HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO US

 Birthday Posts, Metal News  82 Responses »
Nov 212015
 

Six candles

 

We have survived another year. And when you get right down to it, sheer survival is the reason any of us celebrate birthdays. We are six years old today, having made our first post on November 21, 2009.

Measured by the lifespan of your average Galápagos tortoise, six years isn’t so long. Measured by the lifespan of your average metal blog, a species that tends to fall victim to accelerated decrepitude, I guess we’re almost ready for a nursing home.

For something that has never been a business and to this day relies on purely volunteer effort, it would have been entirely understandable if the vagaries of life had moved all of us on to other things and left NCS behind as just a fond memory. The fact that we are not only still here, but somehow more widely read than ever, makes me shake my head in wonder. We surely have defied the odds, even if we now need help going to the bathroom. Continue reading »

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO US!

 Birthday Posts, Metal News  88 Responses »
Nov 212014
 

 

Well, here we are. The blessed day has arrived. NO CLEAN SINGING is five years old today. We made our first post on November 21, 2009.

As a five year-old, we still poop our pants, scream at the top of our lungs for no good reason, have a growing fascination with what’s between our legs, and throw our food against the wall because, fuck, you only have a brief time when you can get away with shit like that.

Last year at this time I wrote that there’s a word for metal blogs who are still around as long as we’ve been: They’re called “survivors”. “Stubborn” and “too dumb to quit” are still good alternative labels. I can’t promise you we’ll be here this time next year — because no one can count on being around for another year. So we rejoice in the fact that we’re still here, as you should, too — you have also survived another year. Continue reading »

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO US

 Birthday Posts, Metal News  72 Responses »
Nov 212013
 

Guess what? NO CLEAN SINGING is four years old today. That’s right, we made our first post on November 21, 2009. There’s a word for metal blogs who are still around after four years. They’re called “survivors”. “Stubborn” and “too dumb to quit” would be alternative descriptions. Many other metal blogs who started around the same time we did (or even later) are no longer with us. We’re still very happy to be here.

My two original co-founders fell by the wayside long ago (though rumor has it, one may be making a guest appearance in the near future). In their place I’ve been very lucky  to work with the four dudes who have helped keep the site going and growing over the last two or three years. For the hell of it, I went back and identified their first appearances at NCS.

Andy Synn’s first post was a review of Dimmu Borgir’s Abrahadabra on September 23, 2010. BadWolf’s first post came on November 15, 2010 — a review of Terraphobic by Dagon. TheMadIsraeli made his debut with a review of The Interbeing’s debut album Edge of the Obscure, published on May 11, 2011. And DGR’s first post was a series of year-end lists on December 28, 2011. I’m proud to call all of them friends as well as colleagues, and I’m so grateful they’ve hung in there with me. Continue reading »

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO US: NCS TURNS THREE

 Birthday Posts, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  103 Responses »
Nov 212012
 

NO CLEAN SINGING is three years old today. We opened the doors on November 21, 2009, and we’ve posted something (or several somethings) every damned day since then. Of course, the fact that we’re still here after three years doesn’t mean we’re worth a shit, only that we haven’t given up.

Whether this birthday is a cause for celebration or for mourning, depending on your perspective, it does seem like a good time to do three things: Explain who we are (because we seem to have accumulated a lot of new readers in the last year); take note of some accomplishments; and offer a few words of thanks.

WHO WE ARE

On birthdays it’s always nice to reflect upon your origins. This blog began as a protest against the kind of clean singing that was infiltrating metalcore music at the time (what temporarily happened to Bury Your Dead three years ago was the specific provocative incident). My two co-founders and I weren’t dead set against all metal with clean vocals — we announced from the beginning that there would be Exceptions to the Rule — we just found that the kind of extreme music we preferred usually didn’t include them.

Since then, we’ve expanded our horizons to include a much greater variety of metal, with more clean singing in the mix, though I’ve hung on to the site’s original name despite (or maybe because of) how confusing it may be to newcomers. My original co-founders fell by the wayside long ago, ultimately to be replaced by a cadre of regular writers and many irregular ones. Actually, to be brutally honest, we’re all pretty irregular. So’s the music. So, it’s a good fit. Continue reading »

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO US

 Birthday Posts  49 Responses »
Nov 232011
 

Here at NCS, we have an uncomfortable habit of forgetting our friends’ birthdays. But hey, we forget our own birthdays, too. So there’s that.

For example, we overlooked the fact (for the second year in a row), that November 21 was the anniversary of the first post at NO CLEAN SINGING. We are now two years and two days old. Still not potty-trained, but old enough to have discovered the fascination of our own genitals. So there’s that.

Our credibility as arbiters of taste and intelligent assessment of music is still highly suspect. However, this hasn’t stopped bands from asking us to listen to their music or prevented most metal labels from sending us albums to review. And over the last 30 days we’ve had 57,808 page views and 32,475 unique visitors from 131 different countries (only about half of whom are trying to interest us in receiving large cash transfers from the estates of dead Africans in exchange for our personal details). So there’s that.

Since our launch, we’ve published 1,498 posts (including this one) and received 14,406 comments (only about half of which are my own). We haven’t missed a day, publishing at least one post every day since we started, even on those many days (including today) when I was viciously hungover.

We’ve remained reasonably true to our founding principles: We still don’t run ads; we still don’t spend much time slagging bad bands or posting negative reviews (preferring to concentrate our time on music we can honestly recommend and not writing about the music that doesn’t impress us); and our news reporting has also been reasonably true. (more after the jump . . .) Continue reading »

YEAR ONE IS DONE

 Birthday Posts  14 Responses »
Nov 222010
 

To show you just how discombobulated I am after a little time off, I totally missed the fact that yesterday was the one-year anniversary of NO CLEAN SINGING. It’s true: On November 21, 2009, my two co-founders and I put up our first post on this site. We had 9 visitors. We couldn’t even get all our friends to pay attention.

We’ve learned a lot since then, we’ve met (virtually speaking) people from all over the world, and we’ve had a fucking blast doing this. NCS has evolved into something we never would have predicted — and few things are better than a pleasant surprise.

We never set out to make money by doing this, which is why we don’t run ads, but we did promise ourselves that if we couldn’t generate interest, we’d just shut down and go find some other way to spend our free time — cuz we really had no interest in writing only for ourselves. That’s what diaries are for.

Thankfully, we found an audience for our ravings, and so we’re still here, working on Year Two. This morning we tried to think of some clever way to celebrate our One Year Anniversary, but we must have used up our weekly allotment of cleverness because all we really want to say is this: To all of you who spend part of your precious time visiting NCS, and sometimes even leaving us your comments (which we love getting), thank you for allowing us to continue with NO CLEAN SINGING. You’ve enriched our lives more than we can say. Stay metal!

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