Oh Canada. You’ve given us a number of great metal bands that some people either didn’t know or forgot they were from Canada. But hey, we’re all inclusive here at Metal Insider, so we’re bringing you a list of metal nominees from the Juno Awards a.k.a. music awards that are like the Grammys except Canadian. As you might have guessed, the category is for “Metal/Hard Music Album Of The Year”, and the nominees are nothing like the Grammys, i.e. all of them actually qualify as Metal and Hard Music. Here’s the list:

METAL/HARD MUSIC ALBUM OF THE YEAR

Heart of Oak Anciients (Season of Mist)
Colored Sands Gorguts (Season of Mist)
Entrench KEN Mode (New Damage)
Volition Protest the Hero (Self-Released)
Dead Language The Flatliners (New Damage)

The fan favorites definitely include Gorguts and Protest The Hero, but it’s good to see Unsigned and Streamed alumni Anciients getting some spotlight with their debut album. The band’s Chris Dyck reached out to us with a statement:

“We would like to thank everyone for the massive support we have received since this band first started. It means alot as a Canadian to be nominated for a JUNO, we know it isnt the most punk rock award but it is validating and kinda next level shit, should really help out in terms of getting better tours and having more exposure for album #2 (which we are already writing!). Its been a hell of a ride so far, the touring alone we have done for our first record cycle is unreal (Lamb of God, Decapitated, Death to All, Tesseract, Scale the Summit, etc), some bands will never do this even after 5 albums…so…we are so fucking grateful and plan on returning the favor by not letting up, ever…album #2 is going to crush your fucking face!!! Huge congrats to our bros in Gorguts and KEN Mode for being nominated as well(Season of Mist for the win). Again, thanks to our manager, label, agent, lawyer, all press, all promoters, bands we have played with and every single person who has come out and got rad with us! You all rule so hard! Finally, massive thanks to Jesse Gander, Alan Douches, Alison Lilly and Sab Kay for engineering, mastering, providing artwork and layout for “Heart Of Oak”, i feel that it is a total package deal here, could not have made this good of an album without the help from these key people. Thanks Canada. Fucking rights.” Chris & ANCIIENTS

You can check out the full list of nominees here.