Nov 252021
 

 

As part of our annual LISTMANIA series we re-publish “best album” lists from some of the the few surviving print publications that cover metal, and from a handful of “big platform” sites that include metal in their on-line coverage, along with a range of other music genres and other aspects of popular culture.

Of course, as soon as you see the words “popular culture” you know those lists aren’t going to devote too much attention to the kind of music we cover at NCS. But it’s still amusing, and sometimes even edifying, to get a glimpse of what these “taste-making” organs are telling the more above-ground world are the year’s best metal releases.

Today Revolver magazine published their list of the “25 Best Albums of 2021” on-line. Revolver claims that “millions of passionate consumers” visit their website and view their videos across desktop and mobile; that the print edition is the “biggest hard-rock and metal magazine in North America,” with a subscriber base that’s three times larger than the “next biggest U.S. metal print publication”; and that they have a “highly engaged social following with over 1B impressions per month across Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.” Continue reading »

Nov 302020
 

 

As part of our annual LISTMANIA series we re-publish “best album” lists from some of the the few surviving print publications that cover metal, and from a handful of “big platform” sites that include metal in their on-line coverage, along with a range of other music genres and other aspects of popular culture.

Of course, as soon as you see the words “popular culture” you know those lists aren’t going to devote too much attention to the kind of music we cover at NCS. But it’s still amusing, and sometimes even edifying, to get a glimpse of what these “taste-making” organs are telling the above-ground world are the year’s best metal releases.

Last week Revolver magazine published their list of “The 25 Best Albums of 2020” on-line. Revolver claims that “millions of passionate consumers” visit their website and view their videos across desktop and mobile; that the print edition is the “biggest hard-rock and metal magazine in North America,” with a subscriber base that’s three times larger than the “next biggest U.S. metal print publication”; and that they have a “highly engaged social following with over 1B impressions per month across Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.” Continue reading »

Nov 282018
 

 

As part of our annual LISTMANIA series we re-publish “best album” lists from some of the the few surviving print publications that cover metal, and from a handful of “big platform” sites that include metal in their coverage, along with a range of other music genres and other aspects of popular culture.

Of course, as soon as you see the words “popular culture” you know there’s not going to be too much attention devoted to the kind of music we cover at NCS. But it’s still amusing, and sometimes even edifying, to get a glimpse of what the above-ground world is seeing acclaimed as metal’s best releases. Continue reading »

Dec 082016
 

revolver-top-20-of-2016

 

As part of our LISTMANIA 2016 series, we’re re-posting a list of the “20 Best Albums of 2016” published by Revolver magazine yesterday.

Revolver bills itself as “the No. 1 hard-rock and heavy-metal destination in the world”. Their online site boasts 13 million page views over the last year, and the ad rate sheet for the print publication claims a total monthly reach of 300,000 readers. Continue reading »

Nov 252014
 

 

As part of our year-end Listmania series, we re-publish “best metal album” lists compiled by certain “big platform” web sites and selected print zines. Today, we bring you what Revolver magazine thinks are the 20 best albums of 2014, as posted yesterday on the magazine’s web site.

Let me be very clear, because someone always seems to misunderstand what we’re doing here: We’re not endorsing these lists we filtch from other places (though some are certainly better than others). We’re especially not endorsing this one. To be fair, Revolver doesn’t pretend to limit its coverage to metal. And to be even more fair, I haven’t listened to half the albums on this list, so what do I know?

Still… not endorsing this one. Continue reading »

Feb 162012
 

Can you guess that I’m still feeling bitchy?  Those posts about Whitney and Quorthon and the mis-constructed festival line-ups didn’t succeed in exorcising the bitterness I feel, so I just decided, fuckitall — I’m gonna wallow in it for the rest of the day!

I guess there’s a common thread to those first two posts and this one. To quote a comment from our own Andy Synn, about the Whitney/Quorthon meme (surely, he wasn’t talking about moi):

“It epitomises one of the inherent contradictions present in a lot of metal-fandom: look how much better our musical heroes are, they’re REAL artists, you should be praising them . . .except don’t, because we don’t need YOUR approval” . . . So, what is the point? Lots of self-righteous huffing and puffing that only serves little purpose except self-aggrandisement of one’s own “superior” elite music tastes.”

I plead guilty on almost all counts. I am not afraid or ashamed to admit that my musical tastes ARE superior, that my dead heroes ARE better than their dead heroes (and death does not make them equal), that extreme metal doesn’t need or care about the approval of the unwashed and tasteless masses, that the Golden Rod award nominations ARE (with very few exceptions) a WTF laughing stock of a joke, and that I DO feel better by huffing and puffing than by seething in silence.

As I said in answering Andy’s comment, this isn’t about being consistent or interesting or insightful, it’s about VENTING!!

After the jump, there is the complete, unedited, unexpurgated list of the nominees for this year’s edition of the Revolver Golden Rods award. Read it and feel superior. Oh, and I also have a new video after the jump from one of the nominees for Best International Band. Continue reading »

May 122010
 

The May/June issue of Revolver magazine arrived in our mailbox over the weekend. What we enjoyed the most was not the cover story about the 2010 “Revolver Golden Gods” awards show (which was largely irrelevant to what we care about in the current extreme metal scene). What we enjoyed the most was Revolver’s verbatim report of a conversation that took place at a dive bar in New York City between Adam Dutkiewicz and Mike D’Antonio of Killswitch Engage and frontman Mikael Stanne of Sweden’s Dark Tranquillity.

As you may know, KSE and DT toured together earlier this year. When Dutkiewicz and D’Antonio formed KSE back in 1999, one thing that united them was their love of Swedish melodic death metal, and Dark Tranquillity in particular. As they got to know Stanne better while touring, they discovered they had more in common than elements of their music. Like a mutual attraction to the Travel Channel (?) and (wait for it) . . . eating competitions.

And green shit.

So after this threesome did some Jack Daniels shots at that dive bar, the conversation eventually turned to the subject of eating competitions, and Revolver was there to record what they said. We thought it was pretty fucking funny.

Granted, our standards of humor here at NCS are pretty low. For example, as you’ll see, we laugh at anything that involves shit. Still, we thought you might find the conversation funny, too. After all, if you’re reading this site, your standards are also pretty low, by definition. So, after the jump, we’ll give you the best excerpts of that Dutkiewicz-D’Antonio-Stanne dialogue from Revolver. Continue reading »

Dec 252009
 

Yesterday was a banner day at NCS. More posts in a single day than we’ve managed before. In the category of listmania, we reported about Decibel‘s list of The Top 25 Most Anticipated Records of 2009 and Revolver‘s list of The 20 Best Albums of 2009, and we added the 9th entry to our own list of The Ten Most Infectious Extreme Metal Songs of 2009. We gave you a Brutal Truth update, the latest burning-goat news from Gavle, Sweden, and a little something to make you nervous on Christmas Eve. Just goes to show what we can accomplish when we get a break from the day jobs. Maybe you now wish we’d get fewer vacation days.

Today your NCS Authors are resting from our labors — except for arguing about which song should be our tenth and final entry on the Most Infectious list. Assuming we can sort that out and there’s still one of us alive to post the result, we’ll do that tomorrow.

In the meantime, the turkey awaits, and he’s looking kinda nervous.

Hope all of you have a peaceful day. Come see us again tomorrow.

Dec 242009
 

So you thought we had finally reached the end of year-end “best of” lists for 2009, right? Nope. Yesterday was metal mag day here at NCS. Not only did we find the new issue of Decibel in the mailbox (see the post before this one), but cuddled right next to it was the new issue of Revolver, which includes Revolver‘s list of “The Top 20 Albums of 2009.” Like the new issue of Decibel, this copy of Revolver boasts a cover date from the future (Jan/Feb 2010), which is further proof that Revolver has access to the same quantum wormhole used by the rest of the magazine industry to send copy back in time. If only they’d told me something potentially remunerative, like who won the Super Bowl.

Lots of bands on Revolver‘s list are exactly what you’d expect. But there are some peculiar choices too. For example: Rammstein.  Best of 2009? Really?

To see Revolver‘s list of “The Top 20 Albums of 2009,” continue reading after the jump. And because we had fun in the preceding post showing you the demographic data Decibel uses in selling ads, we might as well show you the same kind of data Revolver uses to describe its audience. Continue reading »