(written by Islander)

Well, holy shit, is it already time to begin our site’s annual LISTMANIA orgy? Lo and behold, it is.

It has become an annual (and reflexive) tradition at our putrid site to launch our year-end LISTMANIA orgy with the appearance of DECIBEL mag’s Top 40 list, because they always seem to burst from the starting gate sooner than anyone else — and they’ve done it again this year, even earlier than they did in 2023.

I need to repeat, of course, that the reason we also use their list as the launching point for all of our own forthcoming YE features is because, in my humble opinion, DECIBEL is still the best print publication out there for fans of extreme metal. Their list also always generates healthy discussions (and sometimes unhealthy ones), so it’s still a fitting way to launch the latest LISTMANIA season apart from the list’s early-bird status.

The DECIBEL 2024 list will officially appear in the magazine’s January 2024 edition (with Cirith Ungol on the cover), which hasn’t yet hit my own mailbox, but DECIBEL again decided (for the tenth 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, beyond the sheepishness that comes from being one of the factors that forced them to start outing themselves in the first place. Continue reading »