(For the ninth 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 »
(NCS contributor Todd Manning shares a diverse year-end list of top metal albums (15 of them), and a list of recommended not-metal too.)
This is my fourth year reviewing for No Clean Singing, and I found 2019 to be a bit of a mixed bag. Not that there wasn’t good Metal releases this year, but nothing that would’ve beaten out my top two from last year, Imperial Triumphant and Horrendous. Still though, lots of good albums and even a few great ones graced my ears.
Perhaps the biggest challenge for me in coming up with this list was trying to rate albums that were vastly different in character from one another. Over here you have paint-peeling Grindcore, over there some pastoral Black Metal, maybe a little bit of vile and filthy Sludge for good measure. I really enjoyed the variety, but it’s definitely a case of comparing apples to oranges. Even though my 2018 list certainly possessed some variety in material, it still, to me at least, possessed a bit more thematic consistency. Nevertheless, here goes trying to sort out my best of 2019. Continue reading »
Pitchfork obviously qualifies for the part of our year-end LISTMANIA series devoted to re-publishing lists by “big platform” cross-genre music sites. Founded in 1995 by recent high school graduate Ryan Schreiber in Minneapolis, it has been based in Chicago since 1999 and has been owned by the Conde Nast conglomerate since 2015. From its humble beginnings, it now boasts an audience of more than 7 million monthly unique visitors.
It’s fair to say that most of those visitors aren’t metalheads. The site’s reputation historically was closely associated with independent underground music, and in the last 10 years their Album of the Year award has gone to Kendrick Lamar three times, as well as other hip-hop artists. This year it went to Lana Del Rey’s Norman Fucking Rockwell!. But as you see, Pitchfork also publishes a list of the year’s best metal. Continue reading »
My time is running short, so I’ll dispense with any further introduction beyond what I included in Part 1 earlier today.
ZIFIR
The next song in this two-part collection is “Empire of Worms“, off a new album by the Istanbul-based black metal band Zifir. Entitled Demoniac Ethics, the new full-length is accompanied by the artwork of one of my favorite dark-art creators, Vergvoktre, and it will be released by Duplicate Records on January 24th. The track premiered about one week ago at Decibel. One other track from the album (“Chants for Execution“) surfaced around Thanksgiving, and I’ve included that stream as well. Continue reading »
“Confrontation is expected, it doesn’t matter if it’s Christmas”. That’s a quote from a 28-year-old restaurant worker in the midst of a crowd exchanging insults with police today in Hong Kong, where protests continue without regard to the holiday. But when I saw that line in an article this morning it seemed a fitting introduction to this column too. We’re not shutting down either, so get ready for a lot of confrontational metal to blacken this holiday (divided into two parts).
SARGEIST
This is a rare SHADES OF BLACK in which every band here, in both Parts, is one I’ve written about before. And they’re here again because they’re all damned good. Of them all, Sargeist is the most venerable and venerated. Now 20 years into their career, and still led with venom and vigor by Shatraug, Sargeist gave us a new album last year, but decided to drop a new EP just yesterday. It caught me by surprise, and what a good surprise it is. Continue reading »
Contrary to an accusation that one of my NCS comrades recently leveled at another one, I don’t hate fun. In fact, I love it, and I enjoy seeing other people have fun. And so, although the imminent Christmas holiday means nothing to me, I’m sure I speak for all of us here (except maybe one of us) in wishing you some joy.
To ameliorate the possibility that you will have nothing in your stocking but a lump of coal because you’ve been so baaaad, and to help relieve the brain death that the stresses of the holiday season demonstrably produce, here are a few gifts from us to you.
REPLICANT
This New Jersey death metal band turned out a hell of a debut album in 2018’s Negative Life, which Steve Schwegler (of Pyrrhon, Seputus, and Weeping Sores) beauatifully reviewed for us. I’ll excerpt just a few of his thoughts about that album: Continue reading »
(In what used to be an annual tradition, and hopefully will become one again, we present a year-end list of favorite Not-Metal albums by Joseph Schafer (whose NCS moniker was BadWolf). Joseph is a former NCS writer, ex-Invisible Oranges editor, current contributor to Decibel, Noisey, and Consequence of Sound, and a principal co-conspirator in the production of Northwest Terror Fest.)
Sorry it took so long. Last year, the usual hustle and bustle of the holidays totally occupied my time. If you think about it, it’s hard to think of a worse time of year for Listmania than the apex of social and familial pressure that is the end of the year— not to mention the horrid weather that blasts most of the United States as I write this. Regardless, after an abnormally tumultuous 2019, and my decision to skip Listmania the year before, I took the time to outline, as before, my favorite non-metal albums of the year.
Some of these choices should be familiar to anyone who has read my list in years past – I tend to err on the side of my favorites, most of the time. The artists who created five of these choices have turned up on these lists before. Continue reading »
(For the sixth year in a row, we’re grateful that Neill Jameson (Krieg, Poison Blood) accepted our invitation to share with us and you a list releases from the past year that made an impact on him. His lists always provide welcome discoveries, and the one this year — which is divided into two parts — is no different. You can find Part 1 here.)
I knew the moment I hit “send” on the first part of this that I’d remember a few records I wanted to write a bit about. That’s one of the nicer things about years like this: there’s so much out there worth listening to that you somehow forget all of it when you’re pressed to talk about it. Like I said previously, this is more of an “odds & ends” part of the shit I filled my ears with in 2019. So rather than fill space with more pointless exposition let’s just get right to it: Continue reading »
(Comrade Aleks helps us begin hell week with a fiendishly entertaining and perhaps surprisingly wide-ranging interview of guitarist Ricard of the Spanish death metal band Proscrito, whose debut album will be released on January 27th by Memento Mori, as well as by Discos MeCagoEnDios.)
Proscrito is a tough and ugly death doom outfit from Sabadel, Spain (referring to the music, to be clear). It was formed as a trio in 2016, not long ago as you see, but their progress from the demo El Calvario released in 2017 to the forthcoming full-length Llagas y Estigmas is remarkable. It’s straight and hellish, truly macabre and slow torturous doom, so I didn’t expect such an in-depth conversation from one of Proscrito’s crew. However, their guitarist Ricard provided a great interview that I’ve truly enjoyed. Continue reading »
(For the sixth year in a row, we’re grateful that Neill Jameson (Krieg, Poison Blood) accepted our invitation to share with us and you a list releases from the past year that made an impact on him. His lists always provide welcome discoveries, and the one this year which is divided into two parts — is no different. Look for Part 2 tomorrow.)
Going over my year-end thing from last year I’m struck with how dour of a tone it takes and I’m reminded of how difficult I found putting that list together. Not that the choices I made were bad, far from it, but those were the only records I could pull out of last year that I felt anything for. Only two of them remain in rotation, maybe three. Kind of self-fulfilling since nearly every time I’ve been given the honor to thrust my tastes at you I always warn of how people don’t actually pay attention to the records on these lists a few weeks after the new year starts. I guess this means I’m not better than any of you since I’m guilty of the same thing, and now my entire world is crumbling. Also I quit smoking a week ago.
Any of this only matters because I’ve had a much more difficult and, honestly, awful year than I have in… well… years, and yet the only reason this list is a lot tougher than 2018 is because this has been an incredible year for music and I’ve only scratched the surface with this list. Much like 2017, I have to do two pieces for shit I think you should give a listen to. Hope you get something out of them. This first part will focus on the full-lengths while the second part will be the fucking myriad odds and ends this year that kept dropping like a rat shitting in a hoarder’s dining room. Continue reading »