Jan 16, 2019
Best Song
Names
Rebel Wizard, album -
Voluptuous Worship Of Rapture And
Response —
1. Persisting as it does
2. The prophecy came and it was
soaked with the common fools forboding
3. High mastery of the woeful
arts
4. Drunk on the wizdom of unicorn
semen
5. The poor and ridiculous alchemy of
Christ and Lucifer and us all
6. Mother Nature, oh my sweet
mistress, showed me the other worlds and it was just
fallacy
7. Majestic mystical
burdens
8. Healing the chakras with heavy
negative wizard metal
9. Voluptuous worship of rapture and
response
10. Exhaustive glory
Best
Traditional Death
MONSTROSITY (FL), album - The
Passage of Existence
Song: The Hive (0:26-5:05)
— Sweaty old mullet metal bros that
have headbanged their way around Florida death for decades. These
guys know the riff, the guitar solos, the intricacies of vocals and
the headbang. Just a gem.
Runners-up:
CORPSESSED (Finland), album - Impetus
of Death — Blast blast blast in your face and Finnish
country folk that bite the antlers off rabid beasts. These guys go
all out epic.
LIK (Sweden), album - Carnage
— I like Lik because it reminded me of At The Gates (listen to Rid
You of Your Flesh), almost the exact same vocals, melodic touch to
old school death. Fucking headbang with a fist in the air. Nothing
new, but so much fun.
HATE ETERNAL (FL), album - Upon
Desolate Sands — Muscular death metal that flex: technical,
brutal, overtly masculine vocals. They are innovative beyond
throwing around testicles. Guitar solos are epic, so many crushing
riffs.
Best
Hardcore/Punk
PORTRAYAL OF GUILT (TX),
album - Let Pain Be Your Guide
Song: Your War (6:55-9:13)
— Bleak and raw, emotional;
deeply-felt lyrics which is a staple of hardcore. This is just the
beginning for these guys.
Runners-Up:
JESUS AIN'T IN POLAND (Italy), album
- No Man's Land — Jesus Ain't in Poland have slowed their
version of grindcore to dynamic, eruptive, melodic hardcore. With
some grind sprinkled on top.
MAMMOTH GRINDER (Austin), album -
Cosmic Crypt — With members of Iron Reagan and Power Trip,
Mammoth Grinder unsurprisingly blended the chompiness of hardcore
into death, short little bits of fun to dig your teeth
into.
IDLES (UK), album - Joy as an Act of
Resistance — Idles got my last year's Best Punk album.
Bristol punks want you to find joy as the resistance, gawd how
sweet. These are hot British guys you want to hug and punch and
drink beers with. Stylized punk with deep lyrical
content.
FUTURE CORPSE (Melbourne), album -
Culture Ruins Everything Around Me — A triumphant
experimental sound, diving face splat first into prog and punk,
stir some badass death metal kick, simmer with jazz, and all with
the young heart of poppy punk and hardcore vocals. Stunning fantasy
album art.
Best
Legendary Band
SATAN (UK), album - Cruel
Magic
Song: Legions Hellbound
(9:52-14:50)
— 40 years of dense and intricate
guitars creating melodic thrash, and they don't need to speed it up
to make their point.
Runners-up:
AT THE GATES (Sweden), album - To
Drink From the Night Itself — In the 90's I headbanged to
this band religiously in my car. Their new albums sound a lot like
Slaughter, but why the hell not. Again, with age comes
refinement.
JUDAS PRIEST (UK), album -
Firepower — Judas Priest prove they are still heavy metal
gods. They engage in their trademark hooks and harmonies and manage
to remain muscular. A must-have album.
Best Female
Vocalist
CLOUD RAT (Michigan), album -
Silk Panic
Song: Nago (15:20-17:50)
— This album encompasses a universe
of emotions that every woman possesses. She screams it for us. She
sighs. She breathes. She is amazing.
Runners-Up:
IZEGRIM (Netherlands), album -
Beheaded By Trust — Geezus, the female vocalist is nothing
short of amazing. Check her out here:
https://youtu.be/w3_-ps206sM
DEATHBELL (France/Ireland), album -
With The Beyond — Incredibly jolting pagan psychedelic doom
led by a French goddess with sultry vocals.
MESSA (Italy), album - Feast for
Water — Don't worry, she's on the list
below.
LUCIFER (Sweden/Berlin), album -
California Son — Berlin has blues in their blood. This is
perfect 70's rock with a badass female lead
vocalist.
Best
Extreme/Technical Death
GOROD (FR), album -
Aethra
Song: Hina (18:24-23:38)
— And the guitar lords speak after
the bloody battle. You have won, tech death nerds, you are the
mighty warriors of all. This album is frighteningly fast, crazy,
brutal, but most importantly a fucking blast.
Runners-Up:
PORTAL, album - Ion —
Anonymous, cloaked members creating completely fucking alien
dissonant atmospheric for your fucked up brain.
REPLICANT (NJ), album - Negative
Life — Bass-heavy, harmonies and space between the chaos
breathes fresh energy in this modern tech death, heavy on the riff.
Then the vocals vomit its raw horror.
INOCULATED LIFE (Denver), album -
Exist to Decay — Colorado rises, yet again. These guys have
a long, long life. This was a killer debut.
Best
Darkwave/Deathrock/Post-Punk
NAUT (UK), album - Raise the
Lights
Song: Frames (24:17-30:41)
— I can't deny, this is one of my
favorite categories. These guys use bass to create their brooding
melody, with those death rock vocals, encompassed in a bow of
shimmering guitars. They are nostalgic personified.
Runners-Up:
THE SOFT MOON (Berlin), album -
Criminal — Stylish, intense industrial darkwave with a
really cool-styled vocalist. Extremely danceable.
LEBANON HANOVER (Germany), album -
Let Them Be Alien — German dark danceable wave done to
perfection by a duo of vocal perfection, both male and female.
Gorgeous synth and bass.
Best
Traditional Doom
MESSA (Italy), album - Feast
for Water
Song: Leah (31:34-39:34)
— Soft, strange, lovely mood created
by angelic and powerful vocals with crisp, bluesy guitars. They
were nominated last year, and a clear winner in this, hands
down.
Runners-Up:
DEATHBELL (France/Ireland), album -
With The Beyond — 4-female created distorted, thick melodic
doom. Incredibly jolting pagan psychedelic doom led by a French
goddess with sultry vocals.
URFAUST (Netherlands), album - The
Constellatory Practice — The vocalist is a wavering thin
screech between a wall of black meditation, an oppressive push that
pressed my brain into a slit. Controlled Bleeding experimental
style mixed with melodic and cathedral vocals in parts. This is the
last part of a trilogy.
SOLSTICE (UK), album - White Horse
Hill — Solstice started in 1990; if you are Indian and can
do math in your head, that is a fuckload of time ago. Led by a
charismatic lead singer, pagan heavy metal doom.
APOSTLE OF SOLITUDE (Indiana), album
- From Gold to Ash — 2 vocalists are standouts, gorgeous
harmonizing loveliness.
Best
Sludge
1914 (Ukraine), album - The
Blind Leading the Blind
Song: Passchenhell
(40:11-47:03)
— I may have cheated placing this
death-leaning band in sludge, but it has elements of sludge:
filthy, crushing, dense, suffocating.
Runners-Up:
FISTER (St. Louis), album - No Spirit
Within — Fister is one of the best sludge bands ever
created. Infusing slow tempoed darkly filthy passages with the evil
screech and rasp of the vocalist, bubbling into catchy rhythmic
headbreaking, but only in brief slashes of time. The rest is just
gurgling torture. Had one of my favorite songs all year:
https://youtu.be/Vfoo0l9x14Y
BRAINOIL (Oakland), album -
Singularity To Extinction — Bay area Brainoil releases
groove rampage sludge that is that Brainoil-style of satisfaction.
Greg's vocals are epic. John Santos created-album
art.
Best
Retro
Wytch Hazel (UK), album - II:
Sojourn
Song: See My Demons
(47:51-52:13)
— One of the hardest, worst
categories for me to rate, because I loved every single one of
these albums. For (2) of them - Graveyard and Greenleaf, I was
banging my head on the wall, I love these bands so much. But, this
was the album this year. Story-telling, jamming guitars, and those
vocals. Rich, rich stuff.
Runners-Up:
Graveyard (Sweden), album -
Peace — If you know anything about me, you know that I
worship Graveyard, the warm melting sweet chocolate vocalist. In
the midst of becoming famous, winning a grammy in their country,
and discussions of breaking up, these guys took their sabbatical
and came back together strong and vital and strong in storytelling,
hooks, blues, ripping my heart apart yet again.
The Night Flight Orchestra, album -
Sometimes the World Ain't Enough —
They blend the funk of the 70's
and classic metal ballad vocals and lyrical content of the 80's.
Super fun.
Greenleaf (Sweden), album - Hear the
Rivers — Swedes do psychedelic jamming blues the best; and
Greenleaf has been one of my favorites of these bands. They changed
their incredible singer a few years ago, which was terrifying to
me. But holy shit, they must have sacrificed to Satan because he is
amazing. This is one of their strongest soulful albums to
date.
Best Modern
Black Metal (mixed genre)/Best Evil Male Vocalist/#2
Album
CONVULSING (AU), album –
Grievous
Song: Relent (53:37-END)
— This album reminded me of Ruins of
Beverast and Venenum. Not in the sound, but the creation of an
epic, unexpected trip within and outside your brain. Yes, this is a
1-man band. He has climbed through my brain with massive vocals,
contrasting tempos, creepy atmosphere climbing into dissonance.
Bleak and monstrous.
Runners-Up:
SKELETONWITCH (OH), album - Devouring
Radiant Light — I don't care what anyone says, Skeletonwitch
has always been genius. THe new lead singer put me at a loss at
first, but I think he found his footing with this one. More focused
on fierce cold black metal, rather than the charming previous lead
singer's love for groovy thrash. It fits now.
REBEL WIZARD (AU), album - Voluptuous
Worship Of Rapture And Response — The vocals are a knife,
the technical guitar solos are worshipful. Australia had the most
epic scene of 2018. Reb
GAEREA (Portugal), album - Unsettling
Whispers — Bleak to its core, whispers of evil and death
crawling up your spine, the tempo is not based on your need for
headbanging. They will let you know when it is appropriate or
necessary, nothing is staged.