Fuck Brumpxit its the 2016 Metal and Hard N' Heavy Rock Poll Results Thread (With spotify and bandcamp links)

Glad to see Wrong, Occult Burial and Cadaveric Fumes placing. So far I've wishlisted Skaphe (reminds me of the churning murkiness of Aevangelist), Wormrot, Howls of Ebb (don't know why I didn't get around to this when I loved "Vigils of the 3rd Eye"), Eight Bells, Chthe'ilist, and Inquisition.

fuck me Mesarthim have released another one TODAY

― illbient microtonal poetry Surbiton (imago), Tuesday, 20 December 2016 11:20 (one second ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

who's gonna run the Mesarthim poll

30 Mesarthim - Isolate 266 Points, 7 Votes
http://i.imgur.com/LAUnsSd.jpg

https://open.spotify.com/album/1Ufx2MnbehYOpzFDzff6X1
spotify:album:1Ufx2MnbehYOpzFDzff6X1

https://mesarthim.bandcamp.com/album/isolate

"Like Summoning IN SPACE "

Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
$1 USD or more

ok looooooooooool

Hahaha

The Great Filter > Absence > Type III* > Pillars > Isolate > Spire

*based on my one listen just earlier

It's the best one too. the best synths, the best guitar solos and the best tunes

As always, ignore imago

The opening track is incredible but the rest, while good, feels like a dry run for future glories

All of it is essential listening though

I have an old iAudio player I use exclusively for metal 'cause it has way better audio quality than my phone, can't wait to add all the Mesarthims to it and bliss out

new song out today even has Christmas bells

lol, true

it also has about five different climactic crescendos

29 Metallica - Hardwired...To Self Destruct 270 Points, 9 Votes
http://i.imgur.com/tltE25X.jpg

https://open.spotify.com/album/6BAWrCZig4yVNuJrHSwK4p
spotify:album:6BAWrCZig4yVNuJrHSwK4p

Those Mesarthim keyboard melodies are super cheesy. Filter out the screeching, blend the guitars in with the other synths, and you have bad elevator new age music. Clown college wallpaper. Fighting off some stupid cold virus everyone is getting and didn't want to wake up, so I'm unfiltered ;)

xp Token old farts floggin' a dead horse album

I thought for SURE that would crack the top 20 xxp

There's a killer 50-minute album in there

xp
to me, it sounds like the music when Transformers die. ymmv depending on how much that sounds like shade I guess

I thought it would be higher but the biggest boosters on the rolling promo thread and the metallica thread didnt bother voting.

Maybe it wasn't that good after all?

Obviously the Mesarthim melodies are cheesy. It is kind of the point.

So was the Metallica any good? Or just another album that was better than st anger and lulu?

What did you think of the whole Metallica album imago?

Filter out the screeching, blend the guitars in with the other guitars, and you have bad elevator new age music. Frat house wallpaper.

That sure is ugly, but not as bad as Aphex Twin I guess. 29th is plenty good. There's only two songs on it that I'd take off. Fun fact, it's 1:15 shorter than Load. I like it better than the black album FWIW. In fact, there's fewer boring parts than Justice For All, though I wouldn't go so far as rate it over that. They would have had to have gotten more progtastic again.

Actually I haven't heard it. But I will! Just for you guys.

we expect you to liveblog it

Xp cheesy melodies in triumphant power metal makes sense. In black metal, does not compute. Black metal is not exactly compatible with irony or self-effacing humor. Sorry, I see clowns, not frat boys when I listen.

clowns...IN SPACE

we have Metallica...IN SPACE to look forward to later, winning this poll, just in case you were doubting the space thing

In space, no one can eat ice cream:
https://rochpikey.files.wordpress.com/2012/09/killer_klowns_from_outer_space_movie_poster_horror_comedy_review.jpg

Metallica fans were delighted with the album

Does imago even like the 1st 4 Metallica?

I really like the intro to Sanatarium before all the chugging starts. If all Metallica sounded like that I'd be on board 100%

you're nuts

:D

I'll give them their due eventually! But I'm not qualified to talk about this album as I'm not a thrash fan.

I mean, I still will. When I hear it.

Welcome Home (Sanitarium) is one of the greatest songs ever as is rather a lot of 80s Metallica. the black album and Load has loads of good songs too.

New album is streets ahead of st anger, the last supposed return to form album which was actually shit (death magnetic), lulu, reload.

At least they didn't embarrass themselves this time. I wonder if they will still stick to a few new songs + the classics in future tours like theyve been doing for years or actually play most of the new songs

28 40 Watt Sun - Wider Than The Sky 284 Points, 7 Votes
http://i.imgur.com/D1NUbr3.jpg

https://open.spotify.com/album/7ejPvGjIXZvNROVwsyNRqa
spotify:album:7ejPvGjIXZvNROVwsyNRqa

https://40wattsun.bandcamp.com/releases

ALBUM REVIEW: 40 Watt Sun - “Wider than the Sky”
By: TJ Kliebhan

Album Type: Full Length
Date Released: 14/10/2016
Label: Providence Records |
Svart Records

Although the record may find itself on the fringes of metal, the empathetic feelings Walker shares over soaring ten minute tracks should cause anyone who has felt anything before to reflect in some meaningful way. “Wider than the Sky” challenges its listeners to reflect for themselves, because after all it’s important to remember where one stands. 40 Watt Sun’s latest record is likely to find itself among the best records released this year.

“Wider than the Sky” CD//DD//LP track listing:

1). Stages
2). Beyond You
3). Another Room
4). Pictures
5). Craven Road
6). Marazion

The Review:
Patrick Walker enjoys his privacy. It’s no secret that the English musician tends to keep a low profile, which makes any news coming from him significant to his fans. In 2016, Walker has announced a one day performance at Roadburn festival where he will be reuniting Warning to play the “Watching from a Distance” in its entirety. Warning has been considered seminal in the revival of traditional doom metal, but do not put that genre label on what Walker does now as 40 Watt Sun.
Walker began 40 Watt Sun to address his growth as a musician and songwriter while moving on from the music he created as a young man. This year Walker finally announced a follow-up record for 40 Watt Sun marking 2016 as an exciting year for fans who have endured long periods of silence over the past three years. Label issues delayed the release of “Wider than the Sky” until now, marking the group’s first record in five years coming by way of their own Providence Records label. A Patrick Walker release has never sounded more polished or emotionally devastating than on “Wider than the Sky”.
On 40 Watt Sun’s sophomore effort, the band creates an air of maturity while Walker’s baritone pleading vocal wrestles with past relationships, meaningful physical places in his life, and the passing of time. The album is lyrically crushing, and finds Walker taking the least abstract approach to songwriting in his career.
The massive opening track “Stages” clocks in at over sixteen minutes and features chilling lines such as, “the heart of the matter that both of us can’t hide…I’m feeling everything like nothing in my life.” Walker has always touted that his lyrics are simply what he experiences. The drama that his voice as well as the slow, rhythmic delivery are fitting for this incredibly genuine collection of words. Walker’s chosen canvas for these ubiquitous tales is around ten minutes, but he proves he is able to deliver equally traumatic words on the short final track “Marazion”. The track finds Walker longing for the coastal town while aching, “if I could just be strong enough, but I don’t want to face it.”
While Walker can come off as a dreary character, these six tracks offer a diverse array of subjects that come with his unique perspective on, with the only constant from track to track being the level of personal intimacy that Walker brings to each song.
Musically, this is 40 Watt Sun’s cleanest record. The crushing atmosphere and distortion that Warning created was severely scaled back on 40 Watt Sun’s first record “The Inside Room.” Indeed “Wider than the Sky” takes the cleaner tones even further. This is still very much a guitar driven record and the pacing is similar to past releases in the Walker canon, but everything sounds more refined. This new record sounds as if it will seamlessly transition to the solo acoustic shows that Patrick Walker frequently performs. Many of the these tracks feature a sound for the opening couple minutes that slowly gets expanded upon by incorporating more instruments or feature a slight change in pace with a new riff. The tracks unfold in subtle ways and brilliantly derive significance out of minimalism. “Another Room” and “Craven Road” are perfect examples of how Walker is a master of maximizing the power of a shift in pace using a similar melody and tone without introducing numerous new instruments to the fold.
“Wider than the Sky” demonstrates that 40 Watt Sun is not dedicated to any sound or existing to satisfy the clamors of Doom metal fans. The band has aged and refused to compromise their vision, and in the process has created a release which could be considered as one Patrick Walker’s best. Although the record may find itself on the fringes of metal, the empathetic feelings Walker shares over soaring ten minute tracks should cause anyone who has felt anything before to reflect in some meaningful way. “Wider than the Sky” challenges its listeners to reflect for themselves, because after all it’s important to remember where one stands. 40 Watt Sun’s latest record is likely to find itself among the best records released this year.
http://thesludgelord.blogspot.co.uk/2016/10/album-review-40-watt-sun-wider-than-sky.html

amazing album that I voted for that is absolutely not metal

^ Metal police

RIYL early Low, Madrugada trapped in molasses

Not complaining, just noting!

Ya, it's not even rock. I said it has more in common with sadcore indie bands like Frightened Rabbit, and the stark, unadorned avant folk of Richard Youngs. But in a good way, I think it was on my ballot!

27 Entropia - Ufonaut 298 Points, 9 Votes
http://i.imgur.com/vx64N6W.jpg
https://entropia.bandcamp.com/album/ufonaut

http://www.nocleansinging.com/2016/02/01/an-ncs-album-premiere-and-a-review-entropia-ufonaut/

In the last days of the last year I came across a new song named “Mandala” from a new album by Poland’s Entropia. As I wrote at the time, it’s heavy, high-energy music that defies easy genre classification, with pneumatic grooves, twisted riffs, otherworldly guitar arpeggios, and quirky electronica capable of pushing you past your comparatively drab surroundings and into this band’s inventive vision. And as you’re about to find out, the same could be said of the entire mind-bending album.

The name of the record is Ufonaut. It follows the band’s 2013 debut album Vesper, and it will be released by Arachnophobia Records on February 15. It’s a cocktail of adrenaline, paving tar, and mescaline, consumed in an asylum — and it’s a completely electrifying concoction from the first gulp to the last.

Wearing the trappings of black metal, progressive metal, and post-rock, Entropia deliver one high-intensity thrill ride after another. Frenzied, often dissonant guitar duels and waves of near-cacophonous tremolo riffing whirl around huge, gravel-throated bass notes and spine-shaking percussion — spawning images of swarming, dog-sized hornets soaring, diving, and colliding in a whir of mad violence while urban streets explode from below in upheavals of concrete and ruptured water mains.

The guitarists execute blazing arpeggios, seeming to pursue their own twisted paths and constantly ratcheting the tension until the band break the tension with sledgehammers, snaring all the explosive exuberance (if only briefly) and yanking it back into place with anchoring grooves, only to unleash it again in the next moment.

While the music is an exhilarating roller-coaster ride, there is method to the madness. The songs contain unifying melodic themes and compelling, convulsive rhythms that persist through all the instrumental craziness and frequent bouts of dissonance. The tracks really do get you in their grips — the music is heavy and bone-rattling just as much as it is mind-bending. While the songs are mostly instrumental — and the instrumental performances are genuinely impressive — the vocals (when they appear) are just as crazed and superheated.

There’s also another aspect to the music, one that provides a striking contrast to the band’s high-voltage intensity. Picking their moments carefully, within songs such as “Samsara”, “Paradox”, and especially the mystical closing track “Veritas”, the band slow the pace, making way for the unfolding of shimmering keyboard melodies above huge, groaning bass notes. Those moments are beautiful, in a way that brings vistas of the cosmos to mind — almost enough to induce a brief trance state before the next supernova explodes.

There are no weak spots in Ufonaut, no fat, no filler. Pick any song at random, and I think you’ll be ensnared. It’s an early-year highlight, and one people should still be talking about this time next year.

Lurker enjoying the rollout says favourite find so far is Astronoid. That set of 40 Watt Sun references makes it sound right up my street, too.

Oh wow didn't think this would place, thanks for boosting it BlackIronPrison I totally overlooked it earlier in the year

It's brilliant and was in my top 10

I'm liking this so far. Very cool.

This was somewhere in my ballot too, meaning I rather enjoyed it