Dec 182015
 

Noisey Best and Worst 2015

 

Although we’re getting deep into our site’s own year-end lists, there are still a few more “big platform” sites whose year-end lists I’ve been waiting for, and this is one of them.

Vice Media, Inc. traces its origins back to a punk magazine called Vice Montreal that was started in 1994. Since then, Vice has grown into a multimedia network that includes not only Vice.com but also nine other digital channels. One of those is Noisey, which was launched in 2011 and focuses on music across a range of genres, including rock, rap, metal, and punk. Noisey proclaims that it “reaches millions and millions of readers and subscribers a month, a must-stop source for new music, investigative journalism, and artist-sourced content.”

This year, Noisey brought metal journalist Kim Kelly on board as a writer and member of its editorial staff, and yesterday the site published her ranked list of “Top 10 (Mostly) Metal Albums of 2015”, followed by an additional un-ranked list of “40 Favorite (And Occasionally Not Metal) Albums of 2015”. Here they are (and to read Kim’s comments about all the albums and listen to music streams, go HERE). Continue reading »

Aug 312012
 

(photo credit: Nick Palmiretto)

(In this post, Dane Prokofiev [formerly known as Rev. Will around these parts] returns to NCS with another installment in his Keyboard Warriors series, in which he interviews well-known metal writers. Today’s subject is the thoroughly awesome “Grim” Kim Kelly.)

The name “Grim” Kim is, surely, not unknown to denizens of the metal blogosphere and physical print media.

Starting at the tender age of 15, the New York-based female metal writer worked her way up from underground fanzines to bigger outlets, and she has been at the craft for nearly a decade since. Her career as a metal writer seems to be one of the most successful cases around, as evident from her perennially expanding portfolio (she recently became a staff member of Pitchfork Media), and so it is only natural to inquire: what were the unique life experiences that shaped her to be who she is today?

Of course, that is not all that perks the interest of the body modification enthusiast’s admirers and peers. In this interview, No Clean Singing delves into certain iffy metal issues with the seasoned metal scribe as well.

 

Hello Kim, it’s time to start talking about yourself again! Were you christened (or satanized) “Grim” Kim by a good metal pal, or did you come up with it yourself?

It’s a nickname given to me by my friend Curran Reynolds. He runs Precious Metal, a weekly metal night at Lit Lounge in Manhattan, and when I was in college in Philly, I’d often come up to catch the show and hang out. I eventually started DJ-ing there upon occasion, and he decided that “Grim Kim” was to be my DJ name. When I started writing for MetalSucks I used it as my pen name ‘cause everyone else there had a quirky nom de plume, and from there, I guess it just stuck. People like rhymes. Continue reading »