(I successfully prevailed upon Ben C, the proprietor of the immensely entertaining Church of the Riff, to share with us his year-end list of 2012’s best albums.)

Were you ready for the end of days? I was stocking up on porn, Cheetos, and liquor since January. Was gonna watch this sucker go up in style.

Anyway.

I hadn’t really intended on making a year-end list, as just the thought of sifting through the heaps of good music released this year was making me feel like taking a nap. However, once I was horribly mutilated – I mean, graciously asked – by Islander, I hiked up my underoos and set to work.

I should probably warn you now that these aren’t strictly metal albums but instead run the gamut of metal’s extended family, from sleazy skate rock to energetic pop-sludge. The majority of the ten albums I’ve picked will hopefully be new to your ears, as only two of them have been featured here on NCS. So without any more jibber-jabber, let’s get to the music shall we? Continue reading »

We’ve been re-publishing the Best Metal of 2012 lists that we’ve seen on other web sites, focusing on sites that have really big audiences — which sorta means, by definition, that they’re not metal-only sites. So far, we’ve reported about the lists on Pitchfork, Exclaim!, Stereogum, PopMatters, and Loudwire (and we also included DECIBEL magazine’s Top 40 list and a list from Amazon.com). You can catch up on all that by using this Listmania link.

Today, we’re reporting on The Top 50 Albums of 2012 as selected by Adrien Begrand for MSN Entertainment. MSN Entertainment (which is owned by Microsoft) is another broad-scope entertainment site that includes coverage of music, film, games, videos, celebrity gossip, and a wide range of music. They claim over 23 million unique visitors to the site every month, narrowly edging out NCS in audience size. Once again, we’re featuring their list of the year’s best metal because we’re curious about what mass-audience outlets are touting from our precious underground genre.

MSN Entertainment has been rolling out their Top 50 list all week in segments, and as of this morning, the list is now complete. To see the list at MSN Entertainment, along with Adrien Begrand’s comments about each album, GO HERE.

A few thoughts about the list, plus the list itself, appear after the jump: Continue reading »

(This is the fourth installment in NCS writer Andy Synn’s week-long series of year-end lists. To see his lists of the “Great” , the “Good”, and the most “Disappointing” albums of 2012, go here, here, and here.)

Let me stress immediately that this ‘Critical Top 10’ list is NOT a list of my own favourite albums. These are all albums I like, appreciate, even love, yes… but they’re all albums I think set the highest standards for the past year in metal. It’s a serious list, and one I take seriously as a result.

Tomorrow’s list, my ‘Personal Top 10’ of the year, is more fun, and needs less justification. That list reflects me as a person, and the albums I have loved this year, the ones that have clicked with me the best – yet also I hope it reflects a modicum of self-awareness, as I freely admit that my personal tastes are not always the ‘best’ albums.

Which is where the ‘Critical’ list comes in. I slimmed down the list of ‘Great’ albums to a shorter list of 14/15, then began to place and order the remaining entries, occasionally removing an album from contention when it became clear it wasn’t going to make the cut. It was hard going. I’ve had to cut some albums I would dearly love to have included. I’ve had to include a couple that were initially discarded, until I realised I was letting personal tastes dictate things too much. It’s a struggle to be objective sometimes.

For example, how do you weigh the objective quality of a brutal death metal album against a more conceptually-driven prog-metal album, or a record of vicious, scintillating black metal? It’s finding a balance, and a way to fairly measure these sorts of records against each other, that takes a lot of time. Essentially there are three criteria – ambition, creativity, and execution. All quite broad, but they seem to encompass the ‘best’ aspects of music. Some of these albums are more ambitious than others, meaning that at their best they go further and reach higher. Others are more creative, either through the clever use of disparate influences, or simply by doing more with less. And then there are the albums that are just flawlessly executed gems of metallic precision. Each of these reflects a manner in which an album can achieve ‘Greatness’, but the greatest of all manage to meld all three.

Oh, and a quick warning (because apparently it wasn’t clear in one of my other columns): there’s a fair helping of clean singing on this list. Just so you don’t get confused by the blog title and everything. Continue reading »