Metal Storm Awards 2024
All too soon, these 28 days of fun come to an end once more; it’s bittersweet to see the month pack up and go, but there’s always much ado to investigate when it’s gone.
And much ado there did: we had a bit of a dramatic opening, thanks to the revelation that one of our Hard Rock nominees was, in fact, a computerized imposter wearing human skin. You can read all about it in our specially created Biggest Deception category, which we cooked up to “honor” this undesirable occurrence (2025 Drama of the Year candidate?). Hopefully that’s a designation we don’t ever have to employ again. It seems we won’t be able to ignore the encroachment of AI onto our shores any longer, but we not planning to turn the keys over to HAL anytime soon; we value both music and grindcore as forms of human artistic expression, and that’s why we’ve gone to such effort to share as much as we can with you. Until the machines actually gain sentience and overrun us for real, we’ll have as our goal the preservation of heavy metal as something organic, human, and totally bodacious.
So it was a bit of a bumpy ride, but it wasn’t all so dire. This year we made some substantial upgrades to our voting interface, all aimed at making it easier to view user-submitted nominations (which we’d received much feedback about over the years) and to automatically match those nominations to existing albums in our database (you can’t imagine the number of stupid typos we’d have to fix and entries we’d have to merge in every category before we devised this ability to autocomplete stuff). That seems to have paid off, as we had some very healthy engagement with the features and the user nominations got a lot of attention. As usual, of course, the victories all go to our staff-selected albums, but Borknagar made a valiant effort in half a dozen categories, even breaking the top five in Folk/Pagan/Viking, and Dark Tranquillity pulled the #3 spot in Melodeath. Ihsahn made the rounds as well and Thrash/Speed saw not one but two noteworthy write-in contenders in Kerry King and Suicidal Angels.
But of course we want to hear about winners, right? Well, it'll please you to know that Hard Rock was won by humans after all, but the grand showdown of the year undoubtedly had to be Extreme Prog, with Blood Incantation and Iotunn each fielding some massive album-of-the-year candidates that in any other year would have swept the category and overpowered the neighboring categories to boot. By the end, Blood Incantation pulled out an insurmountable lead, but that’s one fight where you couldn’t possibly have had a bad result. You can probably surmise that the exact opposite situation existed in Regular Prog, where a newly redirected Opeth overwhelmingly smashed even revolutionary stars Chapel Of Disease, spicy desert voyagers Dvne, and caffeinated Canadian Devin Townsend. Gothic had a nastier scrap in the end, with foundational titans My Dying Bride, perennial favorites Tribulation, and debuting supergroup Cemetery Skyline revolving closely around the lead. Thy Catafalque conquered Avant-Garde/Experimental with their fifth win in that category, an impressive tally that puts them neck-and-neck with Amon Amarth on the MSA leaderboards and within striking distance of seven-time champions Amorphis. The biggest sweep of all, however (and maybe ever), went to Judas Priest, and how fittingly: the grand(leather)daddies of them all not only cratered Heavy/Traditional Metal with the greatest of ease but earned the highest-scoring album in the whole MSAs. "Invincible shield" is 100% correct.
We should also recognize one of heavy metal’s most significant cultural moments from 2024: Gojira conducted probably the highest-profile metal performance in history, representing us before the entire globe at the opening ceremony of the Paris Olympics. Staged at the Conciergerie along the Seine, Gojira, operatic mezzo-soprano Marina Viotti, and 300 of their closest classical musician friends slaughtered their way through the Revolution-era song “Ah! Ça Ira” in three minutes of brightly colored brutality. The song eventually got a studio release, which has now won our 2024 award for Best Cover Song (undoubtedly an equal honor in the eyes of the world). Pressure’s on for the 2026 Milan/Cortina Olympics to book Fleshgod Apocalypse. If they don’t, they’re cowards.
With all that said, there are still plenty more winners to find, and even amongst the non-winners there are no losers. We had another rich year of excellent music and we hope you enjoyed celebrating it all with us. Feel free to discuss the results with us. Otherwise, we'll see you right back here next year.
Metal Storm Staff