(written by Islander)

For many years as part of our annual LISTMANIA orgy we’ve shared Stereogum’s YE list of the best metal releases. For all of those years (until now) it was assembled by the writers of Stereogum’s monthly Black Market column. In last year’s list it was announced (to my dismay) that the Black Market column would be ending, to be replaced by a column called Breaking the Oath written by Brad Sanders, who had been responsible for Bandcamp Daily’s metal column.

Sure enough, Breaking the Oath’s initial appearance at Stereogum occurred last January and has appeared monthly ever since. If you try to catch up on those columns now, you’ll need to pay Stereogum a subscription fee. Simply registering with an e-mail and password isn’t enough, as I discovered to my chagrin.

However, Brad Sanders has continued Stereogum’s tradition of publishing a list of the year’s best metal, and it’s not pay-walled. Interestingly, he has also continued to write the monthly metal column at Bandcamp Daily, another platform whose YE lists we’ve been sharing for some years, and will do again in our next post today. It shouldn’t shock anyone that today’s list and that one overlap… significantly. Continue reading »

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 »

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 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 nine years running now.

It follows that Stereogum‘s annual metal list is one I especially look forward to seeing every year, and the 2021 edition appeared yesterday. It again consists of only 10 entries, collectively assembled by Ian Chainey, Aaron Lariviere, and Wyatt Marshall. It’s preceded from this statement by Ian: “In keeping with the grand tradition, Aaron Lariviere would like to remind you that ‘this list will disappoint you.’ He’s right. Instead of bests, we pick favorites. That always makes for a fittingly weird list. Hell yeah.” Continue reading »

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 (they have, for example, a list of the “50 Best Albums of 2019“ across many musical genres — which includes only two albums that I think would qualify as metal), but its staff includes a talented and tasteful 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 seven years running now.

It follows that Stereogum‘s annual metal list is one I especially look forward to seeing every year, and the 2019 edition appeared last Friday. It consists of only 10 entries, collectively assembled by Ian Chainey, Aaron Lariviere, and Wyatt Marshall (and perhaps the ghost of Michael Nelson). Continue reading »

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 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 five years running now.

It follows that Stereogum‘s annual metal list is one I especially look forward to seeing every year, and the 2017 edition appeared a couple of days ago. It again includes a ranked list of 40 albums. Continue reading »