Metal Storm Website wrote:The 2009 Metal Storm Awards were easily the largest to date. Last year saw two or three genre categories break 1,000 votes, this year's Awards saw a whopping 10 genres clear that mark!

As with the 2008 Metal Storm Awards, 2009 was another year of big names crushing their respective competition. Mastodon, Epica, Candlemass, Megadeth released new albums and then went on to win their respective categories by hundreds of votes. After a seven year lay-off running around Blashyrkh and posing for photos, the returning Immortal were our most decisive winners, grabbing 40% of the Black Metal vote and compiling almost four times as many votes as their closest competition. The tightest genre race was in the Metalcore category, where Converge managed to win a tight, to the wire, race over The Agonist.

The tightest race of all was in the Letdown category, where 1349, Lacuna Coil, Slayer, and Sonata Arctica fans voiced their displeasure, but all "lost" to what has to be an MS first... an album that hasn't actually been released yet. The saying goes "time waits for no fan", but it seems plenty of Wintersun fans are tired of waiting on "Time."

The biggest surprise was also, uh, surprising. Alice In Chains released their first studio album in 14 years and the 15 year old French band Kalisia released their first album in, oh, forever and both garnered strong support, but ultimately lost to Megadeth's "Endgame" - which is surprising considering "Endgame" (8.4 MS rating, 429 votes) is slightly better than their last album 2007's "United Abominations" (7.9 MS rating, 432 votes). If a marginal improvement counts as a surprise, I guess a lot of folks were expecting Megadave to Megadisappoint.

Finally, we want to hand out one more special award to the anonymous user who wrote-in Dissection's "Storm Of The Light's Bane". While the album is widely acclaimed within BM circles, I am sorry to inform you that you were just a tad late for the 1995 Metal Storm Awards. Vote deleted, but many LOLs to be sure.

So, as is also customary, there will be a nice thread where folks can discuss the results. You can find that here.

Best albums by genre

Alternative Metal
Mastodon - Crack The Skye [A very good album to be sure]

Atmospheric/Symphonic Metal
Epica - Design Your Universe

Black Metal
Immortal - All Shall Fall

Death Metal
Behemoth - Evangelion

Doom Metal
Candlemass - Death Magic Doom

Extreme Doom Metal
Ahab - The Divinity Of Oceans

Gothic Metal
Katatonia - Night Is The New Day

Grindcore
Napalm Death - Time Waits For No Slave

Hard Rock
Gotthard - Need To Believe

Heavy Metal
Amorphis - Skyforger [Well deserved]

Melodeath/Gothenburg Metal
Be'lakor - Stone's Reach [I'm glad other people agree with me. One of my Favourite albums]

Metalcore
Converge - Axe To Fall

Pagan/Viking/Folk Metal
Ensiferum - From Afar

Post-Metal/Avantgarde Metal
Diablo Swing Orchestra - Sing-Along Songs For The Damned & Delirious

Power Metal
Sonata Arctica - The Days Of Grays [Not as good as their earlier stuff, but FAR better than Unia]

Progressive Metal
Dream Theater - Black Clouds & Silver Linings [Another good one from them. Surprised? I thought not...]

Sludge/Stoner Metal
Baroness - Blue Record

Thrash Metal
Megadeth - Endgame


Other awards

The Best Cover Song
Vader - Fight Fire With Fire (Metallica)

The Best Debut Album
Kalisia - Cybion

The Best DVD
Iron Maiden - Flight 666 [Fascinating and Reccomended]

The Best Video
Behemoth - Ov Fire And The Void

The Biggest Letdown
Wintersun - Time (for not being released yet)

The Biggest Surprise
Megadeth - Endgame


Special awards

The Best Drama
Dimmu Borgir - Bassless Keyboardless Garden [I found this amusing ]