LISTMANIA 2015: METAL NAMES ON LISTS OF THE 50 BEST ALBUMS OF 2015 FROM STEREOGUM, ROLLING STONE, AND SPIN

 LISTMANIA 2015  16 Responses »
Dec 072015
 

Stereogum 50 Best

 

As part of our year-end LISTMANIA series, we bring you lists of the year’s best metal from a few print zines with wide circulation and from some cross-genre web platforms that get orders-of-magnitude more eyeballs than we do. In the case of most of these other lists, we do this as a way of peaking at what the wider world sees, since our world is very narrow and subterranean. In this post, we’re looking at Stereogum, Rolling Stone, and SPIN. It won’t take you long to read the metal names on these lists.

STEREOGUM

Stereogum is a music web site founded in 2002. It’s part of the same SPINMusic network that includes the SPIN webzine (featured at the end of this post) and Brooklyn Vegan, among other music-oriented sites. SpinMusic says that Stereogum reaches more than 700,000 music fans a month.

In past years, Stereogum has published a list of the year’s best metal albums, and I assume that will happen again this year — and we’ll pay attention to that, because their staff of metal writers is a good one. But last week Stereogum rolled out its list of The 50 Best Albums of 2015 — not limited to metal. I perused the list in an effort to spot metal names, and below I’m listing what I found, along with their placement in the overall list. Continue reading »

LISTMANIA 2015: METAL NAMES IN THE POPMATTERS LIST OF THE 80 BEST ALBUMS OF 2015

 LISTMANIA 2015  9 Responses »
Dec 072015
 

PopMatters 80 best

 

PopMatters is a popular culture web site with broad coverage of music, film, television, books, comics, software and video games — you name it. 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 the year’s best metal we usually re-post here at NCS as part of our own LISTMANIA series — for the entertainment value of seeing what the great unwashed masses are being told is the year’s best metal.

Today, PopMatters published its list of “The 80 Best Albums of 2014″. In past years they’ve published a separate list of the year’s Best Metal Albums, and I assume they will this year, too. But in case they don’t, I thought I’d share the metal albums that appeared on their “80 Best” list (which crosses all genres) and identify where they appeared, by number ranking. I mean, it was painful for me to go through all 80 names and sort these out, so I’m damned well going to share my work product. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): TEMPLE OF EVIL — “THE 7TH AWAKENING”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  5 Responses »
Dec 072015
 

Temple of Evil-The 7th Awakening

 

Today it’s our pleasure to help premiere the debut album by the black metal band Temple of Evil from Nicosia, Cyprus. Entitled The 7th Awakening, it will be released in a 6-panel digipak of 500 copies on January 7, 2016, by Deathhammer Records, and it’s available now on Bandcamp as well. And as you can see, it is accompanied by the striking artwork of Khaos Diktator Design — not only for the album cover but also for individual songs.

Temple of Evil’s unholy ranks consist of an agile bassist who doubles as a blood-freezing vocalist, a pair of riveting six-string guitarists (one of whom doubles as the keyboardist), and a drummer who is both acrobatic and a lethal blaster. Together they have created a dark and dramatic full-length, one that is esoteric and unearthly in its aura, both solemn and savage, grim and gripping. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD ON A SUNDAY: WAFT, ELFSGEDROCH, CRUST, SLOTH KING, DEAFEST, HIGH INQUISITOR WOE

 Exceptions to the Rule, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  10 Responses »
Dec 062015
 

Waft-Chronolith

 

I’m going to try to spend time today working on a few reviews I’ve been meaning to write for weeks, but of course I must also make time to risk stroke and/or heart failure by watching the Seahawks take on the Vikings in the wasteland of Minnesota. If the site goes dead tomorrow, you’ll know I didn’t survive the game without a trip to intensive care (or at all).  But I do have a few songs I’d like to recommend before indulging in those other activities.

One thing I should mention before I get started: Some of these songs come from entire EPs or albums that have already been released and are deserving of complete reviews, even short ones. But I fear I won’t be able to manage that, so I’m only writing about individual songs and hoping that you’ll dig deeper on your own if you like what you hear.

WAFT

The first song comes from an album I’ve been enjoying for longer than any other release collected in this round-up — so it comes first. The name of the album is Chronolith and it was released via Bandcamp in August by a South Carolina band named Waft. Waft‘s Bandcamp page includes this comment: “Written over the course of four years. Recorded live over two days”. Continue reading »

THE REARVIEW MIRROR (WEAKLING)

 THE REARVIEW MIRROR  9 Responses »
Dec 062015
 

Rearview Mirror

 

As has been true of many of the bands we’ve featured in these backward-looking Rearview Mirror posts, Weakling had come and gone before I ever heard of them. But I heard a lot about them in the years that followed their demise.

The band apparently took their name from a song by Swans, from the album Filth. Bay Area guitarist John Gossard started the band, along with guitarist/drum programmer Robert Williams of Ubzub. By the time Weakling released their first — and only — album in 2000 (Dead As Dreams), the line-up included (in addition to Gossard — who also provided the vocals) guitarist Joshua Smith (The Fucking Champs), bass-player Sarah Weiner, drummer Sam Foster, and keyboardist Casey Ward.

The band split up in 1999, before the album was even released. According to The Font of All Human Knowledge: Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD ON A SATURDAY: CONAN, FIFTH TO INFINITY, SABBATORY, ECTOVOID, TONGUE, VORKREIST

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  12 Responses »
Dec 052015
 

conan-revengeance

 

Infernal greetings to one and all on this fine Saturday. Once again I’ve assembled a playlist of especially impressive new songs from among those I heard over the last 24 hours. I hope you like them.

CONAN

This first song has appeared under mysterious circumstances. I learned of it from Grant Skelton, who learned of it from someone else and then passed the link on to me. It appears to be the title track to Revengeance, the third album by Conan from the UK, which is set for release on January 29 by Napalm Records. This is Conan‘s first release with producer Chris Fielding on bass and vocals, along with drummer Rich Lewis and founding guitarist/vocalist Jon Davis. Continue reading »

LISTMANIA 2015 UPDATE

 LISTMANIA 2015  28 Responses »
Dec 042015
 

NCS Best of 2015 graphic

 

I thought I would provide a little update about our year-end LISTMANIA extravaganza — partly as a reminder to those who haven’t yet joined in the fun, and partly as a preview of what’s headed your way in the coming weeks.

First, we’ve had a hell of a response to our request for suggestions for our annual list of the year’s “Most Infectious Extreme Metal Songs”. Based on the songs that have been recommended by readers to date, coupled with my own list of candidates that I haphazardly compiled as the year went on, the line-up of candidates now includes over 400 songs (!). And that doesn’t yet include all the suggestions by the rest of our staff, most of whom haven’t weighed in yet. Continue reading »

BAKOS ATTILA: “ARANYHAJNAL”

 Premieres  10 Responses »
Dec 042015
 

Bakos Attila-Aranyhajnal

 

This album is an exception to some of our “rules”, including that main one reflected in our site’s title. I doubt that I would have delved into it but for the fact that I knew the name of its lone creator, Attila Bakos, because of his striking vocal contributions to two exceptional albums by the Hungarian band Thy Catafalque — Róka hasa rádió (2009) and Rengeteg (2011) — and even more specifically, because of his contribution to a song from the latter album that to this day remains one of my most-listened-to metal songs — “Fekete mezők”.

But Aranyhajnal (which means “golden dawn”) is not only exceptional as a subject for commentary at our site, it is also exceptional as a collection of music — as spellbinding and beautiful as the artwork by Gyula Havancsák that graces its cover. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: ABORTED — “TERMINATION REDUX”

 Premieres  6 Responses »
Dec 042015
 

Aborted - Termination Redux - EP

 

Given the diversity of our tastes in metal, there aren’t many bands that all of the old-timers on our staff can unanimously unite behind with enthusiastic devotion, but Aborted is one of those. And so you can imagine, then, we’re almost beside ourselves with glee over what we’re about to deliver unto your unprepared eyes and ears — a brand new Aborted song and a brand new video to go with it.

The name of the song is “Termination Redux” and it will appear on a special 20th anniversary EP by the same name that will be released in January as a prelude to the band’s next full-length album

I said “unprepared” on purpose, because seriously, you’re not ready for what you’re about to see and hear — unless you’re a fan of horror and gore, in which case you’ll… eat this up. As a prelude to the slaughter banquet, let’s consider this statement by the band: Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: SEER — “ANTIBODY”

 Exceptions to the Rule, Premieres  4 Responses »
Dec 042015
 

seer cover

 

In the spring of this year I came across an extremely impressive debut EP by a band from Vancouver, British Columbia, named Seer. Entitled Vol. 1, it was self-released by the band late last year and consisted of two songs, “Glimmervoid” and “Hive Mind”. By the time I encountered the music (and praised it here), the Art of Propaganda label had announced that it had signed Seer for the release of a full-length debut that would include not only Vol. 1 but also four new songs under the name Vol. 2. Now we know that Art of Propaganda will release Vol. 1 & 2 on January 22, and we’re pleased to bring you the premiere of a song from Vol. 2 named “Antibody“.

I confess that one of the reasons I was first drawn to Seer’s music was the fact that they live in the Pacific Northwest, surrounded by the same combination of mountains, evergreen forests, rivers, lakes, and ocean that surround my own home base of Seattle, albeit about 150 miles further north. Like many bands in this region, the spectacular natural setting has influenced their music — along with an interest in fantasy, sic-fi, and the occult. And so while music  reflects in certain ways the distinctive Cascadian atmosphere of this region, the band’s lyrical focus ventures beyond the bounds of what we see around us. Continue reading »

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