(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.

(The Indian metal scene is vibrant, multi-faceted, and loaded with talented bands waiting to be discovered on the international stage.  In the vanguard of the movement are Demonic Resurrection and their frontman The Demonstealer.  As a songwriter, a musician, the manager of Demonstealer Records, the host of a heavy metal cooking show, and much else besides, he’s a busy dude, but he made time to answer our request for a list of his favorite albums from 2011.)

Considering I haven’t heard much music this year it was very hard putting this list together. Had I heard a lot of the other albums released this year I might have had a different list. Either way, given a choice, this list would be in no particular order, but since we do this thing, here is my list in order.

1. Fleshgod Apocalypse – Agony – Oh my god this was my surprise discovery for 2011. I found it thanks to SickDrummer.com where there was a drum cam video of Francesco Paoli playing the song ‘The Violation”, after which I saw the music video and had my nuts blown off!! I immediately got the album and it’s been in my player ever since.

(Sending his binary bits all the way from Denmark, MaxR — the proprietor of the Metal Bandcamp blog — makes another welcome guest appearance at NCS with this feature on his Top 10 Metal Bandcamp doom favorites of 2011.)

10 tracks in no particular order plus one honorable mention. 2 hours 26 minutes and 1 second of music. Enjoy.

1. Lycus – “Aghast”. Mournful choral vocal lines accompany the traditional death metal vocals and crashing riffs. And that fantastic fast section as the track goes from stately to pummeling. Cathartic.

(The Number of the Blog may have drifted out to sea in a blazing longboat, its spirit soaring on flames toward the Valhalla of metal blogdom, but its writers are still with us, and we’ve opened our doors to them until something new rises from the ashes. Today, we’re delighted to post a series of year-end lists and awards from that pillar of TNOTB, DemiGodRaven.)

Hey folks! So uh….how are you all?

I’d honestly thought that I would take the time that TNOTB was down to disappear for a little bit and recharge, then come back full steam ahead, but sadly things didn’t go the way Grover and I had planned them, so we find ourselves in the welcoming arms of Islander and the NCS crew. It has been an absolute pleasure being the court jester/news guy/reviewer over at TNOTB, so thanks to those of you who read my various ramblings over the past two years.

But enough reminiscing, because it is 2011 and I have to fulfill my last obligatory duty as an egomaniacal blogger and issue my top arbitrary number of reasons that my music taste is better than yours for 2011. Originally, I wasn’t planning to number this list since I think that, as I have gotten older (you know, by a whole year), the blood in my veins has cooled somewhat and my desire for conflict has dropped dramatically. This was supposed to be a sort of peaceful declaration of how I had moved beyond numbering things and just wanted to list 10 discs that really stood out for me this year. I’ll be goddamned if I didn’t find myself subconsciously ordering the damn thing anyway because as soon as I wrapped up this list and gave it a quick glance over I noted that the way this thing lined up was pretty fucking close to my enjoyment of each album.

A note though: 2011 was an absolutely incredible year for music, and even though the albums on here may not be consistent with the ratings I gave them over at TNOTB (you guys can go look them up if you want!), this really became an archive of albums that got the most spins from me this year. Also, as I wrapped up this list I started writing out stuff that I wanted to include as well, which I didn’t bother to order and kept small, so once you are done with my 10 keep scrolling down and see what else I thought about this year.

(We first came across A Hill To Die Upon in an October MISCELLANY post, and since then their name has continued to appear on our site — their 2011 album Omens made Andy Synn’s list of the year’s Great albums as well as his list of Personal Favorites, and we also posted this review of Omens. I asked the band’s drummer and backing vocalist Michael Cook if he would share with us his list of favorite albums from 2011, and lo and behold, he agreed.)

The Horde - Thy Blackened Reign (Stromspell Records)

Thy Blackened Reign is one of the best thrash albums ever. I can say that as a man completely uneducated in the school of thrash. So, of course, my opinion won’t hold much weight with thrash fans, but I can urge everyone to buy this album and listen to it. The drums are solid, the guitars are catchy and raw, and the vocals… are… killer…

(Continuing with this year’s edition of Listmania, I invited Johan Huldtgren of the killer black metal band Obitus to share with us his year-end list.  And if you don’t know about Obitus, here’s our review of their debut full-length, March of the Drones.)

Like last year Islander graciously asked me to provide my top ten, and who doesn’t revel in the opportunity to tell people how wrong they are and tell them what the top ten really should look like. For those interested in a bit more detail on these albums (and I really mean a bit – I am a man of few words), I have a post on each of the entries on this list on my blog (here).

10. Barghest – Barghest

Primitive and nasty USBM.

(It may be Christmas Day, but we’re still open for business, and today we’re happy to welcome a visitor from another site.)

Hello NCS readers. I am Tr00 Nate, master of all that is tr00 and kvlt. You might be familiar with me. You might not. It makes no difference to me. I write for NCS’s sister/rival site The Number of the Blog. If you visit that site, you might have noticed that it is currently down due to technical difficulties. Seeing as how I have a perfectly good year-end list, it would be a shame if it never got posted. So I contacted Islander to see if he would let me post my list on his esteemed website. He graciously agreed, and now here we are.

What follows are the 30 albums that had the biggest impact upon me this past year. The ones that stuck with me the most. My favorite albums one could say. This list was made while taking everything that I have listened to this year into consideration. So consider yourself warned if you see something unexpected. If you wish to sample one of these fine albums, all you have to do is click on the album art, and it should take you to a youtube video (as that is how we do things over at TNOTB).

EDITOR’S NOTE: Oak Pantheon is a Minneapolis-based band who we wrote about a couple of times earlier this year (most recently here), singing the praises of their EP called The Void. As a gross generalization, it’s folk-influenced black metal with memorable acoustic and electric melodies, infectious rhythms, and a scarifying dose of Nordic vocals. Sean Golyer is a “behind the scenes” member of the band, and he sent us the following list of his favorite albums from the past year. By coincidence, it includes three bands who made their first appearance on our the year-end lists from Stephen and Kenneth Parker that we posted yesterday.

There have no doubt been a lot of great music releases that I’ve listened to this year — countless more than this list indicates (Absu, Disma, and Wolves in the Throne Room are a few of the bands whose albums are great, but not listed below). However, I decided to take a new approach to my choices this year and compiled a short list of releases that have permanently made it into my collection of music that I listen to regularly, or simply releases that were so stand-out fantastic I couldn’t help but mention them.

I have to admit, the big metal releases this year were not quite as stellar as the past few years (at least not ones from the big names or labels). But that allowed me to open myself up further to bands outside of the genre, or bands that really pushed its boundaries. 2011 will certainly be known as the year that the underground really shined and surpassed anything the big labels put out.

Melancholy is a theme I always enjoy searching for and listening to. I discovered a lot of new bands and I’m also developing a newfound taste in crust, but not a lot of releases stood out enough that they stuck in my playlists regularly.  I’m a man who likes to let the music speak for itself, so instead of me babbling on about my opinions for each band, I’d rather you just listen and take in the music to form your own opinion.

(NCS guest contributor and avid commenter SurgicalBrute provides a Best of 2011 for all trve curmudgeons out there, and I threw in a handful of song clips at the end. Listening to all these albums in a row would be like having a grenade detonate inside your belly while a napalm canister goes off inside your skull.)

I know it’s been a hell of a year for metal, because my credit card statement keeps reminding me. So when I first started writing this, I wasn’t entirely sure what would make it onto my list. While some of my choices were pretty obvious, even from the very beginning, several of my mid-year favorites ended up getting bumped because of some last-minute discoveries. After a little thought, a little time, and a little alcohol (okay maybe more than a little), I finally settled on 15 albums I would call my “must haves” for this year.  There are a few honorable mentions as well, just to round things out.

Most of the stuff I really like tends to fall on the death metal side of things, but there’s a mix of black and even a little doom as well. No, there is no Tech, ‘Core, or Machine Head on here. Yes, I like Disma. No, it did not make my list. Yes, I actually have a very good reason for that.

So, in no particular order, here’s my list…enjoy…\m/