LISTMANIA 2016: A YEAR-END LIST FROM BEN SMASHER

 LISTMANIA 2016  17 Responses »
Dec 262016
 

listmania-2016

 

(For the third year in a row, we present a year-end list from our Iowa-based guest Ben Smasher.)

Welp, next time we drown in 86 gallons of buffalo vomit, we can think to ourselves, “It’s ok, it’s not as bad as that time we lived through 2016!”

I swear the only reason I didn’t put a bullet in my temple this year was because of all the records that would pile up outside my door in the wake of my departure. Though my rabid interest in metal music had waned somewhat over the last few years, this year I decided to begin a YouTube channel (here) where I talk about my collection and other metal-related topics, and that stoked the fires more than they have been in years.

So I feel that this year I have a more refined list to offer because of how much more time I spent delving into the far reaches of the genre. If you find yourself in the throes of the winter doldrums come January, there is certainly some solace to be found below. Continue reading »

LISTMANIA 2016: PROG AND EXPERIMENTAL METAL AND NON-METAL (MORE YEAR-END LISTS FROM AUSTIN WEBER)

 LISTMANIA 2016  5 Responses »
Dec 262016
 

listmania-2016

 

(Last week we published the first three installments of Austin Weber’s year-end lists, which were devoted to death metal, black metal and grind, and mathcore and instrumental metal. This is the fourth and final installment.)

My goal has been to bring you a massive alternative list of my favorite lesser-known releases of the year, divided into several parts. Which means I won’t post a lot of releases that you see on other lists. Not because I didn’t dig a lot of them, but because you already know about them and will be seeing a lot of the same names being repeated elsewhere.

Undoubtedly some of the releases will be ones you’ll know or heard mentioned in passing, but hopefully you’ll find more new bands and music you were unaware of overall. Quotes that appear below the following releases were pulled from my reviews, multi-band articles, and song premieres from music covered here at NCS and my 2016 posts from Metal-Injection. You’ll also find some new mini write-ups for releases I didn’t get a chance to cover anywhere this year, but loved as well. Continue reading »

THE DGR-NCS HOLIDAY BUYERS’ GUIDE AND YEAR IN REVIEW FOR THE METALHEAD WHO HAS TO HAVE ABSOLUTELY EVERYTHING — 2016 EDITION (PART 6)

 LISTMANIA 2016  4 Responses »
Dec 262016
 

dgr-list

 

(Each day last week we rolled out a part of DGR’s list of his favorite 50 albums of 2016. In this 6th and final installment of his year-end list we have not-metal favorites, awards, confessions of shame, and other miscellaneous stuff. Follow these links for Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, and Part 5 of the list.)

NON-METAL

I often try to include a small segment of not-metal shit that I’ve listened to during year soon ending, and to be honest, the rotation kind of stays the same. But it’s only because I feel like these groups absolutely nail it. However, I can fully understand that the “DGR pitches Fixt-label and Celldweller music” paragraph can be tiring, which sucks, because both of Klayton’s Scandroid and Circle Of Dust discs came out this year and they’re both GREAT.

However, that’s not going to fully stop me from putting all my credibility underneath a dump truck’s tires and then backing over it until it is a fine paste, so here’s a small taste of the rock and electronica stuff I got around to this year. Continue reading »

THE DGR-NCS HOLIDAY BUYERS’ GUIDE AND YEAR IN REVIEW FOR THE METALHEAD WHO HAS TO HAVE ABSOLUTELY EVERYTHING — 2016 EDITION (PART 5)

 LISTMANIA 2016  8 Responses »
Dec 232016
 

dgr-list

 

(DGR created year-end lists of great length. He wrote many words about each listed item. Your humble editor feared that the site would collapse beneath this great leviathan of words if it reared its bulk in a single post, and therefore decided to split it up, with one part appearing each day this week. Follow these links for Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, and Part 4.  And guess what? There’s still one more part left to come after this one.)

You knew this was coming, or you would if you had been around here the last few years. It’s been a long-standing tradition here at NCS that when the Listmania series happens, I take the filter completely off and just produce a gigantic screed of words that is occasionally interrupted with album art, music streams, and album titles with little numbers next to them. This year is no different.

In my attempt to rationalize an enormous year of music, I’ve capped my list at fifty albums, ranked in order of whichever numbers my fingers were closest to on the keyboard. On top of that, I have my usual small collection of not-metal stuff, some fun stuff, my list of shame, a likely happy face where number 8 should be because I’m a moron and put the numbers in front of a parenthesis and WordPress translates that into an emoticon, and my personal favorite award that I hand out each year.

The 50-album list continues today, counting down the top 10. What’s left after that will come your way on Monday. Continue reading »

LISTMANIA 2016: MATHCORE, MATH-ROCK MANIA, AND INSTRU-METAL (ANOTHER YEAR-END LIST FROM AUSTIN WEBER)

 LISTMANIA 2016  2 Responses »
Dec 232016
 

listmania-2016

 

(This is the third part of Austin Weber’s four-part year-end list series. To check out Part 1, which focused on variants of death metal, go here, and to see the lists focusing on black metal and grind, click this.)

As 2016 comes to an end, I remain quite thankful to Islander for allowing me to contribute here over the last few years. I really believe in this site and our mission of sharing more of what’s out there than most other sites. So with that in mind, if anyone about to intake this hasn’t seen my prior year-end lists here at NCS, I try to do something different than most people.

My goal is to bring you a massive alternative list of my favorite lesser-known releases of the year, divided into several parts. Which means I won’t post a lot of releases that you see on other lists. Not because I didn’t dig a lot of them, but because you already know about them and will be seeing a lot of the same names being repeated elsewhere.

Undoubtedly some of the releases will be ones you’ll know or heard mentioned in passing, but hopefully you’ll find more new bands and music you were unaware of overall. Quotes that appear below the following releases were pulled from my reviews, multi-band articles, and song premieres from music covered here at NCS and my 2016 posts from Metal-Injection. You’ll also find some new mini write-ups for releases I didn’t get a chance to cover anywhere this year, but loved as well. Continue reading »

LISTMANIA 2016: A TOP TEN LIST FROM TODD MANNING

 LISTMANIA 2016  6 Responses »
Dec 222016
 

listmania-2016

 

(We’ve rolled out some very long year-end lists, with more of them to come, but this one by NCS contributor Todd Manning is a compact, though varied, 10 items in length. Enjoy.)

As years go, 2016 has been a real kick-in-the-balls, and further down the road we probably won’t talk too much about the year in music, except maybe about everyone that died. That being said, it was the first year I really threw myself into writing about music on a regular basis and I have to thank No Clean Singing, AvantGarde-Metal.com, and Burning Ambulance for being willing to publish my semi-coherent ramblings. Doing a top ten list seems like a nice culmination to my efforts and a chance to interrogate all the music I’ve heard and see what really made an impression.

This list is as much for myself as it is for anyone else, though it has been a challenge to force myself to rank all the music I’ve heard this year. By my estimation, I’ve heard approximately 115 full 2016 releases, primarily from Metal and Hardcore. I can’t tell you how many individual songs I’ve heard, fragments of albums, and so on. It seems like a lot, but I’m pretty sure there are others who have listened to quite a few more.

I sketched out this list quite a few times and it kept changing from day to day. I decided it was time to just finish the damn thing, but will of course list a few runner-ups as well. So without further ado… Continue reading »

THE DGR-NCS HOLIDAY BUYERS’ GUIDE AND YEAR IN REVIEW FOR THE METALHEAD WHO HAS TO HAVE ABSOLUTELY EVERYTHING — 2016 EDITION (PART 4)

 LISTMANIA 2016  6 Responses »
Dec 222016
 

dgr-list

 

(DGR created year-end lists of great length. He wrote many words about each listed item. Your humble editor feared that the site would collapse beneath this great leviathan of words if it reared its bulk in a single post, and therefore decided to split it up, with one part appearing each day this week. Follow these links for Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3.)

You knew this was coming, or you would if you had been around here the last few years. It’s been a long-standing tradition here at NCS that when the Listmania series happens, I take the filter completely off and just produce a gigantic screed of words that is occasionally interrupted with album art, music streams, and album titles with little numbers next to them. This year is no different.

In my attempt to rationalize an enormous year of music, I’ve capped my list at fifty albums, ranked in order of whichever numbers my fingers were closest to on the keyboard. On top of that, I have my usual small collection of not-metal stuff, some fun stuff, my list of shame, a likely happy face where number 8 should be because I’m a moron and put the numbers in front of a parenthesis and WordPress translates that into an emoticon, and my personal favorite award that I hand out each year.

The 50-album list continues today, continuing the countdown through No. 11: Continue reading »

LISTMANIA 2016: CVLLED KVLT COLD CVTS AND INTELLI-GRIND (MORE YEAR-END LISTS FROM AUSTIN WEBER)

 LISTMANIA 2016  10 Responses »
Dec 222016
 

listmania-2016

 

(Yesterday we began the roll-out of Austin Weber’s year-end NCS lists with a feature focused on variants of death metal, and here we present his second list, with a focus on black metal and grind.)

 

As 2016 comes to an end, I remain quite thankful to Islander for allowing me to contribute here over the last few years. I really believe in this site and our mission of sharing more of what’s out there than most other sites. So with that in mind, if anyone about to intake this hasn’t seen my prior year-end lists here at NCS, I try to do something different than most people.

My goal is to bring you a massive alternative list of my favorite lesser-known releases of the year, divided into several parts. Which means I won’t post a lot of releases that you see on other lists. Not because I didn’t dig a lot of them, but because you already know about them and will be seeing a lot of the same names being repeated elsewhere.

Undoubtedly some of the releases will be ones you’ll know or heard mentioned in passing, but hopefully you’ll find more new bands and music you were unaware of overall. Quotes that appear below the following releases were pulled from my reviews, multi-band articles, and song premieres from music covered here at NCS and my 2016 posts from Metal-Injection. You’ll also find some new mini write-ups for releases I didn’t get a chance to cover anywhere this year, but loved as well. Continue reading »

LISTMANIA 2016: YEAR-END LISTS FROM THEMADISRAELI

 LISTMANIA 2016  9 Responses »
Dec 212016
 

NCS The Best of 2016 graphic

 

(As LISTMANIA continues at our site, TheMadIsraeli provides his year-end lists in graphical form.)

2016 was a rough year for me that kept me from really submerging myself in music the way I would normally want to. While it seems that I managed to listen to many of the releases that really mattered, I do feel like I fell a bit short. I was, however, able to put together three lists: A top-10 death metal list, a melodic death metal list, and an overall top 10 of the year, which you’ll see in the Topster’s collages below.

A few ramble notes before the lists… Continue reading »

THE DGR-NCS HOLIDAY BUYERS’ GUIDE AND YEAR IN REVIEW FOR THE METALHEAD WHO HAS TO HAVE ABSOLUTELY EVERYTHING — 2016 EDITION (PART 3)

 LISTMANIA 2016  9 Responses »
Dec 212016
 

dgr-list

 

(DGR created year-end lists of great length. He wrote many words about each listed item. Your humble editor feared that the site would collapse beneath this great leviathan of words if it reared its bulk in a single post, and therefore decided to split it up, with one part appearing each day this week. Part 1 is here and Part 2 is here.)

You knew this was coming, or you would if you had been around here the last few years. It’s been a long-standing tradition here at NCS that when the Listmania series happens, I take the filter completely off and just produce a gigantic screed of words that is occasionally interrupted with album art, music streams, and album titles with little numbers next to them. This year is no different.

In my attempt to rationalize an enormous year of music, I’ve capped my list at fifty albums, ranked in order of whichever numbers my fingers were closest to on the keyboard. On top of that, I have my usual small collection of not-metal stuff, some fun stuff, my list of shame, a likely happy face where number 8 should be because I’m a moron and put the numbers in front of a parenthesis and WordPress translates that into an emoticon, and my personal favorite award that I hand out each year.

The 50-album list continues today, counting down through No. 21: Continue reading »

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