~~~ 2014 ILM METAL POLL TRACKS & ALBUMS COUNTDOWN! ~~~ (Tracks top 30 first then Albums)

i dunno...

maybe i should hear the album and read the review at the same time. i'm not sure about the assumption that indie is boring now.

59    Argus - Beyond The Martyrs    248 Points,    9 Votes
http://i.imgur.com/U5Rkzbf.jpg
http://open.spotify.com/album/5HNwj591St7iS8pZTh4znj
spotify:album:5HNwj591St7iS8pZTh4znj

http://www.deezer.com/album/6976647

Genre:
Heavy/Doom Metal

bbbbut indie IS boring now!

that coliseum review mentions a whole bunch of bands I like too so it helps explain why I like the band so much

Argus are awesome too btw

So far I've listened to Agrimona and Sungod albums while working, both seemed pretty good, will def listen again more attentively.

Listening now to Coliseum - it's great! Don't really hear PGMG/Blood Brothers comparisons in most songs as much as standard late 90s or early/mid 2000s hardcore? But it's not a bad thing obv, love that music.

i don't listen to much metal btw so looking forward to rest of the results.

Argus disappointed me. It's a good record, but pales before their last one. It sounds too safe.

Coliseum not only made a great record, they toured the shit out of it and fucking rocked live. One of the best shows I saw all year, which is saying something.

High Praise!

antoni welcome! always nice to see people checking out the results and commenting.

58    Aeternus - And The Seventh His Soul Detesteth    251 Points,    6 Votes
http://i.imgur.com/WQHHvRX.jpg
http://open.spotify.com/album/6ZUnEP5WNVNv5MqGXxHmhB
spotify:album:6ZUnEP5WNVNv5MqGXxHmhB

http://www.deezer.com/album/6425136

Genre:
Death Metal

57    Kadavar - Abra Kadavar    253 Points,    7 Votes,   One #1  
http://i.imgur.com/rHa2YjV.jpg
http://open.spotify.com/album/6pSduW2CtbBc87aPyhEKxc
spotify:album:6pSduW2CtbBc87aPyhEKxc

http://www.deezer.com/album/6501910
Genre:
80s Synthpop Revivalists

Abba Kadavar

56    Ulcerate - Vermis    258 Points,    8  Votes
http://i.imgur.com/fplRThK.jpg
http://open.spotify.com/album/0FR1Vn0vo2p8J8WT67eTYz
spotify:album:0FR1Vn0vo2p8J8WT67eTYz

http://www.deezer.com/album/6794719

Genre:
Technical Death Metal

Can't remember if I voted for the Ulcerate, but this one didn't connect with me the way Destroyers of All did. Color Sands was this year's Destroyers of All for me.

#27 Decibel, #35 Rock-A-Rolla, #25 Metal Sucks
http://ulcerate.bandcamp.com/

Coliseum - #32 Decibel, #26 Rock-A-Rolla
http://coliseum.bandcamp.com/album/sister-faith

Argus - #43 Metal Hammer
http://shadowkingdomrecords.bandcamp.com/album/argus
http://youtu.be/KJHCwRYBFrY

Argus has been left out in the cold in most polls, so props to ILM!

Aeturnus - no other poll love
http://youtu.be/L_gRlS6iaOg

Kadavar - #27 Obelisk, #6 Obelisk readers, #13 Captain Beyond Zen, #5 Stoner HiVe
http://youtu.be/I7FBmbyDGaA

man, i think half my ballot has already shown up. out of the ilm metal mainstream :...(

80s Synthpop Revivalists

Ha. Seriously though, this was my #1. At first I preferred the debut, but the more I listen to this the more I like it. These guys can write a hook, the bass lines are awesome, and I like the singer's voice. It may seem like they're just doing a retro-revivalist shtick, but there's nothing cookie-cutter about it. This stuff holds up against the '70s hard rock dinosaurs they plainly admire (Zeppelin, Sabbath, Hawkwind, etc). There may be nothing especially innovative about them, but it's so pleasurable to just listen to a great band playing great songs that I don't really care.

I like the quotes/review blurbs, also worked well on the disco poll: ...AND THE BEAT GOES ON! The GRAND ILM DISCO POLL results are revealed!

Yeah Kadavar grew on me the past month. Love their video for "Come Back Life" - http://youtu.be/4xgi91s7zf8

xp With 415 total albums in the poll, you're doing alright to get most of your ballot in top 100.

(old ILM quotes are always nice to kickstart/restart discussions)

55    Autopsy - The Headless Ritual    258 Points,    9 Votes
http://wac.450f.edgecastcdn.net/80450F/loudwire.com/files/2013/07/autopsy-the_headless_ritual.jpg
http://open.spotify.com/album/2w3bjJMGoiTHtBjTAGTbDh
spotify:album:2w3bjJMGoiTHtBjTAGTbDh

http://www.deezer.com/album/6638153

Genre:
Twee Pop
Lyrical themes:
Fluffy Bunnies, Hello Kitty, Cardigans.

siegbran feel free to post some! I've got enough to do as is!

I'm definitely feelin' this Kadavar business. At least the couple songs I've sampled so far.

#15 Decibel, #11 Metal Sucks musicians, #23 Pitchfork, #38 Metal Hammer, #17 Terrorizer
http://youtu.be/B88XiAjqaqc

54    Morne - Shadows    259 Points,    8  Votes
http://i.imgur.com/Bn4sqA0.jpg
http://open.spotify.com/album/6QxxWZR17E5i1XZvJwZtcR
spotify:album:6QxxWZR17E5i1XZvJwZtcR

http://www.deezer.com/album/6966792

Genre:
Sludge/Post-Metal

http://morneband.bandcamp.com/releases

53   The Ocean - Pelagial    261 Points,    8  Votes
http://i.imgur.com/L9QSw1i.jpg
http://open.spotify.com/album/6R9cHdJ7hljxDDYq2tUCdO
spotify:album:6R9cHdJ7hljxDDYq2tUCdO

http://www.deezer.com/album/6959409

Genre:
Progressive/Atmospheric Sludge Metal/Post-Hardcore

#9 Rock-A-Rolla, #3 Metal Sucks, #8 Metal Sucks musicians
http://youtu.be/JfZMTDcqKnQ

52    fen - dustwalker    261.0    9 Votes
http://i.imgur.com/aPpPigN.jpg
http://open.spotify.com/album/0TCydMhfBWdkVufpSUxdhH
spotify:album:0TCydMhfBWdkVufpSUxdhH

http://www.deezer.com/album/6202706

Genre:
Atmospheric Black Metal/Post-Rock
Lyrical themes:
Solitude, Sorrow, Landscape, Nature

http://www.sputnikmusic.com/review/54547/Fen-Dustwalker/

Review Summary: Atmosphere, melody, and brutality mixed together into a potent musical brew.

Dustwalker embodies a spectrum of moods and sounds that convey a rather compelling musical performance. It's a very meticulously arranged collage of atmosphere, melody, and brutality that exhibits an eclectic range of musical styles. Throughout the album, we witness Fen regressing back to the nature of their previous albums, while yet fusing them with a better understanding of themselves and what emotion they want to convey in their music. There's an array of genres and concepts present within the album as we continue to see Fen embracing an affinity for borrowing and breaking down whatever musical styles appeal to them, and then mixing them together into a potent brew of melodies and rhythms that go well beyond the average metal repertoire. In a nutshell, Dustwalker retains the aggression of Black metal, while adding a delicate touch of ambience and euphony to their music. Certainly an elaborate plot to work with, but it's nothing that hasn't already been explored by other artists. There's a very conspicuous influence which can be felt throughout the album that is distinctively derived from other bands well within their musical vicinity, such as Agalloch, Negură Bunget, and Altar of Plagues who have all pioneered the various possibilities of connecting the charismatic essence of Black metal with outside influences like Shoegaze, Folk, Post-rock and even to an extent, Progressive rock.

A song like "Hands of Dust" really illustrates the overall musical concept of Dustwalker. There's an array of different musical conventions uniting here to compose a sound that aspires to be as engaging as possible, and in that aspect, it succeeds with ease. "Hands of Dust" opens with an introductory guitar arrangement that is embellished with a graceful echoing dissonance, thus exuding an ambient allure to ease our descent into its ever-fluctuating musical realm. This is one of the many times in the album where the progressive influences are at their most consciously evident, because this whole song is a constant ascension to a different mood with every passing second, yet it tends to operate with rather contrasting dynamics in style. For example, during the song's dreamy shoegaze section in the beginning, we hear the vocals alternate from a soothing tone to a more frustrated growl, and yet the music remains well in its calming state. And it isn't until the latter portion that we hear any distorted riffs and relentlessly manic drumming, but even then, though discreetly lingering in the background, we can still hear the echoing remains of its initial ambient texture.

"Spectre" yet again reflects the band's affection for spacey musical environments, though this time they incorporate a more folk-influenced sound. The primary melodic framework of "Spectre" is exuded by a gentle acoustic arrangement, which is accompanied by an electric guitar that lets out a sonic wave of psychedelic radiance in the background. This is definitely one of the highlighting moments of the album because it is just such a beautifully composed piece. The vocals, especially, are sung with an exquisite harmony that really vitalizes the music with a graceful aura. The only flaw in "Spectre" is that it probably lasts longer than it should. After the vocalized section reaches its climax, the song arrives into an instrumental passage that dissolves among a haze of ethereal ambience. And as mesmerizing as these soundscapes may be, you will indeed find yourself noticing how needlessly prolonged this interlude gets after the first 2 minutes, which kind of makes "Spectre" lose some effect from its trancing spell, but overall it is still an exceptional piece. Depending on the preference of the listener, one may find that this sense of repetition actually works thematically with the atmospheric ideology of "Spectre", but Fen, whether consciously or not, tends to exhibit a lot of monotony and repetition within their other compositions, though to a less than inspired degree.

The final two epics, "The Black Sound" and "Walking the Crowpath", seem to surpass their state of relevancy long before they reach their end. Both songs clock in a little over 10 minutes, and within that time Fen embrace their metal attributes much more intimately than any other moment in the album. There's an excessive usage of slow tempos and heavy rhythms being deployed here that express an overall pessimistic sentiment, and though there are some invigorating riffs and bombastic drum rhythms to be found, that's all they really have to offer, lacking any sense of ingenuity to coerce our intrigue enough to eagerly hit the repeat button. "Wolf Sun", on the other hand, is the one and only redeeming song in the latter half of the album, and the reason for that lies in the one quality that "The Black Sound" and "Walking the Crowpath" failed to harness, an innovative approach. "Wolf Sun" displays a combination of alternative rock instrumentation with infuriated Black metal shrieks and raspy vocals. Of course, there is prominent usage of 'clean' singing throughout the song as well, but it is still very compelling to hear the two contrasting musical styles compliment each other in such an irresistibly harmonic fashion.

At its final moments, Dustwalker can very well be considered an even further progression in style from Fen's prior efforts, The Malediction Fields and Epoch, one that focuses more on their Shoegaze and Post-metal influences rather than Black metal. For anyone that was hoping this would be the direction Fen would explore more after hearing Epoch, then Dustwalker will be an experience well worth your time. As I mentioned before, there's an impressive level of creativity being expressed in their songwriting here, particularly in the methods of combining their different musical influences in a way that is both coherent and appealing. This is definitely a 'fan-pleaser', and though it's merely an addition to atmospheric Black metal and nothing that is particularly revolutionary or innovative in the genre, it still makes for a truly satisfying listen to anyone willing to give it a try.

http://youtu.be/z3xu8WO4Yqo

Kadavar were in my top five. Maybe my favorite of all the throwback rock releases this past year. Just great songs.

Production also sounds great. Really makes a difference with this stuff.

51    Cathedral - The Last Spire    263 Points,   8 Votes
http://i.imgur.com/GlpFWLm.jpg
http://www.deezer.com/album/6475137

Genre:
Doom Metal

http://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/18020-cathedral-the-last-spire/

After nearly a quarter century, 10 albums, a major-label stint, and a deserved reputation as an act that helped pull doom metal from its stylistic exile, exactly how will Cathedral end its final album? That’s the question that hovers above The Last Spire, the excellent eight-track LP that will mark the end of the long-running, ever-restless English quartet. Early last year, Cathedral played their final show in Australia before returning to England to chart their own demise. For the last two decades, the band has pushed far beyond the slow-growing and wide-set roots of its foundational debut, 1991’s Forest of Equilibrium, to incorporate thrash blitzes, psychedelic tangents and 70s rock bombast. Talking through each entry in the band’s catalogue with Terrorizer earlier this year, frontman Lee Dorian acknowledged the deliberate nature of his band’s non-linear development. Sometimes they wanted to retreat from doom, and sometimes they wanted to retreat into it. “I hate complacency,” he said. “It’s not something you should ever feel, especially in terms of art.”

That perspective has kept Cathedral interesting for the long haul, even if it hasn’t resulted in necessarily great records. For instance, the band’s most recent LP, 2010’s The Guessing Game, spent 85 minutes dipping and diving into prog rock aberrations that sometimes felt excessive and often unnecessary. Cathedral kept twisting free from its traditionally lugubrious mid-tempo maul with an assortment of influences, from Uriah Heep to Genesis. Mostly, it made you wish Cathedral would just settle back in to doom again.

And for a moment at the close of The Last Spire, it seems that Cathedral will indeed exit with a sentimental reminder than that they’ve generally been more than a simply gloomy squadron. “This Body, Thy Tomb”, the final song, opens with a low-strung, generously distorted riff, which Dorian pairs with appropriately funereal imagery: “I exist in this coffin,” he opens from a backlit pulpit. “Murdered trust and misfortune has evolved into strife.” Just past the three-minute mark, though, Dorian and the strangling tone of Garry Jennings go quiet, fading into a series of somber instrumentals-- a twinkling acoustic guitar, a glass-eyed electric solo, a music box melody played on mellotron. Cathedral, it seems, will fade into their own apoptosis.

But the mighty band enters one last time, pounding at Jennings’ lead harder than it has for the entire record. Brian Dixon locks into distended drum rolls and swings hard coming out of them, while keyboardist David Moore and bassist Scott Carlson build steep walls around the riff, conjuring claustrophobia even while heading for the exit. No treacle here: Cathedral ends exactly as it started-- heads down in heavy doom. Swansong attachment aside, that return-to-basics approach is one defining characteristic of The Last Spire, an album that reconnects with Cathedral’s beginnings without simply repeating them.

Another is restraint: In an interview with Ghost Cult Magazine published the week after The Last Spire was released, Jennings admitted that the band left a lot of recorded material on the cutting room floor for this album. Of those five omitted tracks, he said, at least one of them was a 30-minute Cathedral farewell that was never finished. At 56 minutes, however, The Last Spire is very much the right length for a band whose most consistent handicap has been not knowing when to say when, or how to move toward the next track or album. No, efficiency has never been Cathedral’s bailiwick, but on The Last Spire, they operate with surprising and newfound economy. They surround lengthy tracks with much shorter ones and generally just get out of their own way. The first half of the record, for instance, moves as swiftly as anything Cathedral has ever done. A terrifying introduction of swelling field recordings, tolling church bells and grating noise passes quickly into “Pallbearer”, a 12-minute anthem that pauses just enough for an acoustic interlude before sprinting headlong into a burst of thrash. It’s an extended number, but Cathedral anchors shifting momentum to a grim mantra00 “War, famine, drought, disease!”-- and a center of doom gravity. You almost want it to keep going, a rare quality for this band. “Cathedral of the Damned”, meanwhile, crisscrosses samples between verses, choruses and solos, while “Tower of Silence” adds a dose of punk ire to its unfettered seven-minute march. By not pausing to take stock of its progress, Cathedral testifies to its true purpose and power.

The Last Spire is so close to the spirit of Cathedral’s earliest works that Dorian has said it’s the record he’s hoped to make since their debut, Forest of Equilibrium. Importantly, though, it does not feel like a microwaved visitation with the past or some self-obsessed tribute. Rather, these pieces sound like the work of a band hoping to fortify their legacy at the end of their career rather than simply prolong it. The last two decades of exploration reappear here, certainly-- listen for the sidewinding second guitar in the distance during “Tower of Silence”, or, more obviously, the playful and possibly avoidable keyboard-and-bass fantasy that sits at the center of the otherwise morose “An Observation”. But these are simply the positive after-effects of years of auditory experimentation, not the driving force for the record itself. They’ve got too much to fit into an hour for self-involved excess.

If The Last Spire is the end of Cathedral, it’s a lofty exit for a band that’s often tripped over its own artistic ambition and unease. These eight tracks serve as a swift, sinister reminder of why Cathedral mattered at the start and why they intrigued for so many years in the middle. When it mattered the most, they had the sense to recognize that their work was done and to experience the end with dignity-- and, thankfully, doom.

#33 Decibel, #46 Rock-A-Rolla, #11 Metal Hammer, #15 Terrorizer
http://youtu.be/ucXybRkZUpw

Cathedral have called it quits, played their last live show, made their last video and the somewhat cleverly titled The Last Spire (released through Rise Above/Metal Blade) is reportedly to be their final album. One never knows for sure — surely over their time together the band must have amassed suitable fodder for rarities collections, live albums, greatest hits, cover records and so forth — but if it actually is the end of their run, The Last Spire is also the point at which the album Cathedral wants to make meets with the album that fans want to hear. It is an 56-minute victory lap that — far from actually sounding like one — presents eight songs of the dark, dreary doom that has come to be thought of as traditional in no small part because of Cathedral‘s crafting of it. The band’s lineup of vocalist Lee Dorrian, guitarist Gary “Gaz” Jennings, bassist Scott Carlson and drummer Brian Dixon present some progressive moments reminiscent of or at very least nodding toward The Guessing Game – the synth interlude that interrupts the sluggish lumber of “An Observation” comes to mind; David Moore‘s contributions of Hammond, Moog, synth and mellotron aren’t to be understated in establishing The LastSpire‘s murky atmosphere — but in their structure and in their intent, cuts like the early “Pallbearer,” “Cathedral of the Damned” and “Tower of Silence” underline the doomed feel for which Cathedral have become so known both in their home country and abroad. They are Cathedral at their most Cathedral. And rightly so. One couldn’t possibly hope for more of them than that.

The aforementioned trio occur sequentially following the intro “Entrance to Hell,” which finds Dorrian repeating the phrase “Bring out your dead” — which in my mind always goes right back to Monty Python and the Holy Grail, but he sells it well — over suitably plague-addled atmospheres, with “Pallbearer” as the longest track on The Last Spire at 11:39 and marked aside from its strong hook by the backing vocals of Rosalie Cunningham behind Dorrian‘s signature semi-spoken delivery and the chorus of “War, famine, drought, disease” repeated to memorable effect. There’s a mournful acoustic break in the middle, but by and large, Jennings, Carlson and Dixon sound big, thick and threatening, and when the acoustics (backed by organ) give way to the resurgent groove and faster push of the song’s peak movement, the effect is fluid and entirely metal. They end slow and offer a more mid-paced distortion on “Cathedral of the Damned,” which is marked out by the spoken guest vocal by Chris Reifert of Autopsy and the line “Living in the shadow of a damned cathedral,” which may or may not be Dorrian dealing with his own legacy and the prospect of moving on after ending the band. Either way, it’s the riff and the buzzsaw guitar tone that stands out most as the band meet their longest track with the shortest full song (that is, non-interlude or intro), slamming head-on into the chorus as they do with no diminished returns on the subsequent “Tower of Silence,” the pair affirming Cathedral‘s potency on all levels as they round out The Last Spire‘s first half, whether it’s the vocals, Jennings‘ righteous solo, the heavy nod of the bass and drums, or the overarching catchiness of the chorus itself: “A tower of silence/Is waiting for me/Looming before/An astral sea.”

Really, one could read a lot of The Last Spire as being emblematic of Cathedral‘s self-awareness as regards their own ending, but when it comes to “Infestation of the Grey Death” starting off the second half of the album, the vibe is more of a return to “Entrance to Hell”‘s plague thematic than the band saying goodbye. Jennings smoothly layers acoustic and electric guitars in the chorus and post-chorus, Dorrian‘s vocals are caked in effects, and Dixon‘s thudding drums provide more than ample punctuation in the tempo’s slower push in comparison to “Tower of Silence,” verses and the chorus following the riff in doomly fashion and a more raucous second third giving way to a return to the heavy-trodding miseries for a sendoff. “An Observation” is the point at which The Last Spire is the least fluid, keeping the ambience consistent early on with the tracks preceding before rumble and synth strings (mellotron maybe?) give way to a synth solo at 5:42 that follows comparatively awkwardly behind a couple seconds of silence, as though the band, in realizing that nothing would offer a smooth transition between one part of the track and the next, opted not make a transition at all. They bring it into context with accompanying guitar and vocals, but just that initial change is enough to pull the listener out of the song’s flow, if only momentarily. Parts flow into each other well in the final minutes of “An Observation” as Jennings builds to a climax before moving into a more Carlson-led section of chugging push, and when “An Observation” is over, it’s time of “The Last Laugh,” which, at 38 seconds, is just that, the last time Lee Dorrian laughs on a Cathedral record. He’s done it plenty, so I guess the band felt it was appropriate to mark the occasion.

More importantly, brief though it is, the interlude does well in giving a couple seconds’ respite before “This Body, Thy Tomb” arrives as the closer. Pacing-wise, it’s an agony, but there’s still movement at its core thanks to Dixon and Carlson, and here as well the organ features heavily in filling out the sound. Mirroring the opener, there’s an acoustic interlude met by mellotron that comes on in much the same manner but still with better continuity than on the song before and a break of footsteps or churning water that leads back into the central figure of the song. It’s the last march — Cathedral‘s last march, to hear them tell it — and with the organ, guitar, bass and drums all firing together toward a single idea, it’s hard to argue against their having gone out in a manner befitting their legacy. The truth is, Cathedral probably could easily have been putting out records like this all along. Nothing on The Last Spire feels especially challenging for the band or the listener. But that they didn’t makes their decision to write this as their epitaph all the more special. It’s an album that, even if one isn’t familiar with the context surrounding or with the legacy that Cathedral will leave behind them, would make a surprisingly good place to start for a first-timer, since it’s accessible and it summarizes so much of what’s always been most appealing about the band. Since that unmistakably was their intent in creating it, The Last Spire is as true to Cathedral‘s idea of who they are as any of their work has ever been. – The Obelisk

Whoa, that's WAY lower than I was expecting Cathedral to place.

maybe ilm metal thread regulars have gone off doom

8 votes on 50-something ballots? Color me surprised, too.

yeah I thought more 50 year olds would have voted for them too

I feel like a good chunk of my top 10 has already placed.

50 Voivod - Target Earth 266 Points, 7 Votes
http://i.imgur.com/GwWKxcg.jpg
http://open.spotify.com/album/5Woxw6C2pG4ZPzIbQ7xvlr
spotify:album:5Woxw6C2pG4ZPzIbQ7xvlr

http://www.deezer.com/album/6158267

http://www.spin.com/reviews/voivod-target-earth-century-media/

by Chuck Eddy

So you know how heavy metal supposedly, suddenly, got all avant-garde and high-IQ in the past few years, enabling its embracement by the hippest of the bearded Brooklyn hip? Well, whoever you're banging your microbrewed brainbox to, odds are Voivod beat them to their best ideas by a quarter-century.

Weirdness came naturally to these four French Canadian street-hockey pucks born around the dawn of the '60s, raised inhaling toxins from the planet's most enormous aluminum plant in Jonquiére, in the nexus of Quebec sovereignty country. In 1969, with Away, Blacky, Piggy, and Snake in grade school —l Front de libération du Québec terrorists bombed the Montreal Stock Exchange; by 1970, in the October Crisis wake of separatist kidnappings and murder, the province was all but under martial law. The boys soaked it all in, and by 1982, had started a band.

At first, Voivod seemed like a joke, apparently not on purpose. They had those silly nicknames, for one thing, and early on, that's all they went by. War and Pain — released in August 1984, a year or so after Metallica's debut, eight months after Slayer's — was called "probably the worst record I have ever heard in my entire life" by Paul Sutter in Kerrang, "like a moose being squashed by a steamroller (the vocals), whilst putting a strong magnetic current through a dustbin half-full of ball bearings (the band)." Their follow-up, 1986's umlautriffically named Rrr öööaaarrr, was some new species of fallout-shelter caveman splatter, complete with are-they-kidding? song titles on the order of "Ripping Headaches"; people lumped them in with thrash and/or speed metal, but already Voivod sounded like nobody else. They were listening to anarchist Brit hardcore (Rudimentary Peni, Discharge); left-field '70s Euro-prog (Birth Control, Egg, Amon Düül II, Nektar) that had a surprising Quebec following; 20th-century classical stuff; goth stuff and horror soundtracks; biker rock; Sonic Youth and Public Image Ltd.; and industrial firms like Einstürzende Neubauten and Laibach, whose T-shirts certain Voivoders wore at '80s gigs captured on 2005's D-V-O-D-1. They had a ridiculous concept — Voivods are time-hopping Viking vampires, see — but meticulous cover design and calligraphy from not-quite-here drummer Away (hence his name) and vegematic riffs from porcine guitarist Piggy to put it over.

Then, on Killing Technology (from 1987; note the two-faced title) and Dimension Hatröss (1988; note the recurring umlaut), they blasted it all into a deep and dense and ulcerous black hole of quantum sound, hanging ten on the galaxy's outer edge atop a jungle-drum rumble and stretching song matter toward ambient anti-matter via algebraic equations that later critic-approved metalgaze droners from Neurosis and Isis to SunnO))) and Liturgy and Pallbearer still haven't figured out how to calculate. Their convoluted structures, meanwhile, presaged entire metal subgenres largely preceded by the prefix "tech," but mainly populated by dorks opting for boilerplate brutality over having personalities.

On Nothingface (1989), Angel Rat (1991), and Outer Limits (1993), Voivod eased their claustrophobic congestion some, letting in more psych/prog/goth beauty, alternate-reality pop hooks, two late-'60s Pink Floyd covers, one 17-minute epic, and melodic college-radio jangle two decades before Baroness. The years since have been tumultuous: five often grumpy studio albums (plus live and outtake sets) between 1995 and 2009, including two with a vocalist who wasn't Snake, three with a bassist who wasn't Blacky but who used to be in Metallica, and two recorded after colon cancer killed Piggy but featuring guitar parts he'd cranked out before he died. Voivod (2003) is one of the band's catchiest records; Katorz (2006) one of their most rhythmic.

Target Earth, their new one, deserves to be the album whereon social-media-era tastemakers finally anoint them legacy heroes, in the amusingly eons-behind-the-curve tradition of Swans, Nick Cave, and Voivod's own early inspiration Killing Joke. Blacky's back, and if new guitarist Chewy from Quebec tech-deathers Martyr is no Piggy (nobody is), he holds his own — his fills in "Kaleidos" are nutso. As albums by Treponem Pal, Mekong Delta, Angel Witch, and others have demonstrated in the past year, great metal bands have a jellyfish knack for eternal regeneration when lineups change, and Voivod remain as sui generis as, oh, the Fall — their noise still can't be mistaken for anybody else's. The self-production here is a bit murky, maybe, and the drums and vocals have seen sharper days. But these dudes still turn sharp corners. Seven of 10 tracks last 5:45 or longer, but not even the 7:35 "Mechanical Mind" (first released last fall on one-sided, logo-etched seven-inch vinyl) wears out its welcome. It just builds, from wind-chiming start through yawping bad-dream multiverses and impatient time signatures and nyah-nyah-nyahs unto insanity: "Night arrives! / The guilt inside! / The worms of mind! / Scarred me for life!"

There are all sorts of idiosyncrasies tucked into the album's wormholes: Inuit throat singing and an almost lounge-jazzy midsection in the First Nations folklore-derived "Kluskap O'kom"; a Mediterranean intro credited to Greek oudist Perikles Tsoukalas making way for traffic-jam honking and extended staccato rhyming in the black-ice depressive "Empathy for the Enemy"; rain-forest polyrhythms under conspiracy theories of suppressed alien visitation ("skulls with conical shape, a map of outer space") in "Artefact"; intercepted satellite static or aluminum-smelting musique concrète opening several tracks, presumably courtesy of Blacky, who has dabbled in electronic music in recent years. "Corps Etranger," cold and clammy then raging, is recited in French, and seems to concern a parasitic disease — maybe Piggy's cancer.

In the world of extreme-metal experimentation, writing songs you'll remember once the album's over isn't cool; either that, or most bands don't know how. Voivod have for ages — environmental horror and nuclear/biological/chemical warfare and chaos theory and drone weapons of the formerly future frontier have been obsessions since Killing Technology days. Target Earth kicks off with cyber terror: a hacker attacking the power grid. But somehow, Snake's nasally accented repetitions, more robotic than monstrous, manage to consistently communicate shades of emotion — worry, despair, but also a hopeful calm — outside metal's usual purview.

So a dystopian nuke-wasteland dirge like "Warchaic" ultimately finds him looking to rebuild a "brand new world" like a 16th-century New France settler, then up next is the swinging punk protest "Resistance," not entirely un-skeptical yet actively embracing gas-masked street demonstrators toppling champagne-sipping gargoyles from ivory towers — a shout of solidarity with Occupy anarchists or Arab Springsters or Montreal students rioting over tuition hikes or Wal-Mart workers trying to unionize in Jonquiére. Eventually, we conclude with an odd, ominous minute-and-half snippet called "Defiance": black clouds, world in flames. But it doesn't feel like the end. Just the opposite; it feels unfinished. To be continued…maybe forever.

#16 SPIN, #25 Metal Sucks musicians, #21 Terrorizer
http://youtu.be/itHcrRaZhXs

I had pulled that same review, doh.

Cathedral was decent, just outside of my top 50. There was so many other great doom albums.

49    Progenie Terrestre Pura - Uma    275 Points,    7  Votes  One #1
http://i.imgur.com/Dza14do.jpg
http://www.deezer.com/album/6963455

http://lastrit.es/reviews/7028/progenie-terrestre-pura-u-m-a-

If I’m being completely honest, I should probably admit that Progenie Terrestre Pura had me hooked before I ever heard a note of its debut album U.M.A. Not only am I a certified sucker for almost anything even vaguely categorizable as post- or industrial black metal, but that cover. I mean, seriously, take a good look at that gorgeous cover art. Accepting the band’s invitation doesn’t mean I have to stay for the whole party, though. Luckily, the album is every bit as classy and satisfying as its futuristic artwork implies, and U.M.A. announces the arrival of a hugely promising new talent.

The funny thing is, Progenie Terrestre Pura is a hell of a tough thing to describe. It’s nominally black metal, I suppose, but what else? Symphonic? Sort of. Ambient? Sure. Industrial? Of a kind. Atmospheric? Certainly. But if we combine any of those terms with black metal - symphonic black metal, industrial black metal, etc. - you’re sure to get the wrong idea. How about this: The first time I dived into U.M.A.’s deep, tremulous pools, the overwhelming impression that came to mind was that this is the album to answer the unasked question: What if Devin Townsend’s Ocean Machine was a black metal album? Superficially, there’s almost no real similarity here with Townsend’s masterpiece, but I still can’t shake that initial thought. There’s something about U.M.A.: its production, maybe, or its dense yet spacious sheen, or just some damned, intangible...feeling.

The album’s opening tune doesn’t even bother getting around to any actual blasting until near the four-minute mark, and even then, nothing sounds in the least bit aggressive, even as the guitars tremolo constantly, and the programmed beats pound unerringly, and the vocals float above the fray in a hoarse, detached whisper. The closest to properly “heavy” the song gets is when the drums lock in to a double bass pattern in the last minute or so. But even then, sheesh, this is like jackhammering through a rolling countryside of cloud-hills from 30,000 feet.

As the album unfolds, Progenie Terrestre Pura consistently reminds me of countless other artists and sounds without the entire assembled package ever sounding quite exactly like anyone or anything else. Imagine, I suppose, if DHG had set up shop in Star Wars’s Cloud City rather than the dank bowels of the Death Star to record 666 International. Or, I don’t know, if Darkspace and Blacklodge took some tranquilizers and fiddled around with the space disco of Lindstrøm and Pantha du Prince. The band’s sound is split almost cleanly down the middle between space-age black metal tricks and mellow, soundtrack-y bits stuffed full with all the retro-futurist-sounding bleeps and bloops of, hell, Tangerine Dream? Maybe some Windham Hill compilation?

Given the clear difficulties I’m having in communicating Progenie Terrestre Pura’s expansive vision, is it...is it cool if I dub this “new age industrial black metal”? Probably not, at least to anyone but me, but boy oh boy, this album is a pure sensory treat. And of course, to call any portion of this album “black metal” in any restrictive sense of the genre is a stretch. But still, lineage matters: I can’t see quite how you get to a world with Progenie Terrestre Pura without first moving through Mysticum, Limbonic Art, Aborym, and Dodheimsgard.

The most important point, though, is that U.M.A. is one-hundred percent about mood. You’ll find some muted clean vocals way toward the end of “Sovrarobotizzazione,” and “Droni” sees the band whip up some (relatively) intense interplay between the programmed drums and mechanistic riffing, which later transitions into a classic heavy metal gallop, but almost certainly by design, U.M.A. is a single, 51-minute journey through pillowy atmospheres and sharp outcroppings of metallic suggestion, like crude three-dimensional polygons barely glimpsed through the glittering haze of a comet tail. Elsewhere, the instrumental interlude “La Terra Rossa Di Marte” swoons and plunks away like Joe Satriani playing a Perdition City pinball machine in Tron, because, well, of course it does.

For all its brilliant, gleaming surfaces, though, Progenie Terrestre Pura seems to understand the tension, the undercurrent of whitewashed unpleasantness that simmers in all utopian futures. By grafting this sort-of industrial black metal onto such beautifully atmospheric soundscapes, U.M.A. occupies the same aesthetic terrain as a Minority Report or a Blade Runner. Maybe U.M.A. takes the listener on a similar journey to Ocean Machine, after all, except that the referent unit is an entire civilization rather than an individual, cast into an uncertain future and left to consider the conditions of its inevitable end.

It’s like a death becomes musical, but this one’s for the life.

http://progenieterrestrepura.bandcamp.com/album/u-m-a
http://youtu.be/cFOO1qSXS6Q

I'm not a big doom guy but would have tried it out and I never even heard the Cathedral and it's solely because I couldn't find it on Spotify -- I just did, but it's not in their main profile, it's part of some splinter profile and I notice AG didn't include a Spotify link for it either:

http://open.spotify.com/album/48bUcwkqymPVOyptcyNrph
spotify:album:48bUcwkqymPVOyptcyNrph

One of the more annoying aspects of Spotify, I wonder if anyone else out there was stymied by this.

48    Vista Chino - Peace    276 Points , 9 votes
http://i.imgur.com/EtOyXpA.jpg
http://open.spotify.com/album/7tiZXwV3bxIY1bOReyVroe
spotify:album:7tiZXwV3bxIY1bOReyVroe

http://www.deezer.com/album/6900186

http://www.spin.com/articles/vista-chino-peace-napalm-records-kyuss-album-stream/

"It's very simple to play Kyuss songs," says Vista Chino frontman John Garcia. "Anybody can do it, but you've got to have character."

From 1991 to 1995, Garcia was the frontman for Kyuss, the band who helped pioneer stoner rock's husky dude-rock vocals and charging post-Sabbath melodies, fogging up the alterna-landscape like a smoking steamroller. Since their breakup, the band's guitarist, Josh Homme, has certainly stayed busy, yet Garcia and drummer Brant Bjork cycled through band after band with a fraction of the spotlight until reforming (with livewire bassist Nick Oliveri) as Kyuss Lives! in 2010

Renamed Vista Chino in 2010, Garcia and Bjork still have that Kyuss character in spades on their debut, Peace, writing bulldozing stoner anthems that live up to the legend of their former band. They released the record under the new moniker after Homme sued them for "trademark infringement and consumer fraud," but the sound is like classic Kyuss never missed a swinging, bluesy beat in 18 years. "We don't like getting speeding tickets, let alone fucking federal lawsuits slapped on us," Garcia says. "There were times when we had to be doing depositions when all we really wanted to do was be in the fucking studio. But names are obviously not important to us. We're going to be making music anyway. And nobody has a fucking right to take our joy away. We're lifers. We're grateful to be here."

Hear this blistering reunion in full below, and read a track-by-track breakdown where Garcia explains what it was like singing through Jim Morrison's microphone. Tour dates below the tunes. Pre-order the album from Amazon here and from iTunes here.

"Good Morning Wasteland"
John Garcia: Kyuss, as well as Vista Chino, will always do instrumentals. "Good Morning Wasteland" is an example of a song that didn't call for lyrics. It just has a very organic feel to it, and that's what Brant Bjork was going for as a producer. That's why we didn't go to a studio in Hollywood or Los Angeles, but instead built a studio from the ground up in Joshua Tree, California.

"Dargona Dragona"
Some people have told me that the vocals on this song sound raw and distorted, and that's because I was singing into Jim Morrison's U87 [microphone]. Our engineer, Harper Hug, is in the process of building Robby Krieger's studio in Los Angeles. So they've become really good friends and were talking about Vista Chino. Robby Krieger told him, "Hey, Jim sang out of this microphone before. What do you think the guys would think of using it?" And of course when you put a U87 in front of me that Jim sang out of, of course I'm going to be a little bit intimidated, but it was also inspiring as well. And I was honored, because I'm a fan.

"Sweet Remain"
For me as a singer, this song is a totally out of my range. It's very, very high for me, but it was super fun to experiment with that range. Singers' voices tend to deteriorate just a little bit as they get older. And mine has, knock on wood, held up, and I really wanted to test the boundary of my vocal ability.

"As You Wish"
I remember around the time we were working on this one, a lot of people were asking me what the record was going to sound like. I honestly didn't know. This is a song where Brant and I learned to trust each other again. We went through a couple of different versions of it until we found one that works.

"Planets 1&2"
"Planets 1" is one of my favorites. Brant Bjork called me one day and said, "Hey dude, would you mind if I sing this song?" And I said, "Absolutely. 100 percent please. Go for it." His vocals bring out another side of this band. And then "Planets 2" is just so minimal; it's the less-is-more thing. It's just six lines. Believe it or not, it's hard to be simple. I love to fill up every single minute of a song, and when you do that, you wind up finger-fucking it, ruining it.

"Adara"
All it takes is the first line to get a story going, and then it just flows. "Adara" was a direct product of that. It's very fun to sing, and, for lack of a better word, it's very, very classic Garcia for me.

"Mas Vino"
That was a live recording one night. Bruno and Brant were in the studio, and they called me up and said, "Come on in and cut some vocals." Listening to them play it, there was a great vibe, but because of where the song sits in the sequence of the record, we decided not to release it with the vocal on it. I think eventually we might release the piece with the vocal as a B-side. Until then, I think like a fine wine, it needs a little bit of time.

"Dark and Lovely"
I can see this becoming a 15-minute jam, where it's a trip. It's a very classic-Kyuss type of tune. If you partake in smoking the herb, that one's going to be one where you light back up. I think a lot of people think this band partakes in that a little bit, when actually, in reality, I can't remember the last time I smoked a bowl or a joint or a bongload. It's been that long. I'm waiting for the right time and the right moment to be able to sit down and do exactly that to this one.

"Barcelonian"
This song is just a perfect example of this band beginning anew. "Barcelonian" is not a song Kyuss would have played. But that's great. What we wanted was exploration, and "Barcelonian" is a direct product of going down a tangent. I don't mean it to be crass to the band, but the music sometimes gets redundant and boring. So exploration is fun.

"Acidize – The Gambling Moose"
I did eight different vocal takes on "Acidize." Because I did eight different versions, it was one of the last songs we recorded. And then "The Gambling Moose" is very classic — not to be talking about myself in the third person — but very classic Garcia. It's a fun song to sing. I love the snare sound when it comes in. It's a fitting ending chapter to this book.

#27 Rock-A-Rolla, #4 Obelisk, #2 Obelisk readers, #9 Captain Beyond Zen, #1 Stoner HiVe, #49 Terrorizer
http://youtu.be/3LWvOl8ZqRY

If, like me, you thought the idea of a reunion sans Homme and Reeder – and only intermittently featuring Nick Oliveri, who's become a one-man turnstile in the band – was kind of half-assed and pointless, you're liable to be a little stunned by what the quartet have put together for their debut album under the rebrand, Peace. A few notable moments aside, Peace is where you figure Kyuss would have eventually ended up when they got tired of creating spacier, more drawn out songs and decided to get back to basics. Kind of a no frills ying to Homme's Queens of the Stone Age yang.

"Dargona Dragona" bypasses all of Homme's latter day flirtations with farflung strands of blues rock and 70's metal and zeroes straight in on that Blues for the Red Sun template, shedding aggro-fuzz riffs like a dog with mange… we're instantly transported back to an era where it was just these guys and Fu Manchu and it was still desert, not stoner, rock. The other previously leaked single, "Barcelonian", features a more melodic, string-bending guitar line that is the most Queens-like thing on the album, deceptively so if it's the only thing you've heard so far.
Brant Bjork's ace drumming pretty much steals the show from "Sweet Remain" onward; there's a compressed, small room touch to the album's production which seems to benefit Bjork's kit the most… you can almost envision the dude hammering away at the skins in a basement with faux wood paneling while a modest crowd of beer-swilling yokels do a few 12 oz curls and nod along approvingly. If a drum solo is in the works for the live show it surely belongs sandwiched between "Sweet Remain" and it's album follow up, "As You Wish".

In spite of the overall stripped down approach, Vista Chino do prove that they can still throw down the heavy duty space jams in two specific instances, both coming at what would (presumably) be the last song on each side of the vinyl or cassette: "Planets 1 & 2" is the more restrained of the two, sticking with a fairly conventional songwriting framework but going all Jam Room in the middle. The finale, "Acidize/The Gambling Moose" is – like the title suggests – a multi-part suite, the first half settling into the first real chill out segment of the album, crooning vocals and jazzy licks providing counterpoint to Bjork's unflappable drumming. The back nine ("The Gambling Moose") ends the album on an extended boogie note, more Hooker & Heat than Jam Room this time.

It's pretty much a given that cats are gonna want to take sides, some claiming that Peace is merely QOTSA-lite while others insisting that Vista Chino are the better band for their sense of focus, but this is hardly an either/or proposition here: the truth is that both acts are at the top of their game right now, and for former naysayers like me who'd written Kyuss Lives! off as mere legacy act cashing in on former glory, it's time to eat a bit of crow and acknowledge that Peace is the best work any of these guys have done since the mothership crash landed back in '95. Bravo, gentlemen. – Jeremy Ulrey, Metal Injection

Another album I thought would be higher

47    Portal - Vexovoid    282 Points,    8 Votes
http://i.imgur.com/l5P61hk.jpg
http://open.spotify.com/album/0PtGwwqM6zFvawkY3JHtfq
spotify:album:0PtGwwqM6zFvawkY3JHtfq

http://www.deezer.com/album/6965793

http://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/17576-portal-vexovoid/

Musical density can falsely suggest volume: Listening to a two-sided, 40-minute, wall-to-wall extreme noise record, for instance, can seem like an hours-long gauntlet, especially compared to a 12-track LP of the same length filled with breezy pop songs, each guided by its own system of verses, a chorus, and a bridge. For the latter, the clear striation of parts lends a certain momentum to the listening experience, goading the music toward a clear finishing line, and then repeating the process. But that 40-minute noise record might stuff as much sound as it can into that equivalent space, supplanting pop's rests and dynamics with a barrage of musical information. If you don't think intensity can warp your sense of time and space, remember the notion the next time you're at the gym.

Excepting their 2003 debut, Vexovoid-- the fourth and most recent album from Australian heavy metal abusers Portal-- is the band's shortest full-length to date and their first to fall just to seven songs. At 35 minutes, it is barely longer than your average primetime sitcom or less than a quarter of the music rock'n'roll votary Ty Segall released last year alone. But parsing Vexovoid, Portal's first as a quintet and first since 2009's addled and diverse Swarth, should take you the better part of this calendar year. Initially forceful and ultimately complex, Vexovoid redirects the image of death metal through a dervish funhouse, where the expected shapes have been mutated and multiplied into orders so strange they seem surreal. Rhythms stay the course where you expect them to shift before finally switching without warning. Sharp-barbed riffs emerge from and climb above dins that once seemed irreparably unordered. Songs that, for the first minute, appeared to have but one aim and direction find a half-dozen new missions and vectors in a five-minute span. Hearing it all go by-- the forms flux, the pieces connect, the momentum volley-- provides an exhilarating, bewildering sort of audio whiplash. Vexovoid is a gauntlet that, to run again and again, is every bit as exhilarating as it is exhausting.

Portal has long tapped into sounds beyond death metal basics to warp their core, with traces of doom metal and stoner rock, black metal and noise rock trapped within their already-claustrophobic music. But Vexovoid eliminates the seams better than ever before, with alien sounds woven perfectly into the native space. "Orbmorphia" splices the kind of technically daunting sprints that canonized Meshuggah into rote death metal blitzes. "Plasm" hammers away with similarly primal simplicity, but Portal perverts it via sly embellishments-- molten waves of repetition rather than riffs that slice and flee, or the slow quake of the bass rather than an ordinary game of four-string keep-up. When the drums disappear after three minutes, they give way to a corrosive drone. The transition is surprising but deserved and brilliant, a conclusion foreshadowed by the now-obvious maneuvers of the tune's first half. Likewise, the guitars of closer "Oblotten" radiate grimly with the lock-step tremolo of black metal, while drums boom in the distance, as though industrial samples have been slingshot randomly into the frame. Hidden behind each of those percussive quakes, there's a sad little riff shared between the bass and a guitar. When the cacophony finally chokes out, though, only that riff remains, creeping quietly into nothing.

Go back and trace its progression: It's the kind of detail that you might miss the first dozen times you hear Vexovoid, especially if you've persevered its meticulous and merciless 35 minutes in one sitting. Such intricacy is precisely what makes Vexovoid-- a trove of interconnected themes and variations, distractions and redirections, barbed by the one of the heaviest bands in the genre-- so rewarding. If these 35 minutes feel like twice that, it's because Portal thought through every step, packed all of its ideas as tightly as possible, and left it for you to decode.