Written by:	Promonex
Published:	March 16, 2013

Thanks to everyone who voted in the Metal Storm Awards this past February! Perhaps some of your top albums won their categories, and perhaps you discovered some bands among this year's nominees. We know everyone tries to be diligent and listen to EVERY album nominated in their choice genre categories. Right? RIGHT? Okay, maybe you don't have time to spin every single record, and we understand that. So here we have the Staff Picks: we staff and elite at Metal Storm pooled our collective love of metal music to select the best records you may or may not have heard from this past year. So before saying goodbye to 2012, be sure to find your favorite genres below and check out that album.

Here's The Best Metal Albums of the Year as selected by the Metal Storm Staff:


2012 Metal Storm Staff Picks

	Alternative Metal Klone - The Dreamer's Hideaway		Avantgarde/Experimental Metal Metallic Taste Of Blood - Metallic Taste Of Blood
	Black Metal The Great Old Ones - Al Azif		Death Metal Ævangelist - De Masticatione Mortuorum In Tumulis
	Djent/Math Metal Bend The Sky - Origins		Doom Metal Abske Fides - Abske Fides
	Extreme Doom Metal Faal - The Clouds Are Burning		Folk/Pagan/Viking Metal Dordeduh - Dar De Duh
	Gothic Metal The Foreshadowing - Second World		Grindcore Anaal Nathrakh - Vanitas
	Hard Rock Jess And The Ancient Ones - Jess And The Ancient Ones		Hardcore/Metalcore/Deathcore Wolfbrigade - Damned
	Heavy/Melodic Metal Christian Mistress - Possession		Industrial/Cyber/Electronic Metal Blut Aus Nord - 777 - Cosmosophy
	Melodeath/Extreme Power/Gothenburg Metal Kälter - Ubuntu		Melodic Black Metal/Metalgaze Taranis - Kingdom
	Post-Metal Sunpocrisy - Samaroid Dioramas		Power Metal Orden Ogan - To The End
	Progressive Metal Enochian Theory - Life... And All It Entails		Sludge/Stoner Metal Royal Thunder - CVI
	Symphonic Metal Aberrant Vascular - Aegisthus		Thrash Metal Deathhammer - Onward To The Pits
	Debut Royal Thunder - CVI		Clandestine Cut Of The Year Spelljammer - Vol. II

Happy with the results? We know a lot of the bands, who have taken home an award in either the fan's or the staff's vote, are. Of course we don't want to withhold their messages. Here goes:


Be'lakor, your winners in The Best Melodic Death Metal Album category:

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We're honored to have won this award and would like to thank the many metal storm users who have supported us over the years. We're already writing new material, and this process is looking like being an exciting and rewarding one.

Cheers,
The Be'lakor guys.

Xandria, your winners in The Best Symphonic Metal Album category:

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Hello makers and readers of Metal Storm!
We really appreciate that you have chosen our album Neverworld's End as the best symphonic metal release in 2012! Thank you very much!
We put so much sweat and heart's blood into this album and we are so very happy about the amazing feedback it gets!
Thank you and hope to see you on tour!

Gerit, Marco, Manuela, Philip and Steven

Kälter, staff's winners in The Best Melodic Death Metal Album category:

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2012 has been an intense year for Kälter with the release of our 2nd full-lengh album Ubuntu and the release of our first videoclip. We devoted our life to this amazing musical project since 2007 and it's really nice to see that our music is enjoyed all around the world. We just want to dedicate this message to all the members of the Kälter Tribe! We love you and we will always share our passion with you. Finally, we just want to thanks all the team at MetalStorm.net for believing in us.

Orden Ogan, staff's winners in The Best Power Metal Album category:

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We are absolutely overwhelmed by the worldwide success of To The End and all those great words about that record by journalists and fans alike. Hope to see you all on tour soon!

Attila Bakos of Taranis, staff's winners in The Best Melodic Black Metal Album category:

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I was very surprised when I found out that my album was nominated for the Metal Storm Awards 2012. I composed the songs for Kingdom 12 years ago, and I wasn't even sure if this music would find its place amongst the mass of releases out there. I'm very happy it did, so thank you all for your votes and kind words, it gives me strength to carry on. I'm working on a new material now, which I plan to release later this year. It's inevitably different from Kingdom, but I still do metal, and I still like epicness. I left the black metal roots, the new songs are more peaceful and balanced, exploring the realms of post-rock/doom/ambient with a taste of folk, as usual. I'll only use clean vocals in my native language, Hungarian. So keep your eyes open! Labels, you are welcomed as well.

Enochian Theory, staff's winners in The Best Progressive Metal Album category:

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Thank you to everyone who is spreading the word about Enochian Theory and for voting our latest record as the best progressive metal album of the year. It is quite unbelievable!

We are very, very pleased to have been given this award and to be receiving such amazing support from the readers and writers of this very supportive website.

We are genuinely humbled and amazed by this...

Thank everyone who has listened to the record...please keep supporting the band!

We are working hard to build our structures.

Watch the skies...

Debemur Morti Productions, the label of Blut Aus Nord, winners in The Best Industrial Metal Album category in BOTH the fan and the staff vote:

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I'd like to express my gratitude to the whole Metal Storm staff for providing quality content over the years. We, at DMP, are very much honoured to see some of our releases ending in the top awards, even more when both staff and readers decide to pick Blut Aus Nord as the best of the best for 2012 !

The Great Old Ones, staff's winners in The Best Black Metal Album category:

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We're stoked to learn that Al Azif is selected The Best Black Metal Album of the Year! Thank you guys! We're getting so much support from the staff and all of you on Metal Storm since the album release, we can't thank you enough. Catch us on tour this year and let's share some beers!

Metallic Taste Of Blood, staff's winners in The Best Avantgarde Metal category:

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Wow! We are really honoured and astonished to be nominated by metalstorm.net! Keep up the great work guys!

The Foreshadowing, the staff choice for Best Gothic Metal release, had this to say:

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Hails from The Foreshadowing! Let us say it's a great honour for us that Second World has been chosen as best gothic metal album of 2012 from the Metal Storm staff! And we would also thank all the fans who rated our album as their best one! This makes all of our efforts and sacrifices trustworthy and successful, since it's an important feedback coming from one of the best metal webzine in the world, therefore we appreciate it!!! Keep up supporting our doomy and mournful tunes!

Horns up!
The Foreshadowing

Bend The Sky, staff's winners in The Best Djent/Math Metal Album category:

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We're overwhelmed with the responses Origins has received!

To be in the same top 10 as Meshuggah, Skyharbor and many other great bands just blows our minds every day.

We cannot thank everyone enough for sharing our music and helping us along the way, fans and metalstorm users/staff, we are so grateful for everything! Thanks!!

We'll also be releasing an EP Observatory on 31st March. We hope you check it out, available free from our bandcamp page.

Klone, staff's winners in The Best Alternative Metal category:

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We're really happy, it's the first time that an international webzine choose us as the best album of the year; so we're really proud of it! Thanks to you and all the fans who have voted for us.

Faal, staff's winners in The Best Extreme Doom Metal category:

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We as Faal are honored that our latest album is chosen as the best extreme doom metal album from 2012 by the Metalstorm staff! Especially when you see the other bands in the list!

Edmond AKA Hupogrammos of Dordeduh, the staff choice for The Best Folk Metal album, replied this:

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It's great news for us and it makes us all very happy to gain such interest and appreciation for our album. Many thanks to the Metal Storm team and to all the people around the word that voted for us. These kinds of gestures bring us extra motivation and keep us alive. Greetings to all Metal Storm readers!

Newcomers Spelljammer had this to say about the band's Clandestine Cut Of The Year staff pick:

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Wow, what an honor to have Vol II chosen as Clandestine Cut of the Year. We really appreciate everyone who voted for us and of course every one who has supported us by buying our album. Thank you also to Metal Storm for picking us! This is really cool and very unexpected.

Matron Thorn of Ævangelist, staff's winners in The Best Death Metal Album category:

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We are honored and enthusiastic to be recognized for this and we can assure you that this first movement is only an omen of the things to come.

Their label I, Voidhanger even has shared some exciting news for Ævangelist's fans:

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We are very pleased to hear that the staff and readers of Metal Storm liked Ævangelist's De Masticatione Mortuorum In Tumulis so much. We have licensed the album to Blood Harvest Records, which is going to release it as a gatefold 2-LP with bonus track in the near future. But De Masticatione... is just the beginning, as the band is ready to climb higher peaks. In next months we are going to release a limited 7" EP with 2 new and exclusive songs to celebrate Ævangelist's live debut in late June, on the stage of the Martyrdoom Festival in Brooklyn, NY. The band will also contribute an exclusive track to the next chapter of Yogsothery, our series of tributes to the Lovecraftian spirit. The song, a 14-minute monolith of dark and annihilating chaos, has already been recorded under the title of "Abstract Catharsis", and is the sonic statement of Ævangelist's perennial quest for new abysscapes of trascendent evil to explore.

Sounds spooky, eh?


And we'd like to hand out another award for The One Reply That Had Us On The Floor Laughing - here's the response from your winners in The Best Black Metal Album category:

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Good grief, that was most unexpected! We're not sure what to say, really... I didn't think buying all those votes in exchange for drugs and gin would actually work, but I guess I've been proved wrong - I owe you sixpence, Curse. We shall put this award on the Club mantelpiece, next to our London Illustrated News' "Most luxuriant (while inebriated) moustache" award for 1889.

The Gentleman
A Forest Of Stars

So, this wraps up this year's award season here at Metal Storm. We hope you had as much fun as we did and discovered one or the other band whose awesomeness you weren't aware of before. If so, please let us know which ones in the comments below.

And now: into the future! Let's see what exciting music 2013 has in store for us...