THIS IS NOT THE FINAL THING YOU’LL READ ABOUT LAST YEAR (meta lists, sub-radar sounds, immaculate conceptions, and a few records of critical acclaim)

 Album Reviews, LISTMANIA 2025  No Responses »
Jan 292026
 

(Our South African contributor Vizzah Harri decided to follow up our 2025 LISTMANIA series with a monumental listmania of his own, which includes various list-assembling calculations and his abundantly illustrated thoughts about three groups of albums he chose to highlight in his own inimitable fashion, respectively anchored in each section by discursive reviews of releases by Demonic Death Judge, Melpomene, and Imperial Triumphant.)

Hi, it’s your non-resident alien. Can someone please remind us of what the time is, last year is over already? Well, I’ve spent too much time as my second favorite spirit animal, the ostrich. You know, sticking my head in the sand and grubbing around for shiny rocks cos the job market is absolutely grade A dogshit.

Yes, year-end mania is over. The train has left the station and all that’s left are the weeds creeping up the platform and the announcement notice is stuck on loop. So, while we’re waiting for that next train and everyone else is racing ahead into the future, here are some uselessly vital statistix for those of us who aren’t quite ready for the new year. NCS doesn’t have a single authoritative take like other ‘happy camper’ sites that deal in the underground, though the Listmania roundup does a good job of covering a lot of bases.

I’m not a threat to anyone’s job dragging cells, I do however excel at stupidly focusing on mindless chores. Before we get into some things from last year that are still worth your time, a quick diversion into; what a meta list of readers’ lists would produce and what a meta list of NCS lists would produce. I tried compiling a meta list of the mind-numbing data of all the other lists including these, but it ended up being futile. There already is a To the Teeth list of lists, which is careful to account for bias. I’m not a data scientist and I’m biased as fvck, I was however able to gather that across the board, there are two albums that got way more votes on way more sites than any others. Therefore a meta meta list, in the Greek sense, of all the motherfuckin lists weighted and scaled together (the link is to Brazilian avant-jazz band Metá Metá’s pandemic album MetaL MetaL) would mean 2025’s Absolute Elsewheres are: Continue reading »

LISTMANIA 2025 WRAPUP

 LISTMANIA 2025  1 Response »
Jan 142026
 

(written by Islander)

We posted the last of our many 2025 year-end lists yesterday. As in previous years, the volume was extensive. As usual, some of them were re-postings of lists that appeared at “big platform” web sites and print magazines, and others were prepared by our own stable of race-horse writers. And once again we had a large group of lists from other guests and old friends. Plus, we’ve again received valuable, extensive lists in reader comments on THIS POST (new lists can still be added there).

In this article I’m setting forth links to all of the 2025 year-end lists that we published, divided into categories and listed within each category mostly in the order of their appearance. For people who are looking for the best metal that 2025 had to offer, these lists and our readers’ lists provide a tremendous resource, as they have in past years.

Heart-felt thanks again to everyone who contributed to 2025 LISTMANIA and to everyone who made time to read what we pulled together. A lot of people put a lot of effort into this series, as we do every year, but I can tell from the page views that it continues to mean something to fans of heavy music, and so we’ll continue doing it. Continue reading »

LISTMANIA 2025: DANIEL BARKASI’S 25 CUTS OF 25!

 LISTMANIA 2025  4 Responses »
Jan 132026
 

(For our final LISTMANIA installment of for 2025 [other than the still-evolving infectious song list], we present Daniel Barkasi’s Top 25 list.)

Arriving at the tail-end of Listmania is the one you haven’t been waiting for. Yup, it’s my year-end list of stuff that kept me going for another spin ‘round the record that is life. I chronicle my recent happenings in my monthly Obscurities column, so yes, we’re going to subject you to a quick synopsis.

This is being written post-move to the mountains and frigid cold of West Virginia. Unpacking will take a while, and most of my end-of-year downtime has been spent packing, moving, and unpacking. Not exactly relaxing as we’d like to unwind before going back to the day job, but it had to be done, and we’re settling in nicely. The pups and cats are doing great, and the sheep/pigs have a lot more space (and warm enclosures to shield them from this). I’m sure the new neighbors have enjoyed my cursing the high winds and temperatures in the teens we’ve endured the last few days. Being a Florida resident for a decade certainly changes one’s perspective on temperature, and I’ll be spending as much indoor time as possible until March or April. Whenever it becomes suitable for a human to exit the house. Continue reading »

THE BEST METAL ALBUM OF 2025 (RAFI’S PICK): TRIVAX — “THE GREAT SATAN”

 Album Reviews, LISTMANIA 2025  No Responses »
Jan 132026
 

Artwork by Nestor Avalos; recommended for fans of Melechesh, Behemoth, Dark Fortress

(Last month Israeli metal writer Rafi Yovell made his reviewing debut at NCS, and while he hasn’t brought us a year-end list to share in our nearly completed 2025 LISTMANIA series, he has enthusiastically identified his album of the year.)

Black metal almost always comes with rage for religious fanaticism, regardless of where or when you’d argue the genre began. Fascinatingly enough, though, I think the Middle East was where black metal would reach its conceptual summit.

There have been many great black metal releases from the region, but last year the Iranian-born but now UK-based Trivax blessed us with one of the best extreme metal records I’ve ever heard.

Surely, I wouldn’t be the first to point out that awesome metal tends to flourish from hardship. And my pick for the best metal album of 2025? Holy fucking J’hannam, The Great Satan takes that concept to a whole other level… Continue reading »

LISTMANIA 2025: TO THE TEETH’S “LIST OF LISTS”

 LISTMANIA 2025  10 Responses »
Jan 122026
 

(written by Islander)

We aren’t quite finished with our 2025 LISTMANIA series, but we’re getting very close. As we’ve neared the end in many previous years, we’ve included a “List of Lists” assembled by Dutch writer Peter van der Ploeg for his To the Teeth metal blog, which began life in May of 2016, originally on Facebook and eventually expanding to SubStack, and this year we’re sharing his List of Lists again.

As in the past, Peter explains that he began the exercise by assembling a population of year-end lists from an international group of music sites. For the 2025 endeavor, he identified the following sources:

This year I’ve counted the relevant lists from Album of the Year, Angry Metal Guy (AN Grier, Steel Druhm), Bandcamp, Brooklyn Vegan, Consequence of Sound, Decibel, Invisible Oranges (Colin Dempsey, Josh Rioux), Meat Mead Metal, Metal Hammer, Metal Injection, Metal Storm, MetalSucks, No Clean Singing (Gonzo, Will Cifer), No Echo, Popmatters, Rolling Stone, Stereogum, The Needle Drop, The Quietus, To The Teeth, Toilet ov Hell, Treble and Zes Losse Tanden. Some magazines or blogs publish a lot of personal lists: I included a maximum of two, to prevent publication bias.

Altogether, these lists included a total of almost 300 albums. Peter then assigned point values to the selections based on the rankings they received at their original locations. He explains: Continue reading »

LISTMANIA 2025: A YEAR-END LIST FROM THE GOAT TAVERN

 LISTMANIA 2025  5 Responses »
Dec 312025
 

(Last May we published an excellent interview of the Polish band Polish band Wędrowcy~Tułacze~Zbiegi by a metal enthusiast with some roots in Poland but based in the UK whose moniker is The Goat Tavern. With that as our introduction, today, as part of our 2025 LISTMANIA series, we’re sharing The Goat Tavern’s year-end list of 25 favorite albums. To follow The Goat Tavern, go here and here.)

Whenever it’s time to look back at the year that’s just passed, I always face the laborious task of selecting the albums that have tickled me the most and the ones I think are worth a special shout-out. I try to take different things into account but, in the end, it’s the emotions that matter to me in the first place.

Extreme metal is in a fantastic place at the moment. Each year brings more and more astonishing albums and 2025 was no different. The variety and range of music within the metal scene is overwhelming and it might be a real battle to follow everything that’s coming out.

This year, I selected 25 full-length releases that I consider my favourite ones that I’ve been listening to the most this year. The definite majority involves black metal and, this year, the list has been dominated (again!) by Polish bands.

I hope you can find something new there that you like. Enjoy! Continue reading »

LISTMANIA 2025: A YEAR-END LIST FROM JOHAN HULDTGREN (OBITUS)

 LISTMANIA 2025  2 Responses »
Dec 302025
 

(For the 15th year in a row, our friend Johan Huldtgren of the Swedish black metal band Obitus (find them here and here) has again allowed us to share with you his year-end Top 10 list, originally presented on Johan’s own music blog here.)

Lists like this are always somewhat arbitrary, it’s ten releases I picked, from the longer list of albums I liked, whittled down from albums I’ve heard, released in 2025. Often times which get picked and which get left off is mood dependent, and that is only the albums which I’ve heard; experience has taught me that I will sometime down the road find albums released this year which could easily have made the list. As at least a few of the releases below I’ve not seen on other lists published here, I hope you find something you enjoy which you may otherwise have missed. Continue reading »

UNDERGROUND METAL FOR THE TRVE CURMUDGEON (BEST OF 2025 EDITION)

 LISTMANIA 2025  9 Responses »
Dec 292025
 

(This marks the 12th time in our history when our ornery old friend SurgicalBrute has weighed in with a year-end list of favorite albums and/or EPs. As expected, his list (in alphabetical order) adds many names that haven’t appeared before in our 2025 Listmania series, and this year there’s a lot of variety on offer, though the prose is just as curmudgeonly as ever.)

It’s been about three years since I last did one of these lists for No Clean Singing. Since then, hardcore kids have taken over old school death metal, black metal has become a meme on TikTok, slam metal continues to exist, and for some reason there are still people convinced Deafheaven is a black metal band.

What the hell, people!? I step away for five minutes, and all hell breaks loose! Continue reading »

LISTMANIA 2025: ROLLING STONE’S LIST OF “THE 15 BEST METAL ALBUMS OF 2025”

 LISTMANIA 2025  6 Responses »
Dec 292025
 

(written by Islander)

The first two parts of our year-end LISTMANIA festivities are nearing conclusion — our sharing of lists from sites and zines with much bigger audiences than our own (but often, audiences who aren’t as devoted to metal as ours) and lists compiled by our own writers and old friends. In this post we’re again including Rolling Stone magazine’s list of the year’s best metal albums because it has become a tradition, a largely comical tradition at this point which dates back to the halcyon days of 2013 when a commenter somehow just skipped past all our introductory text, looked at Rolling Stone‘s list, and chastised us for not naming Gorguts as AOTY instead of Deafheaven.

Of course, Rolling Stone hands-down qualifies as the kind of “big platform” site or zine that we pull from in this part of our LISTMANIA orgy, as a way of getting a glimpse into what the top-side world perceives as great metal.

This year, Rolling Stone compiled a Top 15 list (the number seems to vary from year to year). Ususally their list displays a lot of “scatter”, for want of a better term. Often, it includes albums you wouldn’t be surprised to see on one of the lists assembled by our own writers, and often it includes others that makes us cringe. By our lights, the rankings themselves are often eye-rolling. Continue reading »

LISTMANIA 2025: A YEAR-END LIST FROM TODD MANNING

 LISTMANIA 2025  3 Responses »
Dec 262025
 

(2025 marks the 10th year Todd Manning has been writing with us, and we’re grateful he has stayed with NCS for so long. Below you’ll find his un-ranked list of this year’s best albums (12 of them), plus lists of EPs, “metal adjacent” records, and reissue spotlights.)

Every year I am lucky enough to do this year-end round-up, I typically lament the state of the world, drawing some sort of parallel between the bleak state of affairs and the content of the music consumed. While all that remains true, I’m going to start on a more positive note.

This year, I’ve been able to more deeply engage with all the music that I love, to take refuge in these wonderful music scenes. I got to join a band I was already a fan of (Blasted Heath), do a short tour, and release some material from my noise project (Towers Burning Water). I also just got to hear so much more new music this year than I had in the past couple of years. It was a challenge to narrow this list down and to keep this article at something resembling a reasonable length. I always write this round-up the way I like to consume similar lists of others, a way to gorge on music I missed. Please enjoy…

Continue reading »

 Older Entries