LISTMANIA 2017: THE GRAND TOME OF ALBUMS THAT DGR ENJOYED IN 2017 (Part 2)

 LISTMANIA 2017  5 Responses »
Dec 282017
 

 

(This is the second part of DGR’s massive year-end list feature. Part 1 (here) included Honorable Mentions and albums ranked 30-21. Today he presents the next 10 selections for the album list, ranked 20-11. Tomorrow we’ll have the concluding segment.)

 

There are few things that I enjoy each year more than the yearly list roundup here at NCS – including taking the time to write out my own personal favorites. This is a post that I spend a large part of the year dreading, knowing that my penchant for massive verbiage in the face of all things common sense will turn around and bite me in the ass and the stress implied therein of the constant re-reading and editing that goes into the joy of crushing one’s website editor under the sheer weight of text. Were the yearly list allowed to be a book, I would deeply enjoy witnessing the ever increasing size of the roll of toilet paper mine would have to be printed on throughout the year. Maybe one year I’ll actually be able to spring for two-ply and at least have some effect. Continue reading »

UNDERGROUND METAL FOR THE TRVE CURMUDGEON (BEST OF 2017 EDITION) BY SURGICALBRUTE

 LISTMANIA 2017  23 Responses »
Dec 272017
 

 

(For the 7th year in a row, I asked our old pal SurgicalBrute to weigh in with his year-end list of favorite albums and EPs. As expected, his list (presented in alphabetical order) adds names of underground releases that haven’t appeared before in our 2017 Listmania series, including some that (gasp!) include clean singing.)

 

What to say?….What to say?…What to say? I mean, was it a good year for metal…of course it was…that observation is trite and tired. It’s not 1996 any more, we’re not stuck using dial-up and getting our heavy metal information exclusively from magazines. There is a constant stream of new music to be found at your fingertips if you want it, and the chances of us ever seeing another year like 2002 (one of the weakest I can remember) are extremely unlikely.

How good was it, though? Well that depends. If you were looking for something new and unique, you were probably let down a bit, but as far as I’m concerned, that’s not what makes or breaks a year. I’m not looking for anything genre-defining, I just want to kick back and listen to some killer music, and by that measure I can’t find a single thing to be disappointed about.

So, with that said, let’s get on with the list….Enjoy! \m/ Continue reading »

LISTMANIA 2017: THE GRAND TOME OF ALBUMS THAT DGR ENJOYED IN 2017 (Part 1)

 LISTMANIA 2017  9 Responses »
Dec 272017
 

 

(As usual, DGR created a year-end list of great length, devoting a great many words to each listed item. Whereas your humble editor continues to fear that the site may collapse beneath this great leviathan of words if it its bulk were caged in a single post, this year we have split it up into only three parts instead of last year’s six. This part includes Honorable Mentions and the albums ranked 30-21.)

 

There are few things that I enjoy each year more than the yearly list roundup here at NCS — including taking the time to write out my own personal favorites. This is a post that I spend a large part of the year dreading, knowing that my penchant for massive verbiage in the face of all things common sense will turn around and bite me in the ass, and the stress implied therein of the constant re-reading and editing that goes into the joy of crushing one’s website editor under the sheer weight of text. Were the yearly list allowed to be a book, I would deeply enjoy witnessing the ever increasing size of the roll of toilet paper mine would have to be printed on throughout the year. Maybe one year I’ll actually be able to spring for two-ply and at least have some effect.

2017 on this end, was an oddly paced year that moved in massive fits and starts. It seemed like there would be a tremendous flood of music and then radio silence, save for the occasional spark of life that would illuminate an ever-darkening cosmos — a new star birthed just in time to realize that it can’t see any of its neighbors anymore. Believe it or not, there was actually one point at which I thought I’d be able to keep this thing down to a nice and trim twenty albums without falling off the deep end. But as the yearly crawl back through our review archives causes one to do, there was a whole lot of “oh fuck, that actually came out this year” uttered — which is a pretty good sign, as many of these albums have slotted into the constant-play role, alongside the many other discs that I’ve dedicated words to over the years. Continue reading »

LISTMANIA 2017: A YEAR-END LIST FROM BLACK METAL HQ

 LISTMANIA 2017  14 Responses »
Dec 262017
 

 

(As our 2017 LISTMANIA series continues, we are joined by a first-time list contributor who is the man behind the Black Metal HQ YouTube channel — which you can find HERE — and who we’ll allow to introduce himself further below. He presents his list in a form different from any others we’ve featured here.)

 

Welcome to my Year-End List of Black Metal related releases in 2017 (so far)! Although a bit premature — what would this world be without lists prepared as early as November? But who am I to judge, right? That might literally be the question some of you might have, so who am I? For all you antisocial misanthropists, please scroll down and get your dose of some great Black Metal; for all the others: enjoy a little introduction about Black Metal HQ.

To begin with, the person behind Black Metal HQ: Let’s just say I am your regular metal nerd who got into the genre nearly 20 years ago. To be more specific — I had my cherry popped at a small summer party by “Nightmares” from Iced Earth, which until today remains a very pleasant memory. Being instantly hooked on “metal” and drifting through a lot of metal genres with proportionally little Black Metal escalations I rediscovered the darker spheres through Spectral Lore’s III and Mare Cognitum’s Phobos Monolith in 2015. If for some reason you are not familiar with those two albums, please stop reading now, head over to Bandcamp, and come back in 2 hours after enjoying yourself (whatever floats your boat, yo). Continue reading »

LISTMANIA 2017: A YEAR-END LIST FROM JOHAN HULDTGREN (OBITUS)

 LISTMANIA 2017  9 Responses »
Dec 262017
 

 

(For the seventh year in a row (!), I invited my friend Johan Huldtgren of the Swedish black metal band Obitus — whose new album Slaves of the Vast Machine (reviewed and premiered here) was itself one of the year’s best black metal albums — to share with us his year-end list. Once again, he agreed. This list previously appeared on Johan’s own blog.)

 

Another year has flown by, in my case quite literally, so here we are again with a new edition of “albums I enjoyed this year”. From what I’ve seen of the lists posted here so far, many of my picks haven’t made others’ lists so I guess either my taste has diverged from that of the median NCS:er or you’ve all missed out on some worthy albums; hopefully it’s the latter and this will be useful for you. Continue reading »

LISTMANIA 2017: WIL CIFER’S TOP 25 METAL ALBUMS OF 2017

 LISTMANIA 2017  8 Responses »
Dec 222017
 

 

(We present NCS contributor Wil Cifer’s selection of the Top 25 metal albums of 2017.)

 

Here’s my top 25 metal albums of 2017. Making these lists can send my OCD into a spiral, so I have learned to abandon my more complex methods of ranking them and leave it to what Last Fm said I listened to most. In some cases it didn’t feel right so I flipped entries around.

While I adhere to a pretty strict policy of not feeding the trolls, these lists can lead to a great deal of grumbling, so this time around I have included a brief blip explaining why one album ranked higher than the other.

In short these are MY Top 25 Albums of 2017, so if your name is not Wilhelm Satanchild Cifer, then I don’t really care what you think, but feel free to share your thoughts any way since this is the internet. Continue reading »

LISTMANIA 2017: A YEAR-END LIST FROM JOSEPH SCHAFER — PART II

 LISTMANIA 2017  9 Responses »
Dec 212017
 

 

(Joseph Schafer, the ex-editor of Invisible Oranges and current writer for Decibel, was one of this site’s earliest regular writers under the pseudonym BadWolf and has been a steadfast friend of all of us ever since. This week he returns to NCS once again with a year-end list. This year it comes in two parts. In this Part 2, Joseph lists his Top 10 albums of 2017. Yesterday’s Part 1 (here) named 25 albums that narrowly missed his top slots.)

 

Picking a ranked selection of ten records to represent the best metal in 2017 presented an unusual challenge. As I outlined in my previous list of runners-up, narrowing in on a single trend or trajectory of the genre proved untenable. Of course, metal globally is at what seems like peak production. Literally every week of the year produced at least one record in the genre worth revisiting.

Moreover, focusing on anything, least of all music, seemed difficult. Much of this has to do with the trouble international and domestic political climate. How are we supposed to appreciate the nuanced aesthetics of a record when for a while there every morning news update seemed like a potential nuclear air raid siren. Metal ought to comment on and illuminate these affairs. At least the best metal of the ’80s and ’90s accomplished that feat while delivering great tunes as well.

Instead, metal seems unable to agree on what its own identity is. Instead of the music reflecting the world at large, the culture around that music exhibits the same symptoms of our global culture’s disease. Partisan dogfighting. An unwillingness to think beyond the short term. A total breakdown in shared moral consideration. Fuck picking a record, how are we supposed to pick one problem to fix first? Or at least to write a song about? Continue reading »

LISTMANIA 2017: A YEAR-END LIST FROM JOSEPH SCHAFER — PART I

 LISTMANIA 2017  8 Responses »
Dec 202017
 

 

(Joseph Schafer, who was one of this site’s earliest regular writers under the pseudonym BadWolf and has been a steadfast friend of all of us ever since, returns to NCS once again with a year-end list. This year it comes in two parts. Part 2, which we’ll post tomorrow, is a Top 10 list. In this Part 1, the focus is on 25 albums that narrowly missed Joseph’s top slots.)

 

This list will mark my return to No Clean Singing after three years editing Invisible Oranges, and now six months as a dedicated freelance writer. I got my start here at NCS and this time of year I always return. The holidays, after all, are about setting a light in the dark and navigating home, if only for a moment. Now as ever, NCS remains a light in the deepening internet dark, and will always be home.

I can think of many ways to summarize 2017. One could call it a year of reconciliation. Storied and well-traveled bands easing into their twenties and thirties did their best to flex and please after 2016’s glut of great new and super-underground acts. To their credit: 2017 has to be the best year for ‘mainstream’ metal in over a decade. The disappointing tripartite belly flop of Emmure, Suicide Silence, and Winds of Plague’s limp new records hopefully put that subgenre in the dirt for the time being, but otherwise the old Big-little labels, Nuclear Blast, Century Media, Metal Blade, and Relapse delivered some polished surprises: Obituary, Suffocation, Cannibal Corpse, Immolation, Satyricon, Dying Fetus, Trivium, Belphegor, Vader, Danzig (what?), Exhumed, The Black Dahlia Murder, and Unsane all released their best albums in years. Special accolades must go to Cradle of Filth, who have somehow come out of their maybe-worst-band-in-metal tailspin and released a front-to-back rager with Cryptoriana – the Seductiveness of Decay. Continue reading »

LISTMANIA 2017: A YEAR-END LIST BY NEILL JAMESON (PART II)

 LISTMANIA 2017  3 Responses »
Dec 192017
 

 

(For the fourth year in a row, Neill Jameson (Krieg, Poison Blood) kindly accepted our invitation to share with us his list releases from the past year that meant the most to him. It comes in two parts. In this second part, Neill’s list is devoted to splits, reissues, and “non-metal odds and ends”. Part I, which includes albums and EPs, is HERE.)

 

Still with me? Thanks, I promise this won’t be as wordy. 2017 was also a great year for splits, reissues, and dark music that doesn’t fall into the “metal” category but is worth your attention just the same. That seems like enough of an intro, let’s dive right in. Continue reading »

ANDY SYNN’S TOP TEN TRACKS OF 2017

 LISTMANIA 2017  15 Responses »
Dec 182017
 

 

(Here’s Andy Synn’s annual list of 10 favorite songs from the year that’s nearly ended.)

Oh, you poor, innocent fools… did you really think I was done with you just yet?

Not only do I have a bunch of other reviews, plus another edition of The Synn Report, all set to roll out over the course of this week and the next, but I’ve also got yet another list for you after this one, so you needn’t worry that you’ll be lacking any content to keep you distracted from the grim reality of your lives this festive season.

One quick word of warning – the following list is neither kvlt, krieg, or kool… it’s just ten of the (many, many) songs that lodged themselves deep in my brain over the past twelve months, and which I felt compelled to highlight. Make of that what you will! Continue reading »

 Older Entries  Newer Entries