LISTMANIA 2019: A YEAR-END LIST FROM JACOBO CÓRDOVA (MAJESTIC DOWNFALL, ZOMBIEFICATION)

 LISTMANIA 2019  1 Response »
Dec 272019
 


photo by Luis Roa

 

(Once again we are fortunate that our Mexican friend Jacobo Córdova — of Majestic Downfall and Zombiefication — has accepted our invitation to share with us his list of the year’s best metal releases (and one disappointment).)

In my opinion, even if 2019 was a great year for Metal releases, it was not as strong as past ones. I feel quality was not that present overall while quantity surely was, but that sucks since there is so much trash released every year that you really need to dig to find gems. That being said, here is my top 10 list from this year, where, at least for me, all are truly stellar releases that deserve to be praised! Thankfully, here quality is everything!!! Continue reading »

ANDY SYNN’S “BEST” OF THE DECADE

 Listmania  12 Responses »
Dec 272019
 

 

(As Mr. Synn will soon explain, the following list is something other than what you might expect from the title of the post, but lots of good music nonetheless awaits you.)

The eagle-eyed amongst you may have noticed that the word “Best” is in scare-quotes in the heading, and there’s a reason for this… that title is a bald-faced lie.

Hell, it’s hard enough doing a “Best” list every year (and I purposefully dodge that with my split Critical/Personal lists), so the idea that I, or anyone, would be able to provide anything NEAR a definitive list of the ten (seriously, just ten?) best albums of the last decade is pretty ludicrous.

I’m not even sure where I’d start? Probably After? Vertikal? List? Maybe Death Mask or Vile Luxury? Definitely The Destroyers of All and Kwintessens, at least. And then there’s Bilateral, Ode to the Flame, On Strange Loops… actually now that I’ve gotten started this might have been easier than I thought…

Anyway, all this preamble is just a long-winded way to say that I’ve decided to go in a slightly different direction for this article, and pick out ten albums from the last decade – one per year – which I think deserved far more attention.

Think of it more as a selection of some of the more “unsung” or underappreciated bands/albums of the last ten years. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: WORSEN, RAT KING, PRIMEVAL WELL, YGG, HAND OF THE TRIBE

 Exceptions to the Rule, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  No Responses »
Dec 272019
 

 

Christmas Day and the day after are usually quiet ones in the spheres of activity of which NCS is a part. The typical flood of press releases dwindles to a trickle, most other metal blogs are hibernating, and few bands or labels release new music. Eyes are elsewhere, many of them probably closed altogether.

However, I can’t resist taking advantage of the relative peace to check out odds and ends I’ve been waiting to explore, or have recently noticed for the first time. I guess it’s obvious that I can’t resist, given how much new music I’ve already thrown at you during this holiday week — but here’s more (don’t duck!):

WORSEN

I could have sworn I had written something about Worsen’s 2019 debut album Cursed To Witness Life, but can find no evidence of it. Add that to the list of excellent 2019 releases I’ve shamefully neglected. If you haven’t already sampled what that album has to offer, and you enjoy black metal, you should go here and give it a shot. As a couple of commenters wrote on that Bandcamp page I just linked you to: “Cold as hell, awesome melodies and in your face riffs”; “Haunting, beautiful, dark and utterly mesmerizing.”

What reminded me of Cursed To Witness Life was a new single that Worsen released on December 24th to commemorate the birthday, not of Jesus, but of Lemmy Kilmister, at whose altar many of us pray more often than the other guy’s. It’s a cover of Motörhead’s “Killed By Death”, and it’s fucking great. Continue reading »

LISTMANIA 2019: A YEAR-END LIST BY JOHAN HULDTGREN (OBITUS)

 LISTMANIA 2019  11 Responses »
Dec 262019
 

 

(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 »

LISTMANIA 2019: YEAR-END LISTS BY TODD MANNING

 LISTMANIA 2019  8 Responses »
Dec 262019
 

 

(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 »

LISTMANIA 2019: PITCHFORK’S LIST OF THE BEST METAL ALBUMS OF 2019

 LISTMANIA 2019  5 Responses »
Dec 262019
 

 

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 »

SHADES OF BLACK (PART 2): ZIFIR, ASGRAUW, GRAVE CIRCLES, PLAGUE WEAVER

 SHADES OF BLACK  2 Responses »
Dec 252019
 

 

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 »

SHADES OF BLACK (PART 1): SARGEIST, SIVYJ YAR, SVARTGREN

 SHADES OF BLACK  3 Responses »
Dec 252019
 

 

“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 »

SEEN AND HEARD ON CHRISTMAS EVE: REPLICANT, NYLITHIA, WAKE, PERMADEATH, OBDUKTIO

 Album Reviews, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC, SHORT BUT SWEET  4 Responses »
Dec 242019
 

 

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 »

LISTMANIA 2019: BADWOLF’S 10 BEST NOT-METAL RECORDS OF THE YEAR

 Exceptions to the Rule, LISTMANIA 2019, Off Topic  6 Responses »
Dec 242019
 

 

(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 »

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