2019 Metal ’n’ Heavy Rock/Heavy Music Poll: RESULTS - Top 100 Countdown

We have our own rules

you dont like actual heavy metal!

Next up: INSOMNIA aka SPIRIT INVOCATION.

yeah, of course it's fair to vote for anything but sometimes you see something in yr list and yr just like....it doesn't fit the ~vibe~, maaaaan

But before we get there… another personal favourite, which My Dying Bride fans are sure to love.

73
Weeping Sores - False Confession
129 points, 4 votes

https://f4.bcbits.com/img/a3885326903_16.jpg

https://open.spotify.com/album/7F93HxoAH0o0nAFfBUBFP8
https://weepingsores.bandcamp.com/album/false-confession

http://www.invisibleoranges.com/weeping-sores-false-confession-review/

I, Voidhanger’s unquestionable presence in extreme metal continues unabated with Weeping Sores‘s debut record False Confession. The album is admittedly much less avant-garde than the rest of the fair from the label this year, a far cry from the primitivist folk of Onkos or the abstract psych-prog black metal of Esoctrilihum. That said, Weeping Sores earn their place among the incredible output of groups like Epectase and An Isolated Mind not by avant-garde tendency but a fine attention to craft, turning in a death-doom record that simultaneously eschews the more cartoonish stereotypes of the genre while also deeply embracing certain necessary fundamental components of its two primary compositional spaces.

Take, for instance, the presence of death metal on the record. The group does not arrive at death-doom on this album merely via deep growled vocals and occasional nasty guitar tone; instead, primary instrumentalist Doug Moore makes sure to include certain rhythmic passages, a tighter, almost thrashy chug at times, in combination with an absolutely filthy guitar tone to solidify the connection to death metal. Likewise, the doom isn’t the overly-polished post-epic doom direction that a great deal of the unnamed-but-cartoonish and overbearing death-doom and gothic doom bands deploy.

Instead, Weeping Sores crafts something closer to classic Paradise Lost or early Anathema, clearly developing from a post-Autopsy/Morbid Angel sense of increasing the potency of the death metal via atmospheric touches and sense of pacing rather than a purely speed-based sense of aggression.

If the whole album was like the first track, it would have made my top 3. As it stands, it's still a fucking great debut and I very much look forward to their future releases.

Voted for this! The violin is what makes the album imo

TOO LOW, this was real high on my ballot. brutal and beautiful.

Yep, that and their ability to keep the rigidity that plagues death/doom at bay, especially on the rhythmic front.

xp too low is right.

We just struggle for voters now, still at the 4 vote point so its a bit unpredictable results wise and things you thought would be top 20 appear.

I dont know how to increase voter turn out

2008 30 Ballots
2009 50 Ballots
2010 80 Ballots
2011 74 Ballots
2012 51 Ballots
2013 53 Ballots
2014 62 Ballots
2015 61 Ballots
2016 42 Ballots
2017 40 Ballots
2018 33 Ballots
2019 36 Ballots

30-40 ballots is good

We got more than last year and more than in 2008, so that counts for something.

I don't think we get the ilx crossover posters voting anymore that we did and I dont know if that's because the crossover metal just isnt happening anymore or ilxors just arent interested in it now.

I do miss all the posters who used to join, are still on ilm, but didn't participate in voting or posting on the results thread or the rolling metal thread.

and the lurkers that used to vote regularly every year are long gone

So this band's name reportedly means insomnia AND spirit invocation in Icelandic…

72
Andvaka - Andvana
131 points, 3 votes

https://f4.bcbits.com/img/a2264826477_10.jpg

https://open.spotify.com/album/067SlOzVvp5WlM9M2DHVD4
https://andvaka.bandcamp.com/album/andvana

https://www.apocalypselatermusic.com/2019/12/andvaka-andvana-2019.html

The holiday season tends to be a happy time of year for most, whatever name they give it and whatever faith they follow or don't. Most, of course, means not all so here's something for the rest of the world that isn't happy right now. What Andvaka do is described as funeral doom, melancholic doom or post-doom, depending on where you look. They don't sound happy but they do sound very good indeed.

I have no idea who's in the band, but they apparently include members of the Icelandic black metal band Zakaz, whose musicians all go by roman numerals, just like the tracks on this album. I guess they really want the music to do the talking, which it does. It's not much for a couple of minutes, just slow dirge tones, but then it kicks in with vocals and everything has perspective all of a sudden because that's not the voice I expected.

Initially, this sounds ritualistic, especially when the tones add a hypnotic feel three minutes in to Partur I. According to their Facebook page, Andvaka means "spirit invocation" and I can feel a primal spirituality here. Over on their Bandcamp page, this album is described in religious terms as a "three-part series of hymns". Certainly, there's a reverence to the chanting, as if the band members are monks. It's too dark to suggest Gregorian doom, but the thought isn't too far away during the midsection.

My #2. Because funeral doom rules, because the current Icelandic metal scene rules, because the vocalist's operatic pipes rule, and because I never totally got over early Sigur Rós.

I can easily imagine this guy singing Rachmaninoff's All-Night Vigil.

xps to be having, as already mentioned above, a more lively countdown in years, must counts to something, also

never heard of those morbid stuff dudes. will listen to their pup rec

otoh always have the time to hear doug moore. didn't make my ballot tho

its a name your price download on bandcamp too

Anyway, thanks to the other two voters who helped land it in the top 100.

Next up: a concept album, and a really awesome one at that.

71
Funereal Presence - Achatius
132 points, 3 votes

https://f4.bcbits.com/img/a0735819330_16.jpg

https://open.spotify.com/album/3WeeuEe2iIUnAECJBEUwu0
https://funerealpresence.bandcamp.com/album/achatius

https://www.angrymetalguy.com/funereal-presence-achatius-review/

I’ve reviewed a lot of fucking black metal for this blog, and while I could never see myself tiring of covering the genre, I’d rather drown before hashing out another “The current state of black metal…” intro. For one thing, the sound and philosophies of modern black metal are constantly in flux, meaning that those who stumble upon my writings more than a year after publication will find them roughly as relevant as an instructional hip-hop dance VHS tape from 1992. For another, releases like Achatius feel displaced from the black metal timeline as a whole; it’s a record whose influences are clear, yet whose ambitions intriguingly conflict with its intent. This places Funereal Presence in a prime spot indeed, leaning into reliable second wave tactics as it blazes its own distinct trail. It’s not a masterpiece, but damn if it isn’t close.

Achatius represents black metal smelted down to its primal essence, then reforged from the ground up through a lens of modern songwriting and experimentation. Sole member Bestial Devotion’s prime influence to these ears is Darkthrone’s original quartet of black metal records, distilling that band’s trademark abrasion and Celtic Frostisms into four massive (and massively unpredictable) tracks. While the tempo and tonal tangents housed within these mammoth constructions recall Darkthrone’s “Kathaarian Life Code,” the execution here is a degree smarter; the compositions are sprawling, but their conclusions bring things full circle by reintroducing motifs with clever revisions. I normally groan when presented with the all too common trope of “black metal album with four big-ass, ten minute-plus tracks,” but Funereal Presence makes the endurance test well worth my time.

An early 2019 highlight that I didn't come back to as much as I should have.

from that amg review, i can probably get down with this

It's very thrash-esque, so yeah.

This one is monstrously good, gave it loads of points

I only realised after submitting my ballot that this was not Andavald but Andvaka, sad lol. So I didn't vote for it, but it slays. Icelandic doom w/ chants = catnip.

xp

tt can't talk right now due to being in a seminar but she says to say re: Funereal Presence "OMG too low, my #3"

Can't believe that only one person other than us voted for it! Seems right up many of your streets

^^ best Ted talk ever

xp

Can't believe that only one person other than us voted for it! Seems right up many of your streets

― imago, Tuesday, 25 February 2020 17:27 (thirty-six seconds ago) bookmarkflaglink

you didn't campaign iirc and campaigning is what works in these polls

and i dont mean just you, the the voting threads need more campaigning from everyone, inc pom & I but as pollrunners its kinda awkward if all the stuff pollrunners campaign for places. If only everyone campaigned

Yeah I felt bad about repping so much for my faves but better that than a dead-ish thread imo.

^^ was gonna say. I think it goes for a lot of voters that they would've campaigned if they'd found the time. No reason for remorse imo.

We've got some more 'Fork-core coming up (just being facetious, this isn't necessarily a bad thing and I owe much of my listening history to them).

forkscore?

70
Black Mountain - Destroyer
132 points, 4 votes

https://f4.bcbits.com/img/a1848302029_10.jpg

https://open.spotify.com/album/3NWMc0pI8amx5vpl29Em1a
https://blackmountain.bandcamp.com/album/destroyer

https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/black-mountain-destroyer/

Like a bitchin’ phoenix airbrushed on the side of a tricked-out ’78 Dodge B200 van, Black Mountain is a band always in the process of being reborn. Turnover has been almost constant in the metal outfit’s 15-year history, with each album boasting a slightly different lineup. Founding members Joshua Wells and Amber Webber left the group in 2016, shortly after the release of their fourth album, handily titled IV. That leaves frontman/chief songwriter Stephen McBean and keyboard player Jeremy Schmidt as the sole founding members, and that makes it all the more tempting to label this something like a solo project, one whose mission is to realize one man’s vision of heavy rock in the new millennium. But the remarkable thing is how much Black Mountain remains a band, how vital each member’s contributions are. What in the early 2010s looked like it might be a one-note project has pulled out of the skid to redefine itself and its relationship to crunch and riff.

Conceived and sequenced as a soundtrack to an epic desert road trip, Destroyer introduces a new gang of Black Mountaineers, most of whom are actually replacing Webber. That includes one singer, Rachel Fannan of Sleepy Sun, and three drummers: Adam Bulgasem of Dommengang, Kliph Scurlock formerly of the Flaming Lips, and Kid Millions from Oneida. Their version of the band has a lot less boogie but a lot more swamp, a lot more Frank Frazetta fantasy, a lot more majestic doom. As on IV, Jeremy Schmidt stands out as a co-writer and arranger, and his synths taunt McBean’s sludgy guitars, adding friction to the gnashing opener “Future Shade” and dystopian menace to “Closer to the Edge.”

As befits a band that imagines a Ballard-esque tower block as “the loneliest cock in the sky,” this version of Black Mountain have a healthy sense of the ridiculous, which is food of the gods where heavy guitars roam. McBean can deliver a line like, “One thousand horses form in a Flying V” with no smirk of irony and no Darkness-style in-joke. On one of the album’s gnarliest moments, he ends “Pretty Little Lazies” with a coda of menacing, tortured la la la’s, each one sounding more regurgitated than sung, his voice distorted with metal poisoning, like Zardoz puking up an arsenal of assault rifles.

Basically any heavy music that the 'Fork takes note of is 'Forkcore in my book.

I love In the Future but I lost interest thanks to Amber Webber's departure.

Read that as Andrew Lloyd Webber's departure the first time

Conspicuous lack of Large Sad Men today btw. I'm a little sad about that.

ok this Funereal Presence album rules. I found the murky sound tiresome at first but it eventually won me over pretty hard.

How far along are you counting down today Pom?

Taking it down to 61 today.

I'll pick up the pace in a bit.

Mostly because I find these guys grossly overrated aside from Paracletus.

if you're talking about their music from the last decade, i would agree with you. but IMO their older, simpler music was really good. 'si monumentum requires circumspice' was my favorite album and i enjoyed most of the stuff they released before that as well.

I've been meaning to revisit them all for some time.

69
Warforged - I:Voice
132 points, 5 votes

https://f4.bcbits.com/img/a1504869041_10.jpg

https://open.spotify.com/album/1kS9bkcY4yORQ9IVN5N4Y2
https://warforged.bandcamp.com/album/i-voice

https://www.angrymetalguy.com/warforged-i-voice-review/

The Artisan Era has been on a decent roll lately, releasing good to great albums left and right for just over a year. Warforged seemed like a bit of an odd duck for the label though. The Chicagoan five-piece of progressive blackened death metal don’t really fit the tech-death-heavy mold The Artisan Era have curated for themselves. It was this fact that initially drew me to I, Voice. What solidified my interest was the Equipoise-rivaling list of heavyweight guest spots.1 One can only imagine the level of anticipation growing within me for what Warforged had in store for their debut record, but does it live up to my own hype?

Warforged claim to craft progressive blackened death metal that should appeal to fans of Portal, Opeth and Lantlôs. Personally, I would add Artificial Brain, Alkaloid and Gorguts to that list. The sound concocted here is a creepy, sprawling, stream-of-consciousness kind of blackened death. Haunting shrieks (Adrian Perez) coalesce with dissonant riffs (courtesy of guitarists Max Damske and Jace Kiburz), frenetic drumming (Jason Nitts), eerie keys (Perez again), subterranean bass undercurrents (Alex Damske) and unpredictable song structures to send you running for seventy-three minutes from these forbidden forests into which you have unwittingly wandered.

So I'm fairly sure I heard this but… I don't remember a single thing about it despite the fact that prog blackened death is very much my cup of tea?