LISTMANIA 2016: LIFE METAL (A YEAR-END LIST FROM AUSTIN WEBER)

 LISTMANIA 2016  6 Responses »
Dec 212016
 

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(This is the first of several year-end lists assembled by Austin Weber that we’ll be posting this week.)

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. 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. Continue reading »

THE DGR-NCS HOLIDAY BUYERS’ GUIDE AND YEAR IN REVIEW FOR THE METALHEAD WHO HAS TO HAVE ABSOLUTELY EVERYTHING 2016 EDITION (PART 2)

 LISTMANIA 2016  6 Responses »
Dec 202016
 

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(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.)

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: Continue reading »

THE DGR-NCS HOLIDAY BUYERS’ GUIDE AND YEAR IN REVIEW FOR THE METALHEAD WHO HAS TO HAVE ABSOLUTELY EVERYTHING — 2016 EDITION (PART 1)

 LISTMANIA 2016  11 Responses »
Dec 192016
 

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(DGR created year-end lists of great length. He wrote many words about each listed item. Your humble editor fears that the site would collapse beneath this great leviathan of words if it reared its bulk in a single post, and has therefore decided to split it up. How many parts will be required to complete the undertaking hasn’t yet been determined — but this is Part 1.)

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 fact, this year has been insane. This is the first year amongst the now handful of years that I’ve done this where I’ve actually dreaded making the top whatever list for the end of the year. Anyone who asked me what I thought about my albums of the year basically got a shocked thousand-yard stare and me uttering “2016’s year-enders are going to be a bloodbath”. Continue reading »

2016 — A YEAR IN REVIEW(S): THE PERSONAL TOP TEN

 LISTMANIA 2016  36 Responses »
Dec 162016
 

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(Andy Synn’s week-long series of year-end lists concludes with his list of The Personal Top Ten for 2016. Click these links to see his lists of The Critical Top Ten and the year’s Great Albums, the Good Albums, and the Disappointments.)

And now for my final list, the one which, following on from how in-depth and over-thought the rest of them are, is pretty much a breeze by comparison.

Because, for my “Personal” top ten of the year I like to just go with my gut, and simply pick those albums which I’ve been listening to the most, which have been my biggest surprises or my favourite new discoveries, without over-analysing the who, what, where, when, and why.

As a result I’m explicitly NOT saying these albums represent the “best” of 2016 (that was yesterday’s column). They just happen to be my favourites, and should provide a window into my tastes and my listening habits from this year. Continue reading »

2016 — A YEAR IN REVIEW(S): THE CRITICAL TOP TEN

 LISTMANIA 2016  72 Responses »
Dec 152016
 

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(Andy Synn’s week-long series of year-end lists continues with his personal list of The Critical Top Ten for 2016. Click these links to see his lists of the year’s Great Albums, the Good Albums, and the Disappointments.)

For those of you unfamiliar with how this works, I always wind-up my week-long retrospective with two lists, the “Critical Top Ten” and the “Personal Top Ten”.

Now the second one is probably pretty self-explanatory, in that it’s just a list of the ten albums I’ve loved, lived with, and listened to the most this year. It’s really just a snapshot of my personal listening habits/tastes over the last twelve months.

The idea behind this one possible needs some explaining though.

You see the “Critical Top Ten” is where I try (as best I can) to remove my own personal biases and downplay any favouritism and instead attempt to name the ten albums (unranked) which I feel honestly represent the best of the best from the last year in Metal. Continue reading »

LISTMANIA: STEREOGUM’S LIST OF THE 40 BEST METAL ALBUMS OF 2016

 LISTMANIA 2016  37 Responses »
Dec 152016
 

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Earlier this month as part of our annual LISTMANIA series I posted the names of the few metal albums that were included in Stereogum‘s list of “The Best 50 Albums of 2016” across all genres of music that Stereogum covers, while noting that their list of best metal was yet to come. Yesterday it arrived.

Stereogum is of course a “big platform” site that appeals to an audience much larger than merely metal lovers, but the site does have a heavyweight group of metal writers in its stable. They’re responsible for the  “The Black Market” column each month, which has been a great source of discovery for extreme music for four years, and Stereogum‘s annual metal list has been dependably solid for just as long. Unlike metal lists at other big cross-genre sites, Stereogum’s hasn’t had the aroma of pandering and calculation hanging about it like a fresh fart.

And so I’ve been anxious to see Stereogum‘s metal-only year-end list, as I have been in past years. As usual, this year it’s accompanied by an introductory essay — which this year is especially noteworthy in its own right. Continue reading »

LISTMANIA 2016: A YEAR-END LIST FROM JONNY PETTERSSON (WOMBBATH, HENRY KANE, ASHCLOUD, JUST BEFORE DAWN)

 LISTMANIA 2016  7 Responses »
Dec 142016
 

 

(Jonny Pettersson is a busy man, with leading roles in such groups as Wombbath, Ashcloud, Just Before Dawn, and Ursinne, as well as his excellent new solo project Henry Kane. Fortunately, he found time to graciously accept our invitation to share a year-end list of favorite releases.)

 

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1. Brutally Deceased – Satanic Corpse (Death metal)

This album had me blown away. It’s the perfect mix of buzzsaw death metal and blasting brutality.

Continue reading »

2016 – A YEAR IN REVIEW(S): THE GREAT ALBUMS

 LISTMANIA 2016  56 Responses »
Dec 142016
 

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(Andy Synn’s week-long series of year-end lists continues with his personal list of 2016’s Great Albums. Yesterday we posted his list of Good Albums, and the list before that dealt with Disappointments.)

Well, well, well… if you’re still with me now you must be in this for the long haul, so to show my appreciation I’m going to treat you to my list of 2016’s “Great” albums, the ones which I felt were just that cut above, and that little better put together, than the ones which made up yesterday’s list of the “Good” albums.

FYI, this is also the list from which I’m going to choose my “Critical Top Ten”, which is going to be published tomorrow. However, I’ll try my best not to give away any surprises (though the eagle-eyed of you may be able to spot a few clues). Continue reading »

LISTMANIA 2016: A YEAR-END LIST FROM AUSTIN LUNN (PANOPTICON)

 LISTMANIA 2016  21 Responses »
Dec 132016
 

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(We are again fortunate to present another year-end list we eagerly await each year, from an immensely talented musician and a damned fine human being — Austin Lunn of Panopticon and Seidr.)

 

I have to apologize in advance for the length of this list. It has been a great year for metal in my opinion… many, many releases to enjoy and as a result my list is super-long. I cut some stuff for the the sake of brevity… and speaking of brevity, I will do my best to keep the accompanying blurbs short this time around.

This has been an intense year for me, and many of these albums will forever be the soundtrack for those memories in my mind…. so here goes: Continue reading »

2016 – A YEAR IN REVIEW(S): THE GOOD ALBUMS

 LISTMANIA 2016  54 Responses »
Dec 132016
 

listmania-2016

 

(Andy Synn’s week-long series of year-end lists continues with his personal list of 2016’s Good Albums. Yesterday’s list dealt with Disappointments.)

So now we’re really starting to get into the meat of things.

Unlike tomorrow’s list of “Great” albums, the list of “Good” albums covers a bit of a wider range in terms of overall quality.

Some of these albums are ones I consider to be so good as to be almost “Great”, but which are perhaps held back from true greatness by one or two inescapable flaws.

Some of them are undeniably “Good” in the sense that we’ll all doubtless be coming back to them for a long time, but probably (if we’re being honest with ourselves) with some understanding that they don’t quite hit the highest possible standards.

And some of them… are just “good enough”. They’re certainly not bad albums and are more than enjoyable enough, but they’re probably not going to be winning any awards (apart from Revolver awards, but those don’t really count).

Of course your mileage may vary. Some of these albums you may think are the bee’s bollocks (that’s the phrase, right?) and deserve to be considered “Great” albums in their own right. And some of these albums you might actively despise and not understand why anyone could consider them to be “Good”. But I hope you know that I’ve tried to be as objective as possible here, and feel like I’ve given all these releases a fair hearing.

So why not click onwards, brave traveller, and see if anything in this list strikes your fancy? Continue reading »

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