LISTMANIA 2016: METAL NAMES ON YEAR-END LISTS FROM ROLLING STONE AND NPR

 LISTMANIA 2016  21 Responses »
Dec 082016
 

rolling-stone-logo

 

As part of our year-end LISTMANIA series, we bring you lists of the year’s best metal from a few print zines with wide circulation and from some cross-genre web platforms that get orders-of-magnitude more eyeballs than we do. In the case of most of these other lists, we do this as a way of peaking at what the wider world sees, since our world is very narrow and subterranean. In this post, we’re looking at Rolling Stone and NPR. It won’t take you long to read the metal names on these lists.

ROLLING STONE

Last week, the venerable Rolling Stone magazine posted on their web site a list of the 50 Best Albums of 2016. This list isn’t limited to metal. In past years, Rolling Stone has published a separate list of the year’s best metal, but I’m not sure if they will do that this year. So what I did was to scroll through that “50 Best” list and carve out the metal names, which I’m listing below along with their rank on the list.

The full article appears here, with accompanying explanations for the choices: Continue reading »

LISTMANIA 2015: METAL NAMES ON NPR MUSIC’S LIST OF 50 FAVORITE ALBUMS OF 2015

 LISTMANIA 2015  9 Responses »
Dec 072015
 

NPR Top 50

 

I’ll repeat what I’ve written in years past, because it remains true: NPR (formerly National Public Radio) is an American national treasure, one that has somehow survived as a non-profit national radio and on-line broadcaster (with 900 public radio station members) despite largely weaning itself from governmental support and being the target of repeated political attacks by the American right wing. According to Alexa, its online site is the 148th most popular of all U.S.-based web sites and the 568th most popular in the world.

Today NPR Music posted a list of its 50 favorite albums of 2015. It’s a cross-genre list, reflecting the broad demographic of NPR Music listeners. I’ve siphoned off the metal albums from the overall list and am presenting them after the jump.

In years past, NPR has also separately posted a list prepared by writer Lars Gotrich of the best metal albums. I’ve always looked forward to that list, but I understand (sadly) that it won’t be happening this year. So, we must make do with this: Continue reading »

LISTMANIA 2014: NPR’S “10 FAVORITE METAL ALBUMS OF 2014”

 LISTMANIA 2014  11 Responses »
Dec 302014
 

 

Perhaps the last of the “big platform” year-end metal lists we will re-post this year, NPR’s Lars Gotrich has today unveiled his line-up of favorite metal albums from the year that’s about to exhale its final breath.

For this of you who’ve been paying attention, earlier this month we jokingly reprinted “just the heavy stuff” from NPR’s overall cross-genre list of the site’s 50 favorite metal albums from 2014 — a list that consisted of one album, Pallbearer’s Foundation of Burden. But although NPR’s resident metal guy only got one slot to fill in that overall list, he got free rein on this new list. And what did he do with all that freedom?

Well, he compiled a list of 10 albums whose hallmark is diversity. Of course, Pallbearer reappears along with one other album that’s becoming (understandably) a near-ubiquitous presence on 2014 year-enders — Triptykon’s Melana Chasmata. But with a nod to High Spirits, he’ll make our man BadWolf a happy camper, and fans of Origin (whose name has appeared almost not at all in the other lists I’ve seen) will likewise be pleased. For myself, I got the biggest grins from seeing Skull Fist, Thou, and Wo Fat (!) on the list. And I’ve also now got some albums I’ve never heard of to go check out (like the one whose cover is partially exposed up above). Continue reading »

LISTMANIA 2014: NPR MUSIC’S 50 FAVORITE ALBUMS OF 2014 (JUST THE HEAVY STUFF)

 LISTMANIA 2014  21 Responses »
Dec 082014
 

NPR (formerly National Public Radio) is an American national treasure, one that has somehow survived as a non-profit national radio and on-line broadcaster (with 900 public radio station members) despite largely weaning itself from governmental support. According to Alexa, its online site is the 138th most popular of all U.S.-based web sites and one of the top 1,000 in the world.

Today NPR Music posted a list of its 50 favorite albums of 2014. It’s a cross-genre list, reflecting the broad demographic of NPR Music listeners, but there’s some heavy stuff in the mix. As we’ve done occasionally in past years, I’ve siphoned off the metal albums from the overall list and am presenting them after the jump, just to give all us underground dwellers a sense of what’s presented to the NPR audience as the best metal of the year.

NPR didn’t rank those 50 albums, so I’m listing the metal releases in the order I saw them on the NPR list — which you can see in full here. Continue reading »