[EDITOR'S NOTE: Today's guest post comes to us from Dan, who apparently is now called The Artist Formerly Known As Dan. Dan is an American temporarily transplanted to Adelaide, Australia. He has a list for you.]

So, I realize it’s cliche to make one of these lists (and maybe a bit premature?), but they’re usually useful for several reasons.  Firstly, it allows me to shamelessly plug the bands I like and push my agenda on you.  Secondly, it allows you to post lists of the records I forgot and tell me why my first list was wrong.  I can then subsequently go back to the records I may have forgotten or never owned in the first place.  Everyone should theoretically win here, since there is always music overlooked or forgotten about throughout the year.  So, let’s begin.

10. The Tony Danza Tapdance Extravaganza – Danza III: The Series of Unfortunate Events

Technical, but so brutal.  A perfect recommendation for someone who listens to too much vanilla-breakdown deathcore (and, for some of you, “too much” implies listening to any deathcore at all).  I highly recommend seeing them in concert; they bring tons of energy.  Yippie-Kay-Yay-Motherfucker.

(more after the jump . . .)

Before I started trying to put something together for this NCS blog every day (while also dealing with my day job and the rest of my life), I used to spend quality time browsing other metal blogs. Hell, doing that is what inspired me and my two sometimes co-authors to start this thing.

Nowadays, I don’t spend nearly as much time as I’d like on other sites, because I just don’t fucking have the time. The consequence is that when I come across a long piece on another blog, I tend to just wince, make a mental note to come back “when I have time”, and move on to something that’s shorter. (Knowing this you’d think I would be less verbose on the stuff I write for NCS. Yes, you might think that, but then you have to remember that I have a brain the size of a plum that’s been drying in the sun too long.)

Usually, when I make one of those mental notes, I never go back to read the long piece I skipped over.  Today, I actually did. I went back to MetalSucks and I read a July 19 posting of an e-mail that MS received from Ryan McKenney, the vocalist for a band that constantly blows me away, Trap Them. He was responding to an earlier post by one of MetalSucks’ more-or-less regular columnists, Sacha Dunable (of the band Intronaut) on the subject of whether corporate-sponsored metal shows are killing the live concert market.

You don’t have to read Dunable’s post to understand McKenney’s. I could just put up a link to McKenney’s post, urge you to go read it (here’s the link), and move on. But that’s really not good enough. For all sorts of reasons, it just fucking blew me away. I think it will hit you pretty fucking hard too. So, after the jump, I’m taking the liberty of just re-printing the whole bleak, brilliant, passionate, eye-opening, thing.

Those gun-jumpers at Decibel magazine are at it again. Not content to select their list of the Top 40 albums of 2009 in about October (see our previous post about that), the issue that just hit my mailbox (optimistically dated February 2010) includes a feature called “The Top 25 Most Anticipated Records of 2010.” At least Decibel‘s writers poke fun at themselves in the intro that precedes their many following pages of prognostications:

“Decibel‘s always been about more than more past and present: Our powers of clairvoyance increase exponentially with each new day.  Hell, our grip on the future is such that we’re thinking about covering the coming decade’s 100 best metal albums before summer, just to get them out of the way.  As for the list below, remember this: We’ve heard — and utterly endorse — everything on it . . . including the stuff not yet written.”

To be honest, we were thinking of putting together our own list of bands whose new albums we’re stoked to see in 2010.  Might still do that if holiday laziness doesn’t completely gobsmack us. And we really do enjoy reading Decibel every month. But still, just can’t resist poking a little fun.

And in the poking-fun vein, we also came across Decibel‘s 2010 Media Kit. This is the sales piece that the mag provides advertisers to convince them how much folding green metalheads have to spend (yeah, right) and how all you gotta do to collect it is advertise in Decibel. Lot’s of amusing stuff in there, which you can peruse here. There’s a page of demographic data about Decibel‘s audience that’s especially juicy.

So, after the jump, we’ll show you the bands that Decibel has pegged for the The Top 25 Most Anticipated Releases of 2010. We’ll highlight the ones that prompted us to say “Fuckin’ A!” Our reactions to the rest are some combination of “maybe,” “huh?”, and “Uh, no.” And just for kicks we’ll show you that page from Decibel‘s 2010 Media Kit that provides potential advertisers with demographic data about Decibel‘s readers. Enjoy.