(We welcome back guest contributor and fellow blogger BreadGod with another of his year-end lists. I’ve taken the liberty of adding full-album streams for all of his picks.)

The metal scene sort of blew its collective load back in 2012, what with all that fear of the apocalypse and whatnot. They released a bunch of awesome albums in anticipation of an event that never happened. This means that there wasn’t a lot of good metal this year. Of course, that was only if you were looking at the topmost layer of the underground. If you took the time to dig deeper like I did, then you will have found lots of awesome new releases. Here are my top ten releases of 2013. Enjoy.

#10: Abyssal – Novit enim Dominus qui sunt eius

The list begins with the year’s first album. On New Year’s Day, I received an e-mail from the band Abyssal that contained nothing but a download link and a single sentence: “The time has come.” When I pushed play, I was instantly enshrouded in a miasma of chaotic evil. It’s far more diabolical than their debut, Denouement. The production is a colossal wall of sound that will crush the life out of you, the drums offer up both ravenous blast beats and slow and sinister doom rhythms, the vocals sound like the grumbling of an ancient and vile entity that lurks in the deepest reaches of the earth, and the guitars run the gamut from vicious black metal tremolo riffs put through a death metal filter to slow and wicked chugs. I regret not putting these guys in my top ten list last year, because they have made something that is both evil and grand. Continue reading »

(NCS staff writer DGR makes the third ex-TNOTB writer of the day whose year-end list we’re rolling out. Read on… )

Ah, 2013 draws to a close, and you know what that means right? Its time for DGR to unleash his massive list of bullshit what he done liked in 2013! This year is no different, of course — I cut a bunch of categories out in order to streamline the madness somewhat, yet still managed to create a massive clusterfuck of words. I tend to write my stuff for folks that are trapped at work, so I do apologize for anyone who is glancing at this thinking that it’ll be a quick fifteen=minute read — because there is a fucking ton of music on this list.

It almost looks like if you put out a disc in 2013, then I probably liked it, but that’s not the case… mostly because I didn’t listen to a lot of music in 2013, and I even give those folks some credit at the very bottom. If you haven’t heard many of these releases, then I am happy to expose you to them, and if you have and enjoy them already and are just validating your opinion through your chosen NCS cipher, hey, let’s pop a champagne bottle and celebrate our excellent taste over the other jackbags that claim to write for this shitshow.

I’ve actually included some non-metal breathers as well, for those of us who may be suffocating under the weight of all this heavy metal. Let the chaos begin! Here is my list of Shit What I Done Liked In 2013 (thanks byrd for the title!), beginning with the honorable mentions. Continue reading »

While continuing to post our own year-end lists of 2013’s best metal as chosen by our staff and numerous guest writers, we also continue to make room for lists published by selected ‘zines and so-called “big platform” web sites with dramatically larger audiences than metal-only sites like this one. This morning one appeared that we’ve been waiting for: Pitchfork.com’s list of “The Top 40 Metal Albums of 2013”.

Pitchfork has been around since 1996 and now boasts “a fiercely loyal audience of more than 5 million unique visitors each month”. Metal is only one of the genres of music to which Pitchfork devotes attention (and certainly one of the smallest in terms of audience), though because of Pitchfork’s size it has been the platform for many significant metal song and album premieres this year. Its Top 40 list was compiled by Pitchfork editor Brandon Stosuy as part of his ongoing Show No Mercy column. Whatever else you may think of Pitchfork’s main musical coverage, I think Show No Mercy is worth reading.

Stosuy’s list includes explanations for the top 25 picks, plus sample songs, and you can go HERE to check out all of that. Via that same link you can also see the lists assembled by current and former Pitchfork contributors Grayson Currin, Drew Daniel, Kim Kelly, Andy O’Connor, Hank Shteamer, and Zoe Camp.

After the jump, I’m just going to embed the Top 40 list itself, with a few thoughts. As always, we encourage you to leave your own reactions in the Comment section. Continue reading »