LISTMANIA CONTINUES: PITCHFORK’S TOP 40 METAL ALBUMS OF 2013

 LISTMANIA 2013  11 Responses »
Dec 262013
 

While continuing to post our own year-end lists of 2013’s best metal as chosen by our staff and numerous guest writers, we also continue to make room for lists published by selected ‘zines and so-called “big platform” web sites with dramatically larger audiences than metal-only sites like this one. This morning one appeared that we’ve been waiting for: Pitchfork.com’s list of “The Top 40 Metal Albums of 2013”.

Pitchfork has been around since 1996 and now boasts “a fiercely loyal audience of more than 5 million unique visitors each month”. Metal is only one of the genres of music to which Pitchfork devotes attention (and certainly one of the smallest in terms of audience), though because of Pitchfork’s size it has been the platform for many significant metal song and album premieres this year. Its Top 40 list was compiled by Pitchfork editor Brandon Stosuy as part of his ongoing Show No Mercy column. Whatever else you may think of Pitchfork’s main musical coverage, I think Show No Mercy is worth reading.

Stosuy’s list includes explanations for the top 25 picks, plus sample songs, and you can go HERE to check out all of that. Via that same link you can also see the lists assembled by current and former Pitchfork contributors Grayson Currin, Drew Daniel, Kim Kelly, Andy O’Connor, Hank Shteamer, and Zoe Camp.

After the jump, I’m just going to embed the Top 40 list itself, with a few thoughts. As always, we encourage you to leave your own reactions in the Comment section. Continue reading »

THE LIST TO END ALL LISTS

 LISTMANIA 2013  30 Responses »
Dec 262013
 

(Our friend Professor D. Grover the XIIIth, the founder of the late, lamented The Number of the Blog as well as the proprietor of Occulus Infernus, agreed to share with us his list of lists for 2013.)

Greetings and salutations, friends. It’s your Honorable Professor returning to bestow upon you the ever-expansive list of my favorite releases of the year. Due to increased responsibilities from my new employment and my newborn son (the handsome little devil you see pictured), I will be keeping the descriptions of most of these releases brief, briefer than usual, but I will still give my best attempt to justify just why you should listen to them anyway.

Also, and I realize that this list is being published at No Clean Singing, but this list is in no way, shape, or form a list dedicated solely to metal. I listen to a wide variety of music, and to omit everything that’s not metal would be to do myself and all of you a great disservice.

EPs/DEMOS/SINGLES –

This is everything that wasn’t long enough to be considered an album. In a few circumstances, it’s only a song or two. A number of these are available for free, and I’ve attempted to include links of some sort for each regardless of price. Continue reading »

15 FROM ’13

 LISTMANIA 2013  9 Responses »
Dec 252013
 

(I once again successfully prevailed upon Ben C, the proprietor of the immensely entertaining Church of the Riff, to share with us his year-end list of 2013′s best albums.)

Looks like I made it through another year more or less intact, with a whole new collection of music to boot. 2013 proved to be a pretty solid year for me, both in new releases and discovering old classics. It was also the year I decided to plunk some money down on a second-hand stereo setup that doesn’t suck, so I’ve been able to not only rattle my brain but the neighbour’s as well.

The next 15 albums cover the majority of metal’s extended family, from grindcore, sludge, and doom all the way through to throwback stoner rock. I also decided to put together my choices for riff, chorus, and solo of the year – an idea I had been toying with since I published my last list. So without wasting any more time, here are 15 more albums some random guy on the internet thought were pretty swell. Continue reading »

MERRY AND BRIGHT

 Free Shit, Mosh Pit, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  22 Responses »
Dec 252013
 

I have my own opinions about Christmas and the whole holiday season surrounding it, the kind of opinions that used to provoke an annual rant on this site (such as this one, which still receives new visits at this time of year despite its age). But there will be no rant this year.

Don’t get me wrong, I haven’t changed my opinions. However, it has dawned on me that spewing vitriol about the holiday is somewhat inconsistent with what we stand for at NCS. Life delivers more than enough frustration, aggravation, hurt feelings, pain, sorrow, loneliness, parking tickets, and bad food without us adding to the negativity. I like to think that what we’re about at NCS is delivering things that make life better, e.g., some daily metal and generally good-humored prose.

Despite its shortcomings, Christmas does make life better for some people (though certainly not all). Some people hold the holiday as a sacred occasion. It gives some people an occasion to enjoy the company of family and friends. For others, it evokes warm memories of years gone by. Some simply enjoy the pretty lights and the chance to stuff themselves with yummy eats. In general, I think it’s wrong to put down activities that make people happy, as long as they’re not hurting themselves or others in the process, even if such activities don’t do much for me. So, this year I won’t be complaining about Christmas. Continue reading »

FULL METAL RACKET: THE PLAYLIST IS THE THING

 LISTMANIA 2013  3 Responses »
Dec 242013
 

(In this latest installment of our year-end LISTMANIA series, we welcome a guest writer who goes by the name doGbreath, with a different kind of list.)

This is my playlist.
There are many like it, but this one is MINE.
Without me, my playlist is nothing.
Without my playlist, I am nothing.

Ah, the mighty playlist. Conveyor of taste, provocateur. There are many like it, but this one is mine.

It’s the purest form of democracy, the art of music. You consume what you like and everybody else can swing. It’s purely subjective, an invitation to judge a book by it’s cover, but with the advent of the Internet and world-wide constant and immediate access, we as humans have taken communication deeper, to a more fundamental level. We speak to each other through music. Words have become passé.

The meme is king, social media is queen, and the playlist is the joker and fool, always speaking truth to power. Oh, your pop diva bullshit act just sold ten million albums? Fuck you, I have a thousand bands here that actually play instruments, have better production than your pseudo-teen bitch, write riffs that rip your face off, AND bang hotter chicks than her as a recreational sport back in their home countries. Their albums will live forever, while your flash-in-the-pan pop construct will fade into obscurity the instant the publicity train stops to refuel. I listen to shit that’s more melodic than their melodies, listen to lyrics and vocal delivery with more emotion than they can photo-shop and auto-tune, and ingest imagery and artistry through cover art that stretch the imagination into places that horrify the general public. That’s fucking art people, in all it’s contentious forms, defined. Continue reading »

HAPPY METAL GUY’S FEEL-GOOD, EVERYBODY-WINS KHRISTMAS SHOPPING LIST

 LISTMANIA 2013  4 Responses »
Dec 242013
 

(Once again we are pleased to deliver unto you this year-end list by Happy Metal Guy, whose name you may recognize from the Angry Metal Guy blog, and whose other name (Dane Prokofiev) you may recognize from assorted other places.)

In the spirit of Khristmas, there is no mean, hierarchical list from Happy Metal Guy this year that ranks bands in a certain order of merit. Just like those annoying middle school camps with anti-climactic inter-group games that end with everyone winning, Happy Metal Guy has decided to go along with the festive mood and allow every band whose record he listened to and liked this year to be in its own league. ‘Tis the season to be jolly, altruistic, and spreading some e-love via some blog post that will probably never be read by most of the bands mentioned in it after all. Yohoho, everybody—but Happy Metal Guy—wins!

Some of the category names below might seem negative at first glance, but just know that Happy Metal Guy uses each and every one of those in a negatively positive way. Rest assured that all of the records mentioned below entertained Happy Metal Guy enough to be remembered and shortlisted. Some albums like Shining’s One One One and Thrawsunblat’s Wanderer on the Continent of Saplings were initially going to be mentioned here, but they have since lost their appeal to Happy Metal Guy for some reason. Continue reading »

FREE SHIT: SINISTER PATH DELIVERS THE SECOND “UNSIGNED/INDEPENDENT METAL BAND COMPILATION”

 Free Shit, Metal News  6 Responses »
Dec 242013
 

Not even two months ago, thanks to a Facebook post by our friend Vonlughlio, I learned about a new free compilation made available on Bandcamp by Australia-based Sinister Path Promotions — and yet Sinister Path has already delivered a second comp. As of yesterday, the new collection became available on Bandcamp. Like the first one, this latest offering is massive, with 42 songs by 42 metal bands. Highlights of this new release include the following (and here I’m paraphrasing from Sinister Path, with a final bullet of my own):

* Slasher (Thrash, Brasil) have included a single from their upcoming album Katharsis: “Overcome”

* Internal Bleeding (Slam pioneers from the US) have provided the track “Castigo Corpus Muem”, which is the first new recorded track with the original line up in close to 15 years

* 8 Foot Sativa (NZ metal legends) have contributed a new single, for which a lyric video was just released on YouTube: “The Shadow Masters”

* Mistur – (legends from Norway in the folk/viking/black vein) have provided “The Sight”, a single from a new album they’re working on Continue reading »

STANGALA AND STONEBIRDS: “KREIZ-BREIZH SESSIONS VOL. 1”

 Album Reviews  No Responses »
Dec 242013
 

(With this post we welcome Comrade Aleks, a new guest contributor from Russia who writes prolifically for other sites under different names.)

It will be useful to remind our readers about the region located in the northwest of France, and of course I mean Brittany. It is a region washed by the English Channel from the north, the Bay of Biscay is located to the west, and look – there’s fairy forest Brocéliande right in the middle, with Carnac stones and ancient alleys of menhirs. Fucking informative and romantic! Glorious sons of forests and mushroom glades StoneBirds and Stangala did record a solid unit under the name “The sessions in central Brittany”. Turn on the music and you will hear that Stangala really demonstrates proximity to the Celtic culture. And what about StoneBirds?

StoneBirds are good in their own way, and they’re on top of their form now. The band’s first release Slow Fly did not surprise me; yes, it was a not-bad traditional stoner album with songs laden with fat and groove, not very original, but that’s not to say it was of secondary quality. The new stuff sounds more straightforward, heavier, dreary, and more restless. The men have switched to the dark side of the Power. Darth Vader approves, and I would not like to argue with him. Continue reading »

PESTILENCE: “OBSIDEO”

 Album Reviews  3 Responses »
Dec 232013
 

(Earlier this month TheMadIsraeli finished a review of the entire discography of seminal Dutch death metal band Pestilence prior to their newest work. And now he fills that gap as well.)

“Grotesque” is the word when describing Obsideo.  Its bloody, puss-dripping, rotted-flesh, hulking frame can be seen coming from miles away with the last gasps of a human life that open the record.  Pestilence have been vicious, feral, filthy even, but never have they sounded more obsessed, fetishized, and depraved than on this record.  When it’s done turning your body into a sandbag of shattered bone fragments, it drowns you in its putrid excrement afterward without mercy.

This is the kind of shit Pestilence have always done well, and this particular turn of sound has produced the band’s heaviest record since Consuming Impulse.  The thing that really makes this record is just how fucking carnivorous its assault is.  Everything sounds eager for blood, eager to destroy, eager to desecrate.  I don’t know whether it’s the dank tone of the eight-string guitars this time around, the deeper, more feral nature of Mameli’s vocals, David Haley’s tribal blunt-force drum performance, which sounds like a cacophonous death rattle, or what, but this record has me frothing at the mouth for carnage.  In a sense, Obsideo is the record that most fits the Pestilence name.  It’s corrosive, pernicious, destructive, and polluting in all possible ways. Continue reading »

INNER MISSING: “PERJURY”

 Album Reviews, Exceptions to the Rule  8 Responses »
Dec 232013
 

(DGR felt compelled to review the new album by a Russian group named Inner Missing before this fine year draws to a close. Approach this with an open mind, won’t you?)

I still haven’t written my top list. I know the site is in the midst of Listmania, but there are still albums that came out this year that I feel like we owe something to. This is always the case at the end of the year, though. A million discs come out and we swear up and down we’re going to get to them, but we never do, for whatever reason. And thusly, we find ourselves playing catch up, or in my case discovering shit that came out way earlier this year that I really enjoy and want to share with you fine folks. Such is the case with Perjury, the 2013 self-released disc by St. Petersburg, Russia-based group Inner Missing.

Somehow, the band’s video for the song “The Sea Of Grey” wound up in our staff discussion space, and I really took a shining to it. I know everyone else reacted pretty strongly to it, but for some reason I was drawn to this band’s style. Maybe it is the whole underdog nature of it all: a Russian group who take themselves very seriously put out a disc that is incredibly goth, so much so that all the tropes of that style of music are identifiable to a ‘T’ from the get-go. For some reason, I found it so goddamn endearing that the group has always been on the back of my mind, and only now have I found myself determined to review this album.

So, for a change of pace and something a little different from the usual No Clean Singing slate of madness, I give you Inner Missing’s Perjury. Continue reading »

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