Here we have yet another list of best metal albums of 2014 from yet another “big platform” web site, i.e., one with a large online audience that doesn’t cater mainly to metalheads. This time the list comes from Stereogum.
I’ve been waiting for this one, not because I thought it would be amusing in the way that lists from other such places are often amusing, but because there are some studs who put the Stereogum list together: The list was compiled by Michael Nelson, Ian Chainey, Aaron Lariviere, Wyatt Marshall, and Doug Moore.
To be clear, I don’t have any personal knowledge of their sexual exploits, but these are people whose opinions about metal I respect — their monthly Stereogum column, “The Black Market”, is one I always make time to read even when I don’t have time to read much of anything else in the sphere of metal writing.
As Michael Nelson explains in his entertaining and thought-provoking introduction to the list, it’s a result of compromise — the give-and-take among these five writers, not compromises dictated by editorial direction and pandering to readership demographics, which is the kind of smell I’ve gotten from a few other lists from other places that I’ve re-posted here. Continue reading »
