BEST ALBUMS AND EP’S OF 2014: A LIST FROM KEVINP

 LISTMANIA 2014  32 Responses »
Dec 082014
 

 

(In this post NCS contributor KevinP rolls out his personal list of the year’s best EPs and albums. To read his reviews of many of these albums, you can find them collected at Metal Bandcamp via this link.)

Another year stacked with quality releases.  There were so many, I neglected my family half the year to listen to them all.   I also decided to include EP’s this time around.  So let’s dispense with the blather and get to it.

TOP 5 EP’S

 

5.  (tie) Ascension – Deathless Light / Cult of Fire – Čtvrtá Symfonie Ohně (The Fourth Symphony of Fire) Continue reading »

LISTMANIA: THE POPMATTERS LIST OF THE BEST METAL OF 2014

 LISTMANIA 2014  32 Responses »
Dec 052014
 

 

PopMatters is a popular culture web site with broad coverage of music, film, television, books, comics, software and video games — you name it. Its articles get picked up regularly by the mainstream media, and it claims a readership of more than 1 million unique visitors per month. In other words, it fits the profile of “big platform” web sites whose lists of 2014′s best metal we usually re-post here at NCS as part of our own LISTMANIA series.

Today, PopMatters published its list of “The Best Metal of 2014″, ranking the chosen albums from #15 to #1. The list was compiled by Adrien Begrand, Dean Brown, Brice Ezell, and Benjamin Hedge Olson. Like all of these metal lists from big sites whose content isn’t limited to metal, it’s a real mixed bag of picks, and of course the reason we post them here is to generate some discussion/controversy.Also, don’t be fooled — that graphic up there that I lifted from PopMatters is a head-fake. Continue reading »

LISTMANIA 2014: A LIST FROM GRANT SKELTON

 LISTMANIA 2014  19 Responses »
Dec 052014
 

 

(Grant Skelton, a recent contributor to our site, presents this list of his favorite albums of 2014.)

Below – Across The Dark River

This band are one of my first forays into doom metal. Like any metalhead, I always appreciate some Sabbath. But on the whole I’ve only recently begun to venture into doom. In all honesty, it’s been refreshing considering that doom seems to be one of the only genres in which the bands aren’t trying to out brutalize one another. If anything, doom bands seem to try to play slower than many of their counterparts (Sunn O)) for example).

“Portal” was the first song I heard from this album, and is definitely one of the standout tracks from the record. Even though it was released back in the spring, it is very appropriate for winter. Every track on this album is dark, dreary, head-nodding doomy deliciousness. If drummer Doc (Jens Vestergren) is using trigger pads for his bass kicks, then they are subtle and devoid of any “clicky” sound. The bass coats the guitars like varnish. Continue reading »

LISTMANIA: A BEST OF 2014 LIST FROM NEILL JAMESON (KRIEG)

 LISTMANIA 2014  10 Responses »
Dec 042014
 


Photo by Hillarie Jason

 

(We invited Neill Jameson (Imperial) of Krieg — whose Transient album is one of our 2014 favorites — to share with us and you his thoughts about some of the best releases he’s heard this year, and he agreed.)

 

2014 has been one of those years that honestly didn’t leave much of an immediate impression when I glance back at it, but I’m positive it’s more of a slow burner. At least I’d like to think so, rather than the first real signs I’ve become old mentally which means I probably should look into an IRA or what flavor bullet to eat, either sounds about as appealing as the other.

I think I listened to a lot more non-metal music this year in terms of new releases, but rather than spend 500 words telling you why I think Bob Mould’s new record wins the year, I’ll go over the metal & metal-related pieces that I’ll probably continue to listen to past January. Continue reading »

LISTMANIA 2014: A YEAR-END LIST FROM AYLOSS (SPECTRAL LORE)

 LISTMANIA 2014  16 Responses »
Dec 032014
 

 

(Near the end of every year your humble editor humbly invites selected musicians to contribute lists of their favorite releases as part of our year-end Listmania series. This year I asked Ayloss, the man behind Spectral Lore from Greece and the creator of one of my favorite releases of 2014 (reviewed here), to share his recommendations — because I had a strong feeling it would be very interesting, and so it is.)

*****

I don’t usually listen to a lot of music in the year it comes out, as not having the free time I used to have, I prefer to wait until the mediocre stuff gets weeded out and the good remains. When Islander asked me to compile a 2014 list, I realized that my selection was without much character, most likely the exact same stuff you’ll see in many other lists for this year. So I took this as an opportunity to dive back into the underground and do some research.

Yet, I still feel like I haven’t listened to enough music for this year, so this is absolutely not a “best of” list, just some albums that I can certainly attest to being great. In the spirit of discovery, I will mention the “top” stuff below (absolutely check them out if you haven’t already) and then proceed to talk about the stuff that deserves more exposure. Continue reading »

YOU’RE THE BEST AROUND, NOTHING’S EVER GONNA KEEP YA DOWN 2014

 LISTMANIA 2014  12 Responses »
Dec 012014
 

 

(NCS interviewer KevinP is getting a head start on our Listmania posts with the first of several personal lists he’s tossing our way.)

 

Before my post next week on the Top 25 albums & Top 5 EP’s of the year, here’s some of my “Other Best Stuff of 2014”.

 

BEST METAL COUNTRY:  GREECE

This one was fairly easy since the beginning of the year.  Aenaon and Hail Spirit Noir started things off with a bang.  Then you had Dead Congregation, Spectral Lore, and Thy Darkened Shade.  You also have quality releases from Shattered Hope, Septuagint, Soulskinner, Principality of Hell, Varathron, and a glorious EP from Universe217. Continue reading »

LISTMANIA 2014: READER LISTS OF THE YEAR’S BEST METAL

 LISTMANIA 2014  72 Responses »
Nov 282014
 

 

Happy Black Friday. We’re not selling anything and we have no discounts to offer. Instead, we want you to give us something.

We’ve reached a pivot-point in the year, with Thanksgiving now behind us here in the U.S. Now begins the countdown to the end of the year and the official commencement of the annual holiday season onslaught. In the world of metal, we’ll also start seeing more and more lists of the year’s best albums.

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 large group of guest writers (which we’ll start doing in December), and every year we also invite our readers to share their lists. If YOU have made your own list of the albums, EPs, or splits released in 2014 that you think are the best of what you’ve heard this year, we invite you to share it with us in the Comments section to this post.  Continue reading »

LISTMANIA 2014: REVOLVER’S 20 BEST ALBUMS OF 2014

 LISTMANIA 2014  16 Responses »
Nov 252014
 

 

As part of our year-end Listmania series, we re-publish “best metal album” lists compiled by certain “big platform” web sites and selected print zines. Today, we bring you what Revolver magazine thinks are the 20 best albums of 2014, as posted yesterday on the magazine’s web site.

Let me be very clear, because someone always seems to misunderstand what we’re doing here: We’re not endorsing these lists we filtch from other places (though some are certainly better than others). We’re especially not endorsing this one. To be fair, Revolver doesn’t pretend to limit its coverage to metal. And to be even more fair, I haven’t listened to half the albums on this list, so what do I know?

Still… not endorsing this one. Continue reading »

LISTMANIA 2014: THE DECIBEL TOP 40

 LISTMANIA 2014  29 Responses »
Nov 192014
 

 

Above is the cover of the January 2015 issue of DECIBEL Magazine. It includes DECIBEL’s list of the Top 40 Albums of 2014. I haven’t received my copy yet, and for all I know, it hasn’t been mailed yet. But the Top 40 list has leaked, appearing yesterday on a Reddit thread. When I first saw that thread, I decided not to post about the list until I had received my copy of the magazine, but the list has started spreading around pretty fast, and the closely guarded secret isn’t a secret any more, so…

As is true every year, DECIBEL’s list is an interesting one that’s sure to spark spirited debate. The album in the No. 1 position is Pallbearer’s Foundations of Burden, followed by At the Gates, Horrendous, Tryptikon, and Godflesh in the #2 – #5 positions, in that order. The Top 10 also includes Thou, YOB, Vallenfyre, Panopticon, and Morbus Chron. Though I think all 10 of these albums are excellent, I’m especially happy to see Horrendous, Thou, Vallenfyre, and Panopticon in such high positions because I dearly love those albums and because the bands don’t have quite the high profile of most other bands in the Top 10 — though they deserve to be in that company.

The balance of the list includes many high-profile names I expected to see (e.g., Behemoth, Agalloch, and Mastodon) and others from deeper underground that, like those four I mentioned above, deserve this kind of exposure (e.g., Dead Congregation, Krieg, Cult of Fire, Teitanblood, Trap Them, Cretin, Midnight, Thantifaxath, and Lord Mantis).  Continue reading »

2014: FIRST QUARTER RECOMMENDATIONS

 LISTMANIA 2014  39 Responses »
Mar 242014
 

(NCS supporter KevinP came up with an idea. Unlike his idea that the NY GIants will return to the Super Bowl in this decade, it’s a good one, so we’re going with it. Read on…)

If you are like me (shudder at that thought for a moment) then you get overwhelmed with all the new music that comes out over the course of the year.  Call it professional curiousity (I guess I feel special today calling myself a “pro”), but I’m always on the hunt for new bands and music (even from older bands). I feel some type of moral obligation to myself to hear as much as I possibly can.  But there’s simply not enough hours in the day and we all miss a plethora of releases.  Then at the end of the year I comb through endless “Best Of” lists trying to see what I missed and what I should check out.

So instead of waiting until the end of the year and trying to pack it all in at once (which inevitably causes even the best of us to overlook something by not giving it enough time), I propose after each quarter of the year (that’s every 3 months for those of you who failed math), we all list 5 releases that each of us recommends everyone check out (in the Comments section below if that wasn’t painfully obvious). Continue reading »

 Newer Entries