Golden Gods Nominations for ESP Artists

Golden Gods Nominations for ESP Artists

Metal Hammer Magazine will once again be handing out their "Golden God" awards for 2016, with this year's festivities happening on June 13 in London. Of course, no awards show that honors heavy music would be complete (or maybe even possible) without the many player who choose to rock ESP. Here are some of the nominated bands for 2016 that feature ESP players.

Best New Band: Cane Hill
Featuring ESP players guitarist James Barnett and bassist Ryan Henriquez, Cane Hill hails from New Orleans, LA, where they keep the nu-metal sound alive and beyond well. They've been touring in support of their self-titled EP that was released last year, and you can catch them at the upcoming "Welcome to Rockville" festival in Jacksonville, FL.

Best Underground Band: Rotting Christ
Somehow remaining true to their underground roots since 1987, Rotting Christ is one of the first black metal bands from Greece, and have been hugely influential on the entire European underground metal scene. The band includes ESP guitar players Sakis Tolis and George Emmanuel.

Best International Band: Slayer, Amon Amarth, Babymetal
Time for some tough choices. This Golden God category includes three bands with plenty of ESP players. Slayer (with ESP players Tom Araya and Gary Holt) is an iconic metal band having a remarkable year with the release of Repentless and a subsequent world tour. Amon Amarth has taken their Viking Metal sound from Norway around the world with ESP player Johan Söderberg rocking hard on their acclaimed new album Jomsviking. And then there's Babymetal, perhaps the most polarizing band on this list (or maybe in the world), which features outstanding production and killer playing by a band completely made up of ESP rockers (including the fantastic guitar player Takayoshi Ohmura).

Breakthrough Band: We Came As Romans, Beartooth, Northlane
Wow. Once again, we can't be of much help to those of you who are deciding between these three bands who are pushing through to the top of metal's ranks. American metalcore band We Came As Romans is from Troy, MI, and features ESP player Lou Cotton who rocks LTD EC, ESP E-II Eclipse, and ESP Original Eclipse guitars. Beartooth includes ESP player Kamron Bradbury, and performed sold-out shows throughout the last year. Rounding out this trio of metalcore acts is Northlane, an Australian band featuring guitarist Jonathon Deiley who has an ESP E-II Signature Series 7-string baritone model available in his home country.

Best Live Band: Lamb Of God, Anthrax, Nightwish, Parkway Drive
This is getting out of hand, but we suppose that it's no surprise that ESP players completely dominate the "Best Live Band" category. After all, ESP and LTD guitars and basses offer the quality and reliability for even the most intense touring. Lamb of God features ESP players Will Adler (who has a series of ESP/LTD Signature guitars) and bassist John Campbell. Anthrax is one of the "Big 4" of thrash metal, and this iconic band includes ESP bassman Frank Bello.  Nightwish puts on mind-boggling symphonic metal shows, and includes guitarist Emppu Vuorinen who uses a series of ESP Custom Shop Horizons. Finally, Parkway Drive is yet another metal band from Down Under who bring huge excitement to their live shows, and includes ESP players Luke Kilpatrick and Jeff Ling.

Best Video: Slayer "Repentless", Parkway Drive "Vice Grip", Anthrax "Blood Eagle Wings"
One of the great things about ESP guitars and basses: they sound good, they feel good, but when it comes time to rock on video, they also look damn good too. Slayer's video for the title track "Repentless" shows Tom Araya and Gary Holt with their ESPs in between incredibly gory scenes from a prison riot. In addition to rocking their ESPs, Parkway Drive went as far as jumping out of a plane for their "Vice Grip" video, which always tends to garner some award nomination love. Anthrax's video for "Blood Eagle Wings" may have lacked any ESP bass sightings, but is so full of executions and torture and various brutality that YouTube made us confirm that we were old enough to see it (we were).

If you'd like to cast your vote for this year's Metal Hammer Golden Gods awards, do so here. Then let us know in the comments below who you're voting for and why. We congratulate every one of the great ESP players in the nominated bands, and wish all of you luck at the awards in June!

Comments
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Stonecat

Awesome

Kjetil (GRIM) Remen

This is so cool for you ESP to have so many nomenies