THE 10TH ANNUAL ILM METAL POLL:2017 RESULTS THREAD

^otm

No way the Les Discrets album can be less metal than Oxbow tbph

27 Yellow Eyes - Immersion Trench Reverie 269.0 Points 9 Votes
https://i1.wp.com/www.metalinjection.net/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/yellow-eyes.jpg?fit=700%2C700
https://open.spotify.com/album/7K73RBoqxp4pDgE4Z2f8E7?si=NurQ2ToJSTGU_iYBXh3yGA

What is notable with black metal releases recently, something that, on one hand, is a break from the norm when considering the past days of the genre, but on the other re-establishes the ethos of black metal, is the heavy layering apparent in more works. This is has been the case for different varieties of black metal bands, from the nonconformists, such as Deafheaven, to the extreme progressivists, in the likes of Castevet, and many in between. Yellow Eyes take this method very seriously, managing to further condense the energy and ferocity of their work without expanding its duration. The guitar layers of Immersion Trench Reverie are suffocating, allowing no light to pierce through their thick veil. The tracks take on an overwhelming quality, resulting in kaleidoscopic visions of lead guitar parts, as in “Velvet of Horns,” or insanely intense delivery, as with the final track, “Jubilat.”

great little record

yay Artificial Brain!

I hope that ‘Velvet of Horns’ indicates a horn section. I am also a big fan of that trend in this year’s metal, though I do favour the midi variety too :D

I wasn't complaining about Les Discrets being false or whatever! I just found it boring.

Yellow Eyes always sound the same and I always love it.

Ultros, I've liked all the Krallice albums to varying degrees.

Oh ultros, I was responding to BlackIronPrison and pulled the Oxbow album (which I couldnt really get with) out of a hat

Trip Hop and Pop Punk records in the ILM Metal yearly countdown - surely, these are the end times.

ok I promise this is the actual last time I'll say it but Propagandhi are not a pop punk band

i think they're still mad about creeper

ok yeah lol

the last album of today's rollout is completely unknown to me

and it wrecks my "shorter albums this year!" thesis

26 Stabscotch - Uncanny Valley 275.0 Points 6 Votes
https://f4.bcbits.com/img/a2287499593_5.jpg
https://open.spotify.com/album/5OSsCAsBHH2YUtU0D0gQ6J?si=mVSi_vZ7TL2SagQbhbAL_g

A trio out of Bloomington, Indiana, the band’s second album (but label debut) is a barely classifiable nightmare of avant-garde metal, psychedelia, and noise that, in rejecting almost every received notion of “rock music,” alienates itself from every pre-existing rock scene. Sure, it contains recognizable sonic landmarks (distorted guitars, flailing drums, rasping vocals, tape abuse), yet it’s clear that they’re pushing them to unrecognizable extremes, playing and structuring them in a way that transforms them from affirmations of rock to the genre’s negation. But more than this, it’s also clear that the quest to do something different and be something different has taken its toll on Stabscotch, and that because of their strivings for artistic freedom, their music speaks of the suffering and strain of lacking social freedom, of being an outcast.

This strain and suffering is evident in “Open Sesemji,” where syncopated drums introduce a fractured succession of doomy, swirling guitars; intermittent and abrupt pauses of silence; an echoing, reverb-soaked, minatory guitar line; bursts of feedback’d noise; a tormented coda featuring plenty of delay and tremolo picking. As unsettling as these disjointed elements are on their own, vocalist Tyler Blensdorf spends their duration fulminating about his departure from readymade value systems, which in this case appear to take the form of religion.

voters, show yourselves!

Meeeee

In case you're wondering this is heavy avant-noise rock (or something) that's very long but it's worth it. Very uncomfortable listening.

Ufomammut is one of my all-time favorites. I don't know why the blurb babbled about Sabbath, they have little to do with Sabbath-influenced doom. There's more Hawkwind, and even Chrome in their DNA, plus extra lysergic cosmic horror. Great art on t-shirts and posters too. You can circumvent import prices and get the paperback collecting The Art of Ufomammut (the members also make up the Malleus art collective) at All That Is Heavy.

There was some bitter complaining about the Electric Wizard album, but glad to see some people can appreciate their tribute to their proto-metal influences, which really is not a hugely different direction.

Oh yeah Stabscotch was my #3! This album is fantastic!

I love you guys but I can't imagine ever listening to all 104 mins of this

My #3 as well, I think! They sent imago a coffin with some ‘tea-like’ substance in it. The album is a wild and chaotic ride. ‘Black Effigy Speaks’ is a favourite track from it, though it works well as a noisy lysergic whole too.

i wanna catch up but unfortunately i'm still hooked on the wode album

My #2. Absolutely incredible trip

They sent imago a coffin with some ‘tea-like’ substance in it

Haha wtf

The Stabscotch album is enormous, meandering--often surprisingly so--and p much entirely in the vein of stuff like from this thread

The 40 Weirdest Post-'Nevermind' Major-Label Albums (according to Spin)

tt has described it better. it's the fierce and uncompromising chaos of young people out of step with the world yet hungry and intelligent enough to try and devour it all. perfect for the boiling sun and the freezing snow. true delirium

I am one of twenty worldwide owners of their follow-up live album The Witness, it's true :D the coffin also contained a USB stick

Yeah that's a lot better xp

appears to be a comeback record from an old band...can't see the point in this music at all but then i've always been a trad metal skeptic

Just saw this. Nearly everything here (black metal, shoegaze, doom, thrash) originated at least as far back as the 1983-85. There is absolutely a point to the existence of The Obsessed. It may not be your thing, but you really can't make a case that it's inherently inferior to other genres -- they're all old. We're all old.

Oh I wasn't denying its right to be here! Just that it wasn't for me

Stabscotch are not old though :D

Still on track 1 but this is sounding like 'my thing' so far. (I'm a little surprised it's not Simon's.)

Also DAM that was an xpost, I meant tt explained it better than me with 'absolutely incredible trip' - that poll offers a fair swathe of comparison

But most of the subgenres are over 35 yrs old. Stabscotch is pretty good -- definitely brings me back to noise rock of the late 80s -- Tragic Mulatto, feedtime, Skullflower, Lubricated Goat :) Oxbow part of that too.

And yeah Sund4r you are required to be all over this

FNB I've seen plenty of SST comparisons with Oxbow - maybe I'll have to check all that stuff out soon :) in a way Stabscotch feels like the heir to that stuff

I thought of Oxbow for sure but that album is hyper-focused where this one is clearly a kitchen-sink type deal

I'm getting a wee bit of a Naked City vibe. Can't say I much care for the 'rapping', though.

Tragic Mulatto were on Alternative Tentacles, along with NoMeansNo (their best album, Wrong (1989) was remastered and is on Bandcamp). Lubricated Goat was on Amphetamine Reptile, which of course is a goldmine of noise rock with bands like Cows. I've been on a kick listening to that stuff lately, along with R**eman (really wish Albini picked a different name), Naked City, Jesus Lizard, Unsane, old Melvins, etc.

I was the guy who voted Oxbow at #1, incidentally.

Nominated and voted for Stabscotch. Awesome album. Found out about it on here. Also, glad to see Full of Hell making it, that band is the real deal. Love this album and love the Body collabs too.

thanks for running this poll, i always catch up on music at the end of the year (as much as i try to keep up during it, i tend to fail.)

the best album covers are without fail found here of course.

What's your favourite cover so far? Mine might still be Succumb

It has been a good year for covers. I love the Artificial Brain one.

oh yeah

RECAP
100 Cloud Rat / Disrotted - Split LP 99.0 3 0
98 Contrarian - To Perceive Is To Suffer 99.0 4 0
98 Bathsheba - Servus 99.0 4 0
97 Code Orange - Forever 100.0 4 0
95 Tau Cross - Pillar of Fire 101.0 3 0
95 Necrot - Blood Offerings 101.0 3 0
94 White Ward - Futility Report 101.0 4 0
93 Colotyphus - Spiritual Journey of a Forlorn Soul 102.0 3 0
92 Big|Brave - Ardor 102.0 4 0
91 Cannibal Corpse - Red Before Black 104.0 3 0
90 Akercocke - Renaissance In Extremis 104.0 4 0
89 Zeal & Ardor - Devil Is Fine 105.0 3 0
88 The Body & Full of Hell - Ascending a Mountain of Heavy Light 106.0 4
87 Anakim - Monuments to Departed Worlds 107.0 2 1
86 Dodecahdron - Kwintessens 108.0 4 0
85 Nokturnal Mortum - Veria 113.0 3 0
84 Wiegedood - De Doden Hebben Het Goed II 114.0 3 0
82 Obituary - Obituary 116.0 4 0
82 Dreadnought - A Wake in Sacred Waves 116.0 4 0
81 Forgotten Spell - The Necromancer 117.0 4 0
80 Succumb - Succumb 118.0 4 0
79 Creeper - Eternity, In Your Arms 119.0 3 0
78 Gnod - Just Say No to the Psycho Right-Wing Capitalist Fascist Industrial Death Machine 120.0 4
76 Usnea - Portals Into Futility 120.0 5 0
76 Progenie Terrestre Pura - oltreLuna 120.0 5 0
75 Wode - Servants of the Countercosmos 121.0 4 0
74 Grails - Chalice Hymnal 121.0 5 0
73 Oranssi Pazuzu - Kevät / Värimyrsky 126.0 5 0
72 Violet Cold - Anomie 127.0 4 0
71 Queens Of The Stone Age - Villains 131.0 3 0
70 Brutus - Burst 133.0 5 0
69 Akvan - Forgotten Glory 135.0 5 0
68 Nortt - Endeligt 140.0 4 1
67 Flight Of Sleipnir - Skadi 144.0 5 0
66 Pissed Jeans - Why Love Now 147.0 3 1
65 Amenra - Mass VI 147.0 4 0
64 Mesarthim - Presence 147.0 6 0
62 Ungfell - Tôtbringære 150.0 4 0
62 Ingurgitating Oblivion - Vision Wallows in Symphonies of Light 150.0 4 0
61 Tomb Mold - Primordial Malignity 151.0 5 0
60 Gasp - Ghost in Scow Out 153 Points, 4 Votes
59 Circle - Terminal 157 Points, 6 Votes
58 Corpse Garden - IAO 269 159 Points, 5 Votes
57 With The Dead - Love From With The Dead 162 Points, 5 votes
56 Pyrrhon - What Passes For Survival 162 Points, 7 votes
55 Loss - Horizonless 167 Points, 5 Votes
54 Propagandhi - Victory Lap 168.0 Points, 4 Votes, 1 #1 Vote
53 Planning for Burial - Below the House 168.0 Points, 5 Votes
52 Ehnahre - The Marrow 171.0 Points, 5 Votes
51 Gigan - Undulating Waves of Rainbiotic Iridescense 174.0 Points, 7 Votes
50 Psudoku - Deep Space Psudokument 177.0 Points, 4 Votes, 1 #1 Vote
49 Venenum - Trance of Death 183.0 Points, 6 Votes
48 Falls of Rauros - Vigilance Perennial 184 Points, 7 Votes
47 Undergang - Misantropologi 190 Points, 5 Votes , One #1
46 Paradise Lost - Medusa 195 Points, 7 Votes
45 Kairon; IRSE! - Ruination 196 Points, 6 Votes
44 Enslaved - E 197 Points, 6 Votes
43 Sannhet - So Numb 204 Points, 5 Votes, ONE #1
42 Black Cilice - Banished from Time 209.0 Points, 5 Votes
41 Impetuous Ritual - Blight Upon Martyred Sentience 212.0 Points, 6 Votes
40 Krallice with Dave Edwardson - Loüm 212 Points, 7 Votes
39 Full of Hell - Trumpeting Ecstasy 213 Points, 6 votes
38 Mastodon - Emperor Of Sand 219 Points, 6 Votes
37 Oxbow - Thin Black Duke 219 Points, 7 Votes , One #1
36 The Obsessed - Sacred 220 Points, 5 votes
35 Les Discrets - Predateurs 222 Points, 6 votes, One #1
34 Artificial Brain - Infrared Horizon 230.0 Points, 10 Votes
33 Der Weg Einer Freiheit - Finisterre 231.0 Points 7 Votes
32 Boris - Dear 234 Points, 7 Votes
31 Sólstafir - Berdreyminn 254 Points, 6 Votes, One #1
30 Ufomammut - 8 255.0 Points, 9 Votes
29 Electric Wizard - Wizard Bloody Wizard 256.0 Points 6 Votes, 1 #1 Vote
28 Fen - Winter 259 Points, 7 Votes
27 Yellow Eyes - Immersion Trench Reverie 269.0 Points 9 Votes
26 Stabscotch - Uncanny Valley 275.0 Points 6 Votes

SPOTIFY results playlist

We resume tomorrow when Odysseus is returned from the hospital, yes?

i will post #25 myself tomorrow lunchtime before I leave and simon will handle the rest

ayyyyy

holy hell that stabscotch album, not heard of them before now.

I've seen plenty of SST comparisons with Oxbow

Well they were technically on SST themselves, for a fleeting moment.

What's your favourite cover so far? Mine might still be Succumb

― imago, Wednesday, February 7, 2018 11:57 AM (eleven minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Anakim, Succumb, Circle, With the Dead, Loss

i'm a sucker for gaping maws on rotting skeletons & sci-fi nightmares.

I really like the Planning for Burial cover.

Re-listened to Succumb now, and kinda wish it made my ballot - it has a great ugly black death sound.