Was really hoping for some new previously unreleased Anal Cunt. Maybe 2024 is the year.

Shall I mention that this is now the tenth year the MSA has had its Ambient / Drone / Noise category?

Your resident Shamaness is most grateful the idea resonated and has stuck after all this time!

Hey guys, I ran my script from last year to generate a Spotify playlist for each category of the MS Awards. Hope this helps y'all check all the great music in time before the voting closes

Alternative Metal
Ambient / Drone / Noise
Avantgarde / Experimental Metal
Black Metal
Death Metal
Djent / Math Metal
Doom Metal
Extreme Doom Metal
Extreme Progressive Metal
Folk / Pagan / Viking Metal
Gothic Metal
Grindcore
Hard Rock
Hardcore / Metalcore / Deathcore
Heavy / Traditional Metal
Industrial / Cyber / Electronic Metal
Melodeath / Extreme Power / Gothenburg Metal
Melodic Black Metal
Metalgaze
Post-Metal
Power Metal
Progressive Metal
Sludge Metal
Stoner Metal
Symphonic Metal
Thrash / Speed Metal
Clandestine Cut Of The Year
The Best Debut Album

I assume Twilight Force goes in power, rather than symphonic? Same with Gloryhammer?
And Midnight Odyssey in ambient again? Not meloblack?

Written by M C Vice on 02.02.2024 at 00:26

I assume Twilight Force goes in power, rather than symphonic? Same with Gloryhammer?
And Midnight Odyssey in ambient again? Not meloblack?

Yes to all those (power for the first two, ambient for Midnight Odyssey)

Written by 24emd on 01.02.2024 at 09:24

Power was noticeably weaker in 2023. I can probably only name 2 albums I enjoyed.

Which 2? I gave six 8s last year, and 3 of them were power. Only one was nominated, though, so I might be doing a write in for power.

Written by M C Vice on 02.02.2024 at 01:30

Written by 24emd on 01.02.2024 at 09:24

Power was noticeably weaker in 2023. I can probably only name 2 albums I enjoyed.

Which 2? I gave six 8s last year, and 3 of them were power. Only one was nominated, though, so I might be doing a write in for power.

I liked Twilight Force and Marc Hudson, everything else I heard varied from fine to not good. Might relisten to a few of the nominations, but from what I remember they were kinda meh.

Written by 24emd on 02.02.2024 at 05:26

Written by M C Vice on 02.02.2024 at 01:30

Written by 24emd on 01.02.2024 at 09:24

Power was noticeably weaker in 2023. I can probably only name 2 albums I enjoyed.

Which 2? I gave six 8s last year, and 3 of them were power. Only one was nominated, though, so I might be doing a write in for power.

I liked Twilight Force and Marc Hudson, everything else I heard varied from fine to not good. Might relisten to a few of the nominations, but from what I remember they were kinda meh.

I'll probably be voting Twilight Force. Listened to it and Sacred Outcry again today, Like the TF more. Listen to Gloryhammer tomorrow, to decide between the three.

Khan - Creatures, absolutely worth checking out for anyone that hasn’t yet. Very stoner but also very progressive.

Written by Liafev on 01.02.2024 at 23:54

Hey guys, I ran my script from last year to generate a Spotify playlist for each category of the MS Awards. Hope this helps y'all check all the great music in time before the voting closes

Written by Liafev on 01.02.2024 at 23:54

Hey guys, I ran my script from last year to generate a Spotify playlist for each category of the MS Awards. Hope this helps y'all check all the great music in time before the voting closes

Absolute legend.

Aetherian - At Storm's Edge! But, can I go against my boys in Insomnium...

Written by musclassia on 01.02.2024 at 18:11

Written by Shmelevod on 01.02.2024 at 16:52

Written by RaduP on 01.02.2024 at 16:36

Written by Shmelevod on 01.02.2024 at 16:22

It would make sense if the nominees would have been selected based on the rating, otherwise, it's just a matter of staff's taste.

Then skip the awards altogether and use this for the top 10 death metal albums of 2023. Do you also think movies should be nominated for Oscars based on Imdb scores?

Never cared about Oscar, but I guess the correct answer is 'no', since the Oscar committee and IMDB website are different institutions with different logic, while MS awards is the matter of the MS community. Anyway your statement doesn't explain how come bands like Astral Tomb have been nominated and Vomitory, Dying Fetus, and alike were simply ignored as if they didn't do anything this year. Do you really think it's justified?

As for your advice, yeah, I guess I have no choice, but to skip the voting this year, although I was waiting for it.

... The nominations are a group effort comprising people with distinct musical interests, ... the more OSDM-inclined wings of the MSA committee evidently showed a preference for the latter.

Thank you for this explanation. I can't say that I'm 100% agree with your argument on bigger and smaller bands but now at least I get the idea of how the nominee list is comprised.

Actually, I don't think that nominating candidates solely based on ratings is a good idea. Also, I don't believe that, say, Vomitory makes it to the top ten albums of the year. It's more about not seeing clear criteria for excluding many notable albums from the list, and I've taken it as an "in your face" from the people who made the list.

Written by Liafev on 01.02.2024 at 23:54

Hey guys, I ran my script from last year to generate a Spotify playlist for each category of the MS Awards. Hope this helps y'all check all the great music in time before the voting closes.

This is absolutely awesome. Thank you!

Written by Shmelevod on 02.02.2024 at 16:27

Thank you for this explanation. I can't say that I'm 100% agree with your argument on bigger and smaller bands but now at least I get the idea of how the nominee list is comprised.

Actually, I don't think that nominating candidates solely based on ratings is a good idea. Also, I don't believe that, say, Vomitory makes it to the top ten albums of the year. It's more about not seeing clear criteria for excluding many notable albums from the list, and I've taken it as an "in your face" from the people who made the list.

That's quite fair. There is definitely something of a temptation to "stick it to the big bands", given that so many other metal publications' year-end lists are basically just the Grammys for people who acknowledge the existence of black metal, and given how much we like to pride ourselves on giving more exposure to underground artists. But we also acknowledge that promoting smaller acts shouldn't come at the expense of covering the big names, because we like those bands, too, and it would be obnoxious, bad-faith egotism to ignore the highest-profile releases just because it's not sufficiently cool to like things that everybody likes. We have had lots of discussions over the years about how to effectively balance these two things, and we probably will continue to do so.

And it's true that since the rest of the world doesn't see our selection process it can often appear that we purposefully slighted some band or another - the death metal category this year is a great example, since there's no Cannibal Corpse, Autopsy, Dying Fetus, Kataklysm, etc., and yet lots of lesser-known bands. It's easy for me to forget that that can look like a calculated statement. In actuality, we're all just compiling the releases we liked best; I definitely liked Cannibal Corpse and I would have been comfortable having them nominated, but it didn't work out. I haven't been particularly impressed by the last couple of Dying Fetus albums, I've never really liked Kataklysm all that much, and I was just so busy that I never even got the chance to listen to Autopsy (other people did and just weren't sufficiently enamored). I don't meant to go to any great lengths to justify the roster of nominees, but I think you raise some valid points and I just want to clarify that we did consider those artists, and I've never made an executive decision to feature or not feature a particular artist, nor do I expect I ever will. It all just comes down to staff consensus, and sometimes that surprises us as much as it does everyone else.

For me, the "MSA results" are who gets nominated as much as who actually wins: all the final vote tally does is confirm what we already know, which is that lots and lots of people like Amorphis, Insomnium, Kreator, whoever the big tickets are. It can be exciting if there's a big upset and there have been times when an up-and-coming artist toppled the genre heavyweights, which I think makes a very cool moment for those bands and for us, so that's not to take away from the fact that if you won you've done a good job (even if people are remembering the good job you did in 1994 and not whatever you released in the last year). And I do love being able to say that, for example, Thy Catafalque are four-time winners: I like building a local legend. But the winners usually are telegraphed from the very beginning, so if you focus on that aspect more than a little bit it can be discouraging (especially on our end, given the work we put into this).

Getting an album nominated, on the other hand, means we get to write a fun little paragraph about them and pitch them to the world, and we get to be satisfied about at least sharing the albums we really liked even if nobody actually takes us up on those recommendations. For the whole month, the ten albums in every category are equal with each other, no matter how many fans they have on the site, and even after the winners are declared, they still have the prestige of having been nominated. Well, I say "prestige", as if we hold so much power in the universe, but I, at least, tend to remember those albums more years later, and I do think there's something cool about saying that Muyubyosha and Ardwisur are just as worthy of being nominated as Obituary and Katatonia (more so, if you ask me).

In other words, Awards season sort of ends for me once the voting starts, just because the best part is seeing all the nominations go public. The primary goal of the MSAs is and always will be for us and everyone else to discover lots of new music, and it's always a highly rewarding process for me in that regard.

^ There are always a few that complain about the nominations. Nothing surprising here.

Written by Archie 666 on 02.02.2024 at 19:11

Why is it so important to some of you who is and who isn't nominated in whichever category here on this website? Do some of you have no lives? Nothing else to be concerned about? What's with the anger and dissapointment? Don't like what's nominated? There's a Write-in vote option. Did you not know that? You're not sheep. Or are you?

I have no life and I am a sheep in probably all aspects of the life I do not have. I don‘ t mind which band is nominated in which category. It‘s a great starting point to find a name and album I already know and then I can start finding out how much I like the other suggestions that have been put in that category.
Yet I am surprised about my own emotional attachment and interest in seeing one or the other win.

And this came to mind:

Richard: Geoffrey, I am worried about the future of the entire festival. Now: what is the point of putting on a play if no one comes to see it?
Geoffrey: Which would you prefer: an empty house with a great play, or a full house with a piece of garbage?
Richard: GARBAGE! GARBAGE! I want GARBAGE!

Would Slytherin go in black or meloblack? I'm thinking meloblack.

Written by Liafev on 01.02.2024 at 23:54

Hey guys, I ran my script from last year to generate a Spotify playlist for each category of the MS Awards. Hope this helps y'all check all the great music in time before the voting closes

Thanks man you are a genius!!!

Almost a decade after I deleted my profile, I am back and ready to party... listening party.

Written by M C Vice on 03.02.2024 at 01:35

Would Slytherin go in black or meloblack? I'm thinking meloblack.

I'm gonna be honest, I'm not sure any of us even heard this album! Giving it a listen now, I'd say meloblack

Written by Shmelevod on 01.02.2024 at 15:33

Written by zach_buddie on 01.02.2024 at 12:33

Unreal that Dying Fetus wasn’t nominated… I was under the impression that their newest was beloved. Maybe just me?

The whole list of nominees in the death metal category is just some kind of a joke

Not that I want to repeat what Nejde said, he crafted really well, but I've got a slightly different bite on this - it's good to have a pile of noms....higher the noms stiffer the competition.

Also, you should appreciate the fact that how tough is to stack all nominations under different genres at a time when everyone is wrestling their schedule. I don't think you would have afford to contribute(like MSA) for this selfless voluntary work.

I did have many disagreements on 'picks' and even 'winners' before, but nothing throwing flying labels like "joke" subdued the efforts pulled in.

Where would Ignea go this year, symphonic or prog? Would Lumsk count as folk or prog? I assume None is meloblack, rather than black? Are Enslaved prog or black this time?

I think this was the best year for Metal in a very long time. Crazy amount of strong releases

This year i don"t have any idea what to vote for, haven"t really kept up with new releases.
at least i"ll have a bunch of candidates for Tech Death when the 2024 awards start

Written by M C Vice on 04.02.2024 at 01:17

Where would Ignea go this year, symphonic or prog? Would Lumsk count as folk or prog? I assume None is meloblack, rather than black? Are Enslaved prog or black this time?

Ignea were up for consideration in prog and None for meloblack, and Enslaved are nominated in ex prog. Not sure about Lumsk - I think you can vote it wherever it feels more suitable for you

Ah, Metal Storm Awards season: my absolute favourite time of the year on the site. For two reasons:

1) I get to check out a curated list of awesome albums I've more than likely missed in the previous 12 months (big shout to the staff again) and
2) I can always be sure of a stream of whining about the 'wrong' albums being nominated or being in the 'wrong' category.

Never fails to disappoint

I just became aware that the Grammy's does not even have a category for best metal album. The Grammy's are a total joke, obviously, and it's probably why I didn't know that before, but hot damn! To not even have a category (though there is "Best Metal Performance") ...

Very thankful for the MSA! Already found several solid bands I didn't know about

Written by purplejesus on 05.02.2024 at 07:15

I just became aware that the Grammy's does not even have a category for best metal album. The Grammy's are a total joke, obviously, and it's probably why I didn't know that before, but hot damn! To not even have a category (though there is "Best Metal Performance") ...

Very thankful for the MSA! Already found several solid bands I didn't know about

To be fair I think we'd be better at nominating stuff for a lot of other Grammy categories themselves