Been waiting for this list to come out so I could see what's new that is worthwhile, instead of purchasing old classic albums and rehashing the past.

Not complaining, just curious. Did Blotted Science's The Machinations of Entomology or Christian Meunzner's Time Warp get suggested at all? I'm torn between these 2 and Leprous for Progressive metal category...

Written by BitterCOld on 01.02.2012 at 05:40

and write-ins belong where they belong.

Where would Blood Stain Child's album belong? Industrial / Cyber / Electronic Metal or Melodeath / Extreme Power / Gothenburg Metal? It sounds both electro and power, although I'd lean more to the electro sound.

And would symphonic rock still count as symphonic metal? Or does rock go in a different catagory (Within Temptation I'm talking about- there's nothing metal about it, but still a great album).

And if you're deleting write-in votes that you deem to be in the wrong catagory, does that mean my vote for Gallhammer in extreme doom will be wiped? (not that I'm expecting them to win, I just think that the album is more doom than any other genre.) If so, I'll put them in black instead.

And (sorry for all the ands) would Onit have a better chance in the doom or symphonic catagories?

Written by Guest on 01.02.2012 at 07:05
That's how people with inflated egos get by in the world.

You can honestly think whatever you want. I don't care.... I don't even care if you believe me when I say the following:
All the staffers and elites got there not by sheer luck. It's because we did stuff for the website and many of us work pretty hard in what we do. We aren't where we are because of our ego, but because we can back up things like this by the work we do for the website. If you want to try for a spot, try helping the website.

The only reason Absu would be in the nominees if the awards were done by the community... it will be because it's well known regardless of quality. If they were less known that they are, you can be sure not many in the community would vote for them.

Written by M C Vice on 01.02.2012 at 09:42

Where would Blood Stain Child's album belong? Industrial / Cyber / Electronic Metal or Melodeath / Extreme Power / Gothenburg Metal? It sounds both electro and power, although I'd lean more to the electro sound.

And if you're deleting write-in votes that you deem to be in the wrong catagory, does that mean my vote for Gallhammer in extreme doom will be wiped? (not that I'm expecting them to win, I just think that the album is more doom than any other genre.) If so, I'll put them in black instead.

Yes, BSC was declared that it'll go with Industrial / Cyber / Electronic Metal
About Gallhammer I'm almost sure that it should be in Extreme doom but don't count my voice on that. We haven't discussed about that alum in particular so I don't know the other's opinion.

Just a few hours in and someone has already voted Meshuggah's Obzen for best djent.
Have fun staff!! I can only imagine the shit you see at the end of the month

Written by X-Ray Rod on 01.02.2012 at 09:54

You can honestly think whatever you want. I don't care.... I don't even care if you believe me when I say the following:
All the staffers and elites got there not by sheer luck. It's because we did stuff for the website and many of us work pretty hard in what we do. We aren't where we are because of our ego, but because we can back up things like this by the work we do for the website. If you want to try for a spot, try helping the website.

Lmao. Nice taunt Doc but he wouldn't make it to Elite or Staff anyway...

Quote from the FAQ's "Elite users are those members of our community who we think are cool."

Guarantee you this back and forth argument with Staff has probably put him on the "not cool list" and I doubt anybody can become Staff without being Elite first...

Written by psykometal on 01.02.2012 at 10:08
Lmao. Nice taunt Doc but he wouldn't make it to Elite or Staff anyway...

Off course.. we are the fucking devils and new hitlers after all.

Also... dude, do you know a single Award where the nominees are being chosen by the votes of an entire community during the whole year?... Besides Presidential election?
Because I don't... Actually, I don't even think most presidential elections work like that. there are still nominees represented by a selected group

The only reason we get comments like the ones above is because people don't think things through and fail to see why their ideas will not work. The same bands will win by an even higher marginal that we already have.

Written by X-Ray Rod on 01.02.2012 at 10:13

Off course.. we are the fucking devils and new hitlers after all.

Also... dude, do you know a single Award where the nominees are being chosen by the votes of an entire community during the whole year?... Besides Presidential election?
Because I don't... Actually, I don't even think most presidential elections work like that. there are still nominees represented by a selected group

The only reason we get comments like the ones above is because people don't think things through and fail to see why their ideas will not work. The same bands will win by an even higher marginal that we already have.

Yea. Blue makes some valid points but unfortunately I have to say that Craig makes better points... :shrug:

Written by psykometal on 01.02.2012 at 10:21
Yea. Blue makes some valid points but unfortunately I have to say that Craig makes better points... :shrug:

That's what we get with the power of EGO!

Written by X-Ray Rod on 01.02.2012 at 10:22

That's what we get with the power of EGO!

Lol. Yea I wish I could be an egotist with the rest of you...

I shall now commence my whining.

No Foo Fighters in hard rock? Blasphemy, Wasting Light is a fantastic hard rock record. I'd much rather listen to it than UH releasing the same album for the 20th time!!

whining over.

thank you for all the hard work staffers, that is but a minor qualm in an otherwise great award system that allows me to find many albums I otherwised wouldn;t.

Written by Guest on 01.02.2012 at 07:05

Way to avoid the question. You said it yourself man. The 20 staff members value your own opinions over the users. What you think is good obviously matters more than MS users.

To answer your question, like I said earlier. If you used the user's ratings to determine what albums would go on the list then Abzu would definitely be rated higher or equal to more than half of the staff choices. You guys are just out of touch.

to a certain extent, yes, yes I think our collective opinion trumps our users. and look back at past awards... the complaints about the results of general voting are always numerous and even more entertaining than this drama. and after we announce staff picks, more people post in agreement with the staff picks than the general results. look it up, all the threads still exist.

i can look at the awards right now and pick the winners in 70% of the categories. i bet you can, too. the popular bands will run away with 'em. in recent years it's gotten even worse. we all know it. so whether fucking Absu or Negative Plane or Krallice make the cut is completely immaterial if you are just whining about "popularity". they won't win. you can campaign up and down for the next month and short of promising blowjobs for write-in votes, they still won't come close.

as for "out of touch" and "user votes", we voted on 123 black metal records this year. in the straight category, never mind meloblack. hell, I listened to more black metal albums this year than ABZU has ratings. nearly 30,000 users and only 54 rated it... i guess it isn't exactly a movement of the masses now, is it? 0.0018% of our users took the time to tick a number. i can guarantee you there won't be an OCCUPY MS TOWERS movement over this one.

if user ratings determined what made the awards, the system would be more of a joke than it is already. we already have people intentionally inflating top 200/top 20 of year by creating duplicate accounts... and we have people sandbagging them with 1's. we've caught users with 45+ accounts. with nothing at stake. and you put your faith in those numbers?

however, if you would like, I will GLADLY pm you the list of 123 black metal albums that were involved in our voting process so you can look up each one, one at a time, then rank them all by user rating. see if the reason you are whining would make the cut under the rules you would have us play by. my guess is ABZU wouldn't likely finish higher than the 18/123 it did in our voting.

ultimately this is just like the grammies, golden globes, teen choice awards and any other awards... a giant circle jerk important only to those that care about it and of zero consequence to those who don't. It is the mechanism by which the members of Team MS acknowledge which releases we thought were tops and enable the masses to vote the most popular band in each category the shiny, completely virtual trophy.

and, finally, if you realized just how much time, effort, and energy went into the awards, you wouldn't refer to those who do the labor as ego-inflated, ego-driven, or anything else. i spent 15 hours over the last weekend hunched over a laptop adding pages, ensuring coding was proper, downloading/uploading album art, checking links, double checking links, auditing and reconciling pages that were created vs. what was needed, write-ups that were done vs. what was needed. for nothing but love of metal and this site.

yeah. men want to be me, women want to be with me all right.

(and with that drunken soapbox rant, i am done dealing with people whining because band X made it, band Y didn't, and band Z is in the wrong place... you are more than welcome to do your own list. )

Written by BitterCOld on 01.02.2012 at 10:33
for nothing but love of metal and this site.

...And the amount of money and chicks we get.



...Ops! I didn't say anything!



(I'm finally gonna be able to buy a yacht!)

Written by Guest on 01.02.2012 at 03:11

Too bad a band got screwed because of that.

My turn.

A band got screwed? Doesn't that conflict a bit with your whole "popular opinion" theory? I mean, if a band truly has the support of the popular vote, how is being left out of the Awards screwing them over? They have the popular vote, they don't need the award. Instead, we give bands that are otherwise unknown a bit of exposure.

That leads me into my next bit - yes, maybe it is ego. Year round, bands send us their material for review & publication purposes. It may sound cocky, but we get way more music shoved under our nose per year than the average listener. After going through the amount of potential nominees we do, both voluntarily seeking it out, and for requested publication purposes, then you might reconsider how unfair our little ego trip is. Quality over quantity - our collective opinion is probably more educated than the average person. Why? Because it's our fucking job. It's why we're staff.

Thirdly, perhaps your whining would be justified if every staff member had the exact same opinion on everything. We don't. Last year I wanted Mares Of Thrace nominated, Marcel thinks its a garbage album, the rest didn't seem to think much either way. It didn't get nominated. Oh well. The point? Well, out of the dozen + people who paid particular care in the black metal list this year, Absu failed to really impress all but a few people all having different takes on the album.

Last of all, you want the nominees to reflect popular opinion? Well, fuck it, we can skip the middle man and I could tell you who would win just about every category. You're just pissy because the nominee list didn't reflect YOUR opinion.

Also, I'll direct you to a nice little book called Green Eggs & Ham. It might be a little educational.

Ouch. I almost feel kind of sorry for BlueMobius (keyword being almost, but not quite since he opened that can of worms). He's getn bitch slapped from all angles. Too bad there's not a Best drama category, this would get my vote right here...

Written by psykometal on 01.02.2012 at 10:56
Too bad there's not a Best drama category, this would get my vote right here...

Not a beep on the radar for me. This happens every year. Same shit wrote by different users.

If I had to predict which album would be at the centre of the Vagina Sand Monologues for this year I certainly wouldn't have guesses it would be Abzu. That record is neither popular enough or divisive enough to warrant such attention. It's just a decent album unfortunately overshadowed by lots more interesting and innovative records.

This the best time of the year on MS.
So much great stuff to catch up on if you missed it, so many decisions to make, so much funny whining to go through...

Am I the only one not understanding why Amorphis is in Heavy/Melodic Metal instead of "Melodeath / Extreme Power / Gothenburg Metal"? Is it a human mistake?

Written by bodomdragon on 01.02.2012 at 12:44

Am I the only one not understanding why Amorphis is in Heavy/Melodic Metal instead of "Melodeath / Extreme Power / Gothenburg Metal"? Is it a human mistake?

Listen to their newest if you haven't, they're a totally different band than they were, well, ten or more years ago. The only thing remotely resembling that genres are the growls on the album. The rest is completely melodic and lightweight.
(and awesome )

Written by Milena on 01.02.2012 at 13:07

Written by bodomdragon on 01.02.2012 at 12:44

Am I the only one not understanding why Amorphis is in Heavy/Melodic Metal instead of "Melodeath / Extreme Power / Gothenburg Metal"? Is it a human mistake?

Listen to their newest if you haven't, they're a totally different band than they were, well, ten or more years ago. The only thing remotely resembling that genres are the growls on the album. The rest is completely melodic and lightweight.
(and awesome )

I've listened to it like a thousand times and I love it. I still think the sound is quite closer to other relases from this year such as Insomnium or Before the Dawn than Hell or Saxon.

When is the last day of voting? I feel there's some albums I should listen to.

Written by bodomdragon on 01.02.2012 at 13:18

I've listened to it like a thousand times and I love it. I still think the sound is quite closer to other relases from this year such as Insomnium or Before the Dawn than Hell or Saxon.

Well, I used to have a problem with them being put in the "heavy" category too, but the added "melodic" behind soothed me I don't think there's a better way to describe Amorphis.

Written by Warman on 01.02.2012 at 13:20

When is the last day of voting? I feel there's some albums I should listen to.

You have a month, so take your sweet time, I know I will.

I won't go in paragraphs to rant about how awards supposed to get edit fuck options and blah blah!! but in THE BEST COVER SONG: not finding an Amon Amarth's-Aerials( SOAD cover) really really freak me out! I mean c'mon it should be(don't you fucking think) there and amusing shit part is by including DF name twice( and eventually both are weak cover stuff as compare to what AMON did)..anyways....move on! rather we should look at more higher level by beautifully representing MS AWARDS 2011 by our dear staff.

Will look forward for all winners in much excitement.

Written by X-Ray Rod on 01.02.2012 at 10:43

Written by BitterCOld on 01.02.2012 at 10:33
for nothing but love of metal and this site.

...And the amount of money and chicks we get.



...Ops! I didn't say anything!

I think you're getting much over-hyped on this year MS AWARDS( out off 115 comments(till now!) you sir holds the 50 %) or wait......you get excited every year?!!

I done a top 10 list of albums from 2011, the "post" is in swedish but the list and the candidates can still be read

http://wordpress.mikaelhornqvist.se/arets-album-2011-topp-10/

Written by psykometal on 01.02.2012 at 10:25

Written by X-Ray Rod on 01.02.2012 at 10:22

That's what we get with the power of EGO!

Lol. Yea I wish I could be an egotist with the rest of you...

Since I haven't really listened to new metal releases this year, I just inserted a few votes for lulz and that's it.

The drama is getting more intense by the moment.

I love Metal Storm, and I love the awards. I'm glad to be a part of this. My appreciation goes out to all staff members for making Metal Storm what it is and nominating all these awesome albums!