(In this essay NCS contributor Gonzo brings his 3-part YE lists to a close with a Top 10 ranking of favorite albums.)
I could write an intro here, but with this being my third and final installment into this series, the thought of being so redundant fills me with untold amounts of existential dread.
In the interests of avoiding that (because there’s already enough existential dread in this godforsaken world), this list is #1 to 10 of my favorite releases from 2021. Continue reading »
(Relative NCS newcomer Nathan Ferreira weighs in with a Top 20 year-end list and a healthy group of honorable mentions as well.)
HI NCS readers! In case you haven’t been bombarded by lists enough in the past few weeks, here’s my personal round-up of choice cuts.
This was my first year writing for this website, so I don’t really have the same sort of cred some of the veterans do around here. My taste is not particularly obscure, nor esoteric and unusual. There’s probably some overlap with other lists you’ve seen. I’m a generic metalhead (and proud of it!).
Still, this was the first year in a while I really focused on keeping up with new music, so I’d bet there’s a couple of things in this list you missed – I know I missed a bunch of stuff. Hopefully I can establish myself as more of a regular contributor in 2022 because this website is cool as shit.
Now, on to the thing! Continue reading »
(Our friend Vonlughlio has once again prepared a year-end list that focuses on his favorite metal genre, brutal death metal, and today we present all 25 of his ranked selections.)
Hello dear readers, it’s been a long time since I wrote for NCS due to 2021 being full of challenges, from having COVID at the beginning of the year and changing jobs. Basically, having no time to do BDM reviews for NCS. Hopefully for 2022 I will be more active in that regard. Before getting into it, I would like again to thank Islander and his collaborators for doing a great job like always.
For this year I will not be adding comments in each of the positions as I’ve done in previous years (due to lack of time). Hopefully, dear reader, you will click the players and give the bands a listen in the hopes of your liking them. I also will not include Honorable Mentions (again due to lack of time, and there are so many lol). One other thing that changed this year is the triple tie for the Number 1 spot. Those albums are the most-played in this household and I could not pick just one.
Anyways, check out the list and I hope you like what you find, and that you can show support to the bands however you can. Continue reading »
A baker’s dozen of new songs and videos is a lot to take in, but that’s what I’ve compiled here, and since we’re in the middle of Dead Week it seems entirely fitting for me to throw it your way now.
This 13-band round-up is the result of me going deep down a music-listening rabbit hole last night, a topsy-turvy underground descent in which I didn’t encounter any metal bands other than relatively obscure ones. My head was spinning by the end, and I hope yours will be too.
I did attempt to arrange the following items into “blocks”, but I make no promise that the arrangements will always make sense to you. Sometimes they barely made sense to me. I do promise you a real musical roller-coaster ride, and hope you’ll not jump out before you get to the end. And of course I had to pitch a curveball at the end.
P.S. I picked up the name “Dead Week” from this recent essay in The Atlantic, which perfectly sums up the oddities and attractions of this blank space that stretches between Christmas and New Year’s Eve.
NIHIL KAOS (International)
While I think the entire journey through today’s round-up will prove to be head-spinning, I’ve chosen to lead with a trio of songs that are within themselves head-spinning. And I’ve begun with the track that for me had the most jaw-dropping, eye-popping impact of them all. Continue reading »
(Yesterday we posted Gonzo‘s year-end list of Top 10 EPs and album honorable mentions, and today we begin his list of Top 20 albums for 2021, divided into two parts.)
Now that I’ve gotten the EPs and honorable album mentions out of the way, it’s time to start cranking out a list that I’ve spent far too much time organizing (and agonizing over) in my head: My top 20 full-length releases of 2021.
Before we get into this, can we just take a second to stare in complete awe at the towering monolith of head-spinning amazement that was heavy music in 2021? Just off the top of my head, it was a banner year for subgenres like tech-death, sludge, post-metal, and seemingly everything in between. It was also a great time for labels like 20 Buck Spin and Relapse. Some of this was the injection of new blood into the mix, as there were some truly noteworthy debuts and breakouts. The old guard showed up in force, too, with some surprising out-of-nowhere returns to form. And my personal favorite: Getting my fucking subatomic particles rearranged by discovering a new band that simply blows my doors off.
All of that happened this year and then some. Even with the inclusion of my honorable mentions, the actual list of releases I enjoyed this year is way more than what I’ll be talking about here. But in the interests of brevity (as well as staying on top of my day job), here’s the first half of the vaunted top 20. Continue reading »
(For the years 2012 through 2015 an NCS supporter from India who went by the name deckard cain contributed some interesting year-end lists that we posted as part of our annual Listmania series, and he reviewed songs and albums for us too during that same interval. Then he drifted away, but he has returned after a six-year absence with a new YE list that’s worth your investigation.)
Ever come across that often ludicrous brand of idiot who will tell you without any scruples “Oh metal! Yes! I had a phase when I listened to Metallica when I was younger”? Suggesting perhaps that it was a phase that normal humans just wean out of? An affront to our sensibilities yes, but we reply with a modicum of decency, “Oh cool! That’s good to know”. Most of us that follow this brand of music, more often than not, respect all other genres in its variedness. But then there is this guy.
When a world is as mangled as it is today, it’s been our vaccine against the virus of life. It’s been that soothing salve. It’s been our choice of anodyne. It’s been our muse. It’s always been everything to us all.
Of course! Most of us listen to it as leisure as well and for that pure sense of enjoyment that is often our wont. Nolan Gasser, a musicologist, suggests in his book Why you like it: The Science and Culture of Musical Taste that one tends to have a particular affiliation for music we lend an ear to in our formative years (think late teens/early adulthood). To that end, I feel that while musical tastes may vary, that anger and fire we looked to in early stages of our lives is always with us to the grave. Some of us stuck onto metal and some of us found it in our later years to clearly resonate with the fire that was lit ages ago. Coloured as they are by our different social, economic, and cultural backgrounds.
I think then, it’s important to harken back to our good times and yet hold that familiar pain, that slice of reality, that these last two years have bequeathed to us….close… Holding them tight…. So tight that we may hope for a better future or be swallowed by it! Lending us, at the least, some sense of perseverance (success be damned!).
So, let’s get started shall we? Tune our channels to dread 666 and find solace within it! Continue reading »
The high temperature in Seattle on Monday was 23 degrees, making it the coldest day in 31 years according to the National Weather Service. I live close to Seattle, and I feel like I’m in the Arctic, even though I’ve never been to the Arctic. Snow and ice have covered everything in my community and the roads are dangerous, in part because no one here fucking knows how to drive in treacherous conditions.
The upside is that there are attractive snow-covered views out the window in the forest where I live, and I’ve had enough shut-in time on my hands to compile the selections of music you’re about to encounter. If you live someplace where the temps are in the ’70s or ’80s F., or in a frigid place where local governments and residents actually know how to deal with it, please just keep that to yourself.
JUST BEFORE DAWN (Sweden)
About 10 days ago this Swedish death metal war machine discharged a new EP named In the Realm of Ash and Sorrow, as a a tribute to their fallen brothers Sven Groß and L.G. Petrov. For this EP the ever-busy JBD riffmeister Anders Biazzi wrote four new original songs and recorded them with vocalist Remco Kreft (Graceless, Soulburn) and drummer Jon Rudin (Wombbath, Pale King), with guitar solos provided by Kreft and Björn Brusse (Graceless).
In addition, the band recorded a cover of the Entombed song “Drowned” in remembrance of L.G. Petrov, and that one features Gustav Myrin on guitars and bass, with Myrin and Daniel Gustavsson doing the solos. Continue reading »
(NCS contributor Gonzo has assembled a 3-part series of year-end lists, and today we present the first one.)
Ah yes, it’s that time of year again, in which I’m generously afforded a place in cyberspace to yell about the music I’ve been listening to for the past 12 months. Really though, all banal generalizations aside, this has become my perennial favorite month to be an NCS scribe, no matter what variety of aural decimation in which I’ve chosen to immerse myself throughout the year.
Regardless of your tastes or nuanced obsessions with subgenres (blackened post-glam doomgaze polka-core, anyone?), I think we can all agree 2021 had something for everyone when it came to heavy music. I spent hours upon hours this year digging into the grimiest corners of underground for new sounds to obsess over; it even inspired me to start writing my own monthly heavy roundup of whatever I found and liked enough to write about.
So, this post will begin the crux of all of that: My year-end wrap-up. It’s the first installment of a three-part series that I’ll be posting through the rest of the week, until my happy ass heads to Mexico to drink mojitos until I have to wheelbarrow myself back to the airport a week later. Ah, Christmas traditions.
With that, we’ll kick things off with 10 EPs I loved (because this was the year of the abundantly awesome EP), and then some honorable album mentions that didn’t quite crack my top 20 overall but I still really liked. Onward! Continue reading »
(Below our Norway-based contributor Karina Noctum presents her own year-end list of eleven 2021 favorites.)
This year started with lots of Thrash and now it ends just the same. The damper mood with lots of restrictions and lots of cancelled or postponed concerts and festivals does not allow for anything too dark nor cold at the moment. So this list is quite biased in the sense that it highly favors rhythmic virtuosity, old school sound, and non-monotonous riffing for the most part. Also I’m not going to include commercial bands that have been mentioned a thousand times already. Continue reading »
(For the 11th year in a row, our friend Johan Huldtgren of the Swedish black metal band Obitus — whose 2017 album Slaves of the Vast Machine (reviewed and premiered here) is their latest release — has again allowed us to share with you his year-end list, which originally appeared on Johan’s own blog.) Continue reading »