Drama of the Year - Metal Storm Awards 2024

Acid Bath - The Kite String Popped

To be fair to the many thousands of other people involved, this situation is one with a much wider kill zone than one single band, but it is funniest (well, saddest) when filtered through Acid Bath specifically. For those who don't know Acid Bath, what are you doing on this website they were one of the pioneers of sludge metal, purveyors of a unique combination of all the noisy, disgusting, and/or evil sounds available to a New Orleans band in the '90s. Their grungy, grody, gothic combination of hardcore punk, death metal, doom, grunge, noise, blues, and whatever else you want yielded two utterly foundational records - When The Kite String Pops and Paegan Terrorism Tactics - and then, in 1997, Acid Bath disbanded, following the tragic death of bassist Audie Pitre. For 27 years, there was nothing further. Until, all of a sudden, in October 2024, out of the absolute wild sky blue, the band announced a special one-time reunion performance at Sick New World Festival in 2025. The metal world was shocked. X-Ray Rod was burned to a crisp.

The next thing that happened was the only thing that could be more insane than that: nothing at all.

Sick New World was planning its third edition for April 12, 2025, in Las Vegas, featuring a staggering array of legends in metal, punk, alternative, and whatever other genres of music there are. Take a gander at the bill and check out how ludicrously stacked this lineup was. Imagine seeing this miraculous, once-in-a-lifetime Acid Bath reunion and also getting to spend some quality time with Mayhem, X, The Sisters Of Mercy, Refused, The Flaming Lips, Carcass, and Tomahawk. And, like, 311 and AFI and Three Days Grace. Too good to be true, right? Yes, actually. In November, only a month after Acid Bath dropped their incredible news, it was announced that Sick New World was permanently down with the sickness. The only explanation offered by the organizers was "unforeseen circumstances" (which really goes without saying, as nobody would have attempted to organize this in the first place if they had foreseen that it wouldn't happen), but observers pointed out financial difficulties behind the scenes: a guaranteed $5 mil each for Metallica and Linkin Park right off the top cut a pretty sizable slice out of the pie chart, and base ticket prices well in excess of $400 (with VIP packages pushing $2,000) discouraged most potential attendees from bothering to book. Not only was the ~$450 charge a massive increase from the previous year's $250, but it covered only nosebleed stadium seating for a single day of festival, and that's before you factor in travel, transport, lodging, meals, and other incidentals in one of the most expensive cities in the United States. And haven't we been hearing a lot lately about how you're not guaranteed a great live experience from a festival anyway? The whole thing very quickly went from "cool" to "cool on paper" to "the paper is too expensive".

The good news, for Rod and the rest of us, is that Acid Bath decided to have mercy and book a few more gigs to replace the one they lost. So far those seem to be progressing as planned. They've long vowed not to record again, but hey, maybe a real tour ain't out of the question.

Batushka - Batushka Wins Suit Of Batushka v. Batushka, Batushka Planning To Appeal

As we learned from Gorgoroth and Immortal, nothing says "black metal" quite like splitting open a bundle of ugly personal affairs before a global audience and dragging the nocturnal mystique of evil blargh metal into the pallid, sobering light of humiliating legal scrutiny. That seems especially true in the case of Batushka, who prior to the event of their very public spat had cultivated an image of unusually imposing obfuscation. Batushka enjoyed much acclaim following their first album, 2015's Litourgiya, and integral to this success was the maintenance of a mysterious presence and an obscure, sanctified aesthetic: the core of the band's identity is the (literal) iconography, raiment, and, most important, liturgical musical conventions of the Eastern Orthodox Church, which made their debut an unprecedented work of grand, imposing, and (un)holy black metal. That image lasted a couple of years until, right as we were rolling from 2018 into 2019, a schism erupted over the authorship of the true Batushka canon. Founder/songwriter/instrumentalist Krzysztof "Derph" Drabikowski and vocalist Bartłomiej "Bart" Krysiuk found themselves no longer in full communion with one another, and thus the band ruptured into two autocephalous branches that each excommunicated the other.

Thus there were two Batushkan Rites: one holding that divine inspiration floweth from Derph, one professing that the Spirit keepeth Bart in holy counsel. The synod of Bart claimed the band's website, Facebook page, and land holdings in Apulia and Calabria; the synod of Derph staked the YouTube channel and the lucrative Venetian trade routes. Front lines were drawn directly through Instagram, where each party issued a Tomos explicitly recognizing itself at the expense of the other. Quickly venue shifted to the courts, where Bart and Derph each accused the other of theft, sabotage, and heresy. Former drummer Marcin Bielemiuk stepped in to offer his own perspective, muddying the waters with portraiture not particularly flattering to either side. Konstantinos IX Monomachos attempted to curry favor with the papal legate of Leo IX, but Patriarch Michael I Keroularios refused to recede on certain crucial doctrinal matters and thus Konstantinos found himself bereft of popular support. Meanwhile, France aligned itself with Protestant Sweden, crossing religious lines to form an alliance against what it viewed as a dangerously overpowered Habsburg dynasty. Romania joined in the day before the armistice. The schism continued as each Batushka promulgated a new testament, then declared the other’s version apocryphal on their Bandcamps. Things were pretty confusing for a while, and as new music and tours arrived, the courtroom battle turned into a dreary slog; in mid-2019, a Polish court barred Bart from bearing the Batushka banner, then balked and walked back the ban, which had not in any event curtailed any activities.

At long last, after years of endless jokes, ceaseless confusion, and a torrential outpouring of other bands getting in on the name-swiping game, a court finally ruled (apparently not finally) that the Drabikowski incarnation would have exclusive rights to the name Batushka and Bart would henceforth be legally required to join the Roman Catholic Church instead and rewrite all his lyrics in Latin. In his statement, Bart pointed out that this judgment is not technically binding or enforceable and that it is still possible to appeal to have it overturned; he has since moved on to record and tour under the name Patriarkh, so perhaps this was merely a parting shot with no formal intent behind it, but boy howdy, wouldn't it be fun to do this again for another four years? If Bart doesn't appeal, however, we'll have to start finding some other punchlines. With this apparent resolution, the metal world has lost one of its current favorite dumpster fires. Every generation needs its messy trademark travails, so we can only hope that some brave souls will step in to fill these sizable shoes. At least we got four whole Batushka albums out of the bargain.

Pestilence - Testimony Of The AI

Revolutions in so-called artificial intelligence technology over the last several years have stirred much discord amongst parties interested in the creative arts: heated discourse has proliferated surrounding issues such as artistic integrity, accessibility, the authorship/ownership/plagiarism matrix, technological replacement, corporate commodification and devaluation of the arts, generational loss of technique, the ecological toll of powering AI software, and the fact that AI-generated artwork invariably looks ugly as shit. Some of this has spilled over into the metal world, where, as ever, our best and brightest have stood up to face head-on the unique challenges of a changing world; Dutch death metal veterans Pestilence engineered what was possibly the most prominent AI-related fiasco to hit heavy metal when they revealed the machine-made artwork for their latest album, Levels Of Perception.

Now, Pestilence didn't start the trouble themselves; no, 'twere Deicide what sparked this whole debate last year, so let's do what AI can't and give credit where it's due. The first rumblings came in February when Deicide announced Banished By Sin, revealing a suspiciously murky, nonsensical, and low-quality cover that became more uncanny the more you stared at it. Fans clocked it as AI right away, and so followed the first flood of gainsaying - but it was two months before frontman Glen Benton admitted that AI had been employed in the cover's creation. When he did, it was naturally accompanied by the most foolproof defense of the edgelord who hadn't thought five centimeters ahead: I did it to piss people off. Benton stated in an interview, "I like to do something different and provocative. [...] it was meant to stir." He continued with some rather loosely articulated gestures toward people who like art being entitled and AI being the wave of the future. We don't have the space to rebut every statement on the matter that Benton or Steve Asheim rolled off in the subsequent months, belabor the excruciating irony of their many non-defenses, or explain that when you do something controversial without a coherent purpose beyond "people won't like this and so it'll be fun," you can't get mad when people don't like it; suffice it to say that no convincing case escaped Deicide's brains.

We advertised Pestilence, though, and they definitely provided a more amusing spin on the subject. Mere days after Deicide's album announcement, Pestilence revealed their own new studio project, Levels Of Perception, heralded by a hideous regurgitation of the band members' likenesses. In response to the instant wave of revulsion, the band posted on Facebook in confusion, asking fans to explain what exactly was so much worse about the new art compared to the cool, colorful, highly memorable, and instantly recognizable cover of their 1989 classic Consuming Impulse. This is a situation in which the very act of asking the question reveals the fruitlessness of having the answer explained to you. To Pestilence's credit (?), after a solid week of being berated by irked fans, they reneged and replaced their slop sampler with a photographically achieved equivalent, with frontman Patrick Mameli expressing his unwillingness to let the controversy overtake his album's inherent value in spite of his general support for AI. His enthusiasm didn't subside, however: in December, he made a lengthy post on Facebook with a staunch defense of AI artwork, just to ensure that nobody ended the year without remembering that this guy who uses racial slurs and was a COVID skeptic also has other unreasonable opinions. The post was so poorly received that Mameli quickly resorted to deleting and then locking comments, eventually removing the post altogether - but not before Blut Aus Nord arrived to dunk on him for hastening the disappearance of manmade art and devaluing the works of real visual artists.

Well, we're not going to solve the philosophical and ethical questions of AI artwork right here and now, so we may as well move on, but we'll end on this: it's very curious that Patrick Mameli is convinced that his own music is so irreplaceable that the same process of enforced obsolescence will never be applied to him, especially considering that Levels Of Perception is entirely subpar re-recordings of old material. Come to think of it, the AI cover suited it.

Sepulcidal Slipknotcies - How Will I Tour Tomorrow... When I Don't Have A Drummer Today?

Welcome to the Drummer of the Year Award, the category where we recognize the drummer or drummers with the silliest career trajectory in the previous year. In 2024, Sepultura were thrown for a loop when longtime drummer Eloy Casagrande refused/resisted accompanying the band on their farewell tour. Casagrande's sudden departure after 13 years, and two months of tour prep, had the band turning circles, but fortunately they were able to lasso Greyson Nekrutman, erstwhile Suicidal Tendencies percussionist. Now, basic principles of math tell us that somebody was down one drummer, but you actually can't bring Suicidal down: within a week they'd recyco-d Jay Weinberg, who had spent the previous decade smashing stuff for Slipknot until his unceremonious firing. He even stepped into Infectious Grooves for good measure. Then one question remained: whom would Slipknot summon to keep the pulse of the maggots? Well, if you'll turn your attention to the masked man in the corner: yeah, it's Eloy Casagrande. Who knew. In the end, Sepultura, Suicidal Tendencies, and Slipknot just spent about a week trading drummers. At least Sepultura will get some satisfaction out of seeing Casagrande in a clown mask.

Wintersun - Time II Find A New Running Gag

Friends of Metal Storm, this is a sad moment in history. In our lamentably puny mortal lives, there are few constants, few reliable truths we can take solace in. For just shy of two decades - almost as long as we've been running the Metal Storm Awards - one of those truths was "Wintersun will never release Time and all statements to the contrary are bullshit." Well, a little over a year ago, we (and most of the band) were gobsmacked by the sudden announcement that Time II was 100% done. Even more unbelievable was the fact that the album actually got released later in the year. It was a sign of the end times. We are now bereft, you see, for no longer can we indulge in one of our most favorite jokes; Time II is here, it is real, it is a thing of the past already. Metal has lost one of its best punchline mainstays. Let's take a minute to remember all the fun times we've had with Wintersun.

Wintersun scored its first victory in the Biggest Letdown category in the 2009 Metal Storm Awards. 2009. Some of the people reading this weren't even born then. The saga of the Wintersauna captured our hearts a second time the next year, tripling the vote count to win Biggest Letdown at the 2010 Awards. By the 2011 Awards, the album was known to be split in half, and Time I took fourth in the category a whole eight months before its release. And it took fourth only because that was the same year that saw the release of Lulu, Illud Divinum Insanus, and Heritage - and Time I still beat out the absolute travesty that was Dedicated To Chaos, the very-not-bad-but-highly-controversial A Dramatic Turn Of Events, and Sounds Of A Playground Fading by fellow Letdown perennials In Flames (yeesh, 2011 sucked). Even after the release, we were annoyed - in the 2012 MSAs, Time I made fourth in Drama of the Year, second in Biggest Letdown (behind Ensiferum, as a matter of fact), and first in Biggest Surprise (referring, of course, to the actual release of the album, not its quality). But we were mollified a bit, so Wintersun didn't resurface until 2014, when they scored their first Drama win. They secured a contingent of write-ins for Biggest Letdown in 2016, and then came back in force in 2017: a second-place finish for Drama and a comfortable win for Biggest Letdown, The Forest Seasons being noted for its not being Time II more than any actual quality inherent to it. We dissolved our Drama category for a few years and things were quiet, but they picked up a second win in 2023. And now here we are again. Few artists have been so decorated in our Awards for so many of the wrong reasons. With the album finally out, surely Wintersun will never again give us reason to criticize them for their ridiculous sales tactics and production strategies.

Just kidding. We're never going to forget this. Those 19 years were dumb as hell.