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

The track Afloat is a monster

my #1!

it really is uncategorizable

got some traction in the branca metal thread, didn't expect it this high, tho. shout outs to the other 4 voters

gaudio becoming the go-to post-punk-metaller between this and Reveal

gaudio's main poll ballot was awesome

Or nominations in this maybe...I can't remember. Something was good

I concur. 'gaudio' is a remarkably un-metal moniker, though. ;)

Also that might be my favourite album cover of the rollout so far

love y'all

Next up: [redacted]'s poor cousin.

34
Sunn O))) - Pyroclasts
207 points, 6 votes

https://f4.bcbits.com/img/a0470628539_16.jpg

https://open.spotify.com/album/7qBdr5VAmWMSJ7dij0mV3f
https://sunn.bandcamp.com/album/pyroclasts

https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/sunn-o-pyroclasts/

Stephen O’Malley once described Sunn O))) as his “guitar band,” which is a striking understatement. Over the band’s nearly two-decade run, they’ve never deviated from a singular mission: crushingly glacial guitars played at devastating volumes. Since 2009’s Monoliths & Dimensions, the duo has gracefully slipped the shackles of heavy metal, remaining rooted in its ferocious aesthetic while pursuing high concept collaborations and drone at its most incantatory. Sunn 0))) is a guitar band like a hurricane is wind.

April’s Life Metal had a distinct back-to-basics quality, stepping away from the orchestrations and composer commissions for some of the pure, indefinite-hiatus riffage on which Sunn 0))) built their name. Recorded by Steve Albini, the album showed Greg Anderson and O’Malley summoning a sound of overwhelming scope and elegance, moving with just a little bit of extra authority.

Pyroclasts is a companion to that album, recorded in the same sessions but stripped even further back. At the start and end of each day of recording, the group and their collaborators would perform a simple exercise: explore a single modal drone for 12 minutes; Albini would capture it, and they would move on. These four selections can be experienced as a sort of frame for Life Metal’s more definitive statement. Not compositions, nor exactly improvisations, the group describes them as “a daily practice,” calling to mind a regular meditation or yoga routine (except at pain-threshold dB). And like a series of stretches, these sessions were intended to open up the musicians as they worked through the album.

I know several people who prefer this one

More power to them.

Well, the power they have ain't coming from the album.

*stifles a y...elp*

other than Branca this is the least impressive stretch of the rollout so far. bad voters!!

I haven't really dug into the Branca album much in full, but "Cold Thing" is incredible.

I liked the Boris album a lot. They're still strangely hookworm but they manage ream shoegaze poetry without necessarily stopping to sounding pretty

*stooping

and hookworm should be hookpoor

sorry, I'm fucking stoned

lol

33
Lightning Bolt - Sonic Citadel
209 points, 7 votes

https://f4.bcbits.com/img/a1376325179_16.jpg

https://open.spotify.com/album/7j0wKLXUOaXhlq2Iw83NHs
https://lightningbolt.bandcamp.com/album/sonic-citadel

https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/lightning-bolt-sonic-citadel/

For 25 years now, Lightning Bolt has made a career out of indulging only the most gnarled riffs, covering every sound in brittle distortion, and playing live shows so loud and destructive that they—literally—blow out the power and leave the performers covered in blood. The duo’s dedication to this “move fast, break everything” mentality is still strong on Sonic Citadel, their seventh full-length album. The first song is called “Blow to the Head,” a three-minute blast of punishing kick drum, acrid bass riffs, and squealed vocals like a pile of styrofoam plates tossed on a bonfire. It’s as wonderfully ugly as anything they’ve ever made.

They keep up this energy—standouts include the surreal anthems “Bouncy House” and the Tilt-a-Whirl hardcore of “Tom Thump”—adding a handful of tracks to the pantheon of Lightning Bolt jams designed to keep your local audiologist in business. But where Sonic Citadel really takes off is in the moments where they deviate hardest from their formula. Underneath all the fuzz, there’s always been pop sensibility at work; Lightning Bolt riffs have been catchy in their own warped way since Ride the Skies. But at points, they allow those instincts to come into startling focus.

That’s telegraphed, in part, in some of the song titles, which reference Don Henley, Husker Dü, and Van Halen. None of these jams especially sound like classic rock or hair metal, but they are some of the most memorable moments in the band’s catalog. “Don Henley in the Park” is an especially notable curveball, built around overlapping bass riffs that sound like a Durutti Column song as played by the Tasmanian Devil. Chippendale’s nursery-rhyme vocals would almost be fit for a sing-along, if you could make out what he’s saying. (The lyric sheet isn’t especially helpful on this score; it reads “[improvised lyrics].”)

very possibly their best album

Still haven't gotten around to this in full but like what I've heard

Surprised to see so little LIGHTNING BOLT commentary. I liked it about as much as Wonderful Rainbow, which is to say a solid 7/10.

Anyway… an ILM darling coming up (or so it seems to me).

32
Xoth - Interdimensional Invocations
223 points, 6 votes, 1 #1 vote

https://f4.bcbits.com/img/a1114251881_16.jpg

https://open.spotify.com/album/0ahGsSwSspQ1zqZp4Qg76c
https://xoth.bandcamp.com/album/interdimensional-invocations

https://www.angrymetalguy.com/xoth-interdimensional-invocations-review/

It feels like a millenia has passed since Xoth released their debut record Invasion of the Tentacube. The 2016 release took me by surprise. I picked it up randomly, intrigued by the rough sci-fi album artwork and the B-movie title; I expected little. What I heard, though, was striking. Xoth had a sound of undeniable strangeness. You could trace a slither of every subgenre in their sound. The patterns and impulses of their style were reasonably common – a black metal base sculpted with features of thrash, death, power and symphonic. But it was the tone of their production, the peculiarity of the mix, and the quirky hyper-melodic turns in their music which caught me off guard. That record had hooks and memorability aplenty, but this was buried under rusty, rickety dirtiness which struck the right chord. Three years is a long time, though, and I spent a lot of time scouring the web for any information about a new release. Silence. The band played a lot of gigs in the Northwest US and hinted at new songs being written but, then, nothing, really. I sort of forgot about them, except for riffs and vocal lines from”Tentacles of Terror” invading my psyche at random times in my life. As if out of nowhere the mangled title Interdimensional Invocations emerged from another dimension. Now, a second release is here. Can Xoth weave their multidimensional magic once again, or is this destined to spend an eternity in the scrap heap?

Instantly, the music sounds thicker, denser. With the help of Joe Cincotta (Obituary, Suffocation), the band have given their sound a turbo boost. Whereas Invasion had an endearing roughness, Interdimensional Invocations has a directness which intensifies the band’s sound, especially during the heavier jaunts. This record is undeniably heavier. The bassier mix aids this but the songs themselves are less ultra-melodic and more tempestuous. The melodies, present throughout, have a more acerbic quality – there’s a directness which pummels through the whole record. Opener “Casting the Sigil” crunches into being without an introduction. The song grooves at a vicious pace, supported by thicker drum and bass lines. The rickety, jazz-like fluidity of the bass is still present – thankfully – but it’s assimilated much more naturally. Despite enjoying the showmanship it conveyed in the debut record, it occasionally became too flamboyant. Here, it adds to the spirit of the songs – filling the gaps, bridging the riffs and allowing for the lead guitar solos to spin and spit at a manic rate.

This was cool but didn't quite live up to the hype, I'm afraid.

It was my #1 and pom is wrong. Riffs and hooks and wonderful things for days.

Hooray. This was my #4.

Don't mind me, there's so much to which I only lent a superficial ear.

This is great and I really don't like thrash metal. Super fun and maximalist

These guys have the perfect balance of nimble lightness and crushing heaviness, aided by the fact that they seem to take themselves with exactly the correct level of seriousness.

31
The Lord Weird Slough Feg - New Organon
235 points, 6 votes, 1 #1 vote

https://f4.bcbits.com/img/a1409964742_16.jpg

https://open.spotify.com/album/551FoxUGrJq2lYz1tvm6iF
https://thelordweirdsloughfeg.bandcamp.com

http://theobelisk.net/obelisk/2019/05/24/the-lord-weird-slough-feg-new-organon-review-track-premiere/

For nigh on 30 years, The Lord Weird Slough Feg have served the greater good as classic metal’s gift to heavy rock. Or are they classic rock’s gift to heavy metal? Or metal’s gift to heavy? Plus Celtic influences? Whatever. The point is, across 10 full-lengths and a swath of other singles and splits, etc., the band have become one-of-a-kind practitioners of the metallic arts. New Organon is the San Francisco-based outfit’s first long-player in the five years since 2014’s Digital Resistance (review here) came out on Metal Blade, and it finds them reunited with Cruz del Sur Music for the first since 2009’s Ape Uprising! and 2007’s Hardworlder. It’s a solid fit, considering Slough Feg‘s traditionalist approach, and New Organon feels like a purposeful stripping down of tones and general vibe. Perhaps unsurprisingly to those familiar with Slough Feg‘s work, that suits the material well.

Across 10 tracks and a LP-prime 37 minutes, the four-piece of founding guitarist/vocalist Mike Scalzi, fellow guitarist Angelo Tringali, bassist Adrian Maestas — who takes a lead vocal on side B’s “Uncanny” — and relatively-new drummer Jeff Griffin (John Dust also plays on the album), set about renewing the faith of the denim-clad faithful while at the same time mining the lecture notes of Scalzi, a philosophy professor, for lyrical themes. From the Rousseau through Sartre, Plato through Francis Bacon, from whose work the title derives, Scalzi turns cerebral and existential query into the stuff of fist-pumping proto-thrash and heavy rock and roll. It does not seem like a coincidence that they should re-don their full moniker for the effort, having gone simply by Slough Feg since 2005’s Atavism instead of the full The Lord Weird Slough Feg, since the atmosphere in the clear but sans-frills production and the basic structure of the songs is no less directed to the band’s own roots than those of heavy metal itself. They are among the most woefully underappreciated acts in metal, too bizarre it would seem even for the most brazen of self-declared nonconformists, but all the more righteous for standing alone.

30 years, eh? I'd never heard of them tbh, philistine that I am.

xoth record looks riiiight up my alley

too low

an ilx favourite too. Their albums have made all the polls since metal poll began.
They made the all-time metal poll too which annoyed the late lamented 'Bill Magill'.

I liked the previous album but that felt like all the Slough Feg I'd ever need, tbh

I preferred older Slough Feg

A band that never delivers under a solid 8/10 imo

30
Darkthrone - Old Star
246 points, 8 votes

https://peaceville.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/cover-800x800.jpg

https://open.spotify.com/album/1uGGIlXpl6sldjRjKUv8vR

https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/darkthrone-old-star/

Norwegian metal duo Darkthrone’s career has been a long, strange trip, one that’s always hinged upon the relationship between two rock’n’roll obsessives from Kolbotn. The band’s sound has morphed from the grating, lo-fi black metal barbarism that won them international acclaim in the 1990s into a looser, black metal/punk vibe that debuted on 2006’s The Cult Is Alive and injected new life into their career. Since then, they’ve ditched their more abrasive tendencies in favor of a sonic mish-mash that trumpets the duo’s joyful debt to classic heavy metal to the rafters.

Darkthrone’s 18th album, Old Star—which perennial mouthpiece Gylve “Fenriz” Nagell has described as the band’s “most ’80s album so far”—is a celebration of their storied past, produced by Ted “Nocturno Culto” Skjellum in his own Necrohell 2 Studios and polished by veteran knob-twiddlers Sanford Parker’s mix and Jack Control’s mastering job. Both members of Darkthrone share vocal, guitar, and bass duties (with Fenriz also putting in time on the drums), and over the years, they have forged the kind of bond most musicians can only dream about. This new album is in line with what fans of the band’s more recent (as in, post-2006) material have come to expect, but with a new twist—namely, the outsized impact that traditional doom bands like Candlemass and Solitude Aeturnus seem to have had on the songwriting. Darkthrone still stand firmly in the heavy metal (with a dash of punk) camp, but they’ve definitely got a soft spot for old-school gloom.

There’s a melodic strain running through Old Star, particularly on tracks like the delectably doomy “Alp Man” (which suits Nocturno Culto’s breathy rasp) and the up-tempo “Duke of Gloat” (two of several delightfully nonsensical titles on this release. What is an “alp man”? We’ll never know!). “Duke of Gloat” is also the only track on Old Star that could convincingly be labeled “black metal”; despite Darkthrone’s roots in the second wave, their status as genre godfathers, and the designation on their label’s promo materials, the duo’s true Norwegian black metal days are long over. However, with its icy, mid-tempo malevolence and Satanic bent, this song is a thrilling reminder of past evils.

Didn't make my ballot but it's their best album in ages.

Too bad the whole album isn't quite on the same level as 'The Hardship of the Scots'.

I definitely take these guys for granted. Thought this was great and never remotely considered voting for it.

I think with older established acts we compare them to the old 'classic albums' and we overrate 'new' acts with 'potential'. So the older acts are a bit more middling in our ballots.

There are exceptions obviously.

That is undoubtedly true.

we are all obsessed with finding new artists and perhaps we neglect older acts a bit?

of course metal fans are generally quite loyal to bands we liked so we still buy them, go see them yet when it comes to polls we definitely favour new to us acts

I think that goes double for acts whose sound barely nudges over decades. (Not a criticism!)