LISTMANIA 2018: AN INVITATION FOR READERS’ LISTS OF THE YEAR’S BEST METAL

 LISTMANIA 2018  121 Responses »
Nov 292018
 

 

We’re now about to enter the final month of 2018, and that begins the final countdown to the end of the year (and the strengthening onslaught of the annual holiday season). In the world of metal, this month we’ll also start seeing more and more lists of the year’s best releases.

Back in 2009, when this site was just a few days old, I wrote a post about year-end lists and why people bother with them. The best reason still seems to be this: Reading someone else’s list of the albums they thought were best is a good way to discover music you missed and might like.

We don’t do an “official” NCS year-end “best albums” list. However, we publish the picks of each of our regular staff writers as well as a group of guest writers (which we’ll start doing in December).

Every year we also invite our readers to share their lists and we’re doing that again right here, right now. Continue reading »

LISTMANIA 2018: REVOLVER’S 30 BEST ALBUMS OF 2018

 LISTMANIA 2018  33 Responses »
Nov 282018
 

 

As part of our annual LISTMANIA series we re-publish “best album” lists from some of the the few surviving print publications that cover metal, and from a handful of “big platform” sites that include metal in their coverage, along with a range of other music genres and other aspects of popular culture.

Of course, as soon as you see the words “popular culture” you know there’s not going to be too much attention devoted to the kind of music we cover at NCS. But it’s still amusing, and sometimes even edifying, to get a glimpse of what the above-ground world is seeing acclaimed as metal’s best releases. Continue reading »

LISTMANIA BEGINS: THE DECIBEL TOP 40 FOR 2018

 LISTMANIA 2018  53 Responses »
Nov 162018
 

 

It has become an annual tradition at our putrid site to launch our year-end LISTMANIA orgy with the appearance of DECIBEL mag’s Top 40 list. It has become a tradition in part because, in my humble opinion, it’s still the best print publication out there for fans of extreme metal, and in part because they always manage to jump out of the starting blocks first in the race for publishing YE “best of” lists – and they’ve done it again this year. So here we go!

The DECIBEL list will officially appear in the magazine’s January 2019 edition, which hasn’t yet hit my own mailbox, but because it’s out in the world somewhere already, DECIBEL again decided (for the third year in a row) to scoop their own list rather than letting leeches like me leak it. They published the list on-line yesterday, and so I can now again re-publish their list without too much guilt.

Of course, there will be a lot more content in the January issue (which has Deafheaven on the cover), including commentary about each of these 40 albums and why they were selected. You can order a copy of that HERE. Continue reading »

LISTMANIA 2018: AN INVITATION TO OUR READERS FOR “BEST OF THE HALF-YEAR” LISTS

 LISTMANIA 2018  40 Responses »
Jul 022018
 

 

There will be 365 days in 2018. The mid-way point is therefore 182 1/2 days. Yesterday, July 1st, was the 182nd day of the year. And so we’re a bit early with this post, since the mid-way point won’t be reached until the end of the 12th hour today, but we’re not as early as some places have been.

With the year approximately half-gone, it’s a good time to take stock of what we’ve heard so far… and man, there’s been a lot of good stuff to hear. And by “what we’ve heard so far”, I don’t mean myself. If I really tried to make a list of the best releases from the first half of the year, I’d have to shut down the site for a week, and probably still couldn’t figure it out.

No, what I mean by “we” is “you”, because I’d much rather be entertained and educated by seeing the releases that have made the biggest impression on people who visit NCS than agonize over my own list. And I’m guessing other people will enjoy that too. In addition, collecting these lists always turn out to be an excellent resource for making new discoveries. Continue reading »

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