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

74
PUP - Morbid Stuff
127 points, 3 votes

https://f4.bcbits.com/img/a2228600663_16.jpg

https://open.spotify.com/album/504XSXhUJlzztcMV4YMaDV
https://puptheband.bandcamp.com/album/morbid-stuff

https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/pup-morbid-stuff/

In PUP, there is only one rule: the People’s Champ can never win. The Canadian quartet's sophomore album, the loudly beloved The Dream is Over, brought them perilously close to the kind of success that would strip them of underdog status forever: They made an album about the comprehensive mental, physical, and financial toll of touring constantly for two years straight, and their reward was...getting to do the same exact thing for even longer, in larger venues. The dream wasn’t over, it just stuck around long enough to prove hollow. As a result, Morbid Stuff is the angriest PUP has ever sounded. But it’s not a cry for help. It’s a cry of freedom, the sound of a band realizing that anger is liberating when depression is intractable and incurable—we’re not broken, so why bother trying to fix it?

Many PUP songs thrash towards a record-scratch/freeze frame moment where frontman Stefan Babcock becomes far too pissed off to bother with singing anymore. On Morbid Stuff, a lot of songs just begin at this place. During the bridge of “Full Blown Meltdown,” Babcock hectors, “I’m losing interest in self-help/Equally bored of feeling sorry for myself.” It’s Morbid Stuff distilled to an emotional concentrate, and a song that sounds like nothing they’ve ever done before: As the last great band to ever appear on Warped Tour, PUP have always boasted profoundly unfashionable influences, and “Full Blown Meltdown” wraps itself in sonic JNCOS—slap bass as thick as Tim Commerford’s lat muscles, a chugging circle pit coda scented by Toxicity, the unchecked aggro lyricism of nu-metal.

Though PUP are from Toronto, they’ve always channeled the perspective of the sheltered suburban loser for whom every social interaction is a chance to stoke their inferiority complex. “I was getting high in the van in St. Catharine’s/While you were rubbing elbows in the art scene,” Babcock sneers at an unnamed frienemy on the title track. However, the greatest and most frequently suffered indignity in PUP songs is simply seeing someone getting on with a relatively normal existence. On “See You At Your Funeral,” Babcock is in the grocery store, presumably living his best life— “buying organic foods/making healthy selections”—until he spots an ex; by the end of the song, he’s rooting for a televised apocalypse. Minutes earlier on “Free At Last”, Babcock is at Tim Hortons at 5 AM, prompting Charly Bliss’ Eva Hendricks to deliver 2019’s greatest one-line cameo: “Have you been drinking?” Babcock: “Well of course I have!”

Tim Hortons

They just couldn't resist, eh?

Anyway, I very much suspect this is Not My Thing.

excellent album

re: major stars. is this the first year a drag city record placed? maybe ty segall or six organs before?

Om had an album on Drag City that placed

just curious, great band. good memories of seeing them live years ago

alright xp

2019 pop 'n' heavy punk

This is a fine album that I refused to vote for

But isn't it 'the angriest PUP has ever sounded'?

I'm still trying to work out how psychedelic rock never went anywhere. What about the journey into my miiind?

It was inside you all along, maaaaaan.

Fullblown Meltdown is their go at a ‘heavy rock’ song, but otherwise the album is blissful, high-speed pop-punk. I love them to pieces but didn’t vote for this as it would have been second on my ballot and it didn’t feel right.

This is a GREAT album I did not vote for in this.

I dont get this. If an album is nominated and not vetoed then its fair to vote for it.

This poll is not a purists poll.

We have our own rules

you dont like actual heavy metal!

Next up: INSOMNIA aka SPIRIT INVOCATION.

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

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

73
Weeping Sores - False Confession
129 points, 4 votes

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

xp too low is right.

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

I dont know how to increase voter turn out

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

30-40 ballots is good

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

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

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

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

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

72
Andvaka - Andvana
131 points, 3 votes

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

its a name your price download on bandcamp too

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

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

71
Funereal Presence - Achatius
132 points, 3 votes

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It's very thrash-esque, so yeah.

This one is monstrously good, gave it loads of points

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

xp

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

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

^^ best Ted talk ever

xp

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

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

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

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

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

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