With one exception, our 2011 edition of Listmania has finally drawn to a close (although TheMadIsraeli still has plans to elaborate on some of his choices with future reviews). The exception is my ongoing list of 2011′s “Most Infectious Extreme Metal Songs”, which may still be ongoing this time next year if I don’t force myself to wrap it up soon.

Compared to what we did near the end of 2010, this year’s series of posts really mushroomed — 44 posts in the space of about five weeks.

Among other things, we were fortunate to receive year-end lists from many of the writers who made The Number of the Blog such a great source for discovering new metal. But this year we also significantly expanded the scope of our own coverage, reaching out to more band members, fellow bloggers, and our own readers to get their recommendations of the best music that 2011 had to offer. We also started the series by re-publishing Best of 2011 lists from magazines and “big platform” web sites who included metal in their own retrospectives about the year’s best music.

I thought it might be useful to collect in this one place links to all of the posts we published in our 2011 Listmania series, organized into the following categories:

• Magazines and “Big Platform” Sites
• Band Members
• Other Bloggers
• Guest Contributors (including NCS readers)
• NCS Staff

So, if you’re still hunting around for new music or want to see what others have been saying about the albums you liked, check out the comprehensive set of NCS links after the jump. And thanks again to everyone who contributed to this endeavor and to everyone who made time to read what we pulled together.

We first made the acquaintance of Mickael André in the early days of this blog when we developed a fascination for the French metal band of which he is the bassist — Eryn Non Dae.. I counted, and we’ve posted about them seven times since 2010, most recently here. The band’s own description of their music is one I would endorse: “Complex and brutal structures, black and apocalyptic moods, an obscure music where dissonant compositions carry an in-your-face, aggressive vocal style… A trip into the depths of the soul.”

I asked Mika if he would share with us a list of the metal he enjoyed most during 2011, and he responded with a list, which I’ll come to eventually. But this post also gives me an excuse to feature music from the many projects in which Mika is involved. Eryn Non Dae. is only one of those projects, though it’s Mika’s main one. The latest news from END. is very sweet news indeed — they are now beginning to record their second album. Their 2009 Metal Blade release, Hydra Lernaïa, was a remarkable debut, and I’m really curious to hear what the band will come up with next.

But END. is not Mika André’s only musical project. He’s also the guitarist for an instrumental band called Nojia (that’s their photo at the top of this post), who recently released a fascinating debut album called Solarchitect. (available here).

The album starts with a 6-minute overture and then proceeds through four long songs, ranging from 11 to 18 minutes in duration. It was recorded live, with all the musicians performing together in the studio — and when you hear the range and complexity of the music, you’ll appreciate even more what that means. I’ve embedded a music player later in this post that will stream the entire album — listening is an intense, mesmerizing experience.

(As our Listmania series winds down, today we welcome another fellow blogger, whose moniker you may also recognize from his NCS comments. Check out his diverse year-end list of new discoveries below, and be sure to check out the Valley of Steel blog, too.)

Hello, NCS readers! Sitting here on the long bus ride from the Valley to my job in Pittsburgh, I am given the opportunity to do a lot of reflecting. For example, today I am reflecting on the fact that it is FUCKING COLD enough outside to FREEZE A POLAR BEAR’S NUTS OFF. But, since it is also the dawn of a new year, many people like to take the time to reflect back on the year that has just concluded, as well as looking ahead to the one that is just beginning. So I have written posts that look in both of those directions. This first one addresses some of the great music I have discovered during 2011, and if Islander chooses to publish it and if you all don’t completely hate it, there will be a second post to follow which discusses what YOU want the future of metal to look like.

Over the past month or so, I have seen literally OODLES of year-end lists all over the internet. In fact, this website alone has featured damn near an oodle and a half. Many of them (not the ones on NCS, specifically, but just some of those I have seen around) seem to just re-shuffle the same few “big name” releases in various orders, with a couple controversial or “surprise” entries to almost make each list worth reading.

Well, I almost didn’t make my own list, because I really didn’t see the point of just rehashing the same old thing YET AGAIN. The more I thought about it, though, I realized the beneficial part of reading these lists, which is that you might find something new that you otherwise would have missed out on. With that in mind, I spent a lot of time thinking about the joy of discovering new music, and how much awesome music I discovered in 2011. So, then I decided to make a list of some of that music, to share with YOU.

(We’re delighted to bring you a special guest post today from New Zealand’s Steff Metal, who among many other activities is the creator of the wonderful STEFF METAL blog. She has a special list for us from down under.)

After reading all the end-of-year lists posted on NCS, and writing my own (Top Ten Metal Albums of 2011), I realised that – despite a few notable exceptions – these lists were once again dominated by the metal powerhouses of the US and Europe. Sure, we don’t exactly have a down-under equivalent to Fleshgod Apocalypse or Origin, but NZ and Australian bands are putting out more and more decent metal albums every year.

I’ve been trying to focus more on reviewing and promoting local metal acts, and what better way to do this than to pick some of the best Kiwi and Aussie releases of 2011?

1. Ulcerate – The Destroyers of All (Willowtip Records, New Zealand)

There’s nothing I can say about The Destroyers of All that hasn’t been said by a zillion other writers who’ve placed this in their top albums for 2011 – simply a stunning piece of experimental death metal. Flawless drumming, dissonant riffs, jarring, doom-laden vocals – the personification of extreme metal perfection. I’ve been going to Ulcerate shows for the better part of 8 years now, and I reckon you’d be thick to miss them on their upcoming tour.

(We’re blessed with yet another year-end list from one of The Number of the Blog’s writers — Gaia. The previous TNOTB lists have already evidenced the diversity of that site’s musical tastes, but this list makes the case conclusively.)

It’s sad when your favourite old band t-shirt is too tired to wear, the print on the front is cracked and faded, the black now lost it’s hue, for some it’s even ripped from rowdy gigs. But it’s refreshing when you get to buy a new one, the print’s cool, it’s a new recently discovered band, and the logo’s unreadable. Just what you wanted. It doesn’t quite replace that old favourite shirt that you can’t wear anymore, but you look forward to wearing this new one.

I’ll miss you TNOTB, but you’ll always be there. My first favourite.

Of course we’re here to discuss lists and whatnot, not tepid analogies of other things. I wholly enjoyed putting together this list. Previous years have showcased my ineptitude to narrow down my lists and so I hope this year’s at least shows a pretence of being discerning. I could never be so righteous and say these are the ‘best’ records of the year, but they are certainly my favourites.

Before said list, I will now cheekily highlight the honourable mentions and they are Six Organs of Admittance, Turbowolf, Memfis, Elvis Deluxe, At Devil Dirt, and Thorr-Axe, all deserving but had to be omitted from the list then lately annexed here. Oh, Master Musicians of Bukakke was another one. And Moab.

Enough prolixity here, lets ramble on.

(BadWolf did something like this last year — HERE — and it looks like it’s becoming a tradition.)

You might as well call this list “Bad Wolf’s ongoing love affair with angsty woman-rock.”

Yes, it’s true—I have loves outside of metal. I have lesser-but-significant passions for female-fronted lyrical rock outfits, Trip-hop, underground Hip-hop, Hard Rock, Folk, Pop, and extreme non-metal music like math rock, prog and noise. The best concert I saw all year, except possibly Converge, was Portishead.

2011 was a poor year overall for Hip hop, I think—and there hasn’t been a good year for Trip-Hop in close to a decade. Pop is stuck in an awful electronica-fueled gutter binge, and grungy rock n’ roll has been almost completely devastated by radio friendly emo-metal hybrids. Ugh.

But 2011 brought a bumper crop of amazing femme-rock, much of it drenched in filth and darkness fit for goat-throwers to enjoy (not-included but honorably mentioned would be St. Vincent, Florence + The Machine, Cults, and Zola Jesus). Hell, one of them feels like a black metal wolf in indie sheep’s clothing.

I challenge you all to listen to some of this music, broaden your horizons, and explore those darknesses from foreign shores. Without further ado:

(The musicians I invited to submit year-end lists were people whose music I liked a lot and who I thought would bring interesting perspectives to our look-back on 2011 metal. Here’s the latest offering, from the vocalist of Sweden’s Canopy, Fredrik Huldtgren, with whom I had the pleasure of spending some time in Seattle last month. If you haven’t yet introduced yourself to Canopy’s music (for example, by reading one of the jillions of our posts about them), it can be streamed and purchased on Bandcamp here. Canopy is at work on their fourth album – may it come soon!)

9. Primordial - Redemption at the Puritans Hand

I must admit, I am quite a bit of a Primordial fanboy. That being said, this album actually took me quite some time to get into. It is a rather slow album, and it does not feel as harsh as their previous efforts. The passion is still there though, stronger than ever, but I feel that now more than ever, Primordial is a band to see live, because that is where it all makes sense.

(In this post, The Number of the Blog’s groverXIII provides his lists of 2011′s best EPs, albums, and videos. To hear music from the selected albums and EPs, click on the artwork.)

2011 was quite a year for music. I won’t lie… I’m generally a pretty positive guy when it comes to music, which is how I ended up with 75 honorable mentions (and probably more, if I were to go through my massive “albums I listened to” list with a fine-toothed comb). This list isn’t entirely metal, of course, but rather my favorite albums of the year regardless of genre. I had begun my rundown of the following honorable mentions over at TNOTB, but they were lost in our Viking funeral and I don’t have the patience to redo them, so I’m kicking things off with a simple list, in alphabetical order, of albums that I listened to in 2011 and enjoyed, but didn’t quite make my top 25.

There are a lot of big-name releases in the honorable mentions, and lest you think I didn’t like them, bear in mind that these are albums that I did like. If I were to list every album that I listened to in 2011, well, we’d be here for a long fucking time. Anyway, honorable mentions. BEHOLD.

(Today we’re happy to welcome another visitor from The (sadly departed) Number of the Blog: Snagon shares with us his list of the Top 25 albums of 2011.)

2011 marked the end of my life as a boyfriend (I’m engaged), the beginning of my teaching career, and the end of the place where my blogging started, The Number Of The Blog. For all these endings and beginnings I have had my fair share of great new music to take along for this journey and thus my list holds a tremendous amount of personal emotion for me. For now we have the honorable mentions.

Anaal Nathrakh – Passion, Anthrax – Worship Music, Antichrist – Forbidden World, The Black Dahlia Murder – Ritual, Boris – Heavy Rocks,  Charred Walls Of The Damned – Cold Winds On Timeless Days, Craft – Void, Dream Theater – A Dramatic Turn Of Events, Haemorrhage – Hospital Carnage, Jungle Rot – Kill On Command, Manilla Road – Playground Of The Damned, Necrophagia – Deathtrip 69, Opeth – Heritage, Pentagram – Last Rites, Razorblade Handgrenade – Tales From The Bricks,  Revocation – Chaos Of Forms, SSS – Problems To The Answer, Today Is The Day – Pain Is A Warning, Toxic Holocaust, Conjure And Command, Yob – Atma

I listened to a ton of music this year so you must wonder how I was able to talk about only 25 of the new 2011 albums; just read on below and behold, the majesty of balance.

We’re big fans of The Monolith Deathcult, and we’ve written about them repeatedly over the last two years. Most recently, Andy Synn included them in a post called “The King Is Dead, Long Live the King”, contrasting “the electrifying, eclectic, and downright esoteric bludgeoning of” their album Trivmverate with the puzzling Ilud Divinum Insanus: “Unlike Morbid Angel’s most recent offering, this actually fuses a brilliant variety of techno-industrial elements and symphonic excess onto a chassis of pulverising death metal utterly seamlessly, making a whole that is far, far greater than the sum of its parts.”

Andy also wrote a SYNN REPORT about their discography, and last March I had the pleasure of interviewing the band’s guitarist/lyricist/backing vocalist Michiel Dekker (published here), who is also a high school history teacher. TMDC have been painstakingly writing and recording a new album called Tetragrammaton – almost two years have passed since the band’s last release, The White Crematorium 2.0 – and the interview provided a few insights into the typically fascinating lyrical subjects of the new album.

So far, the only lasting taste of the music from the new album is a track called “Aslimu!!! — All Slain Those Who Brought Down Our Highly Respected Symbols To The Lower Status Of The Barren Earth”, which was released last February, and can still be heard HERE. I’ve also had the privilege of listening to unfinished demo versions of a few more songs, which has only made me eager for more. I’m keeping my fingers crossed that Tetragrammaton will be released in 2012 — it’s certainly one of my most anticipated albums for this new year.

All of this is by way of introduction to the real point of this post. As part of our year-end Listmania series, I asked Michiel Dekker if he would give us a list of the best albums he heard in 2011. Instead of that, I got something perhaps more interesting.