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

Anyway, I wonder who else voted for the Undergang. Did Fred surreptitiously cast a ballot for the sake of his fellow Danes? I sure hope so.

Next up: an excellent instrumental record that is TOTALLY NOT TRVE METAL!

#98
Dan Weiss/Starebaby – Natural Selection
95 points, 3 votes

https://f4.bcbits.com/img/a1400024447_10.jpg

https://danweiss.bandcamp.com/album/natural-selection

Dan Weiss is one of those drummers who could easily make a name for himself simply by being a very good drummer but is far from satisfied stopping there. He’s led ensembles all the way from a duet with guitarist Miles Okazaki to a sixteen-piece band. He’s thrived in straight-ahead jazz, modern jazz and even Indian-influenced jazz — he plays a mean tabla — but in 2018 he took his biggest artistic risk yet, an experimental, electronic/prog-metal turn called Starebaby.

For Starebaby, Weiss put together a murderer’s row of jazz talent: bassist Trevor Dunn (Nels Cline Singers), guitarist Ben Monder (David Bowie’s Blackstar band) and two of the most forward-thinking keyboardists on the scene today: Craig Taborn (Junk Magic) and Matt Mitchell (Snakeoil). Full of fuzz and feedback, rock bass lines, rock drums, a metal guitar and electronic adornments, this isn’t the stuff you wouldn’t expect top shelf jazz musicians to play. However, these are particularly adventurous jazz musicians and even those types like rock ‘n’ roll and other forms of contemporary music.

They do bring their improvisational chops to every composition, but these compositions often don’t follow the structure of either jazz or rock. You don’t have a song figured out in the first two minutes and sometimes, not even in the first five minutes, because even though these songs are meticulously composed one never knows what lurks around the corner

https://jazztimes.com/reviews/albums/dan-weiss-starebaby-natural-selection-pi/

Sund4r, stop checking the Québécois music thread instead of the metal rollout.

lol

Catching up now. Primitive Man and Atramentus were both albums I liked that didn't get past my second ballot cut of 80ish records, but that I am glad to see place. Undergang was somewhere in the 40s on my ballot and probably could have inched higher if I spent more time with it. This Dan Weiss thing is the rare entrant in these rollouts that I have never heard of at all.

As far as vox-free jazz-metal goes, Natural Selection is top notch.

Oh wow lol, glad it got other votes.

(I'm doing something that I can't listen to records while doing so I was waiting on checking this thread.)

This is :( though (and from a jazz publication!)

guitarist Ben Monder (David Bowie’s Blackstar band)

That might be worse than "Wilco sideman Nels Cline".

Fair enough, I just wanted to draw your attention to this as it's clearly your doing. ;)

xp oh lol

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.

Yeah, this is great. Thanks for the tip.

only thing I didn't like was the Ruptured in Purulence cover. it's pretty weak and it's one of my favorite Carcass songs and if you aren't gonna go balls out on that song you might as well just not.

but everything else on the EP is dope.

Do you guys want the poll run at the same time next year or earlier?

I feel like waiting until the ilm main polls die down is a good idea, so I'd say roughly the same timeframe.

bold dnp

Sweven – The Eternal Resonance
Hum – Inlet
Slift – Ummon
Behold… the Arctopus – Hapeleptic Overtrove
Touché Amoré – Lament
Gulch – Impenetrable Cerebral Fortress
Bindrune Recordings – OVERGROW TO OVERTHROW
Couch Slut – Take a Chance on Rock 'n' Roll
Vladislav Delay – Rakka
Infant Island – Beneath
Krallice – Mass Cathexis
Stabscotch – Twilight Dawn
Oranssi Pazuzu – Mestarin kynsi
Sightless Pit – Grave of a Dog
Liturgy – Origin of the Alimonies
Boris & Merzbow – 2R0I2P0
Mr. Bungle – The Raging Wrath of the Easter Bunny Demo
Serpent Column – Endless Detainment
Deafheaven – 10 Years Gone
Thy Catafalque – Naiv
Ocrilim – Plvence Abrost R Msitloun
Plague Organ – Orphan
Black Curse – Endless Wound
Envy – The Fallen Crimson
Triptykon – Requiem (Live at Roadburn 2019)
Imperial Triumphant – Alphaville
Machine Girl – U–Void Synthesizer
殞煞 Vengeful Spectre – 殞煞 Vengeful Spectre
Deftones – Ohms
Serpent Column – Kathodos
Vile Creature – Glory, Glory! Apathy Took Helm!
Skáphe – Skáphe³
Uniform – Shame
Old Man Gloom – Darkness of Being/Light of Meaning
Infant Island – Sepulcher

Sorry to be a pain in the arse but I didn't save my ballot, could someone fish it out the bin and post it please?

just put Sweven on top of my ballot and jiggle the order about a bit

& throw in some more colin marston

there we've rebuilt ultros

Yeah pretty much lol

I dont have access to ballots

Just bumping this to say that I finally got my copies of both #4 (Sweven) and #11 (Slift) this week and they are both absolutely incredible. Wish I'd have gotten to them sooner, they both would have gotten another high vote for sure.