(Our old friend from the Dominican Republic Vonlughlio once again brings us his list of the year’s best releases. It’s a Top 50 list, with honorable mentions as well, and this is Part 2, counting down from No. 24 to No. 1. Part 1 can be found here.)
So here is the second part of my favorite albums of this year, and honorable mentions: Continue reading »
(Here’s Part 3 of Wil Cifer’s five-part year-end list. Parts 1 and 2 can be found here and here.)
While death metal doesn’t get as much air time with me, I am no stranger to the genre, having bought my first death metal album Leprosy in 1988. From there Morbid Angel and Deicide would become my favorite death metal bands, with Incantation, Obituary, Cancer, Nocturnus, and Unleashed picking up the slack. As with all things, the darker the better, so that will factor in as we leave no grave unturned and dig into the best of 2015.
This list is going to touch on every aspect of the genre, sometimes getting so melodic I had to question if they were death metal and then give the album another listen to ease my doubts. There was not one sub-genre or genre that dominated this year. Though I tend to lean more toward the doomier and more blackened side, we still have more traditional, tech, and experimental death metal bands making good showings. So here are my top ten death metal albums, ranked according to which ones got the most rotation on my iPod.
10. Vehemence – “Forward Without Motion”
Certainly could have stood to listen to this one more, but I suppose I’m not always in need of this much shredding mixed in with my death metal. It was a guitar player’s album for sure. The drummer was no slouch either, but the focus is more on the sweep arpeggios. Continue reading »
(Our old friend from the Dominican Republic Vonlughlio once again brings us his list of the year’s best releases. It’s a Top 50 list, with honorable mentions as well, so we’re dividing it into two parts. We’ll bring you Part 2 tomorrow.)
So, the time of year has come for my Top 50 albums of 2015. This time around I’m going to divide the list in two. In this post the list will unfold until position 25. The second post will be from 24 to 1, and honorable mentions. The reason for dong this is that putting the entire list in one post might make it too long.
I would also like to say that this year I’ve been listening to more Brutal Death Metal than before. As I always say, some will hate it, others will like it. Regardless of that, please check out the bands, and I hope that if you do like them you will show your support. Well, here it goes: Continue reading »
(This is the second of a five-part year-end list by Wil Cifer. Part One can be found here, and we’ll have the remaining three parts over the next three days.)
In sorting through the black metal albums that stuck with me this year, the key seemed to be diversity. Blast beats for the sake of blast beats have grown stale. These are the bands who took the conventional trappings of black metal and made them their own, and created the kind of music that I looked forward to hearing.
Most of these bands added other elements, ranging from death metal to folk to prog, as they broadened the bounds of black metal rather than just remaining cvlt enough to not be false. This year the bands hail from a little of everywhere: Norway and Sweden still have a presence, but so do America, France, Portugal, Italy, and Iceland. So grab a bic and get ready to torch some churches ‘cus here we go…. Continue reading »
(Wil Cifer has written a five-part year-end series that includes top albums in the genres of black metal, death metal, doom, and experimental/progressive metal, but the first part of the series is this one.)
First, before the weeping of the message board rises to a fever pitch, “Mainstream” here is not referring to bands selling out, playing arenas, or becoming a household name, though some of those things might apply to a few of the bands on this list. “Mainstream” in this case means too middle-of-the-road to belong on the Top Ten lists for more extreme forms of metal such as black metal, death metal, doom metal… you get the picture. They could appeal to your average metalhead who does not just listen to cassette pressings limited to only 200 copies. So in other words, in most cases these bands are not ones I would be able to cover over at my other home Cvlt Nation. The bulk of this is just fun, driving-to-the-liquor-store metal.
These are ranked thanks to my Last.fm in the order of which got the most rotation on my iPod. It’s fine for an album to be highly regarded for its artistic merit, but what is a great piece of sonic art really worth if it’s not inspiring me to come back to for repeat listens? Continue reading »
(Here’s Part 2 of Austin Weber’s year-end round-up of music. Go HERE to see Part 1, which had a death metal focus. In this part, Austin delves into mathcore, prog, grind, and Kvlt Cold Kvts.)
If anyone reading this hasn’t seen my prior year-end lists here at NCS, I try to bring you an alternative list of some of the best music of the year. Which means I won’t post a lot of releases that you see on other lists. Not because I didn’t dig a lot of them, but because you already know about them and will be seeing a lot of the same names being repeated elsewhere.
In addition to this massive year-end list, I also did one at Metal Injection, but my objective for this one is to focus on lesser-known groups and show you more jams from the year that not enough people heard.
Quotes that appear below the following records were pulled from my reviews, multi-band articles, and song premieres, and more than 20 in this two-part feature are from my posts over at Metal-Injection for releases that I didn’t cover here at NCS. But you’ll also find some new mini write-ups for releases I didn’t get a chance to cover anywhere this year, but loved as well. This is an unordered list as far as “ranking” goes. Hope you find some nu jamz! Continue reading »
(We present the first part of a massive multi-part year-end list by Austin Weber. Today’s selections are organized under the heading “Life Metal“.)
I’m not even going to write a winded introduction and re-cap of the year. If anyone reading this hasn’t seen my prior year-end lists here at NCS, I try to bring you an alternative list of some of the best music of the year. Which means I won’t post a lot of releases that you see on other lists. Not because I didn’t dig a lot of them, but because you already know about them and will be seeing a lot of the same names being repeated elsewhere.
In addition to this massive year end list, I also did one at Metal Injection, but my objective for this one is to focus on lesser-known groups and show you more jams from the year that not enough people heard. Just as important, this list is a reflection of releases that I’m likely to want to put on frequently for years to come. Since we all have different listening tastes, I also wanted to provide a big batch of music and let you decide what you enjoy the most.
Quotes that appear below the following records were pulled from my reviews, multi-band articles, and song premieres, and more than 20 are from my posts over at Metal-Injection for releases that I didn’t cover here at NCS. But you’ll also find some new mini write-ups for releases I didn’t get a chance to cover anywhere this year, but loved as well. Some of these are EPs, since good music is not determined by the quantity but by the quality! Also this is an unordered list as far as “ranking” goes. Hope you find some nu jamz! Continue reading »
(I am actually posting two year-end lists from two long-time Swedish supporters of the site, both of whom are named Johan. Having seen both lists, I can tell you that both are very interesting — and dramatically un-alike. This Johan uses the name “Johan” in his comments, and his list is not metal, but the descriptions are so interesting that even I was seduced into listening… and came away very pleasantly surprised.)
As I’m sure many metalheads do, I too have tastes and urges that I have to roam outside of the realms of metal to satisfy. I have found that with increasing age my attention span (or maybe just the amount of time I can spend listening to music per day) has shrunk, meaning that I often tend to latch on to songs rather than albums, and since metal is my first and foremost love, other genres tend to end up more on the periphery.
That said, the non-metal songs that I do latch on to, I usually hug to death like some demented Swedish octopus. In other words, the songs I am about to recommend below all come with the very highest of praise from me. Continue reading »
(Kaptain Carbon returns to NCS with a year-end list of 2015 demos. Kaptain Carbon operates Tape Wyrm, a blog dedicated to current and lesser known heavy metal. He also writes Dungeon Synth reviews over at Hollywood Metal as well as moderating Reddit’s r/metal community. We’ve heard that he is also a fantastic dungeon master and has some wonderful EDH decks.)
Demos were intended to be a demonstration of talent, which could then be passed along to record labels and production companies. The demo would entice interest and would hopefully lead to a larger, more produced effort. This has pretty much been erased since even first efforts from musicians can mimic decent production, and self-produced full lengths are released as first products.
The idea of demos has all but gone away, save for underground metal. It is here where demos are either the first step in a long process of releases or the end point for musicians who never release full-lengths. Demos, in heavy metal, attract a certain allure for their primitive and unadulterated potential despite the reality surrounding them. Continue reading »
(For the second year in a row, we present a year-end list from our Iowa-based guest Ben Smasher. This list originally appeared on Ben’s own blog, here.)
2015 was by all accounts a great year for me personally. It has been a year starkly contrasting with years prior, all in good ways.
In the early spring I found myself growing tired of my typical metal fodder but was too preoccupied to seek out something new to satiate it. In the past I’ve successfully explored other genres and enjoyed decent results. I spent some time exploring what everynoise.com had to offer, which led me to a stint enjoying Zeuhl and prog bands of the ’70s and early ’80s. Then Beijing opera music of the early 1900s fell into my lap by way of my significant other, and it immediately scratched my itch in a new way.
I began plowing through time periods, genres, and vast geographies of music from all corners of the globe and it yielded highly entertaining and fascinating results. From the ritual Nat Pwe music of Myanmar, tribal music of the western Congo, ’80s khmer pop music from Cambodia, Thailand, rock of the ’60s — I could go on and on. This had so significantly changed my listening habits that I had to take a step back. Continue reading »