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

I didn't get much out of this one, I'm afraid. Felt very generic.

wow, much lower than expected. this is a top 10er for me.

Guess I need to check this one out, I remember liking the previous one but I just spaced on the new one.

Never really connected with their stuff much before, but this one really hit my sweet spot. Voted it as my #2.

yeah, I went back to the album before it, and it was decent, but nothing approximating the newest one.

I didn't connect with this one either but these comments are making me want to give it another shot.

void rot somehow passed me by, it's new to me. but I do love krypts.

#45
Kaatayra – Toda história pela frente
188 points, 7 votes

https://f4.bcbits.com/img/a3216140200_10.jpg

https://kaatayra.bandcamp.com/album/toda-hist-ria-pela-frente

(No review, wtf.)

T
O
O

L
O
W

Beautiful album that I listened to all the time

My #6.

electric guitar suits him! #judas

ooooh now this looks neat

getting a bit of a devin townsend vibe?

the keyboards in this are lush as hell

getting a Negura Bunget vibe

this is fantastic damn

Also the pastoral sweep, and acoustic folk elements, mixed with black metal reminds me of the Stara Rzeka album that did well in this poll a few years back.

Need to check both of the Kaatayra 2020 offerings out. Devin Townsend namedrop has me doing the upper left quadrant of the drake meme, Negura Bunget has me doing the lower left quadrant though so we'll see.

It sounds nothing like Devin Townsend honestly, Negura Bunget's a closer shout, residing in a very different kind of forest. Strikes me as Spectral Lore-ish in places too.

it really is quite something

#43 TIE
Mamaleek – Come & See
191 points, 6 votes

https://f4.bcbits.com/img/a0687484033_10.jpg

https://mamaleek.bandcamp.com/album/come-and-see

Since Mamaleek started releasing music in 2008, the band has slyly, playfully engaged the ethos and aesthetics of black metal. Like numerous underground black metal bands, very little is known about the people involved in Mamaleek. The founding and continuous members are alleged to be brothers, perhaps of Middle-Eastern ethnicity (the band’s name is an anglicized version of an Egyptian Arabic word for slave, and some of the music has been recorded in Beirut); but they have never publicized their names, and at many of their rare live gigs, the band has appeared hooded or veiled. Their records have combined the scabrous vocals, dissonant guitar playing and ominous atmospheres of black metal with harsh noise, free jazz and hip hop electronics, and the occasional vocal or instrumental nod to North Africa or the Levant. Mamaleek’s work has often been as mystifying as it has been challenging, and angry. Always angry. 

Come & See is still angry, but the record is stylistically a bit easier to contend with than its predecessors. Come & See was recorded with a full band (and Mamaleek has recently gigged in a four-piece configuration). That change seems to have had tangible effects on the songs. Their dominant textures are still harsh and confrontational, vocals are still howled and shouted. But there are riffs. There are melodic structures. You catch yourself nodding and swaying. Those may not be affirming gestures—they are more a set of responses prompted by the music’s sheer force. But this LP feels more sonically legible. It’s nearly a variety of rock music. It’s also a terrific record. 

https://dustedmagazine.tumblr.com/post/614840957794500608/mamaleek-come-see-the-flenser

#43 TIE
Thou & Emma Ruth Rundle – May Our Chambers Be Full
191 points, 6 votes

https://f4.bcbits.com/img/a3696645020_10.jpg

https://thou.bandcamp.com/album/may-our-chambers-be-full

Thou want to make a new world. Sure, the Louisiana sludge militants sound obliterating—Bryan Funck screeches with anguish, as if a scab were being repeatedly ripped from the surface of the band’s music. But Thou have long hopscotched among labels, collaborators, and split-mates, creating a non-hierarchical network of partners. They do what they want, whether covering Nirvana in quasi-exhaustive fashion or weaving an exhausting web of side-projects. Even their New Orleans hub, Sisters in Christ, feels as much like some communal anarcho-outpost as a record store. In Kentucky, songwriter, painter, and bandleader Emma Ruth Rundle occupies a related role. She works in multiple groups while making her own transfixing chiaroscuro folk-rock, too.

Together, Rundle and Thou shape a grand world of their own. On their seven-track collaborative debut, May Our Chambers Be Full, gothic majesty and charred metal curl into moments of unlikely wonder. At their best, these songs pair the power of a rock-radio anthem with the gnarled eccentricity of their respective DIY roots. Chambers suggests a mutual-aid network: Rundle, an evocative singer with a kind of priestly command, supplies Thou with a central melodic ballast. Thou, one of the most dependably mighty bands to emerge from the South this century, add intensity and muscle. Funck’s serrated screams cut across Rundle’s resplendent tone like a hacksaw grinding against a diamond.

These bits are enthralling. Rundle and Funck volley verses back and forth, for instance, during “Out of Existence.” She initially gives in to the band’s relentless rush, allowing herself to be swept inside, while he climbs atop it, sneering from above like a gargoyle. But the guitars, interwoven like a cat’s cradle, swell beneath Rundle during the climax. The effect is transcendent, lifting you from your own gloom for 30 seconds, too. On “Magickal Cost,” Rundle rejoins Funck after the black metal tirade at song’s center, the superhero and arch-villain suddenly joining teams and making your hairs stand on end.

https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/emma-ruth-rundle-thou-may-our-chambers-be-full/

Mamaleek > Thou & ERR imo.

the imago section

Mamaleek was my #14. Really fantastic record, less all over the place than their previous stuff, which I found gimmicky in comparison.

Voted for Mamaleek. There's some sick, sick stuff on there. Much more noise-rock than metal imo, or at least it works better when interpreted as such

This is hardly the imago section, I only voted Mamaleek, and low down at that! Would have voted Kaatayra mind

Mamleek's is a great record, something different for them, though I prefer the bizarre eclecticism of the previous few albums. Come and See is more like Oxbow than anything else.

Yeah, Oxbow is a good point of comparison.

We could do with an album by an old legacy act right now

Any guesses?

Testament

if u mean "legacy" literally

Testament?

Xpost what Neanderthal said

Unless we already think of Elder as a legacy act.

Babymetal?

Elder will go quite high. Hell, I voted for them

if it is Testament, I voted for it out of duty, even though it's nothing special amidst their catalog (and probably not as good as Brotherhood of the Snake). but they're one of my long-time favs (on the strength of The Legacy, The New Order, and The Gathering - so I gave it a low end vote.

I didn't vote for too many older acts. Cirith Ungol already placed, and I assume it's not Anaal Nathrakh.

AC/DC and Deep Purple were both on my ballot.

I know at least one other person voted for AC/DC.

Bingo!

#42
AC/DC – Power Up
193 points, 6 votes, 1 #1 vote

https://i.scdn.co/image/ab67616d0000b27304db0e3bcd166c1d6cfd81f9

https://open.spotify.com/album/3bTNxJYk2bwdWBMtrjBxb0

For decades, AC/DC have defended their devil-horned crown as rock’s most stubborn band. They’ve survived deaths (singer Bon Scott in 1980, guitarist Malcolm Young in 2017) and dirty deeds (drummer Phil Rudd was placed on house arrest after threatening to kill a man). Yet, they remain eternally committed to their core values: rocking out, hailing Satan, and never going within an outback mile of a ballad. Hell, their most transgressive move ever was using the bagpipes on “It’s a Long Way to the Top,” and that was in 1975. That consistency is what their fans love about them and what their critics hate most.

But nothing has ever slowed down AC/DC on their journey down the Highway to Hell. And now they’re back again with Power Up, their umpteenth album of eardrum-shredding guitar terror and odes to raising hell. It’s their best record since 1990’s The Razors Edge, and yet again, they sound the same as they always have. Frontman Brian Johnson, who had to leave their last tour due to deafness, now has a special hearing aid so he can continue to sing, and Malcolm’s nephew, Stevie Young, plays rhythm guitar. Rudd has served his time and plays as steady as ever, and even Angus Young’s schoolboy outfit still fits snugly.

Naturally, there are no real surprises here: Power Up sounds unapologetically like AC/DC, and Angus has likened the LP to a tribute to Malcolm the same way that Back in Black was a back-pew eulogy for Bon Scott. Many of the riffs, which came from Angus and Malcolm’s archive, recall their greatest hits — the sidewinding blooze of “Demon Fire” is a distant relative of “Whole Lotta Rosie”; the throbbing intro to “Witch’s Spell” harks back to “Who Made Who,” the riff on “Code Red” stutters like “Back in Black” — and Johnson’s voice still sounds like angry truck exhaust, whether he’s huffing about tearin’ up the highway on “Code Red,” snarking about “crystal balls” on “Witch’s Spell,” or prescribing sex three times a day (“or as much as you may”) as a depression cure to a woman on “Money Shot.”

https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-album-reviews/ac-dc-keep-riding-the-highway-to-hell-on-power-up-1089089/

It was someone's #1, even.

I haven't heard it myself. Tbh I don't really enjoy their classic material…

6 votes too

If you don't like their classic material, this won't change your mind at all, but I thought it was immensely better than I could have ever expected - particularly with all the drama of the last few years.

blech.

listening to the Thou/ERR album, imagining it's the AC/DC

I prefer the Bon Scott era but this was really solid, hooky, with excellent guitar tones; Johnson's voice is almost as strong as ever.

Last place on my ballot but deserved a nod.