Rocks Off is sorry this took so long, but between sifting through dozens of categories with dozens of nominations apiece, and shuffling back and forth to the doctor's office thanks to an unfortunate spill last night, we've been working as fast as we possibly can.

Even so, we decided to split the nomination announcement into two parts; today's covers the multitude of genres that make up the local music scene. Individual nominations (e.g. Best Songwriter), instruments and recordings will be announced Monday at 10 a.m.

And we know there's been some talk that the nominations are pointless, that we're just picking our favorites. We can assure you that's not the case - several of the names to come were somewhat unfamiliar to us, and all we did was run a quick MySpace search to make sure the band/artist was still active. The only curatorial perogative we exercised was, because many artists were nominated in multiple categories (in fact, just about all of them), we placed each nominee in the category we felt most appropriate.

Feel free to disagree, but the people really have spoken. Now, we've all waited long enough. Ladies and gentlemen, the first half of your 2010 Houston Press Music Award nominees.

BEST ROCK
ROWE
Lotus Effect
Blaggards
Staci's Edge
Raging Apathy

BEST PUNK
Kemo for Emo
Skeleton Dick
The American Heist
The Failed Attempt
Something Fierce

BEST INDIE-ROCK
Satin Hooks
Deux Frupis
Spain Colored Orange
Wild Moccasins
The Fox Derby

BEST PROGRESSIVE ROCK
Scale the Summit
Ellypseas
The Manichean
Tyagaraja
Tax the Wolf

BEST HARDCORE/NOISE
A Dream Asleep
Female Demand
Rusted Shut
Black Congress
Cop Warmth
Giant Battle Monster

BEST METAL
Downfall 2012
Golden Axe
World's Most Dangerous
After Time Has Passed
Pinche Gringos
Cavernous

BEST INSTRUMENTAL/EXPERIMENTAL
Two Star Symphony
Heidi Massin
Disfrutalo
Dead P.A.
Yppah