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Notable Year End Lists - 2021


GoatmasterGeneral

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1 hour ago, markm said:

OK, so here is a rhetorical ? most of us prolly  have  hashed out many times, is there really an underground in the information age?

I'd say no, not really, as underground implies, to me at least, that the music is hard to find...debatable and as Hungus pointed out, my tastes have somewhat changed but I note a couple of bands-most notably-Worm- found on Surge, GG and just about 80% of any list you can find online. If you follow metal even casually (see me virtually standing up for my bow), and you haven't heard of Worm, ya you really are a casual fan. How is Worm underground? 

Surge has Demiser on his list, a very good album indeed which I first came across on Nine Circles staff list and purchased and would certainly grace my top albums of 21. Link on "Metal Bandcamp"-done. Underground?

Now these are few and far between in terms of the sheer volume of stuff guys like GG, Hungus and Navy listen to and post about, but even AMG will oft highlight a few such offerings and sometimes you'll see them on their year-end lists. 

All of which I posit are good things for fans of dark, heavy music, but it seems the net has broken through the fortress and light now shines through the cracks of the crypt for anyone online with will and interest to find....

 

Maybe a better word for it would be "independent" now, but I don't think underground is really a misnomer. I have some friends who are much more into the mainstream side of things and they've heard of none of this stuff. If you're not in right place at the right time online it's still easy enough to miss. Although I agree much less goes truly unheard now.

4 minutes ago, Hungarino said:

Band names including the word vomit, necro/nekro, goat and/or void make up about 90% of what I listen to! :D 

Speaking of which, NP Nekrovault, one that crushes and I missed from @GoatmasterGeneral's DM list.

"Void" is the big one for me, if it's not in the name it's in the album title. I can't keep em straight anymore.

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I look at it this way Mark. If something is underground, like a sprinkler system for instance, or septic pipes, or maybe a potato, that doesn't mean it's hard to find if you know it's there and you're looking for it. Even if you don't know exactly where these things are if you try you can usually find them easily enough with a minimum of effort. Or even take the subway, it's underground yet very easy to find they even have signs up directing you and stairways that'll take you right down there. But if you're some dude driving down that street on your merry way to fuckifIknowville you won't see any subway trains and you might not even realize that there are tracks and stations with hundreds of people right underneath you. All of these underground things will be basically invisible to anyone who might just be casually walking by totally unaware of them and not looking for them, they're completely hidden from view even though they might be only a few inches under the surface.

It's the same way with underground music. Underground just means it's hidden from view to the general public. The normies and soccer moms and teachers and plumbers and secretaries and the mainstream pop music loving American Idol/Spotify crowd who have absolutely no idea that these aggressively heavy forms of music we listen to and take for granted like death metal and especially black metal even exist. Surely you've noticed that to most unsuspecting citizens when you say you listen to "metal" they generally just think you mean shit like Van Halen, AC/DC, Gunz & Pozes, maybe they've even heard of Iron Maiden, Black Sabbath or Metallica. I remember this one Canadian chick 20 years ago on a forum who insisted that Nickleback were a heavy metal band. People that have no interest in heavy music mostly don't know anything about it and aren't aware of even most mainstream metal much less underground kvlt black metal and they wouldn't be interested in this shit even if they knew about it, which is why they are definitely not looking for it. Do you think if you walked up to any random 10 people at work or at the corner market or the local dive bar and asked them what they thought of the new Worm album that you'd get anything but blank stares and quizical looks like a dog who cocks his head because he thinks he's heard a noise in return? Of course not, because it's underground, hidden from sight. Not fit for mass consumption. We've trained ourselves how and where to find this stuff, but it's real easy to lose sight of the fact that no one else cares about it or even knows what the fuck we're talking about.

 

Worm?

The Truth About Why Dogs Tilt Their Heads | The Dog People by Rover.com

 

 

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I just took a gander at Austin Lunn's list on NCS. Man, there so much freaking heavy music out there. Whatever any of us listen to, it's just scratching the surface. That's why I took a step back over the past couple of years. So much good music.....overwhelms me sometimes. Late November when the lists started coming out and you guys were posting a bunch of your year end faves, I started adding daily to my BC wish list which is now more than I'll probably get to before 22 starts crushing. OK. Time to stop and turn it off for this day. 

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9 hours ago, markm said:

I just took a gander at Austin Lunn's list on NCS. Man, there so much freaking heavy music out there. Whatever any of us listen to, it's just scratching the surface. That's why I took a step back over the past couple of years. So much good music.....overwhelms me sometimes. Late November when the lists started coming out and you guys were posting a bunch of your year end faves, I started adding daily to my BC wish list which is now more than I'll probably get to before 22 starts crushing. OK. Time to stop and turn it off for this day. 

I read that last night too. Added a dozen to my wishlist and that was only about half of what I was interested in. Just no way to investigate them all. Surge's list was pretty good too, and I pick 5-6 from his to check out. Think I'm pretty set for January (and maybe February too).

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1 hour ago, navybsn said:

I read that last night too. Added a dozen to my wishlist and that was only about half of what I was interested in. Just no way to investigate them all. Surge's list was pretty good too, and I pick 5-6 from his to check out. Think I'm pretty set for January (and maybe February too).

Exactly, I've got a couple from Surge's to check out as well. 

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On 1/4/2022 at 8:24 PM, GoatmasterGeneral said:

I look at it this way Mark. If something is underground, like a sprinkler system for instance, or septic pipes, or maybe a potato, that doesn't mean it's hard to find if you know it's there and you're looking for it.

It's the same way with underground music. Underground just means it's hidden from view to the general public. The normies and soccer moms and teachers and plumbers and secretaries and the mainstream pop music loving American Idol/Spotify crowd who have absolutely no idea that these aggressively heavy forms of music we listen to and take for granted like death metal and especially black metal even exist.

I think this is a spot on analogy. The stuff is there, but it's more or less hard to find it, not find out about it. There's what most think of when they think of metal, the mainstream (GNR, Metallica, Motörhead), then the mainstream for metal fans (Gojira, Lamb of God, Mastodon and SLipknot). And then there's like 2-3 sub-levels more until we reach stuff like Till, Wharflurch, Thy Dying Light and Jute Gyte lol. It's all there, but you have to know where to look

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On 1/5/2022 at 10:30 PM, markm said:

I just took a gander at Austin Lunn's list on NCS. Man, there so much freaking heavy music out there. Whatever any of us listen to, it's just scratching the surface. That's why I took a step back over the past couple of years. So much good music.....overwhelms me sometimes. Late November when the lists started coming out and you guys were posting a bunch of your year end faves, I started adding daily to my BC wish list which is now more than I'll probably get to before 22 starts crushing. OK. Time to stop and turn it off for this day. 

 

On 1/6/2022 at 8:01 AM, navybsn said:

I read that last night too. Added a dozen to my wishlist and that was only about half of what I was interested in. Just no way to investigate them all. Surge's list was pretty good too, and I pick 5-6 from his to check out. Think I'm pretty set for January (and maybe February too).

 

I agree that it's kind of amazing to think about how much heavy metal music there really is out there. The cat is out of the bag. I looked up that dude's list as well, and I saw that he apologized right up front for it being so long. 66 albums to be exact and they were mostly black metal too. Wasn't too much on there  I hadn't already heard or seen the thumbnails floating around on the Youtube sidebars, but strangely there were only two albums he had on his list that will be on mine: Valac and Í Myrkri. So I guess his tastes must run to a different kind of black metal than mine. Revisiting a few things he had on there that I had dismissed earlier in the year and can't remember what they sounded like. Starting with this one:

 

Tvær - Uvær

 

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21 minutes ago, GoatmasterGeneral said:

 

 

I agree that it's kind of amazing to think about how much heavy metal music there really is out there. The cat is out of the bag. I looked up that dude's list as well, and I saw that he apologized right up front for it being so long. 66 albums to be exact and they were mostly black metal too. Wasn't too much on there  I hadn't already heard or seen the thumbnails floating around on the Youtube sidebars, but strangely there were only two albums he had on his list that will be on mine: Valac and Í Myrkri. So I guess his tastes must run to a different kind of black metal than mine. Revisiting a few things he had on there that I had dismissed earlier in the year and can't remember what they sounded like. Starting with this one:

 

Tvær - Uvær

 

He's definitely on the atmoblack side of the spectrum, but there are a few straight goat approved lo-fi rippers on there. He's the guy from Panopticon, so I figured going into it what most of the selections were going to favor. I've gone through most of what I added to my wishlist from his and didn't care for the majority of them even though his write up caught my attention.

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Yeah, I revisited two he had on his list that I had given some short shrift-Grimma and Blehg that I already posted about. The Grimma holds up-straddles a line with heavy and beautiful but is definitely more "produced" than some of you prefer. Blehg isn't list worthy for me but a decent black album with folk/woody influences woodsy. I had that Dodsrit album kicking around for a long time. I think I'll grab it now. I thought it was just OK initially...I really liked their 2018 album, Spirit Crusher, but Mortal Coil is pretty cool. 

Oh, and GG, you were right actually in some respects on your assessment of the post sludge band, Amenra. Their last one was a lot better. These long sludgey posty albums are tricky. They do pathos quite well, but between the spoken word tracks and the long passages of nail-on-chalkboard tortured vocals, they take too long to get the climax-I've got oodles of other albums that do this sort of thing better-Boris comes to mind. 

Speaking of mainstream, etc., I'm listening to the new Mastodon album that's all over list season-it took me a few spins...at first I thought it was decent but kind of dull dad rock, but I think it's quite a good hard prog rock album...the kind of prog I enjoy, which I'd just define as prog that is in service to end of good song writing, not merely a means to jerking off muso chops. 

And fair points all around about my query about the underground with a caveat, within the actual world of online metalsphere when bands like Cerebral Rot get featured on AMG, how underground are they, really?  I think it's clear that select albums and bands in the so underground-like havukruunu-now get featured in larger platforms and enjoyed by larger numbers of metal fans who don't typically listen to the darker bowels of metal. 

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Oh I see, he's that guy, well that explains a lot. Yeah I've never liked Panopticon, or at least not enough to buy any of his shit so that's why I didn't recognize his name. But then honestly, I don't even recognize the names of most of the musicians in the bands I actually like. No big surprise that he'd be off in a different direction from me. Yeah there was some pretty good shit on his list for sure, even some stuff that I own, just not much that was good enough to make my list. And I do actually like a fair amount of atmo-black too, seems like I pick up a little bit more of it each year. Guess I just kinda stick to the stuff on the harder, riffier end of the atmo spectrum. Preferrably without banjo. But you know how it is Navy, stuff I think is stellar other people might think is just OK to unlistenable, and stuff other people rave about I'll think is just ok to terrible. Just how it goes.

 

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1 hour ago, markm said:

Yeah, I revisited two he had on his list that I had given some short shrift-Grimma and Blehg that I already posted about. The Grimma holds up-straddles a line with heavy and beautiful but is definitely more "produced" than some of you prefer. Blehg isn't list worthy for me but a decent black album with folk/woody influences woodsy. I had that Dodsrit album kicking around for a long time. I think I'll grab it now. I thought it was just OK initially...I really liked their 2018 album, Spirit Crusher, but Mortal Coil is pretty cool. 

Oh, and GG, you were right actually in some respects on your assessment of the post sludge band, Amenra. Their last one was a lot better. These long sludgey posty albums are tricky. They do pathos quite well, but between the spoken word tracks and the long passages of nail-on-chalkboard tortured vocals, they take too long to get the climax-I've got oodles of other albums that do this sort of thing better-Boris comes to mind. 

Speaking of mainstream, etc., I'm listening to the new Mastodon album that's all over list season-it took me a few spins...at first I thought it was decent but kind of dull dad rock, but I think it's quite a good hard prog rock album...the kind of prog I enjoy, which I'd just define as prog that is in service to end of good song writing, not merely a means to jerking off muso chops. 

And fair points all around about my query about the underground with a caveat, within the actual world of online metalsphere when bands like Cerebral Rot get featured on AMG, how underground are they, really?  I think it's clear that select albums and bands in the so underground-like havukruunu-now get featured in larger platforms and enjoyed by larger numbers of metal fans who don't typically listen to the darker bowels of metal. 

You see this was the big discussion we had that time last year or maybe the year before on Metal-Fi when some of us dared to call some of these higher profile underground bands like Blood Incantation or any one of a number of bands that tend to pop up on several of these big mainstream metal blog published year end lists "mainstream" meaning that within the smaller pond of the underground extreme metal universe they had achieved some noteriety making them the bigger fish compared to let's say some of the raw kvlt black metal bands I enjoy. But we got a lot of pushback on that idea, we were told in no uncertain terms that those bands could not in any way be considered "mainstream" because outside of the extreme metal world nobody else knew they existed. I think we were both right in the points we were trying to make it just really differs depending on your perspective.

I don't listen to any of those semi high profile bands like Mastodon or Gojira or Khemmis or Trivium or any other bands I can think of that have crossed over to achieve some small amount of name recognition in some corners of the mainstream metal world. Bands that even your average mainstream metal fan who thinks they're a metalhead but still really only listens to well established popular bands like Metallica, Megadeth and Iron Maiden or whoever might have even heard of.  I don't hardly ever listen to even anything on a major label. So to someone like me there is a very clear and obviously visible divide between mainstream metal and the underground. While you Marky Mark, are much more likely to be interested in or at least open to some of those more well known consesus bands as you call them, so the line between underground and mainstream is gonna be more blurred and undefined for a guy like you. A guy like you thinks that if a band is getting buzz and is getting recognition and praise from several corners of the internet then you might wanna check them out because they could be good. When I see a band is gaining noteriety and getting mentioned on lists outside of the deep underground I can all but assume that means they won't be anything I would enjoy. And if I'm wrong occasionally and I miss one, oh well. So yeah, if a death metal band that's actually good like Cerebral Rot gets an album review featured on a mainstream metal site like AMG that's cool for them, but that doesn't mean that underground metal isn't underground anymore and that Metallica, Lamb of god and Mastodon fans are suddenly gonna be listening to Cadaveric Incubator and Archgoat and Satanism and Albionic Hermeticism on their ways to work from now on. There is absolutely still an underground. But it doesn't have to be hard to find if you're so inclined.

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Yes I remember, and you know my thing is if I can get a handful of these albums even if they cross over to wider platform blogs that's fine because I don't have the inclination to research and listen to hundreds of albums to find 10 or 20 I actually like.  I don't like those odds. Props to those of you that have that single minded focus.

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2 hours ago, markm said:

Yes I remember, and you know my thing is if I can get a handful of these albums even if they cross over to wider platform blogs that's fine because I don't have the inclination to research and listen to hundreds of albums to find 10 or 20 I actually like.  I don't like those odds. Props to those of you that have that single minded focus.

In the long run I don't care if a band I happen to like such as Cerebral Rot gets picked up by a more widely read "mainstream" platform because they didn't compromise their art or sell-out or anything for this opportunity, the mainstream came to them. So good on them, that's fantastic I hope it helps their career. Not gonna turn my back on a band if I enjoy their music no matter how popular they might become as long as they haven't compromised but to be honest I really don't think one AMG write-up is going to propel anyone with the name Cerebral Rot into rockstar status. I'd love it if more mainstream metal fans got exposed to and started listening to better bands, then maybe what's considered "mainstream" would change even just a little bit. But I don't see that happening because most people enjoy eating shit. And I have found over the years that most of the stuff the mainstream typically picks up on is usually too generic and too watered down and too bland for me, or too prog, or too melodic or too something I don't like. The things that would seem to make a band more acceptable for mass appeal generally don't appeal to me. Likewise most of what does appeal to me would not appeal to the masses, or even to most of my fellow metalheads.

Funny though, you ask if the underground is really all that underground anymore because everything is so much easier to find now in the internet age than it used to be when we were coming up. But then you turn around and say you don't have the time, the inclination or the energy to sort through all these thousands of new releases to find the needles in a haystack because it's too hard and too time consuming for too little reward. And that's exactly why the underground will always be the underground, because it isn't really that easy to find the gems amidst so much crap. It's not like any blog or channel or platform is going to somehow intuitively know exactly which albums you are going to like and which ones you won't. Because no two or three metalheads ever agree on anything. There's an awful lot of garbage out there including almost all of what the mainstream is peddling, but even a lot of the so called underground stuff is less than exciting as well, so I have to be passionate and diligent about learning how to find what I seek. I reject far more albums than I accept to get down to those 300 keepers I found this year.

Most people want everything handed to them on a platter here in the modern era. You don't want to raise, feed, slaughter, pluck, drain, disembowel and filet your own chickens, you just want to pop out to the market for a 1 pound package of boneless skinless thighs or breasts. And believe me I don't want to be a chicken farmer either, because I'm not nearly as passionate about my chicken as I am about my black metal. So to mix metaphors, If I liked even some of what the mainstream was selling I'd probably be quite happy just to buy their boneless skinless thighs from what I had to pick from on their shelf in their store on the main road with the big neon sign and the big parking lot and be done with it. Wouldn't that just be so much easier for me and less time consuming? And if that method works for you or for others and you get your 20 albums that year or however many you wanted then good for you/them. But unfortunately the big brand boneless thighs just aren't what I want, so I really have no choice but to put on my Wellies and go digging for the good stuff night after night because I know I'm simply not gonna find what I'm looking for and what I need any other way. If it happens that you or anyone else can gain from my hard work (which isn't really hard work at all, I'm not out in the mud digging trenches, I'm just sitting on my ass surfing the net listening to music) and you enjoy the things I bring to light then so much the better, I'm happy I could be of assistance.

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2 hours ago, GoatmasterGeneral said:

In the long run I don't care if a band I happen to like such as Cerebral Rot gets picked up by a more widely read "mainstream" platform because they didn't compromise their art or sell-out or anything for this opportunity, the mainstream came to them........If it happens that you or anyone else can gain from my hard work (which isn't really hard work at all, I'm not out in the mud digging trenches, I'm just sitting on my ass surfing the net listening to music) and you enjoy the things I bring to light then so much the better, I'm happy I could be of assistance.

Absolutely and I do appreciate the work involved for you and others on the interwebs culling through hundreds of releases a year. It's practically a full time job. Most of us need filters. In fact, if you're looking for something online, they are literally called filters, right,  because as we all know, in the information age, there's just too much volume for anyone-you need someway to narrow things down. It all boils down to time, our most valuable resources. Time and the demands upon it. You've found a way to structure your life around a singular passion. But, as you often post, you're up to 5 in the morning looking for new releases. And you've figured a way to make that work.

But as a system,  it's impractical  for most people and incredibly inefficient.  I get diverted by other interests, hobbies, work and family demands and frankly other kinds of music where I need to put a hold on new metal releases. And, burnout. There's more to life than listening to hundreds of new albums a year. 

There is also the issue of volume of releases vs time spent with an individual album. You  go through a massive volume of material. I find myself often stopping in my tracks with a new album that floors me and saying, "stop the presses", "hold my calls" and spending several days unpacking a particular release. I may be juggling multiple albums, but if I think it's good, I just know, I need repeat listens. I really like to take my time with some albums and come back to them over a period of time which could be weeks interspersed with all the other things in my life, before making a value judgement. Some albums need time to age and I know, intuitively that I need to do listen to other things and then come back and reevaluate. 

Really, reading posts from the various people here, I think a lot of people just gravitate to a handful of albums that catch their attention and let the rest just pass by like gnats flying by on a summer's day. I have too many interests, too many shiny objects competing for my attention. I most certainly need filters.  Thankfully, some of you are driven to organize your life around listening to new music. I've seen in various hobbies over the years, there will be people that dedicate themselves to that passion in a way many are not but they often reap the greatest reward. You know, I love kayaking. It's a pretty big part of my life. But there are plenty that do little more than kayak. And rest assured, they are a lot better than me!

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Yeah well I haven't always had the luxury to be able to devote this much time into hunting for new releases, and just listening to music, and I understand that most people simply can't. There were many years I had to wake up in the middle of the night to get to work by 4:30am then work long hours usually 6 days a week and then put in some time with the family before I could even think about sitting down to relax and spend some time on the internet. I was sleep deprived for years as well because when I finally get the chance to start listening to music later in the evenings I just don't want to stop. I simply don't have the abilty to force myself to turn it off and go to bed that most normal people do. So I know where you're coming from. Time is indeed precious. There were many years that by December I'd only have about 25 albums and would have to scour other people's lists to find all the stuff I'd missed that year.

And even now I don't do it like this round the clock all the time every day 24/7/365 like you think I do, there'll be weeks or sometimes even several weeks when I'll be busy with something or I'll lose interest or fall out of the habit and do some other things in my spare time. There's an ebb and flow to this hobby of hunting for new releases. But list season is different, all bets are off. Christmas/New Years is an exciting time of the year for me when I scramble to try and find all the things I might've missed that year and I struggle to sort through all the stuff that gets released right at the end of the year and start putting my thoughts together to make my list. My list is like my Christmas present to myself. This is my time in December & January I have earmarked to just listen to all my stuff from the past year and get to know it a little better without worrying about any new stuff that might be coming out. I don't even want to hear about any 2022 releases yet until probably mid February or March. I can catch up later. And I am fortunate that I have plenty of time to listen to music these days, because even when we work it's right here at home so I have no commute. Everyone else generally leaves at 3 or 4 and I'm home already, so I can start cranking the tunes right away. And also being single now I don't have to answer to anyone or spend time with anyone or sit down and eat dinner together at the table or compromise and watch chick flicks or do things that she wants to do. I can do whatever I want at night now without taking anyone else's feelings or desires into consideration. And most of what I want involves listening to music.

And the other thing as I've said before is that as far as I'm concerned we happen to be in the middle of a black metal and goat metal renaissance right now with massive shitloads of killer shit coming out on a weekly basis in the exact styles I prefer. I'm in the zone man, this has been going on for like 10 years now and showing no signs of stopping. Sometimes I think it's almost too good to be true. I don't think I would have been able to find even close to this many killer albums in decades past. So I'm stocking up while I still can, like a squirrel hoarding his acorns for the winter. Because I don't know when the tides could turn and musical interests or the metal zeitgeist will shift and Gen Z gets in charge and who knows when some other crap could become the prevailing metal sub-genres of the future. I reckon this can't go on forever. It'd be nice for me if it could, but it's not likely. When did one style or sub-genre of music ever stay boss for several decades? Shit changes, things evolve. What if dissonant, technical, hipster and prog metal totally take over and the goat metal and raw black metal starts drying up, people just stop forming those kinds of bands and the goat metal party grinds to a halt? Last call for bestial blackened death, get your final orders in, drink up, and then get the fuck out. What will I do then? I'm just making sure I'll have enough good shit in the sub-genres that wind my crank to get me through the dark days of my twilight years at a time when I probably won't be able to accumulate 300+ albums each year like I do now. What if they stick me in the old folks home and I'm unable to accumulate any new shit at all? Really don't want to get stuck with the same 200 albums and have to play them into the ground until I'm completely sick of them. I'll need a little variety. I think of these hundreds of metal albums I've been accumulationg each year this past decade or so as my personal metal retirement account. At some point whatever I've got will have to be enough to last me til the bitter end.

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I would say there is no underground  any more.  Bandcamp etc makes everything accessible.  It is not like in the old days when you had to have access to the the right kind of record shop or know tape traders or people who ran underground distribution labels or friends in the know.

I miss that sense of mystery.  Even the simple joy of finding bands through "thank you" lists in liner notes is gone.

 

I also miss that sense of exclusivity which itself was a reward for hard work of trying to discover the underground metal scene.

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That was pretty much my point, but you said it better, Dead. Bandcamp, blogs and so forth bring to light any number of albums that prior to to the explosion of streaming and access to the internet would have required the effort that would have kept me in the dark during the aughts. But of course, much of this music wouldn't exist were it not for technology. It's a bit like the chicken or the egg isn't it?

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Going to try and hit a few different points here with one big post, so hopefully that’s okay.

 

@FatherAlabaster …didn’t realize that was you, but I’m pretty sure I remember that conversation about Finnish death metal. If I’m remembering right, that was the year Scum dropped “Garden of Shadows” which made my year-end list.

 

As for posting on No Clean Singing, not going to lie and say I don’t get a kick out of people leaving comments about the bands I talk about, but I don’t think I’ve really let that go to my head or anything…I mean, I don’t really post that much there anymore, so I doubt anyone beyond some of the oldest visitors really even recognize my name. Beyond that, unless I missed some change to how he does things, Islander will pretty much post guest articles by anyone who wants to take the time to write something. It’s definitely not some kind of “we elite few” situation. I’m pretty sure he just asks me to send him one because he likes to see how many of the bands he actually recognizes each year.

I’ll also add, that my list there doesn’t completely reflect the albums I’d have chosen if I was just writing something here on the forum. I know more recently Islander has been trying to be more careful about which bands and labels he covers on his site, so the last couple of years I’ve tried to be respectful of that as well when I make my selections.

 

@markm…Yes, that was probably me you saw buying the Auld Ridge albums on Bandcamp. That’s the same guy who does the Albionic Hermeticism releases, only this project uses a lot more ambient stuff in the mix. Also, I’m not surprised that Neil Jameson’s list on Invisible Oranges reminds you of the stuff I talk about. That dude and I have weirdly similar tastes, and I don’t mean in the same way Whitenoise or Navy have the same taste as me. For some reason that guy and I seem to almost always pick a bunch of the same bands come list season…it’s weird.

Finally, I’ll just say in regards to the underground metal discussion. I think it’s important to remember that the underground isn’t just one thing…it basically comes in levels, just like what I’d call mainstream metal. So usually when you see an underground band make its way into the wider consciousness of the more mainstream metal world it’s because it’s been forced up to the very top of the underground scene. Most of the times those guys don’t go looking for that stuff, it’s just that the buzz has become so strong that they finally get wind of it. That’s why a lot of the bigger blogs and magazines are usually about an album behind on things. If you pay attention you’ll see, they almost never catch onto the album that everyone in the underground is buzzing about. It’s almost always the follow up release that gets all the press.

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59 minutes ago, SurgicalBrute said:

 

@FatherAlabaster …didn’t realize that was you, but I’m pretty sure I remember that conversation about Finnish death metal. If I’m remembering right, that was the year Scum dropped “Garden of Shadows” which made my year-end list.

Yup, that sounds right. I think that conversation was how I found out about Slugathor and Vacant Coffin. Cheers man :)

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