OUR LIST OF 2012’S MOST INFECTIOUS EXTREME METAL SONGS: PART 3

 MOST INFECTIOUS SONGS-2012  9 Responses »
Dec 302012
 

This is Part 3 of our list of the year’s most infectious extreme metal songs. Each day until the list is finished, I’m posting two songs that made the cut. For more details about what this list is all about and how it was compiled, read the introductory post via this link. To see the selections that preceded the two we’re announcing today, click here.

2012 was a great year for melancholy, doom-influenced melodic death metal, and both Finland’s Before the Dawn and Sweden’s In Mourning can claim two of the best releases in that genre. Both of their albums supplied multiple candidates for this list, and it seemed like a natural fit to pair the two that I ultimately selected.

BEFORE THE DAWN

The dulcet clean vocals of Lars Eikind may be gone, but Tuomas Saukkonen is still at the helm of Before the Dawn, and on Rise of the Phoenix he masterfully charted a new post-Eikind course that proved to be tremendously satisfying. As Andy Synn wrote in our review of the album, “at its best this album marries melodic power and precision in a way few others can match.”

My initial temptation was to put the song “Phoenix Rising” on this list, but ultimately I couldn’t resist the siren’s call of “Throne of Ice”. Continue reading »

OUR LIST OF 2012’S MOST INFECTIOUS EXTREME METAL SONGS: PART 2

 MOST INFECTIOUS SONGS-2012  12 Responses »
Dec 292012
 

This is Part 2 of our list of the year’s most infectious extreme metal songs. Each day until the list is finished, I’m posting two songs that made the cut. For more details about what this list is all about and how it was compiled, read the introductory post via this link. To see the selections that preceded the two we’re announcing today, click this link.

Picking the songs for this list is hard, but deciding how to pair them for these daily posts is a bit of a kick. It provides an opportunity for some small amount of creativity, which is the amount that I have. A small amount.

Sometimes, my creativity may be reflected in nothing more than pairing two bands who happen to be from the same country, or whose names begin with the same letter (see above re small amount of creativity). Sometimes, the two songs may be paired because of the musical contrast between them. And sometimes, they might be grouped together because there’s some kind of kinship the music shares — and that’s what’s going on today.

CATTLE DECAPITATION

As in the case of our first two song selections, this one comes from an album that was a big hit at NCS (see our review here). Of course, it was a big hit just about anywhere you looked this year, and it’s now popping up on tons of year-end lists, including our own. To quote from our latest list posted earlier today, Monolith of Inhumanity is “a bona fide classic”. Continue reading »

OUR LIST OF 2012’s MOST INFECTIOUS EXTREME METAL SONGS: PART 1

 MOST INFECTIOUS SONGS-2012  11 Responses »
Dec 282012
 

(To see what this list is all about, read the introductory post via this link.)

I listened to a greater variety of metal this year than ever before, branching out more seriously into certain sub-genres that I had largely neglected in the past. It was fun, but I’m now paying a heavy price.

How heavy? Here’s how heavy: My list of candidates for this year’s selection of the Most Infectious Extreme Metal Songs, drawn from my own listening and recommendations from readers and NCS staff, consists of more than 230 songs from over 160 bands.

I’ve explained before that I don’t make my own annual list of the year’s best albums because I have so much trouble comparing large numbers of albums from different genres to each other. Also, I’m indecisive by nature. So how in the world am I going to whittle own a list of more than 230 songs into a smaller group of 20 or 30? Honestly, I have no fucking idea. However, as the Chinese philosopher Laozi wrote, “a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step”.  So I’m stepping off now . . . and I hope I will find a way to finish the list before old age claims all of us.

Because I felt the need to get this thing going despite the fact that I haven’t finished the final list, I decided to start with a couple of easy decisions. We begin with two great songs by two bands who are favorites of this site and whose 2012 albums have become quite popular across much of metaldom. Continue reading »

THE YEAR’S MOST INFECTIOUS SONGS: AN INVITATION

 MOST INFECTIOUS SONGS-2012  63 Responses »
Nov 292012
 

We’re getting closer and closer to the onset of full-throttle year-end listmania at NCS. Really close. So close I can smell it, and I mean to tell you, it smells so much better than I do.

Which reminds me that if you haven’t donated to us, free of charge, your own personal list of favorite releases during 2012, then please GO HERE and do that in the comments, so that I and other readers can leech off your recommendations. Seriously, I don’t know about anyone else, but I read those lists, and I particularly keep an eye out for albums or EPs that seem to be getting repeat attention.

But this post isn’t about getting lists of the year’s best releases, or even about our upcoming series of posts on the subject. No, this post is about a different kind of list: The Most Infectious Extreme Metal Songs of 2012. And as usual, we’d like your help.

In case you’ve forgotten, or you’ve become an NCS reader since this time last year, here’s what this is about:

To repeat, this isn’t a list of the best metal albums of the year. It’s not even our list of the best individual extreme metal songs of the year. Though some of the songs might actually be among the best of the year, creating that kind of list isn’t the objective. That would tax my brain way too much, and frankly this is the time of year when devoting serious effort to anything makes me queasy. Continue reading »

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