Metal Hammer Golden Gods Awards 2012 - Part 2

So coming down to the awards themselves, the competition was totally wide open on all sides, but there had to be winners and so below are the winners in full.

• The Best Underground Band award went to Watain
• The Best New Band award went to The Defiled
• The Dimebag Darrell 'Shredder' award went to Devin Townsend
• The Best UK Band award went to Saxon
• The Best Live Band award went to Rammstein
  
• The Best Event award went to Iron Maiden's 'Conquer The UK' (again - won last year too!)
  
• The Best International Band award went to Lamb Of God.
  
• The Metal As Fu*k award went to Anthrax
  
• The Breakthrough Artist award went to Ghost
  
• The Spirit of Hammer award went to Bill Bailey
  
• The Best Album award went to Mastodon 'The Hunter'
  
• The Best Drummer award went to Vinnie Paul
  
• The Inspiration award went to Roadrunner Records
  
• The Icons award went to Fear Factory
• The Riff Lord award went to Robb Flynn &Phil Demmel (Machine Head)
  
• The Golden God award went to Joey DeMaio (Manowar)
  
• The Video of The Year award went to Trivium 'in Waves'

Out of all of the award winners the following were not present that night, but had representatives on their behalf: Rammstein (Masuimi Max - American fetish model collected the award on Rammstein's behalf), Iron Maiden (their manager collected the award), Trivium or Joey DeMaio (or at least Global Metal Apocalypse didnt see them so).

An additional award for Best Download Festival moment was also awarded to coincide with the festival who was also celebrating 10 years, through a thorough and extreme voting battle the eventual winner was Slipknot for their now legendary Saturday night headlining slot in 2009 for which was to sadly be (and GMA sends our deepest thoughts to Slipknot) Paul Gray's last ever UK gig; he will never be forgotten.

To receive the award on the band's behalf was frontman Corey Taylor and the award was presented to them by Metal Hammer's very own Alexander Milas onstage at Download Festival 2012.

Alexander Milas had this to say:

"10 playing bands, 2 boats, 18 awards and nearly 2,000 fans, and completely Heavy Metal - there's just nothing like the Metal Hammer Golden God awards. This wasn't just the 10th anniversary of the event. It's also the 25th anniversary year for our magazine, and tonight we partied with the legends, the new blood, and most importantly the fans, without whom our world wouldn't exist. Here's to another 10 and another 25. Chin-chin".

The Metal Hammer Golden God Awards are sponspored by: Orange Amplification, Hobgoblin, Alchemy Gothic, DW, Jackson, Kopparberg, Scuzz, Kraken Black Spiced Rum, World of Tanks, Roadrunner Records, Zippo Encore, Universal and UMC.

Part 3 coming soon.