(written by Islander)

The first two parts of our year-end LISTMANIA festivities are nearing conclusion — our sharing of lists from sites and zines with much bigger audiences than our own (but often, audiences who aren’t as devoted to metal as ours) and lists compiled by our own writers and old friends. In this post we’re again including Rolling Stone magazine’s list of the year’s best metal albums because it has become a tradition, a largely comical tradition at this point which dates back to the halcyon days of 2013 when a commenter somehow just skipped past all our introductory text, looked at Rolling Stone‘s list, and chastised us for not naming Gorguts as AOTY instead of Deafheaven.

Of course, Rolling Stone hands-down qualifies as the kind of “big platform” site or zine that we pull from in this part of our LISTMANIA orgy, as a way of getting a glimpse into what the top-side world perceives as great metal.

This year, Rolling Stone compiled a Top 15 list (the number seems to vary from year to year). Ususally their list displays a lot of “scatter”, for want of a better term. Often, it includes albums you wouldn’t be surprised to see on one of the lists assembled by our own writers, and often it includes others that makes us cringe. By our lights, the rankings themselves are often eye-rolling. Continue reading »

Here’s the final entry in the part of our annual LISTMANIA orgy where we share lists of metal from “big platform” web sites and print zines — the kind of places that get a lot more eyeballs on them than filthy little metal-only hovels like ours — as a way of getting a view about what “normal” people are being told is the year’s best metal.

Rolling Stone magazine should need no introduction, so I’m not going to provide one. Three years ago we didn’t include a Rolling Stone metal list in our year-end LISTMANIA series — because they didn’t publish one. Although we surmised that they had jettisoned the idea permanently, their Top 10 metal list made a return in 2021, and in 2022 they expanded the list to 15 names. This year it’s 11 (so of course they made a Spinal Tap joke). Continue reading »

Honestly, in recent years the only reason I’ve continued to post year-end lists by Rolling Stone magazine as part of our Listmania series is to give people a chance to renew the Gorguts joke. Sadly, Rolling Stone magazine has deprived me of the opportunity this year.

Mournfully, I must report that for the first time in a long number of years (I don’t really care enough to count them), Rolling Stone has failed to post a year-end list of best metal albums. I’ve waited patiently, but it’s now January 4th and no such list has appeared. Continue reading »

As usual, let’s just get this out of the way right now:

THIS IS ROLLING STONE’S LIST. IT IS NOT OUR LIST.

THIS IS ROLLING STONE’S LIST. IT IS NOT OUR LIST.

If you thought that was already so obvious that only an idiot would need to be told, well, you obviously don’t remember the famous/infamous Comment No. 7 to our re-post of Rolling Stone’s list in 2013. Though you may have seen how that has been transformed into a running joke every fucking year since then. The only uncertainty now is who will be the first person to do it on this post. The line forms to the left. Continue reading »