A WORD OF THANKS — AND A PREVIEW OF THINGS TO COME

(photos in this post are by the uber-talented Tim Flach)

I’ve returned from my vacation, which was better than I deserved, and I will soon be doing my part to contribute to the site on a more regular basis again. Given the quality and diversity of the guest posts while I was gone, this will undoubtedly come as a let-down to many readers. And that brings me to the first subject of this post…

A WORD OF THANKS

That’s a figure of speech, because I have more than one word: I want to send out a huge thank-you to all of the people who sent in guest posts in response to my request for help before leaving on vacation. I have posted every single one that I received — 25 in all, so far — with the final one coming later today. I thoroughly enjoyed reading all of them, and based on the traffic stats for the site, it’s apparent that our readers did, too.

Honestly, I could get used to having other people do my work for me. If any of you guest writers who submitted posts feel like doing more, don’t wait for another invitation. You know how to reach me. And for those of you who may have mused about doing it, but didn’t — muse harder. And then start writing. Check the “Contact” page if you’ve lost my e-mail address.

Seriously, I think the site and our readers benefit from a diversity of musical tastes, music knowledge, and writing styles, and we don’t need to wait for one two-week period a year to add spice to our NCS meals.

Of course, I don’t mean to imply that our regular staff of writers aren’t gems in and of themselves — because they are, and I thank them, too, for their contributions while I was gone.

A PREVIEW OF THINGS TO COME

We have a lot planned for you in the coming weeks. Beginning tomorrow we’ll start our own year-end Listmania series (while continuing to post year-end lists that appear on other “big platform” sites). The series will include not only articles by our own staff about their favorites from 2013, but also guest posts from readers, as well as posts by a pretty damned cool line-up of musicians. I’ve already received a big batch of these articles, and am really excited for you to see them. We’ll be rolling them out at the pace of one or two per day from tomorrow until we’re all done — which I suspect will take us into the New Year.

On top of that, about a week later, I’ll start rolling out my list of the year’s Most Infectious Extreme Metal Songs. I don’t know what that list will look like yet, because I didn’t do shit on that project while I was on vacation, despite my best intentions. I better get my sorry ass in gear pretty damned quick!

Also, beginning later today, I’m going to begin posting a small number of “Catching Up” articles. While I was gone for the last two weeks, I didn’t do a very good job keeping up with metal news and the release of new songs. But even perusing NCS e-mails and wading through the inter hole episodically, I found some things that excited me, and I want to pass them along, even if some of them are kind of dated by now.

And finally, we will of course continue our usual publication of reviews, song premieres, and other regular features. In fact, you’ll see some of those later today.

P.S. None of the photos is of me.