Juno Awards Add Metal/Hard Music Album of the Year Category

BY Gregory AdamsPublished Sep 28, 2011

In a move that's sure to have longhairs banging in approval, the Juno Awards will be adding a new category to next year's award show that will celebrate Canadian heavy music.

The Canadian Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences officially announced the new category, Metal/Hard Music Album of the Year, this morning (September 28). The first award in the newly minted category will be handed out at next year's show, which will be held April 1 at Ottawa's Scotiabank Place.

A press release explains that the award's goal is to celebrate artistic achievement "without regard to album sales or chart position." It seems as if they'll be scouring the talent pool with a fine-toothed comb, noting that nominations could be fielded from the worlds of "metal, metalcore, hardcore, heavy rock, thrash metal, death metal and their respective subgenres including (but not limited to) nu-metal, power metal, grindcore, extreme metal, industrial metal, viking metal, folk metal, doom metal, gothic metal, speed metal, and sludge metal."

To be fair, the awards show added a Hard Rock/Metal category in 1989, but the prize fizzled out of memory some time ago. Now if only we can convince them to give out some retroactive awards for some old Canuck thrashers. Anvil would be a good start, or maybe something more intense like Goatsblood. Or how about an lifetime achievement award to celebrate how damn long Eudoxis's kick drum was?

Submissions for any Juno prize start October 1, with the deadline for most being November 10. The submission deadline for International Album of the Year and Album of the Year is January 10.

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