THE 10TH ANNUAL ILM METAL POLL:2017 RESULTS THREAD

I'm certain it isn't replicated live, being all one person's work. fwiw I went back and heard his previous stuff and this one appears to be the big quantum leap forward

Loving the stabscotch and white ward, looks like no cavern light in the countdown.

Psudoku is the dude behind Parlamentarisk Sodomi - and Brutal Blues, which is a duo with Anders Hana (Noxagt, MoHa!, etc), is just as interesting as Psudoku and apparently will be playing live shows some time this year.

oh i didn't check out his other bands! interesting indeed...

oh shit that Full of Hell record starts with a Werner Herzog sample, immediately sold!

DONINGTON ARE YOU READY TO ROCK?!

hell yeah
https://cdn2.gigantic.com/static/images/campaign/820x500/download_festival-5149765533.jpg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s-WuR51w9yU

Rock over London. Rock on Chicago. I am a rock and roller.

That was supposed to be this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yg6ZZ4I0U68

10 Pallbearer - Heartless 441 Points, 12 Votes ONE #1
https://i.imgur.com/1H5uBRV.jpg
https://open.spotify.com/album/7lDurtFAXb8mObKJonzgeN?si=yb9urOztRruVACYO9i-AZw

https://pallbearer.bandcamp.com/album/heartless

Pallbearer’s third album, Heartless, is an inspired collection of monumental rock music. The band offers a complex sonic architecture that weaves together the spacious exploratory elements of classic prog, the raw anthemics of 90’s alt-rock, and stretches of black-lit proto-metal. Lyrics about mortality, life, and love are set to sharp melodies and pristine three-part harmonies. Vocalist and guitarist Brett Campbell has always been a strong, assured singer, and on Heartless, his work’s especially stunning. This may in part be due to the immediacy of the lyrics. Written by Campbell and bassist/secondary vocalist Joseph D Rowland, the words have moved from the metaphysical to something more grounded. As the group explains: “Instead of staring into to the void—both above and within—Heartless concentrates its power on a grim reality. Our lives, our homes and our world are all plumbing the depths of utter darkness, as we seek to find any shred of hope we can."

Pallbearer emerged from Little Rock, Arkansas in 2012 with a stunning debut full-length, Sorrow and Extinction. The record, which played like a seamless 49-minute doom movement, melded pitch-perfect vintage sounds with a triumphant modern sensibility that made songs about death and loss feel joyfully ecstatic. Pallbearer possessed what many other newer metal groups didn't: perfect guitar tone, classic hooks, and a singer who could actually sing.

For their 2014 followup, Foundations of Burden, the band worked with legendary Bay Area producer Billy Anderson (Sleep, Swans, Neurosis) for an expansive album that was musically tighter and especially adventurous. Armed with a more technical drummer, Mark Lierly, Foundations feels like it was built for larger shared spaces—you could imagine these songs ringing off the walls of a stadium. It was a hint of things to come. While the debut earned the band a Best New Music nod from Pitchfork and rightly landed the band on year-end lists at places like SPIN and NPR, along with the usual metal publications, Foundations of Burden charted on the Billboard Top 100 and earned the band album of the year from Decibel and spots on year-end lists for NPR and Rolling Stone.

Returning to where it all began, the quartet recorded their third full-length, Heartless on their own in Arkansas, and it’s grander in scope, showcasing a natural progression that melds higher technicality and more ambitious structures with their most immediate hooks to date. The collection, which follows the 3-song Fear & Fury EP from earlier this year, was captured entirely on analog tape at Fellowship Hall Sound in Little Rock this past summer and then mixed by Joe Barresi (Queens of the Stone Age, Tool, Melvins, Soundgarden).

From the gloriously complex, sky-lit opener “I Saw the End” to the earth-shaking (and heartbreaking) 13-minute closer “A Plea for Understanding,” the entire group puts forth the full realization of their vision: More than a doom band, Pallbearer is a rock group with a singular songwriting talent and emotional capacity. Heartless finds the group putting forth their strongest individual efforts to date: Campbell and Rowland, along with guitarist/vocalist Devin Holt and drummer Mark Lierly, turn in peak marathon performances. Both Campbell and Rowland also handle synthesizers alongside their normal duties, and there are plenty of gently strummed acoustic guitars amid the crunchy electric ones, adding a moody, ethereal spareness to the towering metal. The almost 12-minute “Dancing in Madness” opens with dark post-rock ambience and moves toward emotional blues before exploding into a sludgy psychedelic anthem. A number of the seven songs feature a humid rock swagger.

By fusing their widest musical palette to date, Pallbearer make the kind of heavy rock (the heavy moments are *heavy*) that will appeal to diehards, but could also find the group crossing over into newer territories and fanbases. After having helped revitalize doom metal, it almost feels like they’ve gone and set their sights on rock and roll itself. Which doesn’t seem at all impossible on the back of a record like Heartless.
credits
released March 24, 2017

http://www.angrymetalguy.com/pallbearer-heartless-review/

why is metal guy angry

He's a music writer.

\m/

Beautiful album.

never really fully got into this one

I liked this, but thought the quality of songwriting wasn't too consistent. Some tracks were exciting (Thorns, A Plea for Understanding), and others seemed a little too familiar. That said, I see it somehow managed to make it halfway up my ballot, so I must have liked it enough!

I never really kept up with Wolves in the Throne Room after Diadem. This is pretty nice, generally.

You guys preferred the last Pallbearer?

Hang on this is pretty good, I found myself really enjoying a bit there

Seems to be kind of ten-a-penny forlorn mithering inna post-Agalloch style but then it'll do something cool

I get the broad appeal and therefor high placement, but this is not for me.

Just lovely singing and lead guitar playing.

9 Couch Slut - Contempt 487 Points, 13 Votes
https://i.imgur.com/FnfYNGF.jpg

https://open.spotify.com/album/5c7yRcKG59olXAssBSLQ0t?si=cNqJExY2RIuCbmL70PLDbQ

https://gileadmedia.bandcamp.com/album/contempt

Gilead Media announces the July 28th release of Contempt, the second album by Couch Slut.

From Brooklyn, New York, Couch Slut shook the underground in 2014 with the release of its debut, My Life as a Woman. Stereogum called that album "engagingly smart and terrifyingly blunt" and pegged the sound as "a little bit Oxbow and a little bit Today Is the Day during the AmRep years... It's catharsis through pain, both for the listener and the band. But it's also smart in the way it sets expectations and subverts them."

New album Contempt carries on in this fashion – Couch Slut's savagery and intelligence are both in full effect, adding up to an album that thrills on two levels. Opening track "Funeral Dyke" sets the tone, with a skronking saxophone buried under a grimy, blackened, noise-rock blitz. Later in the song, a tambourine rattles along happily with the beat as vocalist Megan Osztrosits screams, "I will fuck you, now you're dirt!"

Contrasts such as those on display in "Funeral Dyke" are what make Contempt the engrossing, dynamic affair that it is. The band's foundation rests on the scorched earth between Unsane's pounding NYC hate-rock and Darkthrone's mournful metal, but... more
credits
released July 28, 2017

Lineup:
Megan Osztrosits - vocals
Kevin Wunderlich - guitar
Kevin Hall - bass
Theo Nobel - drums

Recorded by Kevin Wunderlich and Amy Mills
Mixed by Caley Monahan-Ward
Mastered by James Plotkin

https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/couch-slut-contempt/

now there's the best album cover of the year

also one of the better albums! put it 12th on my ballot but it's awesome and surprisingly varied. 'won't come' is some truly stellar doom but the rest is kind of (really good) noise-rock

excellent cover art today so far

*fantastic* album full of little surprises

Don't linger on the cover art for their previous release at work.

This is pretty good at shutting out mental noise.

I wanted to like the Pallbearer album, but then the Elder album came out and just completely swamped it.

yeah the Pallbearer kind of went to mush in the end

I think I wanted the clean vocals to be more operatic on my first listen to the first two tracks. Definitely deserves more time. xp re Lingua Ignota

Her other album from last year seems to lean more towards classical singing. It's beautiful too.

https://linguaignota.bandcamp.com/album/let-the-evil-of-his-own-lips-cover-him

8 Botanist - Collective: The Shape of He to Come 490 Points, 13 Votes, ONE #1
https://i.imgur.com/x3RQFSr.jpg

“The Shape of He to Come” is the first of the “Collective” series, which means that it diverges from the model of Botanist studio albums as the result of me, Otrebor, doing everything, and instead recording more like a full band with distributed responsibilities. “The Shape” stands as a testimonial to the work, time, and effort that six of us put into rehearsing, touring, and composing from the years 2013-2016.

The origins of “The Shape of He to Come” came from my desire to give all the members of Botanist live the opportunity to contribute to a studio record; to give them a greater feeling of inclusion in Botanist -- and also to see what they were capable of and what my options would be for further inclusion in numbered Botanist albums.

The resulting album turned out wonderfully. I took some pre-existing drum tracks that I recorded in 2010 and gave them to D. Neal and R. Chiang with instructions to do what they wanted. Initially, the album was meant to be a 3-song EP, with the three songs being divided amongst Neal and Chiang as to who would take the “lead” and who would write complementary parts.

That proved to be trickier than I had thought. A... more
credits
released September 1, 2017

“The Shape of He to Come” was recorded in various home studios in Northern and Southern California from the years 2010-2016, and mixed and mastered by Jack Shirley @ The Atomic Garden, East Palo Alto, CA, in December, 2016.

http://www.angrymetalguy.com/botanist-collective-shape-come-review/

https://www.sputnikmusic.com/review/74755/Botanist-Collective-The-Shape-of-He-to-Come/

I found it quite irritating to be honest – couldn't make it past the second track. I ought to give it another go.

i had no idea botanist released anything last year!

can't believe I forgot this one when I was making predictions. love this dude's stuff.

Probably the metal album I listened to most last year.

Another of my votes! Felt like a good move for Botanist - letting the other musicians loose in the studio was a necessary next step. And while it's all good, The Reconciliation Of Nature And Man is the one - a titanic achievement that gets distinctly (and awesomely) Jute-Gyte-esque at the end. Who wants to hear microtonal hammered dulcimer?

YOUTUBE LINK TO ALBUM

Bandcamp: https://verdant-realm-botanist.bandcamp.com/album/collective-the-shape-of-he-to-come

Man, the title track is even better than I remember it

7 Krallice - Go Be Forgotten 500 Points, 13 Votes ONE #1
https://i.imgur.com/BNGXRLn.jpg

https://open.spotify.com/album/0WIrigf44VZRcTkzS872iF?si=Wpmwf_W6SDqBeA_SQtzoLw

https://krallice.bandcamp.com/album/go-be-forgotten

https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/krallice-loum-go-be-forgotten/
http://www.nocleansinging.com/2017/11/21/krallice-go-be-forgotten/

It wasn't forgotten after all

The stuff.

Krallice can do no wrong, and I love that they do more frequent, more focused releases now.

As far as Botanist goes, the clean vocals have this slightly off-key, Ameri-hymnal-like quality to them that I can never stand, whether in this context or elsewhere. The dulcimer is promising but too little is made of it – it mostly just shadows the guitar.

6 Myrkur - Mareridt 509 Points, 14 Votes
https://i.imgur.com/1rzoWLl.jpg

https://open.spotify.com/album/3ewAlccDDYFoybQaMnkTvW?si=1g_T5EjDRFyhbSkqx1qUBw

https://myrkur.bandcamp.com/album/mareridt-deluxe-version

Mareridt (translation: Nightmare) is the highly anticipated sophomore full-length from renowned Danish composer and multi-instrumentalist MYRKUR. Recorded between Copenhagen and Seattle with producer Randall Dunn (Marissa Nadler, Earth, Sunn O))), Boris, Wolves In The Throne Room), Mareridt is a rich juxtaposition of the dark and the light; the moon and the mother earth; the witch and the saint. MYRKUR explores deeper into the mysterious and the feminine with 11 tracks that further progress her visionary blend of metal with gorgeous, stirring melodies, dark folk passages, choral arrangements and superb, horrific beauty. Further taking MYRKUR to new artistic heights are lyrics in multiple languages, an unforgettable collaboration with Chelsea Wolfe and an array of special instrumentation including violin, mandola, folk drums, nyckelharpa (an ancient Swedish key harp), and Kulning (an ancient Scandinavian herding call). Mareridt is a profound manifestation of nightmares that demonstrates MYRKUR as one of the truly exceptional artists of our time.
credits
released September 15, 2017

2017 Relapse Records

http://www.angrymetalguy.com/myrkur-mareridt-review/

https://www.pastemagazine.com/articles/2017/09/myrkur-mareridt-review.html

xp There is no guitar for it to shadow though... Anyway it's a beautiful album that I keep going back to, no insult to Mr. Botanist himself but collabrating with other people was a very good idea.

Obviously pleased to see Krallice so high, and I love a lot of GBF, but it feels incomplete to me, there's only three fully fleshed out tracks and one of them is a cover of a previous Mick Barr project. For that reason I prefer Loum.

wait whaaaaaaat

oh it's the fake one