LISTMANIA 2023: A YEAR-END LIST FROM DIDRIK MEŠIČEK

 LISTMANIA 2023  3 Responses »
Dec 212023
 

(Didrik Mešiček from Slovenia made his first appearance as a writer at NCS this past September, and has given us six reviews before 2023 has ended. In the feature below he shares his list of the year’s Top 20 metal albums.)

If 2022 felt like the year in which we recovered from the pandemic, 2023 really went into full bloom for me from a musical perspective. I’ve seen around 90 bands live, which is definitely my new record (that I, of course, plan on breaking next year). On the front of new releases, however, I can’t say I found it to be a particularly impressive year and would generally rank the pandemic years higher.

The notable shift for me personally though was that there are a lot more black metal inclusions than usual. Whether this is my personal evolution or a sign of the genre continuing to evolve in a positive manner, as I do believe it has in recent years, or a mix of both, I’m not quite sure. Without further ado, here’s a list of 20 albums that I’ve found either most impressive, most appealing, or just worth pretentiously talking about for one reason or another this year.

For those less gifted in the art of reading, here’s also a link to the Best Of 2023 (only about 6 hours of material) playlist, which is made up of my picks from the albums I talk about here plus a few extra songs that were also released this year: https://open.spotify.com/album/6ePCa1DxMuRWkjddULq6GW?si=zrG_Vu2QTR6IWYOaYptR5w Continue reading »

LISTMANIA 2023: A YEAR-END LIST BY PROFESSOR D. GROVER THE XIIITH

 LISTMANIA 2023  5 Responses »
Dec 202023
 

(Our friend Professor D. Grover the XIIIth (ex-The Number of the Blog) has been joining us this time of year for many years to share his diverse year-end lists, and does so again now. There’s a lot here, and it truly is diverse.)

Greetings and salutations, friends. Another year ends, and with that ending comes a barrage of year-end album lists and Spotify Wrapped graphics. Personality, I enjoy writing these lists because it helps me contextualize the past 11 or so months of music listening. As with previous years, this year featured an abundance of really good, entertaining music across a number of genres, and narrowing my list down to 20 was extremely difficult.

Before I get to the list proper, however, here’s a few lists of honorable mentions, divided into a few loose categories. This year, I found myself connecting a number of albums together due to certain similarities, and while I had my struggles in trying to figure out how to represent this in my list, in the end I settled on this method (with a few notable exceptions that made my top 20… more on that later). Anyway, let’s get this started. Continue reading »

NEILL JAMESON CAN’T SHUT THE FUCK UP: 2023 LIST I

 LISTMANIA 2023  3 Responses »
Dec 202023
 

photo by Hillarie Jason

(One of the perennial highlights of our year-end LISTMANIA series are the articles Neill Jameson has contributed, and we’re very happy that he’s doing so again this year. This one is the first of a handful of Parts we’ll be publishing. To be clear, Neill wrote the title of this feature himself. And hey, you should check out Krieg‘s new album Ruiner too.)

I’m getting a later start on these this year, meaning I’ve already seen a lot of year-end lists, mostly due to checking to see if my last album made any of them. And because of this I could easily make the joke that most journalists have Helen Keller’s musical taste. I’d like to think I’m above such low hanging fruit, however.

In years past I’ve sectioned these lists off by demos, albums and dungeon synth. This year I’m ignoring that format in favor of dumping a ton of unrelated genres together outside of the final one, which will be the traditional “best of” list. Why am I doing this? I’m glad you asked and showed sincere curiosity: in the customer service industry we’ve begun using the phrase “surprise and delight the customer” and I’d like to take this wonderful philosophy into my writing. 

Or I’m just lazier than usual this year. Because fuck the customer.  Continue reading »

LISTMANIA 2023: A YEAR-END LIST FROM TODD MANNING

 LISTMANIA 2023  2 Responses »
Dec 192023
 

(As we continue rolling out the year-end lists of our writers, today we move to selections from Todd Manning.)

I think I found the formula for my year-end list last year. Every year, once my own list is finished, I pour over every other list I can find and I am reminded I am a fan first, musician and writer after. So I will keep it brief and give you a bunch of records I loved and I hope you find something new and exciting to check out. Continue reading »

LISTMANIA 2023: A YEAR-END LIST FROM WIL CIFER

 LISTMANIA 2023  2 Responses »
Dec 182023
 

(This week we begin presenting year-end lists from NCS writers other than Andy Synn, who finished his NCS list week last Friday. To begin this week, here’s a year-end Top 20 list from Wil Cifer.)

Given the world’s present apocalyptic trajectory this year’s Top 20 Metal Albums list might be the last of these lists I make. The tone of my listening this year shifted in a more nihilistic direction. I listened to more death metal this year, which might have less to do with becoming acclimated to living in Tampa and more to do with celebrating death as an inevitable end to this cycle of life. Metal has always been my therapeutic outlet. Even before I was formally diagnosed with Bipolar disorder, I used Doom metal to lean into my depressive episodes. Now I am more intentional with this ritual, so there might be a decent dose of doom ahead. Continue reading »

LISTMANIA 2023: ROLLING STONE’S 11 BEST METAL ALBUMS OF 2023

 LISTMANIA 2023  8 Responses »
Dec 182023
 

Here’s the final entry in the part of our annual LISTMANIA orgy where we share lists of metal from “big platform” web sites and print zines — the kind of places that get a lot more eyeballs on them than filthy little metal-only hovels like ours — as a way of getting a view about what “normal” people are being told is the year’s best metal.

Rolling Stone magazine should need no introduction, so I’m not going to provide one. Three years ago we didn’t include a Rolling Stone metal list in our year-end LISTMANIA series — because they didn’t publish one. Although we surmised that they had jettisoned the idea permanently, their Top 10 metal list made a return in 2021, and in 2022 they expanded the list to 15 names. This year it’s 11 (so of course they made a Spinal Tap joke). Continue reading »

2023 – A YEAR IN REVIEW(S): THE PERSONAL TOP TEN

 LISTMANIA 2023  25 Responses »
Dec 152023
 

(Andy Synn finishes off “List Week” with his ten favourite albums of the year)

For whatever reason, this time around much of my “personal” list – which features the ten albums which I’m not claiming to be the “best” of the year, but are definitely amongst my favourites – is made up of new albums by new discoveries, either because the band themselves are fresh onto the scene or because this is simply my first time encountering them.

On the one hand this perhaps reflects my general dissatisfaction with a lot of the more hyped up and/or famous names (not that they were bad, just that they really didn’t do anything for me this year), but I prefer to see it as a good thing, because it means that I am (hopefully) guaranteed even more great stuff from a bunch of fresh new faces with a bright future ahead of them!

Slimming this list down to just 10 albums wasn’t an easy task by any means, but while some well-deserved “honourable mentions” should go to the likes of Downfall of Gaia, Cryptopsy, Morokh, Mercenary, and Returning (all of whom were in strong contention), in the end… well, there can be only ten!

Continue reading »

LISTMANIA 2023: A TOP 12 METAL LIST FROM BANDCAMP DAILY

 LISTMANIA 2023  1 Response »
Dec 152023
 

Reading year-end lists that someone other than you made tend to provoke mixed feelings of validation, perplexity (which sometimes verges into anger), and discovery. The opportunity for discovery is the main reason we here at NCS devote so much space to our annual LISTMANIA extravaganza, even though we know those other feelings will also be in the mix of reactions. The list we’re re-publishing from Bandcamp Daily will probably be no different in any of these respects.

Bandcamp, of course, has become a vital platform for the digital release of music of all stripes (and physical merchandise as well) since its founding in 2007. Bandcamp used to release an annual compilation of performance statistics, but I haven’t found a similar report since the one they released for 2017. However, the main Bandcamp page today reports that “Fans have paid artists $1.23 billion using Bandcamp, and $193 million in the last year.”

Those are staggering totals, and some part of those enormous sums has been the result of Bandcamp’s laudable decision to continue the monthly tradition of “Bandcamp Fridays” that they began during the height of the pandemic. Continue reading »

LISTMANIA 2023: STEREOGUM’S 10 BEST METAL ALBUMS OF 2023

 LISTMANIA 2023  1 Response »
Dec 152023
 

Stereogum easily qualifies as one of the “big platform” web sites whose year-end lists of metal we perennially include in our LISTMANIA series. Of course, the site appeals to an audience of music fans much larger than devoted metalheads, but its staff includes a talented and tasteful (though dwindling) group of metal writers who, among other things, are responsible for the site’s monthly “The Black Market” column, which has been a great source of discovery for extreme music for 11 years running now.

It follows that Stereogum‘s annual metal list is one I especially look forward to seeing every year, and the 2023 edition is out now (as of yesterday). As usual it consists of only 10 entries, with accompanying reviews of the choices by Ian Chainey and Wyatt Marshall. And yes, as I write this, the image at the top of the Stereogum list is the image you see above. I don’t know why it says 2022. Continue reading »

2023 – A YEAR IN REVIEW(S): THE CRITICAL TOP TEN

 LISTMANIA 2023  15 Responses »
Dec 142023
 

(Andy Synn attempts to capture the venom, vitality, and variety of the year in just ten albums)

Of everything I’ve published so far during this year’s List Week this one is the closest so far to what you might call your “typical” end of year list. Although, even then, it’s still a little different than what you might expect.

Case in point, although I’ve limited it to just ten albums (which, let me be clear, is never, ever enough, as there’s at least one more album… cough, Torpor, cough… I really wanted to include here) it’s pointedly not a ranked list like most of the others you’ll probably have seen.

No, the key idea here is – because it’s impossible for any one writer to craft a truly definitive list of the “Best” albums of the year – is to present ten releases from the last twelve months to serve as prime examples of the best the year had to offer, while attempting to represent as wide a cross-section of styles and sub-genres as possible (sometimes within the same album).

It’s a subtle distinction, true, but an important one all the same, and it’s my hope that in five years, ten years, fifteen, I’ll be able to look back on the selections I’ve made here and appreciate just how good 2023 was.

So, without further ado, here’s the ten albums, many of which I don’t think have received anywhere near the amount of attention and acclaim they deserve – plus a bonus entry for each, just in case you’re already familiar with my main choice – which I have chosen for my “Critical Top Ten”.

Continue reading »

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