LISTMANIA 2023 WRAPUP

LISTMANIA 2023 Add comments

Nov 142024

(written by Islander)

I can hear you asking, “Why the hell is a post about 2023 year-end lists popping up in November 2024?” A valid question. And the answer is: Because I fucking forget to do this when I was supposed to do it.

Well, I only partly forgot. You probably don’t remember, but in December 2023 and January/February 2024 I was wholly consumed by a project for my fucking day job, so consumed that I didn’t have time to put together my usual list of Most Infectious Extreme Metal Songs for 2023, and didn’t have time to do the “WrapUp” post for our annual LISTMANIA series. When time eventually did become available, that’s when I forgot.

I only remembered yesterday, when launching this year’s LISTMANIA orgy with a copy/paste of Decibel‘s Top 40 list for 2024. And even though probably no one else but me has remembered that I never did the 2023 WrapUp post, it gnawed at me, like weevils in the grain-sack of my head. Begone you weevils! Here’s the WrapUp, 10 months late.

We posted the last of our many 2023 year-end lists on January 20, 2024 — not counting Vizzah Harri‘s valiant effort to fill the “Most Infectious Song” void that my day job created.

As in years past we posted an extensive series of 2023 lists. As usual, some of them were re-postings of lists that appeared at “big platform” web sites and print magazines, and others were prepared by our own stable of race-horse writers. But once again we had a large group of lists from other guests and old friends. Plus, we’ve again received valuable, extensive lists in reader comments on THIS POST .

In this article I’m setting forth links to all of the 2023 year-end lists that we published, divided into categories and listed within each category pretty much in the order of their appearance. For people who were looking for the best metal that 2023 had to offer, these lists and our readers’ lists provided a tremendous resource, as they have in past years.

Who knows, maybe there are some people out there who would enjoy looking back, and thinking about how some of those choices have weathered the passage of time.

Once again, I want to (very belatedly) extend out heart-felt thanks to everyone who contributed to 2023 LISTMANIA and to everyone who made time to read what we pulled together. A lot of people put a lot of effort into that series, as we do every year, but I could tell from the page views that it continues to mean something to fans of heavy music, and so we’ll continue doing it this year.

NCS STAFF, OTHER NCS CONTRIBUTORS,
AND OTHER OLD FRIENDS

Andy Synn (The EPs)
Andy Synn (The Disappointing)
Andy Synn (The Good)
Andy Synn (The Great)
Andy Synn (The Critical Top 10)
Andy Synn (The Personal Top 10)

DGR (50-41)
DGR (40-31)
DGR (30-21)
DGR (20-11)
DGR (10-1)

Wil Cifer
Todd Manning
Professor D. Grover the XIIIth
Didrik Mešiček
Gonzo (Part 1)
Gonzo (Part 2)
Deckard Cain
Daniel Barkasi
Axel Stormbreaker – Part 1
Axel Stormbreaker – Part 2
To the Teeth