(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.

2. Heresiarch – Hammer of Intransigence (Dark Descent Records, New Zealand)

Loud, barbaric and blasphemous – this is Conqueror worship at it’s violent best. You won’t find Heresiarch bringing anything new to the black/death sound, but Hammer of Intransigence is a tight, ritualistic ear-raping, and it delivers it with gusto. The stand-out song for me is the closer “Intransigent”, which mixes slower, doomy passages in with the barbaric slaughter. And, not that it has any effect on their sound, but the album art alone is worth buying this album for.

3. Mournful Congregation – The Book of Kings (20 Buck Spin, Australia)

Good funeral doom can be hard to find these days, as many bands seem to lose themselves in the style without focusing on the emotion behind the music. But the four tracks of The Book of Kings break this unfortunate mould: they build melancholy without melodrama, extolling suffering with a glimmer of hope. The elegant compositions comprise layer after layer of harrowing sorrow and contemplative misery. The sparse vocals never overwhelm, and the guitar tone and riffs bear an uncommon warmth.

4. Woods of Desolation – Torn Beyond Reason (Northern Silence Productions, Australia)

Far removed from the scathing war metal of Heresiarch’s EP above, Torn Beyond Reason has a dreamlike quality – this is the kind of contemplative black metal I really love. Richly layered instrumentation and sweeping compositions combined with blistering riffs make this an album that constantly surprises you. Formed by members of the BM band Austere, Torn Beyond Reason shows a natural progression of that band’s sound.

5. Lamort – A Cold Godless Machine (independent, Australia)

Named after the Death card in the tarot deck, Lamort’s sound could best be described as symphonic extreme metal. A Cold Godless Machine combines fast, heavy riffs, growls, screams and operatic vocals, choirs and orchestral sections, and some seriously wicked drumming. Lamort toured NZ in late 2011 and have been building a loyal following in Melbourne for the last couple of years. They are currently working on their first full length to be released in 2012, and I reckon they’re heading for big things.

6. The House of Capricorn – In the Devil’s Days (Swamps of One Tree Hill, New Zealand)

I reviewed In The Devil’s Days on my blog earlier this year, and, being a doom album, it falls into that reviled category of “clean singing”. However, the groovy riffs and deep, rich bass of “All Hail to the Netherworld” and “To Carry the Lantern” wouldn’t exactly work with black metal gargling. I’m not much of a fan of the slower tracks on this record, but the fuzzy atmosphere of the faster stoner rock tracks more than make up for it.

7. Voyager – The Meaning of I (Sensory, Australia)

I reviewed The Meaning of I earlier this year and concluded it’s progressive metal without the wankery. This is an album stuffed to bursting with melodic, catchy songs that don’t stray from their purpose. The vocals, while clean, have a rough edge and an odd tone that gives Voyager a truly unique sound. The standout track is definitely “Iron Dream”, a tribute to Type O Negative’s Peter Steele featuring a singer who mimics his voice perfectly.

8. Demolition – Kill Zone (Rock Star Records, Australia)

Thrash metal with a heavy, prominent bass sound and some seriously wicked riffs. Dual guitars lay down a heavy melodic foundation for some of the best speed drumming I’ve heard in a thrash album this year. While Kill Zone isn’t exactly anything new, it’s a solid, well-produced records and if you like your thrash in the vein of Testament, Evile, and Voivod, you will not be disappointed with Demolition.

9. Orpheus – Bleed the Way (Rock Star Records, Australia)

Listening to Bleed the Way, you wouldn’t expect to discover that this is the debut album of a Melbourne band. Orpheus’ meaty riffs, pounding bass, and symphonic keyboard melody place their sound alongside the popular Euro-melo-death bands. Tracks like “Unscathed” and the slower and more rhythmic “A Thousand Times” show off this band’s talent for atmosphere and composition. Orpheus will definitely be a band to watch on our side of the world.

10. In Dread Response – Embers in the Spiritless Void (Dead Boy Records, New Zealand)

Aggressive death metal with overarching melody and faultless musicianship, In Dread Response have been building a steady following in New Zealand since the release of their debut album in 2008. Songs like “Through Chasms” demonstrate their attention to details – lyrics that weave graven images in your mind, relentless double kick and layers of riffs that create drama and tension, and almost classical solos that deliver exactly what they promise.

One of our favorite metal bloggers, whose base of operations happens to be in New Zealand, is Steff Metal. Every week we find unusual stuff on her site that we don’t come across anywhere else. This week she decided to create a mix-tape of her favorite pirate metal (and non-metal pirate) songs, most with video accompaniment and each with her own witty introduction.

A lot of extreme metal is angry, grim, violent, and cathartic — which is exactly why we eat it up here at NCS. Doesn’t mean it can’t be fun at the same time. In fact, we think most of the angry, grim, violent, and cathartic metal is also shitloads of fun.

But when it comes to fun, pirate metal may take the cake — as Steff Metal’s audio-video montage proves quite nicely. She’s obviously more a student of pirate metal than we are, and her collection includes some bands we’ve never heard of — but they can sure swash their buckles and haul their keels. (read on after the jump, mateys . . .)

We’re still not quite sure there’s a definitive set of criteria for classifying a band as pirate metal. According to Steff, all it really takes is to sing about pirates. Blow me down, that makes sense! On the other hand, as she notes in her post, some songs just sound “pirattey” even when you can’t understand the words (e.g., they’re in Swedish). I’ll drink to that!

So, go to Steff Metal’s site and have yourself a good yo ho ho! We recommend you first have a coupla tankards of grog before indulging, or at least a six-pack of PBR (which stands for Pirate Brain Readjustment). This pirate metal shit just sounds so much better in a drunken haze. Even better if you can lay hands on a cutlass after getting a good buzz on.

To supplement Steff’s festivities, here’s a video of “Keelhauled” by True Scottish Pirate Metal band Alestorm (pictured at the top of this post).  This song was our first exposure to pirate metal, and the video is a blast to watch and listen to. I’ll excuse myself now. Gotta go find a wench to molest.

On December 15, the New York Times ran a story about an academic symposium held in Brooklyn called “Hideous Gnosis,” which explored intellectual aspects of black metal. We posted some generally disrespectful commentary about the event, and got some thought-provoking reactions. We posted a follow-up piece earlier this week about one of the papers delivered at “Hideous Gnosis,” which analyzed whether it’s even possible for someone who buys into a black-metal worldview to talk about black metal.  Today we’re continuing the discussion – but this time with a surprise contributor.

NCS welcomes, as our first guest writer, our favorite metal blogger from New Zealand — Steff from STEFF METAL. We’ve already written about her blog, which you owe it to yourself to check out, and she kindly accepted our invitation to add her wit and wisdom to NCS (because we could definitely use more of both). And unlike your NCS Authors, Steff is a black metal maven.

To set the stage, we got this comment on our original rant about “Hideous Gnosis” from a writer named Shinjuku Thief:

“I would disagree with your assertion that metal, particularly black metal, is about expressing emotion. What characterises a lot of BM, for me, is the absence of emotion . . . . I think although you scoff at anything remotely ‘intellectual’ you’re espousing a theory of your own . . . . That is the contradiction of metal, it claims to be primal, atavistic, earthy, of the body, but in reality it is so controlled, has so many codes, rules and boundaries that the fans in a supposedly unthinking manner enforce at every level. . . . [I]ts not spontaneous or relying on our innermost urges, its a well honed aesthetic and conscious action that is very much thought about.”

So, with that intro, here are Steff’s thoughts (after the jump):

NO CLEAN SINGING is doing an awful lot of talking about Black Metal, and it’s good.

You can talk about black metal. In fact, black metallers LOVE to talk about black metal. Trust me, I’ve been trapped in the corner of a bakery for forty five minutes furiously trying to get a word in edgewise while a skinny dude ranted about the Great Hunt and Christianity and how much he wanted to learn Orcish. All because I was wearing a Summoning shirt.

Look, I’m a huge black metal fan, and I can categorically say that most black metal is shit. The only reason people listen to it is that a) they like the idea of black metal more than the actual music, b) they have no eardrums and c) the 2% that is NOT shit, is fucking amazing. It’s beautiful. It’s magical. It’s otherworldly. It’s the soundtrack for the end of the world. Black metal is pure fucking Armageddon.

Many people point out the contradiction in black metal, (an observation lobbed at the Gothic subculture for the last twenty years), that while it seeks to be a chaotic force of disorder, it actually creates it’s own rules, therefore contradicting it’s supposed chaos. It’s a valid statement, but when you separate black metal music from black metal subculture, the contradiction doesn’t actually exist. Whether you should separate the two is an entirely different discussion.

Black Metal is exactly as it claims to be: base, primal, atavistic, of the body, bleak. It speaks of harsh landscapes, forgotten gods and battle-hardened warriors. There are emotions present: dissolusion, anger, revenge, lust, hatred, loyalty and above all, pride. Without emotion, I don’t think black metal – good black metal – would grab us in quite the way it does.

But this sort of music creates a subculture, mainly because it’s so anti-mainstream that those who listen to it are active in seeking out others who share their views. The emotions that make black metal appeal to us also make us want to find others – other warriors, other barbarians – to drink beer and listen to Deathcrush with. More and more people come together, and you have bands and concerts and a subculture, and you have rules. Rules about what to wear, what to say, which bands are good, which aren’t. There have to be rules, because there is a them and an us, and we have to be able to recognize our own. We have to know what side you’re on.

Black Metal society is barbarian society. It’s a Viking horde, a warrior code and a legion of the damned. The rules are different, but they still exist. I wrote about this a little in Your Inner Barbarian and Why Metalheads Wear Black. The rules are different, but they still exist, and as rules go, they’re pretty fucking sweet.

So, we could sit around, and talk about Black Metal, or we could listen to some Black Metal. I know which one I’d rather do. [editor's note: Steff picked the song below for your streaming pleasure -- so listen dammit!]

BATHORY: Blood Fire Death

P.S. Your NCS editor lifted the photos at the top of this post from Steff’s blogsite.  She found them from a 2008 shoot done by Antonella Arismendi for D magazine, aptly titled “Black Metal Barbies.”

We metalheads call things “metal” even when what we’re talking about isn’t music.  Most of the time, it’s meant as a compliment (the ultimate compliment).  Sometimes it’s just a description. In either case, I don’t think I could come up with a definition of what “metal” means when it’s used this way.  It’s kind of like what Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart famously said about porn in Jacobellis v. Ohio (1964):

I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced within that shorthand description ["hard-core pornography"]; and perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly doing so. But I know it when I see it . . . .

Yesterday, while wasting my fucking time expanding my mind on the Internet, I came across one non-musical thing after another that made me think, “that’s metal” — from a cool New Zealand metal site, to abandoned buildings in Detroit, to rugby, to hakas, to Nelson Mandela, to poetry. Allow me to share (after the jump).

First, I discovered a web site called STEFF METAL. It’s the brainchild of a woman in New Zealand named Steff (calm down dudes, she’s married). Steff knows how to write, and her blog is full of cool stuff that’s “metal,” even if it isn’t always about music. (Yes, Steff linked to a couple of our posts, but we’re not vain enough yet to use that as the sole criterion for cool sites; otherwise, there would only be about 3 cool sites on the Internet.) Steff’s site is definitely metal. Go check it out and tell me if you disagree.

One of the items in Steff’s latest post is about a series of photos of abandoned buildings in Detroit. Following her link took me to this place, where I saw 11 fucking amazing photographs (including the one at the top of this post of the United Artists theater) by two dudes named Yves Marchand and Romain Meffre.  From that place, I followed a link to the photographers’ own site, where more awesome photos of Detroit’s deterioration can be found.  I think there’s something beautiful in the ugliness — which makes it “metal.”

The fact that Steff is from New Zealand caused me to think about the end of Invictus, a really good movie I saw over the holidays about true-life events. Much of the movie builds toward a World Cup rugby match hosted in South Africa in 1995 between South Africa and New Zealand. Rugby is brutal, which makes it metal — a bunch of burly animals without pads running over each other non-stop for two 40-minute halves and then getting shit-faced afterwards.

New Zealand’s national rugby team is called the All Blacks.  They’ve consistently been one of the best rugby teams in the world for, like, forever.  They play the brutal sport of rugby, they wear black, they’re called the All Blacks, and they kick ass.  Seems pretty metal to me.

And if there were any doubt, the All Blacks perform a haka, which is a Māori war dance, before each international match. The haka has been closely associated with New Zealand rugby ever since 1884. You can see it at the end of Invictus. More immediately, you can see a sample below. It’s in-your-face, it’s over-the-top, it’s warlike. It’s definitely metal. What’s particularly cool is that the poor fuckers on the opposing team have to stand there and take it. Odds are, they’re about to get their asses kicked too.

Then, thinking about the movie Invictus, I tracked down the poem for which the movie is named. It’s by an English poet named William Ernest Henley, who died in 1903.  While imprisoned (for 27 fucking years), Nelson Mandela kept a copy of the poem on a scrap of paper and referred to it often. In the movie, after becoming president of his country following those 27 fucking years in prison, he gives the poem to the captain of the South African rugby team before its match against the All Blacks. The last two stanzas read as follows:

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds and shall find me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.

Nelson Mandela is metal.  So is that poem.

Final word:  STEFF METAL also included a link to this piece of brilliance, which imagines what it would be like if Star Wars was on Facebook.  I wouldn’t call it “metal,” but it’s fucking hysterical.

You may now return to your regularly scheduled programming.