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

Man, I really slept on the Boris record. So good, especially if you like their more contemplative side.

Swans is #13 for 2019 on RYM so clearly tons of people like them still. But it’s not a metal/rock album at all so I saw no point of nominating or voting for it in this poll, although that didn’t stop people from nominating Chelsea Wolfe for example.

2013 was a killer year.

Converge fucking rule.

Converge rule so much.

Also, never heard of Witch Trail before this but I'm halfway through and this is sounding so awesome. This is a solid band, thank you all who voted for em. Rad stuff.

I really need to revisit that Altar of Plagues record. it was a personal favorite.

I voted for the Schammasch - some lovely stuff on there. I'm still hoping one or two others from my ballot might place in the top 20. Realistically probably only one has a real shot.

I bet I voted for half of the top ten. Are we doing predictions yet? Lingua Ignota, Moon Tooth, Elder, Immortal Bird, Inter Arma, Liturgy, the other Sunn O))), Tomb Mold, Blood Incantation, Esoteric. And then Follakzoid, Chaz Wolfe, Alcest, Baroness, at least one Botanist.

Those all seem safe to me, except maybe Chelsea Wolfe.

Birefringence my #4. I still think Oviri is his masterpiece but this is only just under. It's prob his most accomplished album, and feels much like a 'rock' album...I love how Kalmbach's music only gets weirder and more singular as he begins to succumb to more rock/metal conventions

In other news, I also voted for Lightning Bolt. I'll prob always have time for frenetic bass-centric noise rock

This poll has been just fantastic!

Going to try and catch up a lot today on everything I’ve missed so far.

2015 was such a pop year!

I'm really enjoying Pinkish Black this morning. It seems much more muted and noticeably slow than previous efforts, but the building of synth layers is very lovely. It reminds me a bit of the 70s new age feeling conjured by Panos Cosmatos films, but in its lighter moments.

Neechy, you were right - I love Dead to a Dying World. What beautiful string arrangements! The male and female vocals are equally strong and ethereal.

I bet I voted for half of the top ten. Are we doing predictions yet? Lingua Ignota, Moon Tooth, Elder, Immortal Bird, Inter Arma, Liturgy, the other Sunn O))), Tomb Mold, Blood Incantation, Esoteric. And then Follakzoid, Chaz Wolfe, Alcest, Baroness, at least one Botanist.
― Schammasch Cannonball (Tom Violence)

I'd also bet on Waste of Space Orchestra and Wyrmwoods

Shhhhhhh

Yellow Eyes was excellent for one track and has been OK since then, but I haven't turned it off, so that's good

The final countdown will begin an hour from now, on the dot.

Misthyrming are a frustrated indiepop band, aren't they?

Frustrated...or BLACKENED haha

Tracks 4 and 5 have been straight up dramatic pop songs. Do this with more synths and female clean vocals and ILM as a whole will stan. I like it too

This Major Stars album is the best! It's driving me crazy not being able to figure out which 90s band they are specifically reminding me of though. 'Echo' is closest to my favourite song I've heard in this rollout.

Even though it is definitely not my kind of thing, I bet Wilderun places. I will also be sad if Vastum doesn't.

Tracks 4 and 5 have been straight up dramatic pop songs. Do this with more synths and female clean vocals and ILM as a whole will stan. I like it too

'This Charming Corpsepainted Man'

vastum will place (sshhhhhhh)

in case they don't i've got this two fresh eight inch blade ready for some blood #metal

in the meantime, plating dept, let me check this new fancy lovely microplants who just arrived #alsometal

Yeah there's Smiths in there!

And yeah shhhhhhhh

mr. adrian smith was once here as i've been told. i missed that one

2009 top 20 was great. same w 016 & 017

20

White Ward - Love Exchange Failure

314 points, 9 votes

https://f4.bcbits.com/img/a3449550015_16.jpg

https://open.spotify.com/album/6VHyhPNjGQRfrzy4TH1tFh

https://whiteward.bandcamp.com/album/love-exchange-failure

https://toiletovhell.com/review-white-ward-love-exchange-failure/

Let’s get this out of the way: White Ward has made one of the best records I’ve heard this year. It encapsulates everything that makes a record great. Dynamic songwriting? Check. Transportive atmospheres? Check. Thematic cohesion? Creative and exciting? A bunch of talented musicians playing in total control at the top of their game? Check. Check. Fucking check.

Now for the background stuff. If you aren’t familiar with White Ward, they’re a four-piece outfit hailing from Odessa, Ukraine. Beginning in 2012, White Ward started life as a good post-black metal band, releasing a couple demos, a pair of EPs, and a three-way split. They showed a knack for mastering the common post-black metal tropes of building tension, quiet-loud/fast-slow contrasts, and high-register, reverbed tremolos shimmering above it all. It was nothing you hadn’t heard before, but it was executed very well and showed tremendous promise if they could translate quality musicianship into an identity, a Sound™.

White Ward delivered on that promise with their first full-length album, Futility Report, in 2017. They supplemented their post-black base with a unique mishmash of prog and jazz with a dollop here and there of death metal, electronica, doom, and hardcore. But the ultimate enhancement was a saxophone. Gorgeous, gorgeous saxophone. Whether featured or harmonized with the guitar work, the sax added a puzzle piece that completed the picture. It landed as Number 4 on Joaquin Stick’s 2017 AotY list who remarked “There’s absolutely no stagnation through the entire 40 minutes, every single experiment works, and I am in love with the overall tone.” Same, man. Same.

Now with follow-up album, Love Exchange Failure, White Ward takes what they started on Futility Report and brings it to a new level. Where Futility Report felt like a collection of excellent short stories, Love Exchange Failure is like a novel. The expression from start to finish is a complete musical narrative of a cityscape drenched in hardboiled noir. The streets are always wet and shine with streetlight. Smoke plumes in every alleyway. Crime is rampant.

love this false record

ehhhhh

The first two Saint Vitus tracks were this blissful, grinding doom with neofolk vocals, but the next two are disappointing Mötorhead worship. Idgi

Will try to stay on topic now

White Ward didn't do it for me

They did for me

Too low!

they do a lot of things that are extremely in danger of not doing it for me, yet they’re executed so well with such a vast emotional sense of scale that they really do it for me. while i was putting together my ballot i played “no cure for pain” and it seemed undeniable to me, complex yet spacious, romantic and dark and deep. shouts out to the drummer, who maybe makes the whole thing work

Wow I thought this was a lock for the top five!

I feel like I should mention that the student I'm currently teaching is a metal guitar prodigy, and he has just introduced me to the joys of Dokken. Now I am a dream warrior too

Dokken!

now thats some proper Ye Olde School Metal

if the van’s a-rockin’, i’m doin’ coke to dokken

haha

19

Immortal Bird - Thrive on Neglect

318 points, 8 votes 1 #1 vote

https://f4.bcbits.com/img/a2602154084_16.jpg

https://open.spotify.com/album/16rWku9FIBoyQF9i4UjKw4

https://listen.20buckspin.com/album/thrive-on-neglect

https://www.angrymetalguy.com/immortal-bird-thrive-on-neglect-review/

Every year in Oakland, a strange kind of festival takes place on the Summer solstice. Within the Chapel of the Chimes, a beautiful columbarium of fractal alcoves of marble and glass, dozens of new music artists are stationed seemingly at random, playing everything from electronic noise to liturgical chant to drone-doom, filling the air with strange and beautiful sounds from all directions at once. It’s both a unique musical experience, and, because of the crowds, an extraordinary chance to do some people watching. In my accounting, most visitors belonged to one of three easily distinguishable groups. First, all stages of the hippie life cycle from larval to senescent; second, the typical Oakland yuppie class; and third, diehard metalheads. Needless to say, I was there proudly repping, having recently seen Cloud Rat, Gadget, Immortal Bird, Primitive Man, and Full of Hell in the span of two days and having picked up a shirt from the coolest of those five bands.

Immortal Bird play a cankerous, grindy brand of death-thrash that’s now all but consumed by its nastier wounds. Thrive on Neglect nods its sagging neck towards late-era Revocation (“House of Anhedonia”) but its body sears and aches like the boiling pitch of Plebeian Grandstand (“Vestigial warnings”). Whatever you want to call the sound, there’s no doubt that it’s a logical continuation of sound from the band’s Empress/Abscess debut and a confirmation that the bird is at the very least not dead yet. Single “Anger Breeds Contempt” throws open the doors for an album as clever as it is cutting, counterpointing spotlighted bass and drums with bold, subtly odd phrases. Replacing Evan Berry (Wilderun, Ex- Replacire) on guitar is Nate Madden, but the riffs are as singular as ever – the trademark Bird twist on influences from brutal death metal to thrash to melodic black metal.

my no. 1

great songwriting, playing that turns on a dime, everything i could ever want

Sampling 'Vestigial Warnings' as we speak. Pretty good, I may check out the rest.

quisquillian company was def one of my fave songs of the year. streching out that radiant savagery into the nothingness in a great song form

voted for this rec

I've listened to this dozens of times and I feel like I'm still discovering it.

It’s interesting to hear the city being straightforwardly (as in, no dystopian or technocratic concept) evoked in White Ward. Also, it’s nighttime! Really nice

18

Elder - The Gold & Silver Sessions

320 points, 10 votes

https://f4.bcbits.com/img/a2012554351_16.jpg

https://open.spotify.com/album/4WD2n2uML96zPjzds22Ykl

https://beholdtheelder.bandcamp.com/album/the-gold-silver-sessions

Mastodon. Deafheaven. Baroness. Each clawed marks into the well walls as they hoisted themselves out of the filth and muck that is (say it with a shudder) the metal crowd and into the limelight. Likewise, Elder follow, riding the crossover appeal of 2017’s Reflections of a Floating World to respectability by the masses, and not just the unwashed kind. But the New England outfit aren’t just the next indie darling, and were never just metal for metal’s sake. Their proggy tendencies always lurked beneath the surface to some degree; Reflections was simply the unveiling. With a new LP on the horizon, The Gold & Silver Sessions takes Elder in a direction I didn’t expect, but perhaps should have. This isn’t just prog; it’s out-and-out jam.

Despite the title of the EP, Elder have never been less Baroness. In fact, they’ve shared less common ground with any of their prior influences—or releases—than ever before. Their hallmark sound, which truly came into its own on Reflections, returns in sum, but not wholly unchanged. Gold & Silver‘s instrumental nature is hardly the biggest shift, especially given that it’s almost certainly not permanent. Instead, the off-the-cuff, jam-band presentation relaxes Elder‘s already loose collar, while heavy psychedelic styling twist Elder‘s offerings into something different, yet the same. Improvisation contributed heavily to the EP, a fact evident as 36 minutes unwind around just 3 constantly undulating songs enhanced by a lack of vocals to muck up the proceedings with something as silly as song structure.