As part of our annual NCS LISTMANIA extravaganza we re-publish lists of the year’s best metal that appear on web sites that appeal to vastly larger numbers of readers than we do — not because those readers or the writers have better taste in metal than our community does, but more from a morbid curiosity about what the great unwashed masses are being told is best for them. It’s like opening a window that affords an insight into the way the rest of the world outside our own disease-ridden nooks and crannies perceives the music that is our daily sustenance.

One of those sites is PopMatters. It has been in existence since 1999. In its own words the site “is an international magazine of cultural criticism and analysis” with a scope that “is broadly cast on all things pop culture”, including “music, television, films, books, video games, sports, theatre, the visual arts, travel, and the Internet”. PopMatters claims that it is “the largest site that bridges academic and popular writing in the world”.

As in past years, today PopMatters published a list of “The Best Metal of 2017” under the by-lines of Dean Brown and Spyros Stasis (in previous years the list was compiled by Adrien Begrand), although Dean Brown explains in his introduction that the “list is a collaborative effort by writers with different tastes”, whose names are identified in the commentary accompanying each selection. Continue reading »