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

I think so? Not something I'm entirely cool with tbh.

2xp

I've got 16 US bands on my ballot of 50. Pretty sure the overall ratio in this poll is way higher than that.

Only 2 in my top 10. We've already got 4 in this top 10.

I've noticed it throughout the whole roll-out. Not sure what it means, if anything.

Xp, most albums should begin with a song called 'Bumgardner'.

I concur w/ brad's assessments of Baroness and Inter Arma.

I don't think of CoL and Inter Arma as being particularly similar

In the sense that they're both heirs to Neurosis.

Next up: more imago-core that I also voted for.

6
Waste of Space Orchestra - Syntheosis
494 points, 15 votes, 1 #1 vote

https://f4.bcbits.com/img/a3320415754_16.jpg

https://open.spotify.com/album/2si5wwVFSdYlHGyNx7Qdt5
https://wasteofspaceorchestra.bandcamp.com/album/syntheosis

https://www.angrymetalguy.com/waste-of-space-orchestra-syntheosis-review/

In the beginning, there are only faint, oblique details. Scattered hints of an eerie theme repeated by bubbling analogue synthesizers and their faux operatic voices floating in a vast chamber. Syntheosis’ first cut “Void Monolith” leaves the impression of a minimalist prologue for a labyrinthine, perverted science fiction show from the sixties. A depraved homage to Hawkwind and Delia Derbyshire, perhaps. But beneath this ethereal façade, heavier and darker clouds of crumbling riffs stir. And then—the explosion! As the second minute of “The Shamanic Vision” passes by, the coalesced force of Finnish bands Oranssi Pazuzu and Dark Buddha Rising is revealed in its full, utter grandeur. The soundscape is suddenly overwhelmed by a clash of sounds. Malevolent growls of a mad zealot proselytize, recite, and contort while frenzied tremolos and filthy sludge heaviness intertwine with ritualistic rhythms, rolling drums, incisive sitar plunks, and synth-laden drones. It’s a stunning climax to a build-up that announces a record infused with psychedelia, metallic mass, and divination.

A certain thespian poise dominates throughout Syntheosis, the piece originally commissioned for Roadburn Festival 2018 and then turned into a proper studio recording. Highly conceptual, Waste of Space Orchestra narrate a quite demented story somewhere between magical realism and occult horror. The album develops intently and purposefully, tracing the lines of an imagined ritual and its performers, three mysterious creatures that aim “to open a portal that will suck them into a different reality of brain-mutilating color storms and ego-diminishing audio violence.” The three protagonists—The Shaman, The Seeker, and The Possessor—each possess a voice (and vocalist) of their own accompanied by corresponding musical themes, symbols of certain facets of humanity. Not quite demons, not quite angels, but a bit of both. Musically speaking and true to the album’s name, Oranssi Pazuzu and Dark Buddha Rising synthesize rather than just collaborate, pulling various influences in their storytelling. While Waste of Space Orchestra obviously shares traits and stylistic flourishes with both bands, it is ultimately a thing of its own.

My #2.

Listening to the opening track of this album, Void Monolith, grow from near-silence into galactic splendour was one of the most astoundingly exciting musical experiences I've had in a long time. I like to be reminded now and then of just how thrilling music can be. The rest of the album lived up to it too. An amazing work, an amazing collaboration.

Witness the colour storm. Yield!

Am more than prepared for this to be confirmation bias, but has the metal poll always been this US-centric in the past?

― Ngolo Cantwell (Chinaski), Friday, 28 February 2020 18:09 (thirteen minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

Only the past couple of years. We've lost the euro posters and also the lurkers , who judging by their names/email addresses were mostly euro and UK posters seem to have vanished. Plus there was more shorter ballots this year.

But maybe it was just a strong year for death metal?

my #3 btw

Any guesses as to the top 5?

more like waste of space album!!!

(j/k it's good)

I was the #1 vote for WOSO! It was also my number #1 in the main poll - too undeniable to apply ‘separate metal’ rules to. It is a paean to cinematic experience, to the blurry canvas of our future via 1970s science fiction. The heady progressions of every track on this album slink and loom magically. It’s such a sly, creepy little album with infinite replay value. For anyone who hasn’t heard it yet, head straight to ‘Wake Up the Possessor’.

5
Blood Incantation - Hidden History of the Human Race
529 points, 13 votes, 2 #1 votes

https://f4.bcbits.com/img/a0485761639_16.jpg

https://open.spotify.com/album/34U0n1oAE5mwgdaIBrcIck
https://darkdescentrecords.bandcamp.com/album/hidden-history-of-the-human-race

https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/blood-incantation-hidden-history-of-the-human-race/

Death metal glories in ugliness—rhythm guitars the texture of churned shit, leads like pig squeals, vocals like reverse peristalsis. But Blood Incantation do beautiful things with that ugliness. Their ugliness moves; within 40 minutes on their second album Hidden History of the Human Race, the Denver quartet brings death metal to exalted places, places it hardly ever goes, without ever losing the essential, foul tang of the sound.

It helps that they are incredible players, virtuosic in the most basic sense. In just the first few minutes of the opening epic “Slave Species of the Gods,” guitarists Paul Riedl and Morris Kolontyrsky evoke the cold steel-shavings scrape of Slayer’s Kerry King and the hair-flip theatrics of Metallica’s Kirk Hammett. But their virtuosity comes from their vocabulary, as well: They just seem to think differently than their peers. Great riffs are less the products of finger muscles than the peculiarity of a mind, and there is no question that they are singular players.

You can hear this relative oddness everywhere. They are more fond of harmonized guitars than most death metal bands, which give their suite-length songs uncommon melodic movement and emotional resonance. Ambient synthesizers play walk-on roles at several surprising moments, and clean-toned psychedelic guitar leads often pick up where those synthesizers left off, carrying melodic ideas forward. Even when drummer Isaac Faulk is drilling the music into the earth with blast beats, there is something in the arrangement arcing upward.

Speaking of great death metal from last year…

For anyone who hasn’t heard it yet, head straight to ‘Wake Up the Possessor’.

And try to work out how one vocalist pulled off the whole song!

this one went over/past my head I confess

I voted for the Chelsea Wolfe and Baroness! They aren't as good as some previous releases, agreed, but they were still great albums to me. I don't think Baroness could have topped Purple, it's one of the best metal albums of the decade at least.

The Waste of Space Orchestra is lovely and I also voted for it, but on the lower half of my ballot cause I had only listened to it a little bit, very much the kind of blackened psych-prog experimental stuff I like though.

My #3. The expectations were absurd and they exceeded em somehow. Incredible band. Saw em on tour with Demilich a couple years ago and they played one of the best live sets I've ever seen.

welp I know the top 4 but not the order

My 3 favorites of the year, right in a row.
The Blood Incantation I probably listened to more than anything else in 2019.

I thought it would be my AOTY when I first heard it and it unfortunately fell down my ladder but it's still a damn fine LP. I hope they dip further into Middle Eastern riff alchemy.

I do admire how they manage to turn tech death into a less forbidding proposition, although 'Awakening From the Dream of Existence to the Multidimensional Nature of Our Reality (Mirror of the Soul)' doesn't compromise in the least.

Next up: NOT an American band (but some of you assholes might argue there's no difference).

My #6. Also exceeded high expectations. I listened to Starspawn a lot while waiting for this. It's its own thing, and doesn't come off as retro, but it also touches some early Morbid Angel, Death, and Atheist nerves for me. Also has sentimental value as it dropped during a really great week last fall and became the soundtrack to that.

4
Tomb Mold - Planetary Clairvoyance
571 points, 15 votes, 2 #1 votes

https://f4.bcbits.com/img/a0983660702_16.jpg

https://open.spotify.com/album/36jc0OIIO16Z6gtwegfBfc
https://listen.20buckspin.com/album/planetary-clairvoyance

https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/tomb-mold-planetary-clairvoyance/

Last fall, Tomb Mold previewed their third album, the sci-fi opus Planetary Clairvoyance, with a limited edition cassette tape. Featuring early versions of two songs from the upcoming record, the demo felt like an artifact from death metal’s late-80s heyday: murky, xeroxed, with little context for the uninitiated. Both songs hovered around the six-minute mark, blasting like wind tunnels. The accompanying liner notes, which attributed duties like “Void Expansion” and “Nebula Observation” to cryptically initialed band members, featured a statement of cosmic gratitude in the place where other bands might list their ‘thank you’s’ or paste their Bandcamp link: “The azure of the heavens is perfect, beautiful.”

“Perfect” and “beautiful” are not the adjectives you might think to associate with a death metal band called Tomb Mold. But since forming in 2015, the Toronto quartet have evolved from typically morbid fascinations (song titles include “Bereavement of Flesh,” “Valley of Defilement”) into grander, more ambitious compositions. Last year’s Manor of Infinite Forms felt like a breakthrough, with guitarists Derrick Vella and Payson Power cycling through their infinite arsenal of riffs over a churning rhythm section. Death metal tends to thrive on history, and Tomb Mold never shied away from hero worship, particularly forebears like Incantation and Finnish weirdos Demilich. It was their energy that made them stand out, their ability to find new extremes in their old-school sound.

Darker, stranger, and more atmospheric than its predecessor, Planetary Clairvoyance extends their gifts beyond death metal, sounding untied to any particular lineage. It’s their tightest record to date, suite-like in its momentum and thematic coherence. Almost immediately, they gesture toward quiet, eerier textures. The opening track, “Beg for Life,” is interrupted by a passage of classical guitar that echoes over ominous fills from drummer Max Klebanoff. An ambient interlude, “Phosphorene Ultimate,” arrives early in the tracklist as a kind of warning sign. Less than 15 minutes into the record, it’s a purposefully arresting choice, meant to remind you that this is not background music: at every moment, Tomb Mold demand you take stock of the world they create, where passages of silence are as integral as the grinding melodies and chaos.

my dudes!!!!!!

Yay for the Blood Inc and Tomb Mold

Both #1-2 on my ballot, in reverse order

My #1. The metal record I listened to the most last year: while working, while jogging, while chilling, while shitposting on ILX. I absolutely love their previous LPs but this one takes it to the next level: even better songs, even filthier vocals, even more of that suffocating, eponymous atmosphere. Even the interludes do it for me, and I admire how utterly economical this record is: not a single one of its 38 minutes is wasted, which is exactly what I want from the genre.

…and I'm more of a BM guy usually.

This was great. Would've probably been top 5 for me if I didn't play the two track demo from last fall into the ground beforehand. Still put it at like #14. These guys rip live, too. You gotta love a singing drummer.

my #11. Great album. Deserves its high placement.

tomb mold haven't quite made that record for me. i'm always impressed but never end up attached. feel like i always want their riffs to be twistier. i admit it's a problem with me

i wasn't able to spend enough time with the blood incantation to really think anything about it but i think they're a really cool band!

I'm going to have voted for the entire top 8, I guess. Lol.

I put Chelsea Wolfe all the way down my ballot, it’s good but it isn’t even close to metal.

feel like i always want their riffs to be twistier

I've always wanted that too, but in terms of compulsive listenability they're already there for me – took me by surprise, even.

yes, their brand of nasty suffocating DM is weirdly addictive, even alluring. not sure how they manage that.

Only three more to go, folks…

3
Liturgy - H.A.Q.Q.
615 points, 15 votes, 1 #1 vote

https://f4.bcbits.com/img/a2767654837_16.jpg

https://open.spotify.com/album/4a2XdKkEDVvfniwTu8pSMb
https://liturgy.bandcamp.com/album/h-a-q-q

https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/liturgy-haqq/

Liturgy tend to sort listeners into cynics and disciples. The first camp views the group as posers overthinking intentionally atavistic music—de facto trolls, making headlines for diatribes about their music’s transcendental intentions and its philosophical underpinnings. For the second camp, Liturgy are unapologetic radicals, channeling the basic spirit and sounds of black metal into experimental upheaval.

H.A.Q.Q., Liturgy’s fourth album, confirms what must have been right all along: The truth exists somewhere in the middle. Liturgy offer bait for the haters right there on the cover, with the philosophical framework of founder Hunter Hunt-Hendrix—divided, for your convenience, into four categories, like Axiology and Cosmogony—serving as the album’s stark artwork. And Greg Fox, the hyper-precise drummer that even the naysayers respected, is gone. On the other hand, nothing else sounds quite like these nine volatile tracks, where electronic interference interrupts full-metal sprints and where hoarse screams and mutated strings bleed into one. Yes, H.A.Q.Q. cements Liturgy’s try-hard reputation. But it’s kind of thrilling to hear any band try this hard.

For Hunt-Hendrix, Liturgy were always a way to explore his ideas about existence, which could make for an uncomfortable band power balance. Indeed, tensions over their dynamic led to a hiatus after 2011’s high-water mark Aesthethica. Only Hunt-Hendrix and guitarist Bernard Gann remain for H.A.Q.Q, with Fox replaced by ringer Leo Didkovsky and bassist Tyler Dusenbury swapped out for the versatile Tia Vincent-Clark. If you never checked the credits, you may never notice the difference: The rhythm section still flips between sprint and silence with light-switch precision, and the blast beats (yes, Hunt-Hendrix still calls them “burst beats”) continue to expand and contract, like lungs in the middle of a marathon.

their best album yet

I really hope the top 2 are in the correct order lol

Nobody has ever won metal poll twice....

Hunter is our leader

This was my #5 but The Ark Work is all-time imo and this is merely brilliant

My #1! Yeah, it's their best album yet, the one where they manage to make their ideas last for a whole album