A Pox Upon You, Pitchfork, Round 3

Really, Pitchfork?  Really?

Was it something I said?  Was it because I took issue with your not granting "Best New Music" status to Converge's ripping Axe to Fall, despite it being rated an 8.5 and tagged as "this generation's Black Flag"?  Or was it that, a mere days later I pointed out the hypocrisy when you also ignored the crushing beauty of The Blue Album, the stellar second album by stoner metal groove beast Baroness, which also scored an 8.5, was hailed as "one of the year's most generous hours" and scored as high as your previous "Best New Music" entries?

Is this why you chose to yet again deny that red stripe of honor on a metal album, this time the psychedelic southern sludge that is Spiral Shadow, the 5th album from Kylesa?  Granted it only received a lowly 8.4, but that's the same score as your previous Best New Music winner, Sufjan Steven's The Age of Adz (admittedly a damn fine album but that's besides the point...), but your review gives high marks to every piece of this incredible record, from the complex rhythms of the dual drummers, the breach into melody (your quote - "just about every song has achorus that stamps itself on your brain"), and the infectious groove that adds so much to their sound.  Allow me to quote back to you the concluding sentences of your review:

Like many of the best "extreme" metal albums in 2010, Spiral Shadow is less about alienating outsiders through heaviness, volume, or violence than it is about blurring those extremes (hook and noise, dreamy and ragged, virtuosity and bluntness, metal and pop) on the same record, on the same songs. Captivatingly intricate without sacrificing rough and tough forward drive, accessible without sinking into commercialized blandness, Kylesa offer the pretty irrefutable truth that metal's still the best place to find rock that actually rocks, that there's plenty of boot-to-the-sternum kick left in the old beast after all.

How is that not a Best New Music entry?

Let's work this out, Pitchfork.  I know we can makes things like the way they were, like we were.  I'm willing to put some effort into this relationship.  I just want you to do the same...