Written by:	jupitreas
Published:	March 17, 2011

Every year, we spend countless hours nominating candidates for the Metal Storm Awards. Its a tough job since we select from a pool of thousands of metal albums. While some can easily be dismissed for simply being utter crap, hundreds still need to be discussed. After all this hard work, one thing is for sure: every single band that has been nominated this year can certainly feel that they are already winners. As we grow as a community and webzine, the exposure that being nominated for an award here is already enough to promote these great albums. With this said, there is of course always one real winner in every category. And there is always a Staff Pick.

During the Awards, the Staff hold their own private voting procedure and here are our results. These are the best albums of 2010 according to the votes of the collective Staff body. If you haven't heard these albums yet, what are you waiting for?

2010 Metal Storm Staff Picks

	Alternative Metal Deftones - Diamond Eyes		Avantgarde/Shoegaze/Post-Metal Year Of No Light - Ausserwelt
	Black Metal Enslaved - Axioma Ethica Odini		Death Metal Hour Of Penance - Paradogma
	Doom Metal Mar De Grises - Streams Inwards		Extreme Doom Metal Ophis - Withered Shades
	Gothic Metal Throes Of Dawn - The Great Fleet Of Echoes		Grindcore Misery Index - Heirs To Thievery
	Hard Rock Black Country Communion - Black Country Communion		Hardcore / Metalcore / Deathcore Ion Dissonance - Cursed
	Heavy Metal Volbeat - Beyond Hell/Above Heaven		Industrial Metal Killing Joke - Absolute Dissent
	Melodeath/Gothenburg Metal In Mourning - Monolith		Pagan/Viking/Folk Metal Finntroll - Nifelvind
	Power Metal Blind Guardian - At The Edge Of Time		Progressive Metal Haken - Aquarius
	Sludge/Stoner Metal High On Fire - Snakes For The Divine		Symphonic Metal Edenbridge - Solitaire
	Thrash Metal Helstar - Glory Of Chaos		The Best Debut Album Kvelertak - Kvelertak
	Clandestine Cut Of The Year Rising - Legacy Of Wolves		Best Video Heaven Shall Burn - Combat

As the Metal Storm Awards become bigger every year, some bands are nice enough to send us some feedback:

Dino Cazeras of Fear Factory
Wow, that is so cool winning the award for Best Industrial Metal!
We want to thank our fans for voting and we will see you in 2012 with a awesome new album!

Niege of Alcest
Uff...I don't know anything to say, I just feel glad that Metal Storm readers have chosen Alcest for this music category

Mar De Grises:
It is amazing to know someone remembered we had a great review score this last year! Thanks to Double Dragon, Jonas the Pleiadian and the Arcane Order for all the love, poetry and blood inspiration, and for enlightening the path of all the great exponents of pest-doom metal.

But above all many thanks to our fans for their big support and to the Metal Storm community for introducing and supporting honest and original music. Feeling this kind of genuine feedback enhances and purifies a staged yet timeless creative process. We will keep on doing what we love, from the end of the world. Thank you all so much for this double award.

Kobi Farhi of Orphaned Land
We're very exited to hear about it! it's so great to know that hard working is worth it and that we get such a great feedback! many thanks to everyone who is and were involved in it! forever orphaned!

Ivar Bjornson of Enslaved:
It is a total honor to receive the Metal Storm award! People, us included, might question how Black Metal we actually are - the main point is the compliment that we cherish deeply. As much as we sail by the rule of making music to satisfy our own artistic hunger; we are acutely aware of the fact that the listeners and concert-goers are those who make our ongoing adventure possible. So thank you, this will certainly serve as a motivational fuel to keep working harder and harder, to travel further and further; to keep trying to make Enslaved all that it possibly can be.

Immolation:
We just want to thank the fans and Metal Storm for their great support for "Majesty and Decay"! We really appreciate it! After 25 years of playing death metal its nice to still have such strong support and devotion from our fans! We plan to be out there touring more this year, so we hope to see you then!

Giulio of Hour Of Penance:
On behalf of Hour of Penance i would like to thank the crew of Metalstorm.net for this big reward, it means a lot to us! 2010 is over but we still have a lot of work to do starting from our summer European tour with Deicide and Belphegor ! Thanks a ton!

Jason of Misery Index:
Thanks for picking our album as a favorite. We are honored and humbled to be among such great artists and friends. And although the term 'grindcore' might be a bit narrow to describe us, and we feel there are other bands that do it better, we are supremely stoked that so many people out there like our tunes, Cheers to everyone, and have a good 2011.

Jari of Wintersun:
I'm sure this award was meant only for me, since I'm responsible of the delay. So I will take the honor&glory for it and I want to say that it's my first "Time" for winning any award, so thank you! It's nice to be remembered.

It sure is, Jari!

Once again, thank you all for voting and remember to come back and vote in future Awards as well! Now, lets finally get back to the year 2011...