The end of the year draws nigh, and with it comes lists. Many lists, everywhere you turn. Lists of the best of what 2011 has offered us. Back in 2009, when this site was just an ugly, smelly baby a few days old, we wrote a post about year-end lists and why people bother with them. The best reason still seems to be this: Reading someone else’s list of the albums they thought were the year’s best is a good way to discover music you missed and might like.

We don’t do an “official” NCS year-end “best albums” list. It’s just too damned much work. We listened to a mountain-sized pile of new music this year, we liked a helluva lot of it, and trying to decide which 10 or 15 or even 20 albums were the best we heard would be a bunch of effort I’d rather devote to coming up with new posts for this site. Plus, the music that I and my collaborators like is so varied that trying to compare this apple to that orange and decide which one tastes better is a very confusing enterprise.

But mainly, I’m just too fucking lazy.

Fortunately, we have some regular contributors who have more energy, and we’ll be publishing their year-end lists later this month. We’re also inviting some other folks to give us their lists in the form of guest posts for this site. And, as described in this post, we’ll also have our list of the extreme metal songs from 2011 that we thought were the most infectious.

But we ain’t stopping there. If YOU have made your own mental list of the best metal albums you heard this year, we want to see it. Because we’re fucking nosy like that. (details about this invitation are after the jump . . .) Continue reading »

Listmania season is in full swing. So far, we’ve reprinted the Best Metal of 2011 lists from Pitchfork and NPR, not because they have deep credibility in the scene but because they’re heavily trafficked web sites and because I thought the lists were better than expected. But today we’ve got a list from a source that unquestionably does have credibility.

Yes, the current issue of DECIBEL magazine (the only print metal magazine we read at NCS) arrived at the NCS Island in yesterday’s mail, and that issue includes the magazine’s list of the Top 40 Extreme Albums of 2011. Some of the names on that list have already surfaced on the internet — including the band whose album DECIBEL named the best of the year (Tombs) — because record labels and bands who made the list have been posting about it. But I didn’t know the full list until greedily opening the mag last night. And of course, I can’t resist providing that list for your amusement after the jump.

You’re going to see some of the same band names that have already appeared on both the Pitchfork and NPR lists. Fifteen bands appeared on both of those lists, and 13 of those 15 are also on the DECIBEL list — Tombs, YOB, Hammers of Misfortune, deafheaven, Ulcerate, Krallice, Negative Plane, 40 Watt Sun, Trap Them, Mournful Congregation, Disma, Autopsy, and Exhumed. (Altar of Plagues and Ash Borer were on the other two lists but not DECIBEL‘s).

You will also see names that weren’t on the other lists. For example, technical death metal rears its head through the appearance of Origin and Obscura, and old-school death-doom is represented through the welcome appearance of Vallenfyre. I was also happy to see Revocation highly placed on the DECIBEL list, and surprisingly — though not without justification — Inquisition, Hate Eternal, and Brutal Truth are in the Top 10. You definitely weren’t going to see those names at Pitchfork or NPR.

On the other hand, wait ’til you see who DECIBEL names for the No. 2 and No. 3 albums of the year. They’re certainly not my picks for those spots; they wouldn’t even be in my Top 20. But what the fuck, half the fun of Listmania is the generation of controversy. Continue reading »

NPR isn’t the “go to” source of metal recommendations for anyone I know. They’re not exactly known for having their fingers on the pulse of the underground. But I’m not turning my nose up at NPR either. They’re covering metal on a big platform that’s mostly read and heard by people who could use some metal education (not to mention some sphincter-loosening), and that’s a good thing in my book.

What’s more, they’re not giving metal just a half-hearted, brush-of-the surface kind of attention either. They’ve been featuring music from some bands (e.g., Portal) that are guaranteed to turn even white people white and make treacly blood plasma ooze from ears more used to hearing the kind of mainly soporific music that dominates the rest of NPR’s music coverage.

Therefore, when NPR published its metal columnist’s list of the 25 Best Metal Albums of 2011 today, I took a look — first, because I was curious, and second, because I was interested in seeing what the non-metalhead super-majority of NPR fandom is being exposed to as representative of the best metal.

Guess what? It’s a mixed bag but it’s a decent list. Those of you who thought Pitchfork’s list was hipsterish may have a similar reaction to the NPR list. But on the other hand, it includes names whose 2011 albums we’ve praised here at NCS this year — Cormorant, Tombs, deafheaven, Ulcerate, Krallice, 40 Watt Sun, Disma, and Flourishing. You’ll also find other names to which you’ll probably give a throaty “Fuck yeah!”, as I did. Check it out after the jump. What do you think? Continue reading »