enjoyed the Lamp of Muurmurr, probably should have voted for it.

I love Lamp--raw and punky but really well-produced/-mastered for a lo-fi BM release; synth passages nice and buried, how I prefer 'em

I thought Lamp of Murmuur was really refreshing. Raw, catchy, atmospheric but not over-serious, full of spooky corners.

He's going to drop a split with Dai-ichi in April.

Well, Lamp of Murmuur added to my list too!

This is why I'm glad we don't whittle down the albums in the results, these lower reaches are usually the most fun for me discovering new things.

(I didn't vote for it though, maybe b/c I thought noms had closed, oh well, glad to see it on here)

That VoidCeremony sounds like it might be good, I was on a call and I heard a righteous guitar lick on "Abandoned Reality." I'll have to listen for real at some point.

I did however accidentally vote for Ulthar in two positions (at weighted numbers 8 and 11 on my ballot, in careless haste evidently), so hopefully that was flagged by the comptrollers and their placement a few spots back wasn't artificially inflated--sorry

#91
Okkultokrati – La ilden lyse
101 points, 3 votes

https://f4.bcbits.com/img/a4111863293_10.jpg

https://okkultokratisl.bandcamp.com/album/la-ilden-lyse

Most reviews and articles concerning Norwegian dark hearts Okkultokrati seem to contain slightly differing classifications of the band’s sound. I’m no different: if you’re going to mould the likes of Motörhead, Emperor, and Sex Pistols into a ball of spewing hate, you’re playing Punk / Black ‘n’ Roll as far as I’m concerned. Anyone care? Of course not. More interesting is the decision of certain band members to change their stage names in a move that seems purely designed for new album La Ilden Lyse (Southern Lord Recordings), and which corresponds with a further evolution of the sextet’s direction.

Keyboards have added an extra dimension to the band’s later albums and …Lyse is no different. To set us off, however, a skewing Punk riff leads into ‘Thelemic Threat’: the pounding beat of drummer Verminscum underpinning the shimmering, emetic rasp of Dionysiac; the whole resembling an echo chamber of chilling sonic violence. This is followed by the hostile, frosted buzz of ‘Grimoire Luciferian Dream’, a real screamalong with a rhythmic bluster that evokes those Motörhead comparisons. In turn, Azoth‘s keys give an element of emotion to the rampant, ‘Ace of Spades’-esque ‘Loathe Forever’, and with that obsidian edge, it gives a feel similar to 80s Gothic Metal while creating a musicality that sticks in the mind.

https://www.ghostcultmag.com/album-review-okkultokrati-la-ilden-lyse-southern-lord-recordings/

I haven't listened to this because punk/black 'n' roll is usually not my cup of tea, but I'll give it a shot in a bit just in case.

oooooh

could this be this year's Reveal?

This is good for what it is, but it doesn't dispel my reservations about the subgenre.

#90
Horisont – Sudden Death
101 points, 4 votes

https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/71MIlNe1bcL._SS500_.jpg

https://horisont.lnk.to/SuddenDeath

Formed in 2006, HORISONT started their career with the want to revive the classic sounds of the 70s and has continued on that path ever since. 10 years after forming, they signed a record deal with Century Media Records and went onto achieve #1 on the Swedish charts for About Time in 2017. Vocalist Axel declares that “Our mission was to make the record that WE wanted to do, and not what people expect us to do,” and it is with this laid-back attitude that the band created their new 2020 record, Sudden Death. One look at these guys tells you all you need to know. The band’s style and sound is perfectly matched, complete with oversized aviator-style glasses and some pretty damn impressive moustaches. If you’re gonna do it, do it properly!

First track Revolution kicks things off with an upbeat, staccato style piano intro, gently moving into a classic 70s sound. Vintage rock revival at it’s finest, every note is soaked in sunshine and could easily be the soundtrack to an old-school movie. Free Riding follows suit with sweeping piano melodies reminiscent of 70s rockers like STATUS QUO. Groovy guitar harmonies are layered well here, creating a soft but up-tempo sound. Axel’s voice is unique, it’s nasally but in the best way, strong and full but slightly strained in the way that Ozzy Osbourne sounds.

https://distortedsoundmag.com/album-review-sudden-death-horisont/

Another one I haven't heard.

Such a fun record, I dig those guys a lot.

The penguins campaigning worked!

A really nice album. I just hadn't listened to it enough to vote for it.

This is fun but it just makes me want to catch up with the vintage classic rock I haven't explored yet.

I'm already behind but checking out the Vile Creature which sounds sufficiently Khanate-y so far. Neat. I didn't vote because in 2020 I bought a grand total of eight (8) 2020 metal releases, and I'm not sure any of them were noteworthy enough to make any sort of list. Honestly my biggest metal joy of the year was the at long last release of those King Diamond/Mercyful Fate unremastered CDs.

But I always enjoy these rollouts and have the day off so I'll be listening to what I missed.

(Actually just got the new Horna in the mail, which probably WOULD have made a top-of-the-year list but I was -- obviously -- late in hearing it.)

Every year we get fewer ballots than before. I wish more would vote but what can we do to get more participation?

Has not being able to go to gigs resulted in people buying fewer albums?

For me, metal feels very much an in-transit thing, especially for walking around and long train journeys. Since there wasn't so much of that this last year I definitely felt less engaged with the genre.

I was never a bigtime gig-goer anyway; 2020 didn't affect that for me. And I still bought over 100 albums, 90% of which were metal. And I was as nerdy as ever about keeping track of new releases in an alphabetized notepad file -- just about everything I heard failed to compel me to seek out a physical copy (or digital buy). I dunno, 2020 apparently went over my head.

I'm not much of a gig-goer either, and I get most of my listening (a very generous word) done while working or exercising. As it turns out, last year I heard more new metal releases than ever.

#89
Skeletal Remains – The Entombment of Chaos
102 points, 4 votes

https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/81gJ0k0iteL._AC_SX679_.jpg

https://open.spotify.com/album/18J9fNUCpnaIa9B2jQDaml

Old school death has bucked the dreary trend of a wretched 2020 thus far with a stellar supply of quality albums to help keep the blues away. Now the unfashionable but dependably solid Californian crew Skeletal Remains emerge from their dank and dusty crypt with their bludgeoning brand of no-frills death on latest platter of destruction, The Entombment of Chaos. Amidst the current strength of combatants in the revivalist old school death scene, the pressure to keep pace and remain a competitive force not to be fucked with ensures the challenge is intense and healthy for bands to confront. Boasting a solid track record, can Skeletal Remains reach that elusive higher plane of deathly excellence?

After yet another, all too common and unnecessary introduction piece, Skeletal Remains get down to business with the rugged double bass, barbaric vocals, and mid-paced onslaught of “Illusive Divinity,” both heaving and tank-like, reinforced with chunky, hacking riffs. Whereas predecessor Devouring Mortality exercised a slightly more refined, vaguely progressive approach, The Entombment of Chaos is a far more in-your-face and brutal affair. The viscous grooves are utterly pummeling, both headbang worthy and punishing. Although they remain heavily influenced by Morbid Angel and Pestilence, Skeletal Remains offer enough of their own character and freshness to elevate their stature beyond mere worship and derivation. This is more evident on The Entombment of Chaos, which in many ways feels like the band’s most confident, accomplished album yet.

https://www.angrymetalguy.com/skeletal-remains-the-entombment-of-chaos-review/

One for the OLD SKOOL KREW.

I thought it was okay but nowhere near the top of my ballot for 2020 DM.

This little doomworm is very nice.

This Lamp of Murmuur, which really should be doing it for me, just ... isn't. I think Gjendod's doing the 90s Norse throwback thing better than anyone. Haxanu was excellent too (though they're American and maybe not 100% in that category).

Not sure what this means but the three songs I've listened to so far, all of which were track 1 on an album, were over 10 mins long. The hell's going on with that.

I think I nominated this one, but it didn't make my ballot. Too much killer DM (OSDM or otherwise) for this to rise to the top this year for me I'm afraid.

A phrase to make imagos heart glow

Skeletal was dutiful, but low on mine

Yeah, that's a good descriptor for it.

Guess what?

We've got another tie coming up!

Whudda thunk?

#87 TIE
Spirit Adrift – Enlightened in Eternity
105 points, 3 votes

https://f4.bcbits.com/img/a3328898945_10.jpg

https://20buckspin.bandcamp.com/album/enlightened-in-eternity

One thing about the number of bands who wake up and have a big bowl of Black Sabbath while listening to Black Sabbath before going to band practice to write songs that sound like Black Sabbath: it’s a vanishingly small number who do it with a focus on the first two Dio-era albums, rather than the floppy, weedy riffs of their glorious early-‘70s age. Not so for Spirit Adrift. While not a total case of bare-faced worship, but their metal does nevertheless take big, obvious gulps from the more taut end of the Sabbath spectrum that gave us Neon Knights and Heaven And Hell. This is a very good thing.

Ride Into The Light and Astral Levitation are big, bold metal bangers, revelling in a bigger-is-better approach that flexes their riffs gloriously. Shades of Iron Maiden pop up in Cosmic Conquest’s lead guitar melodies, while Screaming From Beyond is a stomping slower burner that nevertheless brings heaviness brilliantly. That it’s all done with a level of garage‑y grit and dirtiness only adds to their charm. Sort of like Mastodon or Baroness, this is something grand done by an earthy band.

https://www.kerrang.com/reviews/album-review-spirit-adrift-enlightened-in-eternity/

#87 TIE
Biesy – Transsatanizm
105 points, 3 votes

https://f4.bcbits.com/img/a4044994473_10.jpg

https://biesy.bandcamp.com/album/transsatanizm

Black Metal is, let’s face it, an inherently contradictory genre.

By turns both fearlessly progressive and rigidly (some might even say “religiously”) conservative, infinitely malleable yet stubbornly inflexible, it’s the sort of place where bands can preach rebellion and non-conformity on one hand while ostracising anyone who dares to colour too far outside the lines on the other.

And while I love pretty much everything about it – the sound, the fury, the blending of avant-garde artistry and punk-as-fuck attitude – I’m also not afraid to acknowledge the high camp of it all either, considering how much time I’ve spent in small, dark rooms, watching shirtless, make-up covered men with pseudonyms like “Goat Impaler” and “Ultra Sodomite” hammering out priapic hymns of uber-masculinity, all while rocking a borderline-erotic amount of leather.

So it’s actually kind of surprising that it’s taken so long for someone to connect the obvious dots between the nihilistic escapism of Black Metal’s corpse-painted pageantry and the performative, provocative world of drag, but that’s exactly what the mastermind behind Biesy has done, adopting the persona of blue-haired punk-rock princess “Faustyna Moreau” to create an album designed to make you question your own prejudices and preconceptions about the necro-metallic arts.

https://www.nocleansinging.com/2020/06/18/biesy-transsatanizm/

I liked the Spirit Adrift but it didn't steal my trad heart like Wytch Hazel did.

The Biesy is quite unique, and I enjoyed it, but it failed to claw its way into my ballot.

20 Buck Spin has found a way to miraculously pinpoint something very specific that I don't like (and can't articulate) in my metal and give it record deals.

lol

I'll throw a TOO LOW at the Spirit Adrift since it was my #6. I think this one was an improvement on Divided in Darkness (which I think was my #9 or so last year) but didn't quite reach the highs of Curse of Conception, which is still my fave from them.

Tomb Mold tho.

Cerebral Rot.

Obsequaie.

Witch Vomit.

Atramentus.

Mournful Congregation.

Mylingar.

etc.

That's a lot to miss out on.

xp

Biesy my first vote and my first TOO LOW

I loved Mylingar's first album and somehow haven't gotten around to checking out the follow-up, which I hadn't realized was on 20BS.

(And in my original post I'd written out "except for Obsequiae" but backspaced over it, haha. Yes, they rule.)

This Biesy is really cool.

tracks 1 and 3 of the Biesy especially sick. riding that post-2nd-wave industrial-BM Dodheimsgard vibe into new hell

I've never fully managed to overcome my bias against industrial stylings in metal. Blut aus Nord is among the rare exceptions to this rule.

#86
Ripped to Shreds – Luan
105 points, 4 votes

https://f4.bcbits.com/img/a1394046225_10.jpg

https://rippedtoshredsdeathmetal.bandcamp.com/album/luan

You know the death metal's going be good when the intro sounds like a soundtrack to an RPG made absolutely no later than 1993, and Ripped to Shreds' second full-length 亂 (Luan) is infallible proof of this. It's searing death metal that revels in brutality and musicality without trading away either.

In keeping with Ripped to Shreds' preferred subject matter, 亂 (Luan) loosely follows an ancient Chinese war-themed folk tale. Judging by the album art, I'd surmise it involves fire, chaos, and destruction: all ideal material for some gut-ripping death metal. And rip it does, as Ripped to Shreds constructs potent sequences out of a broad palette of cadences and temperaments -- every song tears its way through the less-important stuff in your brain to find a more permanent residence. Drums, bass, guitar and vocals all play a part in the meta-rhythm, stopping and starting in tight coherence with just enough interplay and deviance to tantalize.

https://www.invisibleoranges.com/ripped-to-shreds-luan-album-stream/

I liked this one when I heard it.

Aw...too low.

Loved this one. Was in my top ten I think

TOO LOW. My #14. Andrew Lee has quickly become one of the busiest (8 active bands since dropping his first RTS release in 2018) and best people in metal. Azath and Houkago Grind Time would have both also made an extended ballot for me this year, too.

I'm just not listening to much metal at the moment. I'm wondering if it's terminal and that makes me sad. Interested in the rollout though!

One-person BM bands are easier to pull off than their DM counterparts imo.

This Okkultokrati is a pleasant discovery. The Biesy was a late addition to my ballot. For some reason shouted metal vocals always sound good in Polish.

I feel like methanie and I will have much overlap in our ballots

Next up: one for teh olds.

Imago is rather quiet today, I guess he always is on the death metal section 100-11, lol

#85
Cirith Ungol – Forever Black
106 points, 3 votes

https://f4.bcbits.com/img/a4223878982_10.jpg

https://cirithungol.bandcamp.com/album/forever-black

Pestilence sprays across the land from lung to lung, ignorant congregations gather and die in hordes, the populace rallies against their own public health for the sake of their slaver’s prosperity and in the sky Helios looms in preparation of his fieriest whip of summer heat to date. Churning within every mounting wave of blazon doom is a magnitude higher maelstrom of chaos descending upon Earth and we knew it was coming. We heard the evil laughter in the shadows and the night’s sky for nearly five years prior — It is no coincidence that the prophesiers of doom would return and slap hands full of painted cards across our tables each warning once again of sickness and fire, of black machines and eternal wars! Back by popular demand and nearly a full twenty nine years removed from their fourth and thought-to-be final album (‘Paradise Lost‘, 1991), the masters of metal, the heir apparent kings of the dead and undisputed Ventura, California heavy/doom metal legends Cirith Ungol arrive with a fifth and magical long-player today and I’ll be damned… ‘Forever Black’ doesn’t suck. If anything they’re heavier and more passionate on tape in their sixties than they’d been since ‘One Foot in Hell‘ (1986), it is a kingly return in trying times and a massive inspiration to all.

https://grizzlybutts.com/2020/04/22/cirith-ungol-forever-black-2020-review/

Surprised to see Spirit Adrift that low, fun trad metal record (tho I enjoyed one even more than that that I suspect is yet to come).

I'm hit or miss with 20 Buck Spin stuff, but I'm glad they are less uh, problematic, than Profound Lord. Which is a disappointment, because PL has put out some truly incredible records over the years.

Cirith Ungol album is great

Re: Cirith Ungol, I'm going to self-quote my post from the rolling 2020 thread 'cause I never got an answer to my question:

Not really feel the new Cirith Ungol – my introduction to the band, incidentally. Beyond the dilapidated vocals, the playing is too noncommittal to justify such slow tempos throughout – maybe doom metal isn't for them? There are some appropriately compelling retro guitar solos here and there, and 'Stormbringer' is a standout track, but I can't say I'm too impressed overall. How does it compare to their previous material?

Think I forgot to vote for it though

impressed that I haven't had any of my (I think) 33 votes show up yet!

2/50 of mine placed so far.

Biesy my #15. A powerhouse opening track, followed by some other really decent tracks. Love the slightly power electronics-y vibe it has sometimes.

This Ripped to Shreds is some very listenable no-nonsense old-school Swedeath-style metal. Reminds me of Interment's also very listenable 2016 album Scent of the Buried.

Loved RTS first one, and, again, in my weird selective apathy, never ventured to the second. Sheesh. Nor the new Cirith Ungol though I kinda feel like King of the Dead is as much of them as I need. Tim Baker's way of enunciating every line in exactly the same way gets a bit grating after not too long.

#84
Turia – Degen van licht
108 points, 3 votes, 1 #1 vote

https://f4.bcbits.com/img/a1703939268_10.jpg

https://montturia.bandcamp.com/album/degen-van-licht

‘Atmospheric black metal’ seems to be a bit of a loaded term these days. Traditional black metal bands want nothing to do with it, that’s for sure – but even some bands that are firmly in the ‘atmospheric’ bracket seem to shy away from this term. It almost seems to be synonymous with boring, the same old minor chords backed by blast beats and drenched in too much reverb, clean sections that are too contrasting to make any sense, and pretentious lyrics that (fortunately) no one will ever understand because the vocalist sounds like a dying cat. I’m quite partial to a bit of it, personally. I love the moods, the way the chords resolve, the overall sound of it, and the emotion behind it. Turia’s Degen van Licht is a brilliant amalgamation of these elements.

The Dutch three-piece have released two full-length albums and a handful of splits since their inception in 2014. Degen van Licht is their third studio album; the title translates to ‘sword of light’ – not really my cup of tea when it comes to album names or imagery, but this review isn’t based on that. The music is exactly my cup of tea, and that’s much more important. I’ve written about quite a few black metal releases recently, and so I was wanting to stay away from them for a bit. However, I’ve felt myself very drawn to this kind of music in the last while, and as soon as I heard the opening moments of Degen van Licht, I remembered why. The intro track, a minute and a half of guitar textures and grandiose reverb, transported me straight into a world of snow and stars, the guitars so glassy, sometimes hanging suspended like a cloud of breath, later screaming, a saw across ice. It sets the tone wonderfully for the rest of the album.

https://everythingisnoise.net/reviews/turia-degen-van-licht/

Imago is rather quiet today, I guess he always is on the death metal section 100-11, lol

― Oor Neechy, Monday, 8 March 2021 20:11 (twenty-nine minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

just not rly a fan of things that rip or slam

Guess I'm alone on this one, as it was my #1 and the metal record I listened to the most last year. Atmoblack with a yen for beauty is my kryptonite.

xp

It's a fairly subtle album, however. I found it slightly disappointing at first compared to their split with Fluisteraars, but it slowly but surely won me over in the end.

Gotta listen to this. I loved the new Fluisteraars.

The Dutch know how to make classy BM.

The Turia was great. One of my bandcamp purchases last year

Next up: yet another tie as Tie Day draws to a close.

Vile Creature have the best website in metal btw: http://www.vilecreature.net/

#82 TIE
Regarde les hommes tomber – Ascension
109 points, 3 votes

https://f4.bcbits.com/img/a1077738278_10.jpg

https://regardeleshommestomber.bandcamp.com/album/ascension

Those in the know about French black metal are very aware of Regarde Les Hommes Tomber. They are without a doubt one of the most interesting groups to emerge from the country’s vast black metal underground. With their first full length in five years, they have come to silence all those who may have doubted them. Their latest offering, the spine-tingling Ascension, is a fitting addition to the band’s legacy and a clear next step in their trajectory.  Regarde Les Hommes Tomber craft a unique brand of black metal that relies on vast atmospheres. These are brought on by searing guitars and punishing blast beats. Ultimately, Ascension is more of a sonic experience than a collection of songs. The all-encompassing nature of the record makes it an early contender for 2020’s black metal album of the year. For their Season Of Mist debut, Regarde Les Hommes Tomber have unapologetically pulled out all the stops.

The most promising aspect of Ascension is that it shows how much the band has grown. "Stellar Cross" shows some of the band’s most dynamic work to date. The acoustic intro and open-throated moans that define the track are mesmerizing. The production has clearly also taken a huge leap forward, with the potent interlude, "La Tentation," perhaps serving as a standout example. Meanwhile, tracks like "A New Order" really stay true to the band’s traditional fare of ‘wall of sound black metal’. These precisely composed blasphemous screeds promise to be the stuff of legends and of course, countless year-end lists.

https://metalinjection.net/reviews/regarde-les-hommes-tomber-ascension

#82 TIE
Angel Morgue – In the Morgue of Angels
109 points, 3 votes

https://f4.bcbits.com/img/a2844519188_10.jpg

https://angelmorgue-us.bandcamp.com/album/in-the-morgue-of-angels

Blasphemy and rotten, cavernous death metal are Angel Morgue‘s specialties on debut album In the Morgue of Angels. The death metal on display is primitive and effective—everything from the riffs to the vocals to the impressive drumming to the production to the song titles sounds like it was dug out of a crypt.

Fortunately, that crypt contained an impressive death metal album. From the Immolation-esque “Raped in Church (Touched by God)” to the neck-snapping “Cosmic Torment” and titular closer, Angel Morgue juggle fast and slow tempos, never giving too much of one or the other. There are plenty of sonic similarities to Immolation, Autopsy and early Outer Heaven, and the song titles would bring a smile to Glen Benton’s face.

At a lean eight songs, everything about In the Morgue of Angels feels inspired by a time gone by, adapted for 2020.

https://www.decibelmagazine.com/2020/08/03/full-album-stream-angel-morgue-in-the-morgue-of-angels/

I really enjoyed the Regarde les hommes tomber, I just found it a bit less than consistent than I would have liked. I need to check out their first couple of LPs.

Regarde les hommes tomber – Ascension is one of my votes and I say

TOO LOW

And I'm very happy to see some of you liked the Angel Morgue enough to vote for it. No frills DM with an onslaught of riffs.

Angel Morgue ended up quite high on my ballot. Campaigning works! Every year there's at least one great Name Your Price steal that makes the poll and this year it's this.

Last one for today coming up in a bit.

#81
Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs – Viscerals
110 points, 4 votes

https://f4.bcbits.com/img/a2969374032_10.jpg

https://pigspigspigspigspigspigspigs.bandcamp.com/album/viscerals

If ever an album title summed up its contents—not to mention the intentions of its creators—look no further than here. Viscerals documents the next stage in Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs’ unrelenting story. The album is a statement of intent that continues their sense bludgeoning amalgamation of metal, punk, and experimental noise at its most brutal. 

Since their debut Feed the Rats appeared three years ago, the band have steadily amassed a loyal following that’s seen them welcomed with open arms by the metal and psych rock communities. Which probably explains why parts of this record owe as much to riff behemoths Sleep and The Melvins while the rest could easily be mistaken for Hawkwind, Sonic Youth, or Edgar Broughton Band. 

While lead single “Reducer” and album midpoint “World Crust” represent arguably their most accessible pieces of music to date—from the perspective of radio friendliness at any rate—gargantuan riffathon “Halloween Bolson” and its heavy-duty cousin “New Body” find Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs at their ferocious best.

http://www.undertheradarmag.com/reviews/pigs_pigs_pigs_pigs_pigs_pigs_pigs_viscerals/

Not familiar with these guys but that description is intriguing.

New rule: any weirdo black metal album with bright primary colors on the cover, somebody has to tell me. This is really good. (the Biesy)

good album

:D

Pigs x7 are the backing band on one of the greatest albums of the past 20 years but their own stuff has never quite grabbed me. Maybe this one might?

Spotify Results playlist

So far, so good:

101. Primitive Man – Immersion
100. Atramentus – Stygian
99. Undergang – Aldrig i livet
98. Dan Weiss/Starebaby – Natural Selection
95 TIE. Worm – Gloomlord
95 TIE. Ulthar – Providence
95 TIE. Vile Creature – Glory, Glory! Apathy Took Helm!
93 TIE. VoidCeremony – Entropic Reflections Continuum: Dimensional Unravel
93 TIE. Bell Witch & Aerial Ruin – Stygian Bough Volume I
92. Lamp of Murmuur – Heir of Ecliptical Romanticism
91. Okkultokrati – La ilden lyse
90. Horisont – Sudden Death
89. Skeletal Remains – The Entombment of Chaos
87 TIE. Spirit Adrift – Enlightened in Eternity
87 TIE. Biesy – Transsatanizm
86. Ripped to Shreds – Luan
85. Cirith Ungol – Forever Black
84. Turia – Degen van licht
82 TIE. Regarde les hommes tomber – Ascension
82 TIE. Angel Morgue – In the Morgue of Angels
81. Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs – Viscerals

'backing band' is a bit much actually. A couple of them were heavily involved in the making of Peasant by Richard Dawson :)

Vile Creature have the best website in metal btw: http://www.vilecreature.net/

Wow, you were not joking. <3

Seriously.

*doot doot*

damn, that website does rule, now I will check that album out even though the worm mouth cover always put me off before.

I avoided Pigsx7 for a long time because of the name, this was the first record of theirs I'd heard and I loved it. Right up my alley.

Thanks for all the work, pom. This is really fun so far.

My pleasure!

drat, forgot to vote for the ripped to shreds!

gotta get around to that undergang already!

skeletal remains was the only one I've voted for so far, def a workmanlike take on the genre

Slim pickings for me today, though that might mean that a lot of my ballot's to come. Biesy is the one I'm most likely to return to see if I've missed something.

Hopefully we've gotten awful cover day out the way, but this is metal after all

Have you sampled the Dan Weiss/Starebaby, uug?

No, I admit that instrumental metal played by jazz dudes isn't really what I'm looking for these days, but I guess I'll give it a shot

VoidCeremony pleasantly surprising me

The Angel Morgue record both ripped and slammed. I didn't realize it was a free download.

I'm a bit surprised Atramentus was so low. I didn't vote for it but ILM usually surprises me every year with one or 2 high placing doom albums. guess it wasn't their time

;(

The Vile Creature website is great!

I'm guilty of ignoring a lot of good 'inside' black and death metal albums, if only bc there are only so many things one can keep up with. The Turia album has a really effective atmosphere, a pleasantly bracing feel, and some nice melodies. The last song is almost incredible.

Metal needs more female vocalists and T is up there with my favourites.

i really like Kayla Dixon of Witch Mountain

Had to go somewhere most of today. Glad to see the Horisont placed! Campaigning does work.

I did think the vocals were especially strong and powerful but somehow didn't clock that they were female. I don't even hear gender obv.

The Gypsies had no home, Turia has no bass.

(Tbc, that's a reference to this, not any sort of comment on the Roma): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5xillqqt0Y0

all the new stuff sucks!

Really? Never had you figured for a Doors fan.

Doors fans aren't made. they are BORN.

VoidCeremony pleasantly surprising me

― imago, Tuesday, 9 March 2021 00:14 (twelve hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

Ha, I came here to say exactly this. I love those weird low in the mix licks that run contrary to the rhythm. Also, a couple of the basslines remind me of Duran Duran.

Going live in a few mins.

Ripped to Shreds on in the background now while I take calls. I managed to listen to everything that placed so far except the Regarde les Hommes Tomber and most of the Dan Weiss album that isn't available free anywhere.

Really enjoying this Biesy this morning - the industrial flourishes are giving me early 90s flashbacks.

#80
Khthoniik Cerviiks – Æequiizoiikum
112 points, 3 votes

https://f4.bcbits.com/img/a0281983332_10.jpg

https://ironboneheadproductions.bandcamp.com/album/khthoniik-cerviiks-equiizoiikum

Let me start by going straight to the point – Khthoniik Cerviiks (KC) sounds like an alien trying to play human music. Or an alien trying to play human music, failing, and just going back to his own music. Or trying to weave human influences into alien music, or vice versa. You get the picture. They’re certainly not the first metal band to try something similar. We can refer to some of KC’s influences, like Voivod or Vektor who, the latter playing off the former, tried to take thrash metal to the next level by making it sound veritably otherworldly. You could also refer to Howls of Ebb, a band who KC did a split with, who made death metal of nether-dimensional alien creatures and their humanly incomprehensible culture.

Khthoniik Cerviiks does all that while putting their own spin on the concept. This is an especially respectable achievement since they wear their influences on their sleeve. I’d even say a good way to describe KC is as Voivod’s parallel-dimension evil twin. KC’s thrash influences are obvious, but they operate more in the realm of death/black metal. These aren’t your flying-saucer-driving little-green-men aliens. These are nefarious creatures dwelling in darkness.

“Æequiizoiikum” is a continuation of what KC did on their first record, 2015’s “SeroLogiikal Scars”. A record that frequently delivered straight banging riffs and grooves, even occasional hard rock bits, before pulling a fast one on you and going full “what is even going on”, but not just driving straight into suffocating dissonance as some bands are wont to, but twisting and turning metal techniques into unexpected shapes that still sound vaguely familiar (just like Voivod does!). Successfully employing this method is what makes KC so good – interweaving the familiar with the strange, constantly morphing the sound between the mundane and the abnormal.

https://www.metalutopia.com/khthoniik-cerviiks-aeequiizoiikum-review/

I didn't vote for it because there was just too much stuff to account for yet I still feel like it's too low?

Either way, anyone who enjoyed the VoidCeremony and hasn't heard this one is missing out.

I bought this ages ago and haven't listened to it in full yet! Now's the time I guess...

I actually at some point bought Khthoniik Cerviiks' entire discography on Bandcamp, I like them quite a bit. They're really weird, yet they don't take themselves too seriously.

Yeah this is sounding great

My #15, fwiw.

Thanks for alleviating the guilt of leaving it off my ballot.

this is fun but comparing it to Voivod and Vektor is a good way to set my expectations entirely too high.

Next up: among the vntrvest of the vntrve. Any guesses?

Slayer?

Vlver probably

Korn Bizkit Park

tracks 3 and 4 of the KC are boss

"corn biscuit park" is a band name waiting to happen

#79
Vladislav Delay – Rakka
113 points, 3 votes

https://f4.bcbits.com/img/a4178395027_10.jpg

https://vladislavdelay.bandcamp.com/album/rakka

An imagined pandemic salvaged the career of the elusive Finnish producer Sasu Ripatti. For nearly two decades as Vladislav Delay, Ripatti pulled together strands of minimal techno and beat-driven bombast, ambient glow and gnarly dissonance, making strange chimeras of oppositional moods. Delay’s best work, like 2000’s Multila, suggested hearing the thrum of a distant nightclub in some dangerous, unfamiliar land—enticing but ominous, as though reaching the source would be more trouble than it was worth.

After 2014’s sublime Visa earned his music a role alongside the likes of Ryuichi Sakamoto and Hildur Guðnadóttir in the soundtrack to The Revenant, Ripatti disappeared. As if balking at the prospect of wider success, he sold most of his studio equipment and retreated into isolated experimentation. “I seem to self-destruct,” he later admitted. During the last few years, though, Ripatti repeatedly ventured far above the Arctic Circle, to locations so remote the sun sometimes doesn’t rise or set for days or months on end. Those arctic hikes helped inform his score for Ivalo, a Finnish television series where a mysterious virus that makes people exceptionally evil takes root in the icy region and spreads.

Ripatti’s motifs for the show are what you might expect, like haunting electronic passages that suggest something monstrous and unspeakable or a curious pattern that reflects an investigator’s unresolved questions. But his experiences in the far North prompted Ripatti to consider the impact that such a harsh climate can have on a body and mind, how it can make simply living resemble an endless war, a struggle you will eventually lose. Rakka—his first album of new material in six years and the most compelling work of his career—is a breathless, terrifying newsreel about those battles with nature.

https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/vladislav-delay-rakka/

THIS IS NOT METAL AND YOU KNOW IT!

AHHHHHHH

not metal and you know it
wiggle wiggle wiggle wiggle wiggle

For real tho VD's early albums are some of my fave electronic music ever but I'm not entirely sold on his Pan Sonic-esque noize dude makeover.

What a year for Finnish metal!

The kind of Finnish metal even Tuomas can enjoy!

#78
Eternal Rot – Putridarium
114 points, 3 votes

https://f4.bcbits.com/img/a2933791535_10.jpg

https://eternalrot.bandcamp.com/album/putridarium

Aaahhh, the soothing buzz of swarming flies, and the glorious stench of crusty roadkill. What better way to spend your summer. And to top it all off, why not slap on the most ideal of soundtracks for such blistering heat and smouldering decomposition.

Putridarium is the second release from Polish maniacs Eternal Rot; a gargling, festering, slime-soaked abomination of an outfit that have spent their time holed up in some British abode surrounded by rattling, dust-coated skeletons, gawping maggot-ridden corpses and to a stifling fume of mouldiness.

Okay, so my imagination is running wild, but just one listen to this toxic swamp of a record and like me you’ll imagine yourself being surrounded by characters from The Texas Chainsaw Massacre as demented, squawking caged animals flutter and fit, while outside a blazing sun warps the window panes and forms golf ball-sized beads of sweat on your already humid brow.

https://www.metalforcesmagazine.com/site/album-review-eternal-rot-putridarium/

Not the most memorable DM album I heard last year tbh. Perhaps I should give it another go.

ETERNAL ROT is a good generic band name though.

love that cover art

Yeah, I'm a fan. Also, a putridarium (per Wikipedia) is apparently

a temporary burial place, generally in an underground crypt, in which bodies, commonly of monks or nuns, can be stored in wall niches, often seated on masonry chairs with a central hole and vessel to collect the liquids of decomposition. Once the bodies have reached a proper stage of decomposition, the bones are collected, cleaned, and stored in an ossuary.

putrid air, yum!

OK, let's begin the 77

We've got our only tie of the day coming up.

So technically speaking there is no #77.

#76 TIE
Ocrilim – Plvence Abrost R Msitloun
117 points, 3 votes

https://f4.bcbits.com/img/a3082975439_10.jpg

https://ocrilim.bandcamp.com/album/plvence-abrost-r-msitloun

(No reviews because it’s just that hip.)

#76 TIE
Dola – Dola
117 points, 3 votes

https://f4.bcbits.com/img/a1055703233_10.jpg

https://dola.bandcamp.com/album/dola

Dola was one of those "yo Apothecary you should check this out, it's definitely your kind of stuff" type albums. And good Lord, was he who suggested it to me correct.

Through my exploration of the blackened doom metal style that I so passionately adore, I've come to notice that there are three predominant takes on the sound. There's "kvlty doom," that is bands that are mostly doom metal with a few shades of black here and there in the riffing and vocal styles, such as Atriarch or Usnea. There are the "doomy black" bands, where the opposite is the case, as with Ill Omen or the godfathers in Dolorian. And then there are bands that strike a pretty firm, 50/50 balance between the doom and the black, like Elysian Blaze.

Surprisingly, and pleasantly so, Poland's Dola really don't seem as though they can be classed very easily into either of those categories, being more of a three way blend of black, doom, and… ambient? Yes, ambient, and quite a good deal of it. Atmosphere is key here for this trio and their self titled debut: a hazy, droney, and melodic cloak that forms a dense layer over the rest of the music, greatly assisting in the composition being highly well paced, peaking excellently, and being that much more dynamic and engaging. The intro of the opening track establishes a pattern that is more or less mirrored throughout the rest of the album: a beginning in the dreamlike ambient territory that gradually transitions into a heavier approach throughout.

http://www.metalstorm.net/pub/review.php?review_id=15489

The Dola narrowly missed my ballot so I'm glad to see it placed.

The Ocrilim doesn't ring a bell because I am apparently not a real ILMer.

I wonder why he changed the name from Orthrelm to Ocrilim? Maybe he's trying something a bit different...

Oh, I guess Orthrelm had a drummer

Oh I only just picked up on the Krallice connection.

He was releasing albums as Ocrilim even about 15 years ago, I think? I had one from around then.xps

I may have cut the Ocrilim from my ballot because it was Not Metal, but that seems unlike me. The other Ocrilim/Mick Barr release (the avant garde clarinet piece, iirc) I definitely liked but didn't vote for.

Listening to Khthoniik Cerviiks. It's p good and actually taking me back a bit to shows I used to go to in the mid- to late 90s. Track 3 esp satisfying so far.

I haven't heard this particular Vladislav Delay but that seems far more like trolling to me than voting for heavy alt-rock or fusion records in a heavy rock poll. Maybe this album r0x0r tho.

Ocrilim is...decent? Not a patch on Mastery ;)

I wouldn't say it r0x0r per se but it's definitely more aggro than his previous material. Still, NØT MËTÅŁ.

xp

Well, "Æequiizoiikum (Mothraiik Rites)" from the Khthoniik Cerviiks may be among the top metal tracks I've heard from 2020. They don't actually have Mick Barr playing with them, eh?

Yeah it's so good

I am at fault for nominating the Vladislav Delay, though it didn't quite make my ballot. Tbh I think anything that registers as 'this is very heavy and doesn't have a chance at placing in the main poll' deserves to be here.

That Dola album is excellent.

Next up: the OG gods of diacritic metal.

xp haha, no need to apologize tt, I think it's fair to say Rakka is 'heavy music'.

#75
Blue Öyster Cult – The Symbol Remains
119 points, 3 votes

https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/81O3X%2BdCHVL._SX522_.jpg

https://open.spotify.com/album/0kyBsDAOQHImwKLy8W5OEr

At this point in time's inexorable trudge, it seems unlikely that there are too many people currently chewing their own limbs off in excitement at the prospect of a new BLUE ÖYSTER CULT album. Few would deny the Americans' significance to the evolution of hard rock and heavy metal, and that early catalogue of albums speaks for itself, whether you came to it via the ubiquity of "Don't Fear The Reaper" or, maybe, FU MANCHU's legendary cover of "Godzilla". One way or another, BLUE ÖYSTER CULT deserve a lot more recognition than they generally receive for being among the proto-metal architects. Unfortunately, decades of meandering underachievement has led to a creeping sense that Buck Dharma and his cohorts were drifting into hits-circuit obsolescence. More accurately, perhaps, nothing that the band have done since the late '80s would make you think that they were capable of producing an album as good as this one.

"The Symbol Remains" certainly has its faults. At times, it does sound like a very skilled but unremarkable party rock band playing some rather basic rock 'n' roll. But when it's good, it's really fucking good, and BLUE ÖYSTER CULT suddenly sound transformed anew, into a slightly slicker but no less thunderous version of the band that brought us such seminal cornerstones as "Tyranny and Mutation", "Agents of Fortune" and "Spectres”.

https://www.blabbermouth.net/cdreviews/the-symbol-remains/

Absolutely killer album, maybe not "METAL", but still... too low.

box in my head!!!!

I should have voted for this

I didn't listen to this one because I'm an almost complete ignoramus when it comes to BÖC and would rather delve into their classic releases first.

I have a real soft spot for the hyper-cheesy vampire love song "Tainted Blood"

ocrilim/mick barr opened for oranssi pazuzu but figured it was just a one-off. it was pretty. but didn't realize he was still putting out records under the alias. I'm interested!

should give khthoniik cerviiks another spin. it wasn't doing it for me when I checked it out but I don't even remember why anymore. too much music.

I have a real soft spot for the hyper-cheesy vampire love song "Tainted Blood"

Just put it on now – this is killer.

Ok so I was right to assume the vocalist isn't a boomer.

Iirc he has a Masters in music from a SUNY school, which I thought was v reflective of credentialism in today's job market - you need an advanced degree to get into Blue Öyster Cult.

Anyway this was my second vote (and nom) to place. Great rock album.

For Octis/Ocrilim/Orthrelm/Or:12r³/Mick Barr stuff, I don't know his criteria for which moniker goes on which release, but I assume he does in fact have rigidly set criteria. That's part of what I like about him, the inscrutable mystery of the process.

Check out his Cruinn Annwn project for long form noodlefests. 12 pieces, each 15-20 minutes of metal shredding, usually on two guitars multitracked iirc. It's a task to get through all of it (it's about two hours) but it's a trip.

With a revolving cast of increasingly younger musicians, BÖC could subsist forever, like the Borodin Quartet.

xp

"Don't Fear the Reaper" must never die!

ship öf theseus

#74
Malokarpatan – Krupinské ohne
121 points, 4 votes

https://f4.bcbits.com/img/a1217020302_10.jpg

https://malokarpatan.bandcamp.com/album/krupinsk-ohne

Those of you who really know me know that I hate the news, politics, watermelon, NBA basketball, God, and people. So much so that I hate talking about them or hearing about them. And for those of you that thought we were sharing a mutual conversation on these topics, I hate to break it to you, we weren’t. So, it’s odd for Doc Grier to mention any such topics in a review. Even if he has nothing to say about an album, he can find something other than current events to talk about. For instance, why are Raisinets a thing? Will a shark kill me one day? Et cetera. That said, this whole pandemic thing is hard to ignore. No matter who you are or where you live, everyone is being asked to stay home from a job that they may not get to come back to. Or… living it up with their family in a mansion whose walls sport the fashionable 2020 Vintage Toilet Tissue Wallpaper. Then there’re others of us that push on like nothing is happening.1 Regardless of your dilemma, this shit has come out of nowhere and I-just-went-in-for-eggs-and-left-after-four-hours-because-only-ten-people-were-allowed-into-the-store-at-one-time is a thing.2 Everyone’s upset and no one knows what’s gonna happen next. Funny enough, that’s the perfect attitude to have for Malokarpatan‘s newest masterpiece, Krupinské ohne.

But, in this case, I don’t mean “upset” as “disappointing.” No no no, good Covid-er. Krupinské ohne3 is fucking good.4 If you remember Nordkarpatenland, my #5 pick of 2017, it was a mindfuck from beginning to end. Its ten tracks explore the realms of Iron Maiden and Mercyful Fate, working in brutal black metal, odd-ball soundclips, and the strangest combination of woodwinds/orchestration I’ve heard since Sigh. It has atmospheres and oddities, yet never strays far from an actual song structure. But, “fuck all that,” Krupinské ohne says. Fuck. All. That.

https://www.angrymetalguy.com/malokarpatan-krupinske-ohne-review/

Cool album that I haven't really felt the urge to revisit.

liked the last two but missed this new one

This scraped the bottom of my ballot! Cool sounds.

new to me as well

Not a big departure from Nordkarpatenland - made my top 10.

amazes me that no matter how much I consumed in 2020, I still haven't heard of half these bands.

(not a bad thing - my playlist grows exponentially from these rollouts)

#73
Defeated Sanity – The Sanguinary Impetus
123 points, 5 votes

https://f4.bcbits.com/img/a1076321780_10.jpg

https://defeatedsanity.bandcamp.com/album/the-sanguinary-impetus

After what was arguably their career high point in the astonishingly brutal Disposal of the Dead side of their split with themselves, Defeated Sanity have returned to making a “normal” Defeated Sanity record on The Sanguinary Impetus. Normal is a relative term; Defeated Sanity sounds like nothing else. The touchstones are familiar to most: Suffocation and Cryptopsy loom large as influences, although Defeated Sanity opt for early Cryptopsy’s looser, freer version of death metal that, unlike the tight technicality of Suffocation, sounds like it could derail itself by its own sheer force at any given moment. The difference manifests itself noticeably in the drums; listen to Effigy of the Forgotten again and recall how tight and controlled Mike Smith’s playing is, how he’s never in danger of losing control of the rhythm. Then spin None So Vile and witness Flo Mounier’s snare hits at the tail end of the fastest blasting segments getting a bit softer as he plays just beyond his own tremendous ability, and how instead of Smith’s saliently disciplined character sound like the lineman who’s perpetually in danger of getting an offside penalty by rushing across the line into the maelstrom a fraction of a second too early, but always avoids it – but only by a hair.

Defeated Sanity’s Lille Gruber is firmly in the Flo Mounier school of drumming, or, more accurately, graduated it magna cum laude. While New York death metal drumming tends to help the music represent an intricate monolith like an architecturally complex skyscraper, Gruber’s and Mounier’s styles have a wild charm about them that makes their bands’ music sound more akin to the spontaneous order of a natural ecosystem than a man-made monolith. Vocally, like Cryptopsy before them, Defeated Sanity’s Josh Welshman employ a more feral and brutal vocal style than his comparatively more understandable, well-enunciated New York death metal counterparts (Frank Mullen, Ross Dolan). While Welshman isn’t going to be mistaken for Lord Worm anytime soon, he’s got a naturally powerful growl and a knack for phrasing. As in classic Cryptopsy, bass takes a prominent role and does plenty more than strum root notes – Jacob Schmidt’s delightfully demented counterpoint to the “verse” riff in “Phytodigestion” makes for an early memorable moment.

https://www.angrymetalguy.com/defeated-sanity-the-sanguinary-impetus-review/

TOO

FUCKING

LOW

Def one of the best DM LPs of 2020, technical without being showoff-y. My #24, incidentally.

Dont forget we have a Spotify results playlist you can follow.
https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6BISg6zJeLzumnfHfMfcbG?si=D2BdJt9RSVyX2rQhUBYwYw

Gotta run a few errands so Neechy is now your pollrunner-in-chief.

Defeated made my ballot. A bit low. Got this one on vinyl

Glad this placed, but I'd reckon it's too low since It was my #3. Every time I listen to it I dig it a bit more, so it rose through my rankings throughout the year.

I voted for the Malokarpatan but I've only listened to it a few times. It gives off a lot of folk horror vibes, pretty fun.

I love that Angry Metal Guy casts such a wide net and covers so many different subgenres and tangentially metal related genres, but I cannot stand the house style and the over emphasis on DR scores drives me absolutely batshit.

lol yeah, I remember the first time I read one of their reviews and they spent like half the time talking about the DR score, but never actually clarifying what DR stood for and it took me way too long to figure it out through google since searching for DR score or DR music doesn't give you much useful results.

#72

Geld – Beyond the Floor

124 points, 3 votes

https://f4.bcbits.com/img/a0961468993_10.jpg

https://staticshockrecords.bandcamp.com/album/beyond-the-floor
https://open.spotify.com/album/7A0Bfq8q2kDbMZz2DmViGi?si=k7hc8NPQRFiHAmCdbtsB0w

Melbourne’s Geld play an ugly, discordant, feverish form of hardcore punk. They’ve clearly studied the wildest and most chaotic forms of hardcore that the genre’s history has to offer; there’s a lot of Cleveland and Japan in their sound. But Geld’s music isn’t pastiche. Instead, it’s an urgent scramble, a messy bloodletting.

Two years ago, Geld released their debut album Perfect Texture, an album that impressed me with how unhinged and disgusting it was. Today, they’ve outdone that LP with the new record Beyond The Floor. The members of the band have said that the new LP draws on “psychedelic prog,” as well as hardcore and punk and metal. And it’s not all fast tantrum music. The songs can run long, and there are a few moments of quiet foreboding tension on Beyond The Floor. But those bits just make the nasty, furious parts sound even nastier and more furious.

You really need to be in the mood for a band like Geld if you’re going to give them a real shot. It’s not background music. But if you’re into the crazy, blurry side of hardcore — the frantic bands like Bib — then you’ll probably be into Beyond The Floor.

https://www.stereogum.com/2090303/stream-australian-hardcore-punk-band-gelds-disgusting-new-album-beyond-the-floor/music/

oh is THIS 2020's Reveal (Okkultokrati was definitely NOT, lol)

#71

Melted Bodies – Enjoy Yourself

127 points, 3 votes, 1 #1 vote

https://f4.bcbits.com/img/a2050181391_10.jpg

https://meltedbodies.bandcamp.com/album/enjoy-yourself
https://open.spotify.com/album/2rAOY50XLcpUuLPvK48hm9?si=pqLu3BWoRnKYuMbnWT693g

Have you ever wondered what it would be like if Mr. Bungle was co-fronted by Mike Patton and Jello Biafra, but added dashes of DEVO quirk and catapulted it into an irradiated LA scrapyard… in 2020? That’s probably the most informational, succinct, and hollow description I could give Melted Bodies, a quartet hellbent on rearranging both my face and my albums of the year list.

Hailing from the City of Angels, they practically beamed in from a UFO out of nowhere to, if they have their way, alter the landscape of fast, eclectic music for some time to come. It’s really hard to preface a band like this, and nothing I will say in this review will adequately do them justice or prepare you for the utter onslaught of noise and cartoonish zeal they bring with them, so the TL;DR of this review is: just listen to Enjoy Yourself.

As for the long version? Well, Enjoy Yourself is shapeshifting, able to shrink itself down into the most unassuming, invasive forms or erect into an imposing edifice of an eyesore to reflect society’s catastrophic failings back to it. It’s an album just as likely to indulge in dense deluges of thrashed-out mathcore as it is breakbeat-infused synth circus music. As the name Melted Bodies would suggest, it’s a grotesque endeavor you’re embarking on by hitting play, but a hypnotizing one that careens along with endless energy like a nuclear-powered Jim Carrey – nineties Jim Carrey.

https://everythingisnoise.net/reviews/melted-bodies-enjoy-yourself/

award for worst cover artwork

my #1 - was it the best album I heard last year? probably not, but it was the one that paired best with 2020's general insanity and almost certainly the one I actually listened to most, so it seemed cowardly to put it anywhere else

sample "99 Scents", "Club Anxious" and "Helplessness" for a sense of the gonzo scope of this thing

my second vote to place. very fun nightmare of an album

haha were the only voters for this me you and tt

looool seems that way

their videos are p funny too

Next up a legacy act from the 90s who reformed..

it is kind of crazy how something so dark, heavy and serious as 'helplessness' could be on the same album as something so gleefully nutzoid as 'club anxious'

oor neechy d'you think you could give each album at least 10m sheesh lol

the last two were 14 minutes apart?

haha were the only voters for this me you and tt

I didn't actually vote for it! Loved what I heard, but never got around to hearing the whole thing. Will remedy that soon enough.

Don't think I ever really listened to this Melted Bodies. Sounds very California weirdo. Strong Mr. Bungle, Primus, and Suicidal Tendencies vibes.

Sounds a bit gonzo for my taste, but cool

Ah yeah, I remember hearing and liking this Dola album last year. Recalling why now.

I suppose there's a case to be made that parts of this Dola don't sound that different from the Vladislav Delay, except that the noise is made with guitars and drums, and it is rockist for me to place a premium on live instrumentation when it comes to what I would want to include in my head (obv I do not challenge the authority of the pollrunners here). The counterpoint is that rockism should govern a heavy rock/metal poll.

I was real on the fence about voting for Vladislav Delay. but i love it, so ultimately did.

oor neechy, you've made your point now lol

#70

Envy – The Fallen Crimson

129 points, 4 votes

https://f4.bcbits.com/img/a3033651578_10.jpg

https://open.spotify.com/album/2KVk7tr0aovCFFF19lR422?si=SuYAU9h7TBmutT-FXe3LvQ

https://envy.bandcamp.com/album/the-fallen-crimson

Tokyo’s Envy have long been one of the most intriguing bands on hardcore’s outer limits. A major influence on turn-of-the-century screamo, they pivoted to a more post-rock-orientated sound on epochal records like 2006’s Insomniac Doze, making a name for themselves as forward-thinking innovators of the finest order.

Here, the post-hardcore opening of Statement Of Freedom initially suggests a return to first principles, but instead The Fallen Crimson is a potent reminder that Envy were successfully blending cataclysmic heaviness and seductive beauty long before anyone had coined the term blackgaze.

Swaying Leaves And Scattering Breath offers some of the most straightforward melodies of the band’s career, while vocalist Tetsuya Fukagawa continues to swing between full-throated screams and understated spoken word. Even the ferocity of Marginalized Thread is marked by a euphoric tone, and the point where closer A Step In The Morning Glow kicks in exemplifies the enduring power of this consistently brilliant band.

https://www.kerrang.com/reviews/album-review-envy-the-fallen-crimson/

love Envy but this one didn't leave much of an impression on me

Not my favourite envy either, but the production always feels so luxurious that I cannot be sad to listen to it. This felt a gentler offering and I think it starts off pretty strong once the songs have had a few listens to sink in.

#69

Svalbard – When I Die, Will I Get Better?

131 points, 5 votes

https://f4.bcbits.com/img/a2601294263_10.jpg

https://open.spotify.com/album/1eo3ZZmqerj4vkR5VqDkGs?si=M_B14SDNQli-Z9w6RgVUwg
https://svalbard.bandcamp.com/album/when-i-die-will-i-get-better-2

It’s hard to have hope sometimes. We live our lives constantly getting up and going, always moving onto the next thing—moths chasing flames that grow more elusive as the dawn approaches. We’re tortured by silence in a screaming year, laced with events of turmoil and perpetual change—a silver silence that holds a mirror up to our faces and our truths. And we don’t always like what we see. It’s hard to have hope when we’re distracted, romanced by the illusion of productivity, blinded by privilege, and shielding our weary eyes from discomfort. This is what makes Svalbard so important; they force us to look.

While easy to dismiss as another Oathbreaker, Bristol hardcore quartet Svalbard channels the heartfelt energy of Modern Life is War, the post-metal meditations of Isis or Glassing, and the blackened and melodic flourishes of Downfall of Gaia. Having released a quiet catalog of two full-lengths, two EPs, and two splits since their 2011 formation, When I Die, Will I Get Better? is Svalbard‘s third full-length. While prior albums One Day All This Will End and It’s Hard to Have Hope felt too much like “best-of” compilations, these Brits streamline their assets into a hard-hitting and emotional hardcore album featuring stunning songcraft and necessary messages.

While easy to dismiss as another Oathbreaker, Bristol hardcore quartet Svalbard channels the heartfelt energy of Modern Life is War, the post-metal meditations of Isis or Glassing, and the blackened and melodic flourishes of Downfall of Gaia. Having released a quiet catalog of two full-lengths, two EPs, and two splits since their 2011 formation, When I Die, Will I Get Better? is Svalbard‘s third full-length. While prior albums One Day All This Will End and It’s Hard to Have Hope felt too much like “best-of” compilations, these Brits streamline their assets into a hard-hitting and emotional hardcore album featuring stunning songcraft and necessary messages.

https://www.angrymetalguy.com/svalbard-when-i-die-will-i-get-better-review/

I thought this would have been higher. Weren't the rolling metal regulars raving about it?

post-hardcore/emo adjacent stuff making a big run here

the Envy album came up a lot this year. still love it

#68

Boris & Merzbow – 2R0I2P0

133 points, 4 votes

https://f4.bcbits.com/img/a2247379779_10.jpg

https://open.spotify.com/album/3yHKmmc0q9KDfLrdX2FKEE?si=xgVvrWaDSvqEr32LJ5GEkQ
https://borismerzbow.bandcamp.com/album/2r0i2p0

Sometimes you read about an album on paper, especially a collaboration, and you immediately know if it’s going to fly or not. Japanese sludge doom metal band Boris teaming up again with Masami Akita, AKA Merzbow, is a no brainer. The two have worked together off and on since 2002. It’s going to work. What is unexpected is just how well it works. Their releases in the past have been fun, but at times the music wasn’t all that I had hoped for. Yes, it was loud and visceral, but it didn’t quite hit the right spot for me. On their new album 2R0I2P0 (RIP 2020) everything just works. It just does.

The first thing you notice after a first listen to 2R0I2P0 is how complementary everything is. When you get two heavyweights together, as Boris and Akita are, one can try and be the dominate force with the other adding detail to the others broad brush strokes. This isn’t the case here. Both camps appear to be on the same wavelength. When Boris goes big, Akita either joins in or lowers his wall of noise to accentuate their sludge doom.

https://thequietus.com/articles/29338-boris-merzbow-2r0i2p0-review

So glad to see that place, even this low. My favorite Boris thing in years.

The hipsters jumped off the Boris train a decade ago, but they've put out some really great stuff the past 5 years or so, but the music press ignore them now too.

and that includes the ilx hipsters

Catching up…

I love that Angry Metal Guy casts such a wide net and covers so many different subgenres and tangentially metal related genres, but I cannot stand the house style and the over emphasis on DR scores drives me absolutely batshit.

Yeah, AMG often drives me up the wall but on average their reviews are more readable than those of many a metal zine, which is a sad state of affairs. I'd showcase them less itt if I could!

post-hardcore/emo adjacent stuff making a big run here

My brief absence turned out to be a happy coincidence lol.

As for Boris/Merzbow, I've always admired both without really loving either so I'm not the ideal audience here but I thought 2R0I2P0 was very solid.

What is a DR score?

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think it's the Domain Rating, which is supposed to determine the 'authoritativeness' of a given website.

lol, from their FAQ:

Q: What is this “DR” thing you keep prattling on about?
A: DR stands for dynamic range which is the ratio of the softest to the loudest sounds occurring in a piece of music. Generally speaking, the greater the range, the deeper and more complex the music sounds to the human ear. Inversely, the lower the dynamic range the more everything sounds flat and uniform with little overall variation.

Haha, ok, that's even dumber.

Ha, that makes me curious to read the site.

Angry Steve Hoffman Guy

That was not my Merzbow pick, but I doubt the collab with Gareth Davis is going to place.

Love me some Gareth Davis, especially his Steven R. Smith and Frances-Marie Uitti collabs. Haven't heard the one you mention, however.

#67

Pyrrhon – Abscess Time

133 points, 5 votes

https://f4.bcbits.com/img/a1103101609_10.jpg

https://open.spotify.com/album/2KrOZmblJxFecpw8eCmHvU?si=GBVZzmFQSOy-_xwse5ZPdQ
https://pyrrhonband.bandcamp.com/album/abscess-time

As has been stated numerous times by me and others on Echoes and Dust, as well as other recesses of the Internet, extreme metal is in a period of schism and flux, with inventive bands coming and going, establishing brain-melting new sounds, dizzying records and a delicious penchant for wild abandon and experimentation. If artists such as Krallice are leading the way for black metal, Pyrrhon are fearlessly at the frontier of modern death metal, pushing ever forwards, never settling, never compromising.

Abscess Time, Pyrrhon’s fourth album proper, is another landmark in their discography. That endless struggle, alluded to before, needs to be reflected upon. For all the endless invention and willingness to challenge, it would be fair to assume that Pyrrhon would have made missteps in their discography, and so it is no small tribute to the quartet that every single release – album or not – has built upon the foundations of the past. You know where this is going: Abscess Time is their best and most accomplished release to date.

https://echoesanddust.com/2020/06/pyrrhon-abscess-time/

I didn't even bother with this one because mathcore tends to leave me cold but maybe I'm missing out?

I love love that Pyrrhon, it hit the right spot for me. I wasn't a huge fan of the previous one, but this really scratched an itch.

Yeah, I mean, AMG is still a site I hit up pretty frequently, far too many other metal sites feature "reviews" that are just barely reworked PR releases.

AMG comments sections are pretty lively too, especially for the monthly roundups.

I find them to be tone-deaf when it comes to BM and overly enthusiastic towards prog/power/cheesy trad (my biases are showing).

This was my #23. Probably my favorite thing from them so far. Not really mathcore in any appreciable way imho, more just kinda experimental/discordant DM.

Then I'll have to check it out.

#66

Raspberry Bulbs – Before the Age of Mirrors

134 points, 4 votes

https://f4.bcbits.com/img/a4279676239_10.jpg

https://open.spotify.com/album/7BSe2EAPUNskkzwCrVfVTp?si=If_5_yu4TYqkJUOjnJZmYg
https://raspberrybulbs.bandcamp.com/album/before-the-age-of-mirrors

Even after a long career making creeping heavy music in projects like Bone Awl and He Who Crushes Teeth, the music that Marco del Rio has made over the past decade as Raspberry Bulbs is uniquely unsettling. First on his own and then with a shifting cast of collaborators, he’s mined the most curdled corners of punk and metal to make both tortured no-fi efforts and more recent full-band recordings that feel cosmically off-balance. His songs are full of riffs that become more nauseating the longer you listen to them. At their best, the songs are autostereograms in reverse: They start out looking like something you’ve encountered before, then dissolve into unparsable, overwhelming noise.

Before the Age of Mirrors is the first Raspberry Bulbs full-length since 2014, but it picks up these threads right where the last, Privacy, left off. Across eight proper tracks and four shorter interludes, del Rio and his band—guitarist Nick Forte and drummer Jim Ning Nong—lead listeners to a world of sharp edges, sudden pitfalls, and hidden dangers. As devotees of raw punk and deathrock, they sometimes channel those familiar shuddering sounds, but there’s something even more sinister in pieces like “They’re After Me,” a burst of paranoid desperation scoured by feedback. As ever, del Rio tops the track with his distinctive vocals—which, scraped by distortion and noise, are the sort of sounds you might hear echoing from behind a dumpster in a David Lynch film. It all sounds wrong, in the most menacing possible way.

https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/raspberry-bulbs-before-the-age-of-mirrors/

Today is not me-day.

Which is somewhat odd when I think about it because I've always enjoyed the punk classics and when I was a teenager I had little to no interest in metal per se.

You always know what you are going to get from Raspberry Bulbs

I don't know why I waited so long to listen to this, considering how much I enjoyed Privacy. It was a last-minute addition to my ballot. I get some rudimentary art punk vibes from this, maybe something like Swell Maps or Hanatarash.

#65

Azusa – Loop of Yesterdays

135 points, 3 votes

https://f4.bcbits.com/img/a2604838269_10.jpg

https://open.spotify.com/album/1fn6KVJWB6tA7Crb5QdSwz?si=sOD86lxxS8GeANFzC5QAqw
https://azusaband.bandcamp.com/album/loop-of-yesterdays

Bassist Liam Wilson, formerly of The Dillinger Escape Plan, and Extol luminaries Christer Espevoll (drums) and David Husvik (guitar) had already put Azusa over with prog metal fans. But then you hear Eleni Zafiriadou’s voice, which bridges the gap between old-school screamo and Kate-Bush-style melody, effectively pushing this band to the elite of Solid State Records. It goes without saying that Azusa’s debut, Heavy Yoke enjoyed critical acclaim. Loop of Yesterdays continues that winning streak. This sophomore album elevates Azusa from an interesting one-off to an established force in forward thinking aggressive music.

Loop of Yesterday often manages to be heavier than Heavy Yoke without losing Zafiriadou’s unique singing voice. Opener “Memories of an Old Emotion” crashes with a frenzied assault of technical riffing and feral screaming. Until, that is, ‘90s dream-pop vibes suddenly take over. Azusa not only contrasts these two extremes, but synthesizes them into a true hybridization. It’s why the concussive groove of single “Monument” so easily coexists with its dissonant guitar strains, gothic spoken-word delivery and haunting soundscapes. It’s not about genre crossovers, but about writing good songs.

https://riffmagazine.com/album-reviews/azusa-loop-of-yesterdays/

This absolutely slays

My #8. Sick, sick pop-hardcore-doom ditties. Last two tracks especially beautiful

Another one that slipped under my radar due to insurmountable bias.

(Not really insurmountable.)

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.

This cracked my top 20. Def my favorite funeral doom thing this year. Hopefully, we'll also get a Tchornobog follow-up one of these days.

Recap as of today:

101. Primitive Man – Immersion

100. Atramentus – Stygian

99. Undergang – Aldrig i livet

98. Dan Weiss/Starebaby – Natural Selection

95 TIE. Worm – Gloomlord

95 TIE. Ulthar – Providence

95 TIE. Vile Creature – Glory, Glory! Apathy Took Helm!

93 TIE. VoidCeremony – Entropic Reflections Continuum: Dimensional Unravel

93 TIE. Bell Witch & Aerial Ruin – Stygian Bough Volume I

92. Lamp of Murmuur – Heir of Ecliptical Romanticism

91. Okkultokrati – La ilden lyse

90. Horisont – Sudden Death

89. Skeletal Remains – The Entombment of Chaos

87 TIE. Spirit Adrift – Enlightened in Eternity

87 TIE. Biesy – Transsatanizm

86. Ripped to Shreds – Luan

85. Cirith Ungol – Forever Black

84. Turia – Degen van licht

82 TIE. Regarde les hommes tomber – Ascension

82 TIE. Angel Morgue – In the Morgue of Angels

81. Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs – Viscerals
80. Khthoniik Cerviiks – Æequiizoiikum
79. Vladislav Delay – Rakka
78. Eternal Rot – Putridarium
76 TIE. Ocrilim – Plvence Abrost R Msitloun
76 TIE. Dola – Dola
75. Blue Öyster Cult – The Symbol Remains
74. Malokarpatan – Krupinské ohne
73. Defeated Sanity – The Sanguinary Impetus
72. Geld – Beyond the Floor
71. Melted Bodies – Enjoy Yourself
70. Envy – The Fallen Crimson
69. Svalbard – When I Die, Will I Get Better?
68. Boris & Merzbow – 2R0I2P0
67. Pyrrhon – Abscess Time
66. Raspberry Bulbs – Before the Age of Mirrors
65. Azusa – Loop of Yesterdays
64. Fuck the Facts – Pleine noirceur
63. Blues Pills – Holy Moly!
62. Kaatayra – Só quem viu o relâmpago à sua direita sabe
61. Drown – Subaqueous

Thanks to Neechy for taking over!

Thanks pom & Neechy, great roll-out so far!

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

― imago, Tuesday, 9 March 2021 21:55 (fifty-four minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

however I am now listening to the last two tracks, which are absolutely where it's at

Yeah, really enjoying the rollout - great work! :)

I really liked the electric Kaatayra album. The idea in this one was interesting and there were some v pretty moments, and ofc I'm all for more nylon-string guitars (I think that's what he used?) in rock and metal, but I think they would require a different approach. It mostly sounds like he played the exact same lines that would normally be played on distorted electric guitars which have much more sustain, harmonic saturation, and presence. There's loads of more accomplished classical guitar ensemble music out there tbh imo, lots of which has prog or metal influences. (Idk about music for classical guitars with metal drums and vocals, admittedly.)

I Have Opinions.

Incidentally, this was a v good classical guitar duo album w a lot of contemporary pieces that were influenced by metal or prog, if anyone's interested: https://www.analekta.com/en/albums/contemporary-music-guitar-duo/

I couldn't be around today so I must bellow TOOOO LOOOOOOW at Khthoniik Cerviiks

Surprised to see Ocrilim on here, I had to listen a bunch of Mick Barr stuff for a RYM project and a lot of it's pretty much inscrutable to me, he has some gems outside of Krallice though (Annwn as Tom Violence mentioned is really good). Haven't heard this one, though.

I lost interest in Boris when it became obvious they weren't going to do any more cheesy J-rock albums

Pyrrhon are more tech-death than mathcore to my ears, I didn't get into this one as much as their previous but they're one of the best "angular" metal bands around.

Kaatayra will doubtless appear again, I'm probably the only one who prefers 'So quem...' to the later one, oh well

That album looks interesting sund4r, I'll check it out at some point!

I listened to one and a half Melted Bodies songs and absolutely did not Enjoy Myself

Oh, cool, ultros. Hope you enjoy.

I Have Opinions.

I Agree With Said Opinions.

And I second Sund4r's repping for Adam Cicchillitti & Steve Cowan.

This Kaatayra is really lovely. Don't think I'd heard this one before.

9:30 into "Stygian III" from the Atramentus album, the album is good but this track is amazing so far. The vocals are a little reminiscent of Tibetan throat singing at moments.

It reminds me a little of the Mournful Congregation album I own and should listen to more often.

Canadian metal rules.

Philippe Tougas and Claude Leduc are also members of Chthe'ilist, another awesome Longueuil band that can hang with the best of the Greater Montreal tech death crew.

I just heard the Atramentus album yesterday and REALLY liked it. I think he's getting the croaky vocals partly from Demilich (a definite influence on Chthe'ilist).

Yeah, both that and the Tibetan throat singing comparison strike me as very much otm.

ok, maybe listening to funeral doom while working is a bad idea bc i moved on quickly after sampling when the atramentus record first came out. but playing it again tonight and it really is pretty sick.

fave dirge of the year is still the expanded oksennus. pairs nicely and theres no chance in hell it is placing so -

https://necrolatryrecords.bandcamp.com/album/ty-n-orjat-paholaisten-y-st-nouskaa

Haven't heard that one. I'll check it out, thanks.

85. Cirith Ungol – Forever Black


Surprised this isn't higher; it made my top 10.

76 TIE. Dola – Dola

This was my #2 and I think I turned some people onto it in the Rolling Metal thread.

71. Melted Bodies – Enjoy Yourself

This made the Top 15 on my list and I know I turned some people onto it in the Rolling metal thread.

There were also a few things I liked enough to but didn't quite crack my Nifty Fifty (Vile Creature, Pyrrhon, Drown)

what's the deal with the Ungol? everybody I talked to either says Jesus has returned to walk among us or that it was a tepid pile of horse dung. feels like a weird polarized reaction where you'd normally see some lukewarm. but maybe I walk in atypical circles.

why?

why ask why

try Bud Dry

Listening to Fuck the Facts. Man, Mélanie Mongeon's pipes.

bud dry is very death metal imo

^^^ fact.

Well fuck that then ofc

lol

Was hoping for that assist – thx.

xp

death to IPA metal

Long live bitter metal.

Apparently I saw this band without realizing that MM was screaming bilingually. Based on the printed lyrics, I think she writes much better in French than in English but, even when I read while listening, I don't really know how to connect what I'm reading with what I'm hearing.

I never pay attention to metal lyrics unless they're ineluctably intelligible.

was in a heavy metal parking before a slayer show a few years ago before the fall of new york and a coors light banner advertising plane flew by while i happened to be drinking a cold coors light tall boy and all was right with the world at that particular moment in time

maybe have had a few too many cold coors lights tonight because that is perhaps only semi comprehensible after a second pass but i hope the underlying spirit made it thru

It was all about the Big Rig Alpha Bomb IPA tonight.

Had a couple of Disco Soleils tonight. #TeamIPA

had some sake with dinner and then whiskey after that so i am posing hard tbqh

would absolutely drink a cold coors light in a heavy metal parking lot the second that opportunity presents itself again however

the last track on stygian really is something. genuinely takes you places. but man, they kinda flub the ending with the blastbeats. and then, adding insult to injury... a fadeout!

Svalbard sounding like something I ought to like. Let's see if that actually happens. Inevitable not-as-good-as-Rolo-Tomassi thoughts looming

There's some...Mew in the mix? Paging Sund4r

Oh no I've read a Deafheaven comparison and I can hear it too. Will persist however

The melodic resolution at the end of Click Bait might have just put me off this lot for good

let's pro/con this

+ Mew
+ convincing performances from players + vocalist
+ post-metal dynamics done pretty well
+ the occasional decent melody

- forcing a Rolo Tomassi comparison even though pointedly comparing two post-hardcore UK bands with female vocalists probably goes against everything they stand for idk
- many of the melodies are CORNY
- I'm led to believe that the lyrics aren't all that so I'm not listening out for them
- it all sounds very, very familiar, and their USP appears to be those aforementioned lyrics

but Mew!

someone help an ilxor out here

Came here to say:

- Sounds like Mew mixed with the vocalist from Atreyu doing a Bristol accent - very confusing.
- Might be too emo even for me.
- Might not.

Got to listen ahead of imago in these polls. That opening track IS lovely though. Not sure I could listen to a whole album of it.

Glad I stuck out the post-rock until the second track of the Boris/Merzbow album. Wow!

'Absolutego' sounds like Electric Wizard through...an electrical storm.

holy fuck what is THIS

they just wound Merzbow up and let him go, all over their sludge-rock

Important to add that this is basically a live album done in the studio - it's their 2020 tour setlist. Obviously there was no tour, but there was Merzbow. The second track is a Coaltar of The Deepers cover, and an incredible one at that

What the absolute fuck is 'Love' I cannot even

This is like, the true heir to MBV

Get ready for…

PART 3 OF THE 2020 METAL POLL BONANZA!

(In 10 minutes…)

It's been sooo good so far! I'm going to be absent in four straight hours of teaching but metal will propel me.

it's pom's birthday so we have be extra nice to all the Big Sad Man music

The second track is a Coaltar of The Deepers cover, and an incredible one at that

OK I'm in

Haha, no need to hold back, you know I love music controp drama.

xp

Oh happy birthday, bonne fête, etc!

This middle run of songs is just...insane. This is an unbelievable reimagining of the live experience

Merci, Sund4r. :)

Happy birthday! May the fiercest of Canadian black metals place in this stretch of the poll.

alas Thantifaxath are in hiding atm ;)

'Tis a shame. Besides, 2019 was a better year for Canuck black metal imo.

There is one synthy Québécois BM album from last year that may or may not have placed and that I think everyone would enjoy (except for the BM naysayers, of course). To be continued…

Listening while on the phone in the next room was not doing the Raspberry Bulbs record justice, but it seemed decent. I didn't hear anything interesting or as unsettling as the blurb described.

Neanderthal, I had a lukewarm reaction to the Cirith Ungol, if that makes you feel better. Pretty decently solid Heavy Metal.

#60
Gezan – Klue
148 pints, 4 votes, 1 #1 vote

https://f4.bcbits.com/img/a1179557665_10.jpg

https://jusangatsu.bandcamp.com/album/klue

(No review.)

This is unexpected since their profile doesn't appear to be very high (in the so-called West, at least).

I threw this a vote! Where's DAM (whose advocacy got me to hear it)

There's one track I went absolutely crazy for, think it was track 7

That's a lot of pints!

OK wow Boris/Merzbow

I saved 'TOKYO' off this but forgot to listen to it all. Very genre-blending and erratic fwir.

OK wow Boris/Merzbow

I know. Why didn't Oor Neechy mention Boris were this good. ;)

I voted for this one! Quite low down, but it's cool stuff

#59
Gulch – Impenetrable Cerebral Fortress
151 points, 3 votes, 1 #1 vote

https://f4.bcbits.com/img/a2405824177_10.jpg

https://gulch.bandcamp.com/album/impenetrable-cerebral-fortress

Gulch have reached a rarefied status in hardcore where outsiders who haven’t heard their music still might have heard things about them—frontman Elliott Morrow’s demonic intensity, or maybe the group’s now-legendary This is Hardcore 2019 set, in which they imported the gleeful, cartoonish physicality of the Santa Cruz scene to a roomful of burly East Coast punks. The band’s merch is notorious, too: their logo adorns Sanrio-themed hoodies and rugby sweaters that usually sell out within hours and fetch over $500 a pop on resale sites. None of this necessarily makes Gulch unique within hardcore, where even the best albums risk redundancy next to to the live experience. But there is no live experience of any kind right now; Impenetrable Cerebral Fortress is all Gulch have to sustain their hype in 2020, and they invest themselves in their debut like the quarantine could last the rest of their lives.

Impenetrable Cerebral Fortress isn’t meant to replicate the grim, grubby spaces where Gulch might have been playing in a simpler time. Jack Shirley’s always-sharp production removes the murk that suffused 2019 Promo (two tracks of which show up here) and allows the band’s ugly, ugly vision for hardcore to come into relief. Even if there are no pits to open the fuck up for the foreseeable future, Gulch still acknowledge the value of showmanship and scarcity—they dropped Impenetrable Cerebral Fortress with mere days of advance notice on July 24 and unintentionally provided entertaining contrast for people who find space for hardcore and folklore. For all of their fans’ superlatives like “unhinged” or “chaotic,” Gulch are very much intentional about how they present themselves: as with 2018’s Burning Desire to Draw Last Breath, Boone Naka’s strikingly beautiful and bloody art graces the cover.

On first exposure, Impenetrable Cerebral Fortress is 15 minutes of flailing limbs and demonic howls held together by centrifugal force, intended to be confirmed by two or three-word assessments of its intensity. The group is equally adept with the pure speed-freak flash of the ultra-technical Botch and Dillinger Escape Plan, the sheer ugliness of Emperor or Rotten Sound, and the antisocial populism of any given Sound and Fury headliner. Not much is intelligible, save for self-explanatory title shouts of “Lie, Deny, Sanctify” and “Cries of Pleasure, Heavenly Pain,” whose theme is more literally explored in “Fucking Towards Salvation.”

https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/gulch-impenetrable-cerebral-fortress/

More stuff that is Very Probably Not For Me.

Backtracking for a sec but I'm enjoying the Gezan so far.

I know. Why didn't Oor Neechy mention Boris were this good. ;)

― tangent x (tangenttangent),

Nobody has listened to me for the last 5 years when I said Boris were making great music again.

Finally taking note. Hey, I did vote for the other one at least.

#58
Touche Amore – Lament
154 points, 4 votes

https://f4.bcbits.com/img/a2343181796_10.jpg

https://toucheamore.bandcamp.com/album/lament

Jeremy Bolm has spent the past decade striving to live up to the example set by his own words. The music he makes with his band, Touché Amoré, compels guys with neck tattoos to spend a half hour irresponsibly slamming into fellow fans before they corner Bolm after the show and reveal how they felt truly seen by “And Now It’s Happening In Mine.” He’ll be the first to tell you about the ways he falls short: 2013’s Is Survived By explored Bolm’s struggles with the pressures of being in a profoundly impactful (but not famous) hardcore band, which brought even greater success and demands. Bolm missed his mother’s dying day because he was “on stage living the dream” at Fest in Florida. He atoned by making an entire album about her passing from stage 4 breast cancer. This entire history is summarized on “I’ll Be Your Host,” the second single from their phenomenal fifth album Lament, wherein Bolm recognizes the privilege of his platform and the common misconception that he can singlehandedly walk people through their grieving process because he made a great hardcore record about not knowing how to grieve. It’s a long overdue revelation that he alone can’t be there for everyone at all times, which makes Lament their capstone—a Touché Amoré album that can reach the most people as possible from the greatest distance.

To hear Touché Amoré tell it, they had no choice but to work with famed heavy metal producer Ross Robinson if they were going to make this kind of record. Infamously intense and hands-on, Robinson’s anti-Rick Rubin approach irrevocably changed the course of popular metal by enabling chaotic and highly unconventional acts like Korn, Slipknot, and Limp Bizkit to focus their live intensity without compromising to reach suburban adolescents like Bolm—“I saw the ‘Blind’ music video on a local music video channel,” he recently recalled. “And my fucking brain fell out of my head.”

More germane to Touché Amoré, Robinson was also behind the boards for Blood Brothers’ Burn, Piano Island, Burn, Glassjaw’s Worship and Tribute, and the motherlode, Relationship of Command, all wildly ambitious records that pushed already revered post-hardcore bands dangerously close to mainstream success and shortly thereafter, their demise. “Ross is known for two things, getting a drummer replaced or kicked out and making the singer cry,” Bolm joked.

https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/touche-amore-lament/

More stuff that is Very Probably Not For Me x2.

the year post-hardcore hits big on ILM and Brad is nowhere to be seen

That Touche Amore is incredible, not quite as good as Stage Four, but I liked it a lot. Ross Robinson's production worked really well.

Another I just didn't give enough airtime to, but they always sound wonderful. This felt like a fitting companion album to Stage Four.

Jonathan Davis once said Ross didn't like a vocal take he was doing so he jumped on his back and started whaling on him....during a recording take.

great album, made my ballot. they can do no wrong right now.

#57
Mr. Bungle – The Raging Wrath of the Easter Bunny Demo
157 points, 4 votes

https://f4.bcbits.com/img/a4225317696_10.jpg

https://mrbungle.bandcamp.com/album/the-raging-wrath-of-the-easter-bunny-demo

The Raging Wrath of the Easter Bunny Demo has led a charmed life. Recorded originally in 1985 by a bunch of teenage metalheads from Eureka, California, it turned out to be surprisingly propitious for Mr Bungle’s Mike Patton, who handed the tape to drummer Mike ‘Puffy’ Bordin when his band Faith No More were passing through on tour. “Faith No More played Eureka in a pizza parlour place we played dozens of times,” Mike Patton told Steffan Chirazi for 1993’s Faith No More: The Real Story. “There were six people there and three of them were my friends. It was really bad, a really pathetic show and I remember them standing around the van really upset... I gave them a tape and told them, ‘This is what music from around here sounds like, from this region’.” Faith No More guitarist Jim Martin described Eureka as “a shitty little town in Northern California.”

As for the demo itself, it’s a distorted and scratchy affair presumably recorded in a practice room with an old six-button cassette recorder placed in the corner – or perhaps the one that’s surfaced on the internet is a thirteenth or fourteenth generation copy of a copy of a copy. One would have to dig very deep to recognise greatness within its duplicated reels: the rhythm section is barely audible, guitarist Trey Spruance is a nimble shredder on the fretboard but so were a thousand other kids in small lumber towns in 1985, and Patton’s voice is notable for a 17-year-old but unrecognisable as the artist known these days for his indomitable vocal dexterity and six-octave range.

https://thequietus.com/articles/29184-mr-bungle-the-raging-wrath-of-the-easter-bunny-demo-review

I was quite skeptical of this at first because re-recordings are almost always a terrible idea and I'd rather they gave us an LP's worth of new material, but it's actually very good. Nothing earth-shattering, of course, and I didn't vote for it, but a pleasant thrash outing nonetheless.

Huh, I'll have to check that out too. I'd avoided this for similar reasons as pom.

this does not deserve to be above the melted bodies album, but yknow, name recognition

(don't get me wrong, it's fun and all)

Bungle was a surprise. Obviously on its face, it sounds lame (oooooh, a re-recording of a demo where Bungle plays straightforward Bay Area thrash! Oooooh!), but the execution is just so good. And the demo production was awful.

Obv not a patch on a proper Bungle album but as far as thrash goes it's inspired and a lot of fun.

Plus, how many metal albums have Rhea Pearlman on them?

Refuse to listen to this. Follow up California if you can, assholes, otherwise stay gone

Did I say assholes? I meant cowards. Coward assholes

It's just another form of irony, you see.

Maybe they are just assholes lol

Interesting use of NA spelling there.

It's what they would have wanted

Refuse to listen to this. Follow up California if you can, assholes, otherwise stay gone

― imago, Wednesday, 10 March 2021 15:21 (four minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

https://www.revolvermag.com/music/mr-bungle-re-recording-first-demo-exclusive-studio-report-part-1

The demo was almost unlistenable, this is.

#56
Feminazgûl – No Dawn for Men
160 points, 4 votes

https://f4.bcbits.com/img/a3486034502_10.jpg

https://feminazgul.bandcamp.com/album/no-dawn-for-men

There are so many ways in which I can start this review but let me choose the most blatant one: if you think politics don’t belong in music, and especially in metal, you have no idea what you’re talking about. First, music is inherently political because everything is inherently political. Only the powerful, for whom power is invisible (which is what is arranged and controlled with politics) think that politics belong in a nice little box. Second, metal has always been (or at least, some of it, the good part of it, has always been) about rebellion and calling authority into question. What’s more political than that? And, lastly, why not make it political? What exactly is lost when we do that? I never understood that point; art describes and comments on life and politics is part of life. Therefore, art that incorporates politics is more complete and more beautiful for doing so.

All of this to say that Feminazgul is an inherently political band and their debut, full length release No Dawn For Me is such as well. This can be easily deduced from the naming convention at play here; Feminazgul are unapologetically feminist and rightfully so. The time for apology is long over. It also helps that they make incredible black metal, possessed of an epic quality very much in keeping with the genre’s natural affinities but also of a unique and mournful tone that is wholly their own. No Dawn For Me is them making good on the promise made with their EP, fully realizing their vision and expanding it to an even grander scale.

https://www.heavyblogisheavy.com/2020/03/24/feminazgul-no-dawn-for-men/

Another great album I didn't vote for. Def the best band name of 2020 and possibly beyond as well.

A great album I DID vote for.

I've been almost afraid to listen to that because the name is so *chef's kiss* perfect in so many ways, I kinda feel like it'll be impossible for the music to live up to it.

can't remember if I did or didn't, but i def bought that album and liked it

The circumflex really clinches it.

they didn't have to circumflex that hard

Finally a proper metal album places today AND it's one I voted for. Hooray! This album whips ass.

We've got a tie coming up in case you didn't get enough of those on Monday!

#54 TIE
Zombi – 2020
161 points, 4 votes

https://f4.bcbits.com/img/a3095772899_10.jpg

https://zombi.bandcamp.com/album/2020

About five years ago, I was super into synthwave stuff. A lot of people were. It was a genre that shared a lot of overlap with metal and heavy music in terms of listener base. Lots of blogs and sites that focused on metal also dabbled in showing off some darker, heavier synth-based music like GosT or Carpenter Brut. Coincidentally, this is also around the time I discovered Zombi and, to my recollection, I found it through the little circle of metal culture I occupied. They’re a duo made up of Steve Moore (bass, synths, guitars; also did great work in Miracle) and Anthony Paterra (drums), named after the title of the classic horror film Dawn of the Dead when it was localized to Italy.

Now, Zombi is an interesting beast because while they laid the synths on pretty heavy, I always felt the foundation of their music was their rock side. A lot of their compositions tend to have some density to them or perhaps a foreboding mood, especially on this new album, but they’re hardly what most would consider ‘metal’ – which is fine by me. I’m long past my phase of needing something to be cruelly weighted or Mach 9 fast in order to enjoy it. Lately, I’d rather chill a bit with some neat grooves and multilayered song structures with good writing. Guess what 2020 brings to the table?

https://everythingisnoise.net/reviews/zombi-2020/

#54 TIE
Molasses – Through the Hollow
161 points, 4 votes

https://f4.bcbits.com/img/a1653019248_10.jpg

https://molassess.bandcamp.com

In 2006, siblings Selim and Farida Lemouchi started a psychedelic occult rock band called The Devil’s Blood. In 2013, it collapsed. During its existence, the band drew a loyal following in underground music. Its music balanced retro occult and innovative psych rock. Selim, guitar player and spiritual heart of the band, was uncompromising in his vision, resulting in shows that were as much Satanic rituals as they were concerts, including buckets of pig blood and candles all over the place. In 2014, after struggling with depression for much of his existence, Selim requested permission to die from his mother and sister shortly before taking his own life. 5 years later, Roadburn overlord Walter Hoeijmakers asked the former members of The Devil’s Blood whether they would be interested in creating a commissioned piece of music. Molassess was born.

And I was there for that first performance at Roadburn, though at the time I was unaware of the story behind the band or its previous incarnation. Nonetheless, I highly enjoyed the show, and with good reason. Molassess have a sound difficult to compare to anything else. It’s psychedelic rock at its core, that much is clear. The compositions feel organic, the guitars and bass loose and jangly as if the strings barely remain attached to the instruments. It sounds organic, too, owing to the fantastic production job, with its warm and vital master and balanced mix. The bass has a playful punch and the drums are the definition of unhurried; you won’t find a double bass kick here, and the pacing rarely creeps above leisurely, with only “Death Is” and “Get Out From Under” pushing the tempo, at which point an almost jazzy quality overtakes the drums, a not unwelcome bit of variation that keeps the music feeling lively.

https://www.angrymetalguy.com/molassess-through-the-hollow-review/

Zombi doesn't ring a bell.

The Molasses was cool but it didn't stick (hah) with me.

Dug both of those.

Zombi is Steve Moore and Anthony Paterra, definitely not metal but John Carpenter-esque instrumental stuff.

Definitely the best album of 2020 called 2020

both really good albums

Synthwave and neon crescendos are furloughed in favor of Blue Oyster Cult inspired progressive epics.

Okay, that sounds good.

I really liked the Zombi album and I voted for it. I thought it was also a lot better than the one they released during the sort of height of the "synthwave moment" that seemed rushed and uninspired to me. I def. consider them more properly hard rock than something like Perturbator, which I think has been nommed in the metal poll before too tho.

Next up: p4k metal strikes again.

That could be good or bad

Any guesses?

would Mamaleek count as pfork?

Pallbearer?

Krallice?

Liturgy?

#53
Pallbearer – Forgotten Days
163 points, 6 votes

https://f4.bcbits.com/img/a3740156325_10.jpg

https://pallbearer.bandcamp.com/album/forgotten-days

Doom metal creeps. Half a century since Black Sabbath released Paranoid, arguably the form’s ark of the covenant, most doom bands still sound somewhat like the original, each with assorted refinements. Yes, doom has occasionally splintered into smaller and slower sects, like the lugubrious “funeral doom” and glacial “drone metal.” But consider the progress of hip-hop in roughly the same time frame: While hip-hop has created its own global ecosystem, teeming forever with wild new mutations, doom is a solitary old oak, steadily growing at its own oblivious clip.

A decade ago, Pallbearer emerged from Arkansas as promising apostles of doom and purveyors of this stubborn beauty. On their first two LPs, especially 2014’s magisterial Foundations of Burden, they paired the kind of compulsory hooks that made Sabbath stars with the seeming belief that every song could be a 10-minute hypnotic wash. Pallbearer synthesized doom’s best elements into a refulgent melancholy, sparkling as it sulked. They wobbled, though, on Heartless, their 2017 parting shot for longtime label Profound Lore. As though trying to prove how much they’d grown during their tenure there, Pallbearer did too much too fast, flitting from would-be hits that missed to panoramic psych-rock that bored.

But on their international debut for Nuclear Blast, a fabled clearinghouse for some of the world’s most popular metal bands, Pallbearer—smarter, sharper, and ostensibly sadder now—again plod doom’s time-worn grooves. Their fourth album, Forgotten Days, is both a return to mighty form and a new way forward for a band perpetually poised at the edge of wider success.

https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/pallbearer-forgotten-days/

jmm wins :)

zzz

I really liked Pallbearer's first couple of albums but I found this one plodding and aimless, almost tuneless.