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

This is good as hell and only missed my ballot cause I wanted to spread my votes out and preferred the other big Ayloss release of the year.

if anyone ever says 'isn't BM a bit fash' play them this

Wow, cool album cover.

Conrad Keely used the same method for the Century Of Self cover! Biro skillz

Ha, 30s into Mystras, I'm sold on the sound itself.

Aha, it must be a drawing of Mystras!

https://www.greeka.com/photos/highlights/peloponnese/mystras/byzantine-churches-480.jpg

https://www.greeka.com/photos/highlights/peloponnese/mystras/byzantine-churches-480.jpg

Some Finns up next. LJ care to guess?

I'm guessing it's Wastement Unit 2

totally forgot about that Mystras. it was indeed really good. didn't make my ballot cos...I forgot I had it!

#32 TIE

Dark Buddha Rising – Mathreyata

218 points, 6 votes

https://f4.bcbits.com/img/a1121024153_10.jpg

https://darkbuddharising.bandcamp.com/album/mathreyata

I read somewhere that the standard of a good drone record is that good drone isn’t catchy, good drone catches you. When I was listening to Dark Buddha Rising‘s 2020 release Mathreyata, I was making quizzes at my desk before school started. “Sunyaga” came on at about 8:30 am, and I found myself pausing my work and letting myself succumb to the waves of drone and ritualistic atmosphere. Suddenly, my students walked in at 8:45 for class. I had gotten so lost in the Finns’ seventh full-length’s trance-inducing doom swells that I had completely lost track of time. The big question is: did I get lost in it for its impressively effective atmosphere or did I simply doze off from boredom?

Dark Buddha Rising is a Finnish band, formed in 2007 and packing six full-lengths and an EP under its belt. For a collective that channels drone, doom, and sludge (you’d be safe to throw some stoner doom in there too), their megalithic songwriting is surprisingly restrained, relying on simple bass riffs, distant vocals, and other instruments to communicate their psychedelic soundscape as it reaches a drone climax. While albums like Abyssolute Transfinite and Dhakmandal were densely expansive trips to the void, sprawling beasts in their hour-plus exercises, while 2015’s Inversum and 2019 EP II found the band streamlining their sound into more concise listens that nonetheless channeled its colossal sound albeit to shorter and crisper ends. 2020’s Mathreyata continues this trend, offering the most “accessible” installment yet, in a droning, sprawling, and psychedelic listen that benefits from its more concise runtime and cleaner production.

https://www.angrymetalguy.com/dark-buddha-rising-mathreyata-review/

Yep, Wastement Unit 2 it is!

This is completely sick as hell, my #5

Tracks 1 and 3 set 'em up, tracks 2 and 4 despatch

love that mystras record

if you aren’t that into spectral lore, still worth a shot. it’s a very different sound and one that i personally prefer

Catching up…

Afterbirth does indeed feel too low even though I didn't vote for it myself. A brilliantly paradoxical record, no doubt about it.

As for the Eternal Champion, 'Skullseeker' is eternally hilarious and the album itself is top-notch power metal imo.

The Boris was pleasant enough (like Simon, I'm not much of a stan, mind you).

Undeath was my #9 – no-nonsense DM of the best possible kind and yes, the ultimate 2020 album cover.

The Aktor did precious little for me when I sampled it, sorry.

Deftones was my #20 – among their strongest albums, full stop, although admittedly nothing in it will convert the skeptics.

Mystras is the best Spectral Lore-related project of 2020 imo, ahead of his contributions to the Mare Cognitum collab.

Last but not least, this is going to be an unpopular opinion but not only is the Dark Buddha Rising awesome, I honestly prefer it to the Oranssi Pazuzu.

I mean it's not so much of a gap in quality that I'll even strenuously disagree. DBR have discovered the magic of how very minimalistic music can go on an immense journey. They're masters of tension and its ratcheting

Last but not least, this is going to be an unpopular opinion but not only is the Dark Buddha Rising awesome, I honestly prefer it to the Oranssi Pazuzu.

Some days I'm there, they are both so good for such different reasons.

Here's an even more unpopular opinion: DBR are tedious mince

Don't get me wrong, Mestarin kynsi is killer, but it didn't match my 2020 moods as thoroughly as the DBR.

xp hard disagree, obv., but that's the spirit!

ULTROS

FITE

it cool we buds. ultros talk about Mystras or something

#32 TIE

Couch Slut – Take a Chance on Rock ’n’ Roll

218 points, 6 votes

https://f4.bcbits.com/img/a1619788850_10.jpg

https://gileadmedia.bandcamp.com/album/take-a-chance-on-rock-n-roll

The expression of grief and pain can be as intoxicating as it is poisonous. One of the things that punk rock bands are often lauded for is synthesizing their grievances with the world and personal failures into fun, digestible pieces of pop art for a selective audience of weirdos who have failed at life in similar ways. Candy-coated caterwauls of catharsis. That's the name of the game!

There are other genres, like heavy metal, that attempt to lay claim to life's betrayals and indignities by exhibiting them in a stark, cold, light for all to witness. But even heavy metal has to concede to its audience needs, and as a result, often hammer out anthems of empowerment and oases of relief from the anguish of life.

There are few bands that offer its audience none of these ways to deal with their pain, and still manage to be palatable. Cloud Rat is one, Lord Mantis is another, but the crown at this moment must go to Couch Slut.

Their new album, Take a Chance on Rock 'n' Roll, manages this aesthetic and aural coup without sapping any of the bitterness out of the fruits of knowledge they have on offer.

https://www.noecho.net/reviews/couch-slut-take-a-chance-on-rock-n-roll-review

now THIS is the imago section Oor Neechy ffs haha

my #15, absolutely crushing

Eh, I'm sure this is fine, I just have no yen to find out.

OK Mystras placed higher than I though it might, it's an excellent record obv, no-one would have batted an eye if he'd released it under the SL name though. (btw he has another album out in April!!!)

Listening to Afterbirth again I still like it and appreciate how different it is to other br000tal dm albums but it doesn't quite come together for me.

I couldn't get with Afterbirth at all

couch slut rule, even if i liked the previous LP by a hair

*preferred

This album didn't have a Won't Come on it, but I think it was better and more consistent overall, and its closing track was just as brutal as Won't Come in its own way

Holy Shit my old drummer just sent me photos of the “Someplace Cheap” night. here is a photo of the fireman and I on Coach’s bike, and the three of them (Capt America, fireman, and Coach) holding me at the bar and pic #3 is Randy on the righthand side https://t.co/agmg9snUzX pic.twitter.com/dYsM8UgRzp

— the bodice of christ (@megans__law) May 18, 2020

Just relistened to the closing track of DBR. How can you possibly call this tedious mince lol

Couch Slut was my #4. I was only moderately sold on the previous LP but got massively into this one. 'I'm 14' and 'The Stupid Man' absolutely crush (add to verbs list).

jesus those photos are bleak

Do we have a 'Real America' thread?

Those 'The Stupid Man' lyrics

#31

Colour Haze – We Are

220 points, 6 votes

https://f4.bcbits.com/img/a0452339713_10.jpg

https://ripplemusic.bandcamp.com/album/we-are

It is no small thing for a band to change its construction after about 20 years of working with the same lineup, but as they cap their 25th anniversary celebration in 2019 with the release of the new album, We Are (formerly titled Life), that is precisely what Munich’s Colour Haze have done. The godfathers of European heavy psychedelia have operated since 1998 as the core trio of guitarist/vocalist Stefan Koglek, bassist Philipp Rasthofer and drummer Manfred Merwald, but with 2017’s In Her Garden (review here), they began to experiment more with adding flourish of organ and various synth from Jan Faszbender, and since then, Faszbender has become a part of a new four-piece incarnation of Colour Haze.

On the seven-track/45-minute We Are, which is released as ever through Koglek‘s Elektrohasch Schallplatten imprint and opens its first side at a rush with its quick-boogie title-track, they continue to experiment and drive themselves forward in that integration, with Faszbender moving between playing off the energy of Merwald‘s drumming, running along with Koglek‘s guitar in the graceful instrumental sweep in the second half of “Life,” and generally filling out the melodic and rhythmic foundations of the material while offering a few standout moments of his own, such as the organ laying the bed for the soaring vocals — and I mean “soaring”; there are some pointedly operatic guest vocals going on there too — of the album apex “Be with Me.” The change, in other words, suits Colour Haze. Their studio arrangements have been branching out since well before 2012’s She Said (review here) brought in strings and horns and 2014’s To the Highest Gods We Know (review here) answered back and built on those impulses, but from where the branching out is happening has changed, and their sound is that much richer for having Faszbender in the lineup on a hopefully ongoing basis.

http://theobelisk.net/obelisk/2019/12/03/colour-haze-we-are-review-premiere/

What's the deal with the photos? xps

I briefly sampled this and didn't get what the fuss is all about. I should probably have started with their older material.

click the link in the tweet and read the lyrics (or don't, it's pretty upsetting).

xp

The photos are of the night and the individuals described literally and autobiographically in the lyrics to the closing track yeah

Another contender for worst album art here imho

don't know what this last one is but looks like a peter gabriel album or something

Yeah, I voted for this and love Colour Haze but their album covers have gotten progressively worse over the years.

It really reminds me of the cover for Pat Metheny's Speaking of Now.

Just relistened to the closing track of DBR. How can you possibly call this tedious mince lol

― imago, Thursday, 11 March 2021 17:44 (ten minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

I probably didn't get that far lol, I never have with any of their albums. But fiiiiine, I'll try again

This Colour Haze isn't the last European heavy psych that's going to place, nor the heaviest ;)

I liked the Colour Haze album a lot but it's a 2019 release (https://www.discogs.com/fr/Colour-Haze-We-Are/release/14517169) so I didn't vote for it.

We debated that in the noms thread, it was out digitally like the last week of 2019, but the physical copies weren't until (I think) March of 2020. I counted it as a 2020 release.

Oh I see. I didn't recall the discussion.