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

my #31

For some reason I always find these guys' chord progressions super satisfying.

50

Wormed - Metaportal

169 points, 5 votes

https://f4.bcbits.com/img/a4153785032_16.jpg

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/47ehIhknZRhZZqFDiUf29A

https://wormed.bandcamp.com/album/metaportal

https://www.heavyblogisheavy.com/2019/07/11/wormed-metaportal/

Tech death is a weird branch of the metal tree. Focused primarily on performative fireworks as opposed to standard songwriting structures, the music can at times come across as highly robotic. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but for me as a listener there’s only so many insane guitar passages in an album that I can hear before I crave, you know… songs. With structure. Perhaps this is just an “old man yells at cloud” moment, but the opinion stands regardless. Thankfully, there are plenty of bands in the tech death world that take their songwriting chops seriously, and chief among them is Wormed. Spain’s finest death metal product, this insanely talented group of musicians has been pumping out amazing records for nearly two decades now, and they show no signs of slowing down. But if they decided to, it would be nearly impossible to fault them for it. The death of their drummer Guillermo Calero came as a shock and enormous blow to the metal community at large, and finding a replacement for his incredible talent seemed a task nearly impossible given the band’s technical prowess. The follow-up to their acclaimed full-length Krighsu, Metaportal is the band’s first musical installment of their heady sci-fi saga to include Gabriel Valcázar on drums. He has some big shoes to fill, and good grief does he ever fill them. On performative and songwriting levels, Metaportal continues Wormed’s string of excellent releases, and is one of the more effectively concentrated doses of insane death metal the year has yet produced.

I found this a bit much, which I know is part of the point, but I like my muchness less kitschy (with the proviso that kitsch is very much in the eye of the beholder, of course).

I expect Brad loves it!

haven't heard it, wormed tends to also be too much for me

wow, I was sure it would've been one of your votes when it said tech-death

TIE 48

Brutus - Nest

170 points, 6 votes

https://f4.bcbits.com/img/a0516982036_16.jpg

https://open.spotify.com/album/4iAFMr0roXFZLFALz8oOEr

https://wearebrutus.bandcamp.com/album/nest

https://www.stereogum.com/2036984/brutus-nest-review/franchises/album-of-the-week/

The “about” line you’ll find on Brutus’ social channels serves as an apt manifestation of the Belgian post-metal band’s art: minimalist, mysterious, and menacing. It reads:

“Trouble comes in threes. So does Brutus.”

While evocative, the tagline does not provide much in the way of background, clarity, or definition. Even so, it’s probably a better jumping-off point than whatever rote bit of bio I might offer by way of a beginning, so let’s take what they’ve given us and fill in the blanks, starting by breaking the phrase into its component parts:

“Trouble comes in threes.”

This is a reference to the Rule Of Three: an ancient principle that applies (or can be applied) to basically every element of human history, from the Egyptian pyramids and Aristotelian philosophy to marketing techniques and molecular physics. The Rule Of Three is so prevalent in communication that it’s often invisible, which only underscores its effectiveness. It is supposedly captured in the Latin phrase “omne trium perfectum” (or “everything that comes in threes is perfect”). So far, so good? Good. So:

“So does Brutus.”

That Wormed EP is, I think, their best release yet, and ppl who were overwhelmed by their earlier releases might find that the length and actual melodic content (!!) make it more digestible.

I surprised myself by making Brutus a late cut from my ballot.

I lied about there no longer being any ties yesterday.

Are Brutus an Imago & TT band?

I haven't heard this but as I was saying upthread power trios systematically pique my curiosity.

TIE 48

Misþyrming - Algleymi

170 points, 6 votes

https://f4.bcbits.com/img/a1069899320_10.jpg

https://open.spotify.com/album/4uWiO8kSwoVRt6tpb6TrgU

https://misthyrming.bandcamp.com/album/algleymi

https://www.heavyblogisheavy.com/2019/07/08/heavy-delinquency-misthyrmings-algleymi/

There are few scenes in the metal world that have drawn as much attention and critical acclaim as Icelandic black metal has over the past several years. Band’s like Zhrine, Sinmara, Svartidauði, Auðn, Wormlust, and a host of others have created a regional nexus for dense, aggressive, highly atmospheric black metal that has its own distinct voice, narrative, and songwriting style, and listeners like me can’t get enough of it. Perhaps the most influential purveyor of this style is Misþyrming, whose 2015 debut Söngvar elds og óreiðu catapulted them and the scene as a whole into the spotlight more than any record before it. It’s a masterclass of icy, jagged, and dense black metal that is as good a launch pad as any into the wilds of Iceland’s black metal scene. Their follow-up to that fantastic debut, Algleymi, dropped in May, and I listened to it. Once. I found it an enjoyable listen, then put it away for other records I was more focused on at the time. About a week ago Algleymi popped back up on my radar, and I decided to give it another go. Well over half-a-dozen listens later, I’m kicking myself for not having reviewed this record sooner. Not only is it the band’s best record, it’s also one of the best records of the year in any genre.

There are any number of factors that could be listed to describe why this album is so excellent, but the most immediate is the record’s sheer listenability. Black metal isn’t what I would typically describe as an inviting style of music, but Misþyrming have here created a sound that is both extremely hard-hitting and highly melodic, inserting enough earworm riffs into their songwriting to encourage mid-day humming from listeners for months to come. Opening track “Orgia” serves as a perfect example of this dichotomy. It’s opening moments are a pure rush of black metal darkness replete with robust blast beats and fantastically melodramatic guitar-driven majesty, cascading over listeners in a torrential outpouring of emotion. D.G.’s vocals, the best of his career, burst forth from the maelstrom with uncanny levels of hostility, further entrenching the track’s initially menacing tone. But as “Orgia” develops, it starts to unfold melodically in a big way. There are several riffs that make their way into the song that transcend the sheer brutality of its opening moments through resonant melodic lines, complemented by an absolutely massive percussive performance (executed with fervor and skill by H.R.H.) that very naturally switches gears from straight blasting into a more open style that somehow never loses its intensity. There is one particular passage just past the halfway point of the track that could be considered downright triumphant, latching onto a supremely catchy riff that propels the song to its soul-stirring finale. It’s a perfect example of what the band do best on Algleymi, and its qualities only further ascend from there.

I liked that one but didn't spend enough with it to vote for it

My #4. Siegbran found it too close to Mgła for (aesthetic) comfort, but I think they expand on the formula by being less minimalistic and maybe a wee bit more melodic as well. Anyway, this is one of the metal albums I listened to the most last year.

Ossuaire and this last one on my ballot due to Pom’s recommendation!

“This last one” bcz on phone

:D

Love all Wormed content. Voted it 20ish.

47

Imprecation - Damnatio ad bestias

174 points, 5 votes, 1 #1 vote

https://f4.bcbits.com/img/a1259975174_16.jpg

https://open.spotify.com/album/2SzR3y0b1OCyCHGpEmzsY0

https://darkdescentrecords.bandcamp.com/album/damnatio-ad-bestias

https://grizzlybutts.com/2019/03/14/imprecation-damnatio-ad-bestias-2019-review/

After the great fire of Nero’s Rome three glorious centuries of punishment would see Christians considered enemies of the state, the lowest of criminals, and what punishment the emperor would popularize created a trend of death by the maul of beasts. Majestatis rei committed by monotheists landed them in shreds by fang of wolf and dog to begin with but, as the state met with persistent defiance so intensified the elaborate sport of bestial torture; Tied to bulls then flung and stomped into mush, tied to posts and torn by great cat, bear and gladiator alike, the blood of the insolent would flow so regularly that the idiom ‘Christians to the lions’ held deep and violent meaning to those opposing what trash and pest would follow Christs lies. Among the unwilling bestiarii many a martyr were born in the midst of these punishments leading to political edict that would spare them soon enough citing internecine effects upon the polis. Today it wouldn’t be so outrageous to insist the flock of Christianity be culled in similar fashion, had we any beasts left to slaughter them with, with judgment for their ruinous followership and easily manipulated culture of ignorance. As the lion’s claw and wolven fang can no longer penetrate flesh so from below we must conjure the din of Satanic dominion by fire-branded word and razor-honed riff. As scarce as great predator today are those masters of the riff and the ritual therein, so lies the important potency of surviving masters of the craft Houston, Texas area death metal legends Imprecation who offer ‘Damnatio Ad Bestias’ as true violence against the cult of Christ.

Poured from the same expulsion that’d birth early 90’s United States death cultists Infester, Morpheus Descends, and Crucifier (all of whom landed in crooked alignment with the slightly elder gods of Goatlord, Immolation and Incantation) the music of Imprecation shaped rigid form from chaos abruptly and with great power after just one year of existence with their ‘Ceremony of the Nine Angles’ (1992) demo. The style of this first release was all the more exciting for the drumming of Ruben Elizondo who’d take the risky tempo experimentation of Exmortis (Maryland) and Infester then flip that intensity towards the precision of the New York death metal scene of the time. Describe it however you’d like there is a thread of urgent, blasting force running throughout the otherwise doomed pace of Imprecation‘s work that serves their legacy well with both intricate death metal interest and feral war-like classicism. This remains true today as ‘Damnatio Ad Bestias’ grinds away at a slightly different type of stone than that of their return ‘Satanae Tenebris Infinita’ (2013) without losing their classic, distinct attributes along the way.

Props to o. nate for foregrounding this one.

This one is new to me!

...and I don't think it's for me, lol

Haha, you just need to let it CRUSH you, slowly but surely.

Wow, i am liking this Imprecation a lot

I ended up voting for it at the last minute and don't regret it in the least.

46

Car Bomb - Mordial

176 points, 6 votes, 1 #1 vote

https://f4.bcbits.com/img/a3935264624_16.jpg

https://open.spotify.com/album/3WFUId9pC9xDvU7JYhmKdo

https://carbomb.bandcamp.com/album/mordial

https://everythingisnoise.net/reviews/car-bomb-mordial/

It didn’t take much for them to grab our attention. Fans pounced on the announcement of a new Car Bomb album all those months back, and so came the resulting trickle-feed of new material. It started with the reassuringly familiar ‘pew pew’s of “Dissect Yourself”, continued in the ground-pounding brutality of “Scattered Sprites”, and most recently hit us third-fold in “HeLa”. For the several people anticipating the feature-length opus of Mordial, these preliminary treats have served as a continuous and confident promise to fans that Car Bomb chapter four will be a very special affair.

As a result, you are all increasingly convinced that Mordial will be exceptional. I’m pleased to announce that your expectations are not misplaced – Mordial is a stunner.

Firstly, you can say goodbye to your single tracks. I mean in the sense of them being standalone entities. Once embedded in the full cluster of Mordial‘s twelve-song tenure, those tracks you’ve already heard, as if by some form of wizardry, take on a new sense of purpose when pressed against numbers of like-minded constructs. So despite the amount of times you’ve already hit repeat, you’re destined to hear them in a new light during the full course of the record.

It's safe to say this is Not My Thing without sampling it but I will at some point anyway. Just... not today.

Another late cut from my ballot. Great sound, but only a couple tracks that really stuck with me.

Great stuff, voted for it. Opening track (ignoring intro) is so sick

Would have been much higher up my ballot if it had more of the melodic bits - they have such a cool way with melody buy they're quite sparing about its deployment

I guess we can't all be The Armed

45

Mammoth Weed Wizard Bastard - Yn Ol I Annwn

178 points, 4 votes

https://f4.bcbits.com/img/a0113610763_16.jpg

https://open.spotify.com/album/3lWqeMsizWL9inVetCK7nb

https://mammothweedwizardbastard.bandcamp.com/album/yn-ol-i-annwn

https://everythingisnoise.net/reviews/mammoth-weed-wizard-bastard-yn-ol-i-annwn/

Mammoth. Weed. Wizard. Bastard. Just guess what type of music they play. You’ll probably only need one guess. Although the band contends ‘all band names are stupid‘, I happen to think their name is ridiculous fun, as is their flavor of doom metal. Now, they look to wrap up a trilogy of albums they started in 2015 with their newest effort, Yn Ol I Annwn. This translates from Welsh to ‘Return to the Underworld’, and makes me so happy that this review is in text and not audio since I don’t know how the hell to pronounce that.

I’ve been a fan of theirs for a bit now so not a whole lot surprises me here short of the growth and commitment they show here on Yn Ol I Annwn. This isn’t just doom metal; MWWB‘s tunes also take heavy influence from psychedelic and stoner realms (though I suppose that last part was obvious, huh?). And I do mean realms. See, a MWWB album isn’t just music, it’s a trip. You’re catapulted, pulled, rolled, and dragged all around rifts of riffs, black holes of heavy, and the softest edges of ether. It’s the confluence of these points that make the band not only unique, but a true force to be reckoned with.

With dense music like this, you expect there to be a gruff belter of a voice behind the music, harshened by years of being a weed wizard themselves, but nope! MWWB‘s first, and probably biggest, surprise to new listeners is Jessica Ball’s gentle, serene voice accompanying the unrelenting doomscape. It turns “The Spaceships of Ezekiel” from a dense-as-concrete groove generator to a multilayered, impressive endeavor. Multiply that times six of the eight songs Ball appears on and you have a good idea of how varied this album can get.

I think this is what imago meant by 'Wales' finest'. Sounds pretty rad on paper, I'll be sure to check these guys out.

Toooo lowwwww

I always want to love these guys due to their incredible name but they always just kinda drift past me

The 'Bastard' really clinches it.

They very much exist at the dense, heavy-psych end of doom. In other words, my favourite end. The Spaceships Of Ezekiel may be the hit but most of the other tracks build up to righteous climaxes

44

Tool - Fear Inoculum

179 points, 6 votes

https://townsquare.media/site/295/files/2019/08/ToolFI.jpg?w=980&q=75

https://open.spotify.com/album/7acEciVtnuTzmwKptkjth5

https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-album-reviews/review-tool-return-from-a-long-hiatus-with-fear-inoculum-879842/

Tool’s first album in 13 years opens like a grievous European symphony drawn in electronic tones; what sounds like the chiming of a hammered dulcimer enters alongside Danny Carey’s tablas, which tag-team with kit drums, heavy electric guitar and bass. Maynard James Keenan, his voice still striking youthful — he turned 55 last spring — sings in prayer-like tones about contagion, venom, and immunity; about mania, spectacle, and exorcism. As Adam Jones’ phase-shifted guitar tones alternately suggest Turkish funk and Norwegian metal, the track unspools, building to a bonecrushing, double bass kick-drum-powered finish.

That’s “Fear Inoculum,” the first of six extended songs, all over 10 minutes long, punctuated by four interludes, on a record that clocks in at one hour, 27 minutes. The music takes its time. “Pneuma” has a pulse that suggests the measured rhythm of yogic breathing: a snaking, vaguely Arabic synth tone appears, then slithers off; heavy metal crescendos and feedback-glazed diminuendos rise and fall like abstracted Led Zeppelin. The brief “Litanie Contre la Peur” (apparently taking its name from an incantation out of Frank Herbert’s 1965 sci-fi novel Dune) suggests an exercise in extreme voice processing, 808s & Heartbreak run through a screw extruder.

With lyrics alluding to Ponce De Leon’s mythical search for a fountain of youth, the title of “Invincible” implies air quotes. There’s a weave of mbira and downtuned guitar tones. Echoes of previous songs bubble up: a distended synth line like the one in “Pneuma,” but thicker; distressed vocals like those in “Litanie Contre la Peur,” but more intelligible, with Keenan lamenting time’s mercilessness. There’s a magnificently sick guitar solo, and the drumming’s just ridiculous, verging on super-human, all spiraling polyrhythms and rapidfire blast-beats.

more imago prog

Yayyy! The space is so dense, the arrangements so lush, the vocals so dreamy... I really think they sound so fresh and different compared to a lot of (prog) doom metal. Spaceships of Ezekiel is a masterpiece

Xp to MWWB

I voted this, and I'm not even much of a Toolhead. Just a really solid album all around.

I had a good line about this...'satisfyingly dull' I think it was

If they're capable of turning dullness into a mostly positive quality, that's... quite impressive, actually.

Namaste

kinda think this is the best tool album. had a great time exploring it last year

43

Mayhem - Daemon

181 points, 4 votes

https://consequenceofsound.net/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/Mayhem-Daemon.jpg?quality=80&w=807

https://open.spotify.com/album/76gklSD363XsZ0YlfusDLc

https://www.angrymetalguy.com/mayhem-daemon-review/

A new Mayhem release is the most exciting thing to happen in metal this year. Unlike most other bands who offer refinements and (ideally) improvements on their established sound with each release, Mayhem exhausts a sound on each full-length by exhausting a theme; as the sound’s purpose is to express the theme, the sound’s purpose is fulfilled once the theme is expressed. This means the lazy reviewer can’t merely compare the new Mayhem record to prior ones and base his analysis on that without completely missing the point of the record at hand — Mayhem’s career is an anthology, not an arc.

Nonetheless, the specter of De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas lurks behind Daemon. Mayhem has been performing that record live for years now, and Daemon is their most overtly second-wave record since De Mysteriis. Superficially, one can hear “Pagan Fears” in “Malum” and “De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas” in “Of Worms and Ruins.” Necrobutcher’s bass is mixed high like Varg’s was and even leads some harmonies in “The Dying False King” and “Everlasting Dying Flame” which remind of “Life Eternal” in that aspect. These similarities all are of fleeting importance. The crucial similarity between the two records is the thematic direction: for the first time since De Mysteriis, Mayhem is plumbing the depths of spiritual horror.

Naturally, this is expressed differently on both records. Where De Mysteriis was cold, worldly, curious, and terrified, Daemon is incendiary, aggressive, pained, and enraged. “Agenda Ignis” will remind you of 1349’s best material in a way, and this is because both Mayhem and 1349 are expressing “aural Hellfire,” but Mayhem is concerned chiefly with its effects. This is the key to Daemon: it’s an aural portrait of Hell from the view of a daemon. Poena sensus (pain of sense) and poena damni (pain of loss) — the pains of the damned in Hell — animate each of Daemon’s songs. Teloch’s and Ghul’s guitars play together in harmony and disharmony, flickering around each other like flames licking the night sky — the refrain of “Bad Blood” is one unforgettable example of this. Both guitars begin on low notes, and then quickly shoot tonally upwards in a burst of disharmony before dissipating and repeating the cycle, sonically putting the daemon amidst the flames — Mayhem’s aural Hellfire is thus part of their sonic portrait, not its essence as it was in early 1349.

Narrowly missed my ballot but it's the most electrifying thing they've done in years.