stories
..........................................................................................................................
|
AGM POLLS - TOP BANDS DECADE Your Top 20 AGM Bands Of The Decade 2000 - 2009 Story online since: 05.01.2010 / 22:13:42 .........................................................................................................................................................  And finally here are your TOP AVANT-GARDE METAL BANDS. There has been some confusion if we search the "Best AGM Band ever” or the "Best AGM Band of the Decade”. After long discussions we decided to leave it to the original "BEST AGM BANDS OF THE DECADE”, since many readers understood it this way. Anyway, the result was no surprise regarding your top bands. But it was quite surprising to realize how massively modern avant-garde metal seems to be coined by our Scandinavian fellows. Only 1 (!) non-Scandinavian band made it into your TOP 10 – the strangers from DEATHSPELL OMEGA (supposedly French, but who knows for sure…). And only a few agm acts from the American continent made it into your faves: CYNIC, MR. BUNGLE, UNEXPECT and SLEEPYTIME GORILLA MUSEUM. This was quite a surprise, considering the fact that ca. 40% of the votes came from the American continent. There have been quite some votes for American bands, but these have been much more splintered among many acts. E.g. if all votes for MIKE PATTON projects are counted together, he’d make it among the Top 5. So here are your results for the TOP AVANT-GARDE METAL BANDS OF THE DECADE: 01. ARCTURUS  Adryuu: Unbeatable, they win the avant-garde competition, as if this was the Olympus of Avant-garde. With The Sham Mirrors being the most voted album of the decade, we have Kristoffer Rygg leading the avant-garde singing twice (with Ulver at band #2), curious. Ulv: I'm glad I'm not the only one who enjoys this band who's twisting aestetics marked the end onf the last and beginning of the new century, bearing a small opus I believe they still have an enormous capability of influencing new musicians aVoid: They said it themselves. Masters of disguise. Diabolic fiends or just merry pranksters? You never knew, and now they're gone. ...Or are they? Jonny Lignano: The Michael Jackson of Avant-garde Metal! Alltime kings, but dead. 02. ULVER  Adryuu:With Kris Rygg again, the wolves prove that evolution is the key to the Avant-garde Olympus. Ulv: not metal but mind blowing, a band who's music paints a thousand pictures on the silent canvas of air infront of your eyes and ears Chrystof: After such a long non-metal existence they still get regularly voted into top positions on avant-garde-metal.com. This shows the exceptionality of this band as well as the exceptionality of our readers. 03. DøDHEIMSGARD  Adryuu: The child of Vicotnik couldn't get much further, as his work in both DHG and Ved Buens Ende proves he is one of the fathers of avant-garde metal. Ulv: They had a quite long path in becoming what they are now, but an interesting one indeed aVoid: The Satan Berzerker Mongo we know as Vicotnik subordinates Chaos and proves constantly himself to be his own Devil. 04. VIRUS  Adryuu:The same goes for Czral with Virus and Ved Buens Ende, one of the visionary fathers of avant-garde metal. Ulv: hmmmm! they were the biggest surprise to me when I found out that the legendary VBE has a child, a great kid indeed! aVoid: Fuzzy furry rock weirdnessry never knowing where to go, always dragging you along. Dance music for the absurd. Chrystof: Carl-Michael made it back and proved to be one of the most outstanding personalities of the metal scene. While most so called avant-garde metal bands are more or less only variations of metal, Carl-Michael managed to build a realm of his own. 05. ENSLAVED  Adryuu: rooted in paganism they managed to arrive to a point of no return and since they have been moving further into progressiveness and beyond in their music. Jonny Lignano: Enslaved are so ius prima musica. Chrystof: Once only Vikings they matured like good wine. Today they are truly Pagavantgarde. 06. <CODE>  Adryuu: A band that surprised everyone with their debut and continued to with their second album, we hope to hear a lot more from this promising band, winner of the 2009 albums poll. Ulv: Bringing the retro fashion to the edge with their extremly cold and dreamy atmoshpheres Chrystof: For a long time they have only been guys for me that regularly messed up the html-codes of our site thanks to their strange name. But 2009 proved that they now are much more… 07. SOLEFALD  aVoid: Pretentious bastards always knowing exactly how to present their tantalizing hooks, always daring to look both both forwards and backwards. Post-modern Black Metal. Jonny Lignano: This band rocks. In a non-rock but avantgardistic way. If you know what I am mean. 08. VED BUENS ENDE  Adryuu: all praise the pioneers who thrashed the bounds of mere black metal. Ulv: my alltime favourite agm band, a giant like VBE is enough to crush all the borders of metal rooted music as we know(knew) them...so far no one managed to even draw close to them aVoid: Producing only one album and one EP, the you-know-who's of Norwegian black AGM Czral Vicotnik and Skoll found over the course of a few years not only a completely uniwue groove of their own, but also a groove which few have dared to repeat, and even fewer succeeding. After 13 years, "Written In Waters" still reigns supreme in my book. Chrystof: Completely underrated when they released their first and only full-length album "Writen in Waters” in 1995. Many of the successful mainstream releases of 1995 are already forgotten. But "Written in Waters” remains and still grows year by year. 09. DEATHSPELL OMEGA  Adryuu:one of the most innovative and recognised black metal band of modern times. Ulv: kenose is a masterpiece of dark, cold, and chaotic music aVoid: Being to Black Metal what Martin Luther was to Christianity, these (this?) French (supposedly?) obscuritant(s) are carving new paths both musically and theologically towards the Gnosis of Chaos. 10. THORNS  Adryuu: Snorre Ruch was always kind of ahead of the pack, even if he has been quite little productive, but enough to be considered as one of the ultimate bosses of both avant-garde and black metal. 11. OPETH  aVoid: Superstars and superczars of Progressive Extreme Metal, these Swedes have made quite a name for themselves. Chrystof: One of the very few bands that do the impossible: make innovative, ownstanding music and get big rockstars with it. 12. CYNIC  Chrystof:"Focus” got quite some attention in 1993 thanks to the fact that "some of those guys also play in DEATH”. But basically they remained non-understood in the metal scene of these times. But over the years this scene matured. And finally the time got ripe for Cynic. One of the most appreciated comebacks of the last years. 13. ABIGOR  Adryuu: Their 'Fractal Possession' took many people quite unaware of what was coming, such a welcomed change of direction. Chrystof: I am sure they won’t like it to be called "one of the best avant-garde metal bands ever”. But still they are. 14. FLEURETY  Adryuu: With only two albums they stand as one of the black metal related band who passed most of conventions. Ulv: Always had a mind of their own, mixed with a lot of guests one gets a great representative sample of what we all are talking here about. aVoid: Weird-ass motherfuckers do what they want, when they want, with whom they want, and won't ask for permission or forgiveness! 15. BERGRAVEN  Adryuu: The last album alone is enough for Bergraven to be considered a very innovative and promising band for the future of dark music, to keep in mind. aVoid: The dark mountain of the soul was never so steep. 16. MR. BUNGLE  Chrystof:Mike Patton and his gang among your top avant-garde metal acts. Regarding votes, if Mr. Bungle, Fantomas and all the other Mike Patton projects would be one band, they’d have made it among your top 5 bands… Jonny Lignano: 100101011001010100101010101010101010101010101 000010111010101011110101101010101011010101010 101101011011010101011101101101011010101101101 101101101010101010111001010110010101001010101 010101010101010101010000101110101010111101011 010101010110101010101011010110110101010111011 011010110101011011011011011010101010010101100 101010010101010101010101010101010100 00101110101010111101011010101010110101010101 01101011011010101011101101101011010101101 17. UNEXPECT  Kevin Reichel: Jazz circus death metal stumbling through a wasted, post-apocalyptics world of words, operatic chorus-pieces, screams and growls (three singers!!!). Chrystof: The superheroes of agm, so avant-garde that they nearly become a cliché of their own. Everything is pushed to the extreme, to the very limit. But is it still unexpect if you know that you have to expect the unexpected? 18. MANES  Ulv: The transmutation from a normal black metal band to MANES the agm beauty is fabulous. I can't think of a better combination of electronica (the best I've heard in such bands so far) and other elements of urban music (rap, DnB) with metal or rather fragments of it! Underrated in my opinion. Jonny Lignano: Yesterday I thought that this band sounds like there was no tomorrow. That could be the reason it is not #1. 19. SLEEPYTIME GORILLA MUSEUM  Jonny Lignano:In an attempt to describe this band I failed. Miserably. But in fourteen words. Jonny Lignano: If one has to describe this band one has to think of Bach, Breton and Brecht. In that new world order. 20. CELTIC FROST  Adryuu: Many of the above mentioned bands for sure do have some Celtic Frost album as an influence, as well as they are recognised by the audience. They for sure deserve a place here. aVoid: Originators of the true Avant-Garde Metal: after almost single-handedly creating Extreme Metal in 1983-1986, these Swiss titans stepped outside of all Metal conventions, outside of themselves, and dared to be original. Thus was AGM born. Then in 2005, they unleashed what may be one of the darkest and heaviest Metal albums of all time, only to desintegrate once more. Look out for TRIPTYCHON ready to dominate this coming decade. Chrystof |
