The First Annual MWD Reviews Awards – The Winners

It’s finally here! In several paragraphs time I will be revealing the winners of my first annual awards.

If you haven’t been keeping up with the articles this week, then I’ll catch you up. On the 14th, MWD Reviews was one year old and I wanted to recognise the sheer amount of amazing talent I’ve been witness to over the last 12 months.

I’ve put together a collection of categories covering the gamut of my experiences this last 12 months. In doing so I’ve also made a rod for my own back because choosing from all of these amazing people and artists has been absolutely tortuous. Seriously, there is more than one category tonight where I’ve changed my mind several times.

Before I get on with the winners, I do want to take some time to thank the people who have made this site possible and generally been awesome in real life over the last year. Firstly I want to thank Iain Duigan, who not only helped to transition the site from a Blogger account to fully formed page in it’s own right but who hosts the site for me. Iain also offers me SEO advice when I need it and has helped to keep the site relevant in the rankings on Google.

Next up I want to thank Craig Hennessey for keeping me sane for the last few months of working at my last job, which I left in February. Craig is always quick to read the reviews and render his opinion back to me, usually arching it back into a constant comparison with Hammerfall. Don’t ask.

Lastly, but certainly not least and certainly most importantly, I want to thank my wonderful, gorgeous wife, Mrs MWD herself, Emma. Over the last year she has been so supportive of me, from wrestling with WordPress to design the site and keep it functioning properly in the early days, to pushing me to keep doing articles and accompanying me to gigs when she generally can’t stand my taste in music. She never complains, she’s always keen to see the site improve and I couldn’t ask for anyone better to support me and keep me motivated to review music.

Now that the thank you’s are done, it’s time for the reason why we’re all here, the winners. So with no further ado, here are the winners, with reminders of the nominees.

Good luck folks:

Best Band

The nominees were:

Aliases (Basick Records)
Xternals (Copro Records)
Skyharbor (Basick Records)
TesseracT (Century Media)
Flying Colors

And the winner is:

Skyharbor

Yes, Keshav Dhar and his band of merry men are flying the flag worldwide for the burgeoning Indian metal scene. They command one of the biggest buzzes of any new band on their debut album I’ve ever seen. At a recent gig supporting Lamb Of God in India I’m pretty sure there were more fans turning up to see Skyharbor than the headliner. Their debut album is utterly breathtaking and they have a bright, bright future ahead of them.

Best Guitarist

The nominees were:
Paul Ortiz (Chimp Spanner)
Graham ‘Pin’ Pinney & Leah Woodward (Aliases)
Ron Jarzombek (Blotted Science)
Ol Drake (Evile)
Misha Mansoor (Periphery)

And the winner is:

Graham ‘Pin’ Pinney & Leah Woodward

This award presented the biggest challenge for me. As a guitarist, everything I listen for in metal music is a great guitar riff or an amazing solo and, well, look at the nominations, they’re all superb. Edging it out though we’re Pin and Leah, from tech metal mentalists Aliases.

Where they edge away from the other nominees is that they create such high energy and frenetic music yet the technicality and structure of their playing is absolutely amazing. They fuse tapping with picking, rapidly jumping octaves like it’s nobody’s business with supreme accuracy and precision. After about 5 beers each. That takes immense skill that really shouldn’t be underestimated.

Best Album

The nominees were:
Periphery – Periphery II: This Time It’s Personal
Uneven Structure – Februus
TesseracT – One
Xternals – Fistful Of Infinity
Insomnium – One For Sorrow
Absolace – Fractals

And the winner is:

Xternals – Fistful Of Infinity

Yes, I’ve been banging on about this album since September and no doubt I’m going to keep banging on about it for a hell of a lot longer. Fistful Of Infinity is a beautiful album full of amazing songs, wonderfully produced and brilliantly executed. These guys deserve to be massive with albums like this. Well done boys.

Best Video

The nominees were:
TesseracT – Eden 2.0
Periphery – MAKE TOTAL DESTROY
Uneven Structure – Awaken
Absolace – I Am, So I Will

And the winner is:

TesseracT – Eden 2.0

If you haven’t seen this video, you really need to. It doesn’t have the band performing but it is made in such a beautiful and classy way, it’s very impressive. Eden 2.0 is about humanity’s squandering of Earth’s beauty by faceless corporations, so the video has masked men poisoning shimmering women. Taught as the metaphor may be, it ties into the theme of the song and gives the meaning a human edge to it.

It might look obscure and arty, but I can’t think of any better way to make a video for Eden 2.0.  In fact, watch it for yourself and see what you think:

Best Singer

The nominees were:
Dan Tompkins – TesseracT/Skyharbor/Haji’s Kitchen
Nadim Jamal – Absolace
Stu Block – Iced Earth
Matthieu Romarin – Uneven Structure

And the winner is:

Nadim Jamal

Nadim deserves this award over his fellow nominees because he such a compelling singer to listen to. His voice is sooth and warm, even when he pitches up or gets angry, he is utterly transfixing to listen to, almost like a separate entity to the band, he’s just there, singing directly to you. So clear and expressive is his voice that you can’t help but be amazed by him.

Best Label

The nominees were:
Basick Records
Century Media
Nuclear Blast
Earache
InsideOut

And the winner is:

Basick Records

Basick have the best ethos of any label I’ve ever experienced. They don’t care what genre you play in, they don’t give a shit what you look like, what they care about is original, unique and forward thinking music. Just look at their roster, Glass Cloud, their newest signing is a balls to the wall metal core band, whereas Chimp Spanner is progressive instrumental metal, The Algorithm mashes dubstep, trance and metal into some Godless bastard genre and Skyharbor are djent through and through.

Basick are pushing modern music into interesting unknown territories just because they can. They seek out new experiences from all corners of the globe in order to further their vision of bringing amazing music to the masses. If only the major labels held the same attitude…

Best Production

The nominees were:
Chimp Spanner – All Roads Lead Here
TesseracT – Perspective EP
Xternals – Fistful Of Infinity
Flying Colors – Flying Colors

And the winner is:

Chimp Spanner – All Roads Lead Here

Instrumental metal is hard to make. Because there are no vocals to focus on, everything needs to be perfect. The sounds need to be clear, the mix needs to be balanced, the drums shouldn’t over power, all these things need to be considered for the song’s potential to be achieved. People like Steve Vai spend fortunes on recording studios, the best gear, amps and session musicians.

Paul Ortiz, the (potentially evil) genius behind Chimp Spanner does it all himself. In a bedroom in his house. Paul has home recording down to a fine art. Using digitally modelled amps, sampled drum kits and off the shelf synth packages his staggeringly slick results command respect. He creates huge sci-fi soundscapes that frame his virtuoso guitar work. All Roads Lead Here is an example of how much you can do with relatively modest equipment given the right know-how and a certain affinity for sound. He’s a massive inspiration for me as a bedroom producer and should be a huge inspiration for others wanting to give it a try.

Coolest Person

The nominees were:

Paul Ortiz of Chimp Spanner
Lisa Coverdale from Basick Records/HoldTight! PR
Aliases
Sarah Lees from Century Media
Enzo Arcadi from Xternals
Freddy Palmer from InsideOut

And the winner is:

Lisa Coverdale

Lisa has an absolute gem when it comes to this site. She has been incredibly supportive, giving me my first proper press kits, reposting links to my reviews and even giving me the opportunity to meet one of my all time guitar idols in Pin from Aliases.

Lisa, being a PR lady, is perpetually manipulating social media to her will and will always be right there for a chat about music, cats or anything you can really think of. If Lisa hadn’t given me that first opportunity to get in with a label when I was getting a constant stream of rejections from bigger labels then I probably would have given up the site as a bad job. But thankfully for me and you lovely readers out there, she did and I’m still here writing.

So for that reason, she gets the coveted Coolest Person of the year award.

Last, but not least, a final award that I didn’t announce any nominees for; The Lifetime Achievement Award.

Careful consideration went in to picking a musician who had done pretty much anything you could possibly hope to achieve as a musician and yet remains hungry for more and more new experiences, never content to become complacent and stick with what is comfortable. This musician has battled alcohol and drug problems, formed one of the most influential bands in modern metal and recently has gone on to perform in a multitude of side projects and super groups. I am of course, talking about the one and only:

Mike Portnoy

Mike has had an amazing career from forming progressive metal heroes Dream Theater in the late 80s, touring the world, writing and recording classic metal albums, to his shock departure from the band and his quest for something new. Since he left DT in 2010 he’s toured with Avenged Sevenfold, performed huge sets with his Beatles tribute group Yellow Matter Custard, laid down some serious groove based metal with Adrenaline Mob and gone back to a more classic era for prof with not only Flying Colors, but guesting as a drummer on Neal Morse’s upcoming album.

The man is an absolute musical legend, there’s no two ways around it. His music has influenced countless musicians worldwide (this one included) and he should be recognised as such. Mike Portnoy is truly deserving of the Lifetime Achievement award.

And there you have it, the first annual MWD Reviews awards is done and dusted, finito, over. Congratulations to all the winners and commiserations to those who weren’t so lucky.

One last thing though. This site, log, portal to kickass music, whatever you want to call it would be nothing without you, the readers. It’s a humbling experience to know that people like to spend their time reading what I have to say about the music I love. Without you people coming back again and again to read my reviews, there would be no point doing this. I know I’m not the biggest site out there and that’s cool with me. I’d rather be the little guy in the corner with a handful of loyal fans who share my love for interesting music. I don’t want to be the guy trying to find nice things to say about music he doesn’t like just because it’ll bring readers to the site. That would be a job to me, this is something I love doing and I’ll keep doing it as long as you people come back to read what I have to say.

So from the bottom of my heart, thank you and let’s hope this next year is as good as the last has been.

Have a great day

Michael Downie
MWD Reviews