Striker win Juno Award for ‘Metal/Hard Music Album of The Year’ for ‘Play To Win’ record
Striker win Juno Award for ‘Metal/Hard Music Album of The Year’ for ‘Play To Win’ record
Great news for Canadian heavy metal rockers Striker as the band won a Juno Award for the category of Metal/Hard Music Album of The Year for their record Play To Win, which was independently released back in October 2018. The Juno Awards are essentially Canada’s equivalent of the Grammy Awards in the United States of America.
The following message as posted on Striker‘s Facebook page yesterday (with slight edits):
“Thank you so much everyone! We are so grateful to win the Metal/Hard Music Album Of The Year at the 2020 The JUNO Awards!! Congratulations to all the other nominees Kobra And The Lotus, The Agonist, Lindsay Schoolcraft and SMWorldwide. We’re gonna post a lot more about this over the next few days and weeks but for now it’s beer time. THANK YOU SO MUCH!!!!”
Wikipedia summarizes the Juno Awards as follows:
“The Juno Awards, more popularly known as the JUNOS, are awards presented annually to Canadian musical artists and bands to acknowledge their artistic and technical achievements in all aspects of music. New members of the Canadian Music Hall of Fame are also inducted as part of the awards ceremonies. The Juno Awards are often referred to as the equivalent of the Grammy Awards given in the United States.
Members of the Canadian Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences (CARAS), or a panel of experts, depending on the award, choose the award winners. However, sales figures are the sole basis for determining the winners of nine of the forty-two categories like Album of the Year or Artist of the Year. CARAS members determine the nominees for Single of the Year, Artist and Group of the Year. A judge vote by experts in the relevant genre, determines the nominees for the remaining categories. The names of the judges remain confidential. The judges represent all facets of the Canadian music industry. They are spread across the country and include of men and women, and speakers of both official languages (English and French). No person can judge the same category two years in a row.”
Striker‘s Play To Win ended up at #8 on the Sleaze Roxx’s Top Ten Albums of 2018 to which Sleaze Roxx stated:
“Just like The Lazys, Canadian heavy metal rockers Striker seemingly keep getting better album after album. Play To Win is Striker‘s sixth full-length studio album and sees the band refining its sound even more to take the mantle as the best “melodic” heavy metal band out there. Having started off as mainly a thrash metal band, Striker‘s evolution from one album to the next is interesting to hear. Play To Win sees lead vocalist Dan Cleary establishing himself once and for all as one of the premier heavy metal singers. Man, that guy can sing! Surprisingly, the vocal harmonies are truly outstanding on Play To Win with the closing track “Hands Of Time” as a prime example.
I’ve always struggled with melodic rock albums because I can’t stand hearing keyboard sappy numbers but add a little grit or in the case of Striker, some real heavy metal music, you can end up with a killer album. Striker continue to push the boundaries with their sound while injecting more and more melodies, and keeping their songs a lot shorter. By the way, I am kicking myself for having passed on seeing Striker play live in Toronto earlier this year. What a stupid decision that turned out to be but how I was supposed to know that Striker would be coming up with one of my favorite albums of the year?”
Striker‘s “Head First” video: