PopMatters is a popular culture web site with broad coverage of music, film, television, books, comics, software and video games — you name it. It distributes a syndicated newspaper column, its articles get picked up regularly by the mainstream media, and it claims a readership of more than 1 million unique visitors per month. In other words, it fits the profile of “big platform” web sites whose lists of 2011’s best metal we’ve been re-publishing here at NCS over the last few weeks — not because these lists are necessarily ones we’d recommend as reliable arbiters of extreme music, but because we’re curious about what metal is being touted to big segments of the reading public (many of whom aren’t likely to be metalheads).

Recently, PopMatters published its list of “The Best Metal of 2011”, ranking the chosen albums from #20 to #1. The list was compiled by Adrien Begrand, Chris Colgan, Brice Ezell, Craig Hayes, and Dane Prokofiev (who has contributed to NCS under a different pseudonym). To see the list with accompanying descriptions and explanations of the choices along with sample tracks from the listed albums, use this link.

You will see some names that have appeared on every list we’ve published so far. You’ll also see some new entries, including — finally – Amon Amarth, as well as Dir En Grey, Leviathan, and (gasp) Liturgy. I predict that many of you readers who dwell deep in the underground of metal will find too much hipster in this list, and I suspect most of you are going to disagree about the placement of the Top 5 albums. Anyway, the PopMatters list is right after the jump. Continue reading »

The end of the year draws nigh, and with it comes lists. Many lists, everywhere you turn. Lists of the best of what 2011 has offered us. Back in 2009, when this site was just an ugly, smelly baby a few days old, we wrote a post about year-end lists and why people bother with them. The best reason still seems to be this: Reading someone else’s list of the albums they thought were the year’s best is a good way to discover music you missed and might like.

We don’t do an “official” NCS year-end “best albums” list. It’s just too damned much work. We listened to a mountain-sized pile of new music this year, we liked a helluva lot of it, and trying to decide which 10 or 15 or even 20 albums were the best we heard would be a bunch of effort I’d rather devote to coming up with new posts for this site. Plus, the music that I and my collaborators like is so varied that trying to compare this apple to that orange and decide which one tastes better is a very confusing enterprise.

But mainly, I’m just too fucking lazy.

Fortunately, we have some regular contributors who have more energy, and we’ll be publishing their year-end lists later this month. We’re also inviting some other folks to give us their lists in the form of guest posts for this site. And, as described in this post, we’ll also have our list of the extreme metal songs from 2011 that we thought were the most infectious.

But we ain’t stopping there. If YOU have made your own mental list of the best metal albums you heard this year, we want to see it. Because we’re fucking nosy like that. (details about this invitation are after the jump . . .) Continue reading »

Listmania season is in full swing. So far, we’ve reprinted the Best Metal of 2011 lists from Pitchfork and NPR, not because they have deep credibility in the scene but because they’re heavily trafficked web sites and because I thought the lists were better than expected. But today we’ve got a list from a source that unquestionably does have credibility.

Yes, the current issue of DECIBEL magazine (the only print metal magazine we read at NCS) arrived at the NCS Island in yesterday’s mail, and that issue includes the magazine’s list of the Top 40 Extreme Albums of 2011. Some of the names on that list have already surfaced on the internet — including the band whose album DECIBEL named the best of the year (Tombs) — because record labels and bands who made the list have been posting about it. But I didn’t know the full list until greedily opening the mag last night. And of course, I can’t resist providing that list for your amusement after the jump.

You’re going to see some of the same band names that have already appeared on both the Pitchfork and NPR lists. Fifteen bands appeared on both of those lists, and 13 of those 15 are also on the DECIBEL list — Tombs, YOB, Hammers of Misfortune, deafheaven, Ulcerate, Krallice, Negative Plane, 40 Watt Sun, Trap Them, Mournful Congregation, Disma, Autopsy, and Exhumed. (Altar of Plagues and Ash Borer were on the other two lists but not DECIBEL‘s).

You will also see names that weren’t on the other lists. For example, technical death metal rears its head through the appearance of Origin and Obscura, and old-school death-doom is represented through the welcome appearance of Vallenfyre. I was also happy to see Revocation highly placed on the DECIBEL list, and surprisingly — though not without justification — Inquisition, Hate Eternal, and Brutal Truth are in the Top 10. You definitely weren’t going to see those names at Pitchfork or NPR.

On the other hand, wait ’til you see who DECIBEL names for the No. 2 and No. 3 albums of the year. They’re certainly not my picks for those spots; they wouldn’t even be in my Top 20. But what the fuck, half the fun of Listmania is the generation of controversy. Continue reading »

I have a feeling that not many of our readers spend much time at Pitchfork. Extreme metal isn’t exactly Pitchfork’s main brand affiliation. BUT, well-credentialed metal writer Brandon Stosuy has recently revived a monthly metal column at Pitchfork called Show No Mercy, and yesterday he posted his list of “The Top 40 Metal Albums of 2011”. I thought it was a fine, diverse list, and so I’m reprinting it here.

I haven’t heard all the albums on the list, but I’ve heard the majority of them, and if I had the energy and the mental clarity to make a Top 40 list of my own, I think many of the titles on Brandon’s list would be on mine, though not necessarily in the same order (of course). His list is also missing some albums I’ve liked a lot this year — for example, the 2011 releases by Krisiun, Vallenfyre, Fleshgod Apocalypse, Taake, Esoteric, Kroda, Thy Catafalque, Vader, Insomnium, The Devin Townsend Project (Deconstruction), Decaying, Decapitated, Entrails, Ghost Brigade, Xerath, Solstafir, Revocation, Alghazanth, Flourishing, Septic Flesh, Byfrost, Origin, The Black Dahlia Murder, Noctem, The Konsortium, Shining, Acephalix, Kartikeya, Infestus, Anaal Nathrakh, Rudra, Moonsorrow, Puteraeon — and there are more. I’m not saying I’d put all these albums in place of a like number on Brandon’s list, but there would certainly be some replacements. Still, I do like his list.

After the jump, take a gander at the Pitchfork Top 40 — but you should also visit the page where the list appears at Pitchfork because it includes well-done brief descriptions for each of the top 26 albums on the list, plus tracks to stream for each of those. You can get there via this link.

One more thing — that Tombs album that made it to the top of DECIBEL’s year-end-best list (as we reported yesterday) finishes very fucking high on this list, but not at the top spot. That honor goes to . . . well, you’ll see. Continue reading »