What is Portal Avow?

Written by Karlabos on 01.02.2022 at 13:06

Well, I listen only to the nominees of the categories I'm interested in. Ain't gonna listen to no trash metal

thanks to this i have to agree

Written by musclassia on 01.02.2022 at 08:32

Written by theFIST on 01.02.2022 at 03:46

Should The Crown Royal Destroyer go into thrash, or melodeath?

I think probably melodeath

Written by theFIST on 01.02.2022 at 15:08

What is Portal Avow?

Death

Great, I was so hyped for this (as every year, since I joined). I didn't get to listen to so much new stuff during the year, so I always make sure I use february for checking out what I (potentially) missed. Thanks to the MS staff for putting this together every year!

Btw, I love the fancy MSA button at the top bar, really convenient addition.

Good job staff pals... Cool.

Written by Eternity'sChild on 01.02.2022 at 15:58

Great, I was so hyped for this (as every year, since I joined). I didn't get to listen to so much new stuff during the year, so I always make sure I use february for checking out what I (potentially) missed. Thanks to the MS staff for putting this together every year!

Btw, I love the fancy MSA button at the top bar, really convenient addition.

Indeed. I remember in the other years we had to navigate to home then click the banner or something

Let's see...

Alternative Metal: went for Trivium - In The Court Of The Dragon. Catchy, heavy and their best album since Shogun and even possibly their best to date. A great surprise.

Ambient / Drone / Noise: The Body - I’ve Seen All I Need To See. Not much into this genre but this album is really good.

Avantgarde / Experimental Metal: Thy Catafalque - Vadak. My album of year overall. Enough said.

Black Metal: Kanonenfieber - Menschenmühle. Theres a couple of album that could rival with this one. Wolves In The Throne Room, Stormkeep, Spectral Wound and Yoth Iria. Yoth Iria i consider more of a dark metal band than a BM band per se. Stormkeep is featured on melodic BM and WITTR is not an option. Since i like Kanonenfieber so much went with it instead of a "write in" option. Definitely a great album.

Death Metal: 1914 - Where Fear And Weapons Meet. Yeah i mentioned in the shout box that i consider these guys more a BM band, but since they're here might as well vote for them. Great album.

Djent / Math Metal: Vildhjarta - Måsstaden Under Vatten. Another genre i'm really not into that much, but this album caught me by surprise and spinned quite a bit for a couple of weeks when it came out.

Doom Metal: Monolord - Your Time To Shine. Write in option. Great riffs and melodies, the ending riff on To Each Their Own is larger than life.

Extreme Doom Metal: Skepticism - Companion. Easily my pick of the year when it comes to funeral doom and alike. The song Passage is all you need to hear to be convinced.

Extreme Progressive Metal: Rivers Of Nihil - The Work. From the options it's the one i enjoyed the most.

Folk / Pagan / Viking Metal: Thyrfing - Vanagandr. The song Rötter is so damn good. Easy choice.

Gothic Metal: Impure Wilhelmina - Antidote. These guys are not 100% gothic metal but i'm putting them in it anyways. Think of Katatonia with a smudge of post metal and even some bursts of black metal sprinkled in. Catchy, emotional, heavy af at times. The songs Solitude and Gravel spinned all year.

Grindcore: Lock Up - The Dregs Of Hades. Not much to say here. Best one from the options.

to be continued...

Really surprised Knocked Loose's new EP wasn't in the hardcore section, had to write it in, best hardcore release this year for sure.

My Best Of votes:
Alternative Metal: Wheel - Resident Human, Ambient / Drone / Noise: Big Brave - Vital, Avantgarde / Experimental Metal: Plebeian Grandstand - Rien Ne Suffit, Black Metal: Funeral Mist - Deiform, Death Metal: Archspire - Bleed The Future, Djent / Math Metal: Vola - Witness, Doom Metal: Vouna - Atropos, Extreme Doom Metal: Worm - Foreverglade, Extreme Progressive Metal: First Fragment - Gloire Éternelle, Folk / Pagan / Viking Metal: Cân Bardd - Devoured By The Oak, Gothic Metal: Unto Others - Strength, Grindcore: Fawn Limbs - Darwin Falls, Hard Rock: Khirki - Κτηνωδία, Hardcore / Metalcore / Deathcore: Knocked Loose - A Tear In The Fabric Of Life, Heavy / Melodic Metal: Silver Talon - Decadence And Decay, Industrial / Cyber / Electronic Metal: Borgne - Temps Mort, Melodeath / Extreme Power / Gothenburg Metal: Be'lakor - Coherence, Melodic Black Metal: Ethereal Shroud - Trisagion, Metalgaze: So Hideous - None But A Pure Heart Can Sing, Post-Metal: Der Weg Einer Freiheit - Noktvrn, Power Metal: Eternity's End - Embers Of War, Progressive Metal: Dvne - Etemen Ænka, Sludge Metal: LLNN - Unmaker, Stoner Metal: Spaceslug - Memorial, Symphonic Metal: Aquilus - Bellum I, Thrash Metal: Paranorm - Empyrean.

Clandestine Cut Of The Year: Antrisch - Expedition I : Dissonanzgrat, The Best Album Artwork: Archspire - Bleed the Future, The Best Cover Song: Harakiri For The Sky - Song To Say Goodbye, The Best Debut Album: Iotunn - Access All Worlds, The Biggest Letdown: Sculptured - The Liminal Phase.

You guys are too fast. I listened to the nominees in like... one category by now

EPs eligible for write ins, or albums only? Never been sure. A no would make one of my choices easier, though.

Written by M C Vice on 02.02.2022 at 00:22

EPs eligible for write ins, or albums only? Never been sure. A no would make one of my choices easier, though.

Yes, EPs are eligible, there are EPs on the lists.

Continuing...

Hard Rock: Jess And The Ancient Ones - Vertigo. Not a genre i look up to anymore. Heard this album because of the cover and enjoyed it. Not a greaaaat album, but enjoyable.

Hardcore / Metalcore / Deathcore: Whitechapel - Kin. Not my fav Whitechapel album, but i enjoyed their versatility and desire to include new stuff in it.

Heavy / Melodic Metal: Iron Maiden - Senjutsu. People often forget these dudes are in their 60s and still writing compelling heavy metal. It's a perfect album? No, but it has some awesome tracks and heart in it. Solos in The Parchment are magnificent.

Industrial / Cyber / Electronic Metal: Fear Factory - Aggression Continuum. FF are one trick ponies and they're inconsistent. Fortunately this one is slightly above average and has a couple of songs i'd easily put in FF best of.

Melodeath / Extreme Power / Gothenburg Metal: Carcass - Torn Arteries. No contest here. Better than Surgical Steel. This is their best album since Heartwork imo.

Melodic Black Metal: Stormkeep - Tales Of Othertime. At this point who isn't familiar with this band? it's funny because in the early-00's people were complaining there were too many melodic black metal bands. And now this Stormkeep album gets all this praise. And totally deserves it. The Seer went directly into my best of BM of all time playlist.

Metalgaze: Vallendusk - Heralds Of Strife. Heard these guys on Black Metal Promotion YT channel daily stream and went on replaying it for a straight month. Easy choice.

Post-Metal: Amenra - De Doorn. Amenra takes the cake easily. This was a grower for me. Initially i didn't think it was a worthy successor of VI, but slowly grew to enter my top 5 of 2021. Der Weg Einer Freiheit - Noktvrn deserves a shout out too.

Power Metal: Helloween - Helloween. Black metal and power metal were strong in 2021. Helloween, Blazon Stone and Brainstorm released 3 of my fav records of the year. Helloween is a fantastic record. Brilliant minds collaborating to record one of their best albums ever.

Progressive Metal: Dordeduh - Har. I'd say prog metal had a down year in 2021. Not much to hold on to, at least from the albums i've heard. This album was a breath of fresh air when i heard it the first time and still plays once in a while. Not great, but better than all the options here.

Sludge Metal: Urne - Serpent & Spirit. Easy choice here, didn't hear anything even close to Urne's album.

Stoner Metal: Green Lung - Black Harvest. Yeah i know Mastodon will win and probably if that album had less filler i'd go for them too. But Green Lung's Black Harvest is overall superior.

Symphonic Metal: Aquilus - Bellum I. Again from the choices presented this is the one i enjoyed the most. That's about it.

Thrash Metal: Demiser - Through the Gate Eternal. Write in option. Fast, catchy, relentless, evil and dirty. Black thrash ungodliness. Not sure how this isn't an option, but yeah please do yourselves a favor and check it out.

Clandestine Cut Of The Year: Tower Hill – Fighting Spirits. NWOBHM style first demo.

The Best Album Artwork: Helloween - Helloween. No contest here i think. Elia Kantor is fantastic.

The Best Cover Song: Ereb Altor - Sacrifice [Bathory cover]. From one of the best EPs of 2021.

The Best Debut Album: Stormkeep - Tales Of Othertime. Struggled a bit with this one. Between this and Yoth Iria, went with Stormkeep who took the metal scene by...storm.

The Best DVD: Swallow The Sun - 20 Years Of Gloom, Beauty And Despair - Live In Helsinki. I think this was the only DVD i saw the entire year. Pretty good visuals.

The Best Video: Amenra - De Evenmens. So fitting for the song and atmosphere. Even when it comes to visual art, these guys are geniuses.

The Biggest Letdown: Moonspell - Hermitage. I'm very demanding of the bands i love and Moonspell have been very inconsistent the last decade or so. Alpha Noir was bland, Extinct was good, 1755 was okayish, Hermitage is bad. Songs are weightless and forgettable. The band is kind of in a crossroad and doesn't seem to know where to turn. Probably their worst output ever.
Gojira and Portal were other similar letdowns.

The Biggest Surprise: Trivium - In The Court Of The Dragon. I could choose Stormkeep, Der Weg Einer Freiheit or Belore for this award. But the fact is that after Shogun, Trivium went into an everlasting streak of bad to average albums resulting in me losing complete interest in the band. Then i heard The Phalanx (first single of this record) and went "wow this is good". And then the whole album simply rips with great songs, catchy choruses, fantastic sound production and even a very cool artwork. It's like the band was brought back from the dead.

Special awards: You, for being an awesome member of the Metal community!

Written by [user id=104220] on 02.02.2022 at 12:51

Clandestine Cut Of The Year: Belore - Artefacts. Summoning worship. Great debut album.

Not a debut album, and also a full length album released on a major label.

Not sure you understand what a Clandestine Cut is. These are EPs and demos from up-and-coming bands, either self-released or on small DIY labels.

Written by RaduP on 02.02.2022 at 13:22

Written by [user id=104220] on 02.02.2022 at 12:51

Clandestine Cut Of The Year: Belore - Artefacts. Summoning worship. Great debut album.

Not a debut album, and also a full length album released on a major label.

Not sure you understand what a Clandestine Cut is. These are EPs and demos from up-and-coming bands, either self-released or on small DIY labels.

Updated.

Not sure about 2021...but perhaps we should all start giving 10s to the new Iced Earth album and make it best album of 2022... just to mess up with the Matrix! )

Written by Duck Dodgers on 02.02.2022 at 14:45

Not sure about 2021...but perhaps we should all start giving 10s to the new Iced Earth album and make it best album of 2022... just to mess up with the Matrix! )

It's already received a few 10s and there's a long way to go to the end if the year, so who knows

Written by Dark Shadow on 02.02.2022 at 15:02

Anyway, little by little, I feel that we are losing the main direction of the concept of metal music on this website. I suggest you be relax and name the 2022 Metal Storm Awards as 2022 Pop Wind Awards.

So let me be clear, just because the staff skipped 2 albums that you felt they needed to be there, that makes the rest of the albums... pop?
So those albums would likely be in Melodic Death (Hypocrisy) and Black (Archgoat) categories.
So are any of the 10 albums nominated in both categories pop?
Interesting. Mind telling me which ones?

I'm trying to find the pop albums among the nominees

Written by Dark Shadow on 02.02.2022 at 15:02

Even after 2020, I felt that you were directing the political views of the visitors of this website, which gave me the feeling that maybe you are supported somewhere in the governments of your countries. (I may be wrong about this)

We are indeed supported by the Great governments of the US, Sweden, Norway, Romania, Brazil, Germany, and any I might have forgot. Big thanks to all the world governments for supporting this nonprofit site.

Written by Karlabos on 02.02.2022 at 15:36

I'm trying to find the pop albums among the nominees

They're all actually pop.

And we committed the heinous crime of nominating pop albums, but not Magdalena Bay's Mercurial Love, THE best pop album of 2021.

So, first 3 categories are done.
My votes are:
Chelsea Wolfe & Converge (maybe a bit stretching it, cause heard it once just yesterday, but I think it may be better than my other pick - Soen)
Wolvennest (this band is so good. wrong category though)
Thy Catafalque (well, obviously, probably also album of the year).

I did skip some of the stuff (come on, I'm not going to listen to The Slot - their previous albums was one of the worst ones I have *EVER* heard - and trust me, I've heard a lot), but only the ones which were definitely not gonna get my vote, so I think it's fair. From avant-garde category I listened to all, however.
Resinator was the biggest surprise, it was really great - will listen to it in the future. Wouldn't have found out about it if it wasn't for the awards.
And Nishaiar was good too, I mean, Ethopian blackgaze, how did I miss this?

Hi guys! in the context of MS awards, do you consider the band ERRA in the math metal or metalcore category? MS' page suggest them as Metalcore but i would submit their last album in Math Metal category, in fact that sound it's more near to this genre. What do you think?

Just finished listening to the Demon Head album. That album being in the "hard rock" category is so confusing, nothing says hard rock about this IMO, there are elements of goth rock, doom metal and psychedelia, and like you say even black metal. Even your presentation of the album does not scream "hard rock".

Nice discovery, off to listening to other candidates.

Written by RaduP on 02.02.2022 at 15:45

They're all actually pop.

And we committed the heinous crime of nominating pop albums, but not Magdalena Bay's Mercurial Love, THE best pop album of 2021.

Urgh, poser.

Written by Dark Shadow on 02.02.2022 at 15:02

Such a BIG SHAME... There are no Hypocrisy & Archgoat in the main List???!!!

For many years I didn't want talk but now I should BREAK the SILENCE...

In the last 5 years, I have slowly realized that you friends seem to like trying to divert the main concept of metal music to irrelevant directions.

The name of this website is Metal Storm, but little by little, you have bands registered here, whose style is not metal at all, and in fact, they are pop-style bands that, unfortunately, they published their musics with famous metal music labels.

Even after 2020, I felt that you were directing the political views of the visitors of this website, which gave me the feeling that maybe you are supported somewhere in the governments of your countries. (I may be wrong about this)

Anyway, little by little, I feel that we are losing the main direction of the concept of metal music on this website. I suggest you be relax and name the 2022 Metal Storm Awards as 2022 Pop Wind Awards.

Thank you for all your efforts in the past years. I am a fan of this website, so I am and I have the right to protest. I hope you understand

Thank you for your input. Of course you have every right to protest and voice your opinion like everyone else who is a user here. I believe, however, that your criticism is somewhat unfounded. The fact that we did not nominate Hypocrisy and Archgoat does not mean that the website is turning pop. I am not going to go into detail about why we did not nominate certain albums, these things are subjective anyway. And we have write-in votes for you and everyone else to use.

Of course there is no political agenda and we are not supported by any government (we wish). It is true that the website has been changing its stance to a stricter "no tolerance policy towards intolerant people". I am sorry but being an intolerant person and a bigot is not metal at all (if that's what you are implying) and never has been. Metal has always been about inclusion; in fact, it is partly due to this mentality of inclusion that we metallers have allowed shitty people and ideologies to creep in and it is our own fault. But Metal Storm was never friendly to bigotry and never will be. Everyone is equal here and everyone is accepted as long as they respect their fellow users. This is the only rule really. And everyone who does not abide by this rule is unwelcome. Plain and simple. If you consider this to be "pop", well, you are wrong. It is actually metal as fuck.

Musically, the direction of Metal Storm is and always will be metal. We are more open than other websites to more experimental styles of metal music, but metal is more than 95% of the content here. We actively support and offer exposure to underground metal bands and labels. We don't post "favourable" reviews because a label asks us to. We don't have ads. We don't make money, we actually pay for this website out of our own pockets. We love this community and we want to have as many people involved as possible. We make many mistakes and we want you to let us know what they are so that we can improve. But we have no agenda. Apart for the love of this music, there is no other agenda. There is so much metal content here to choose from. Especially in the last two years that you are referring to, the content has increased fivefold or even more. I hear what you say, we have opened up our horizon a little bit, it's true, but there is definitely something for everyone here. And the person telling you that is me, probably the most traditional metal guy in this team and the least "open-minded".

Written by nikarg on 02.02.2022 at 17:21

And the person telling you that is me, probably the most traditional metal guy in this team and the least "open-minded".

You sure?

Written by nikarg on 02.02.2022 at 17:21

Great Gandhi impersonation

Nik, your patience skills are out of this world. Whenever I see yet another person accusing people of having agendas, political or otherwise, over trivial crap, the only thing I want to say is "oh, fuck off". But you take the time to explain without even the slightest hint of condescension. That's... something else. I don't have a clue how you do that

The guy feels troll (ish), I wouldn't worry.
Let's see if he comes back to defend his point of view. I have my doubts.

Written by Deadsoulman on 02.02.2022 at 17:43

Nik, your patience skills are out of this world. Whenever I see yet another person accusing people of having agendas, political or otherwise, over trivial crap, the only thing I want to say is "oh, fuck off". But you take the time to explain without even the slightest hint of condescension. That's... something else. I don't have a clue how you do that

Thanks, but there have been times when I lost my patience and was rude, and I regret that. I mostly try to be polite because I want other people to be polite to me. And, regardless of whether Black Emperor is right or wrong in what he said, he was not rude.
Anyway, it is easy to have manners; they are free. Lemmy used to say that.

Written by RaduP on 02.02.2022 at 17:33

You sure?

That's the exception to the rule