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Top 25 Albums of the Year, No

Top 25, No Order

Fire-Toolz - Breeze I love everything Angel Marcloid does. You can hang labels on it if you want: pervasie ambient with World of White Ice, Weather Channel synthwave shred jams with Nonlocal Forecast, and the most varied and mad project she hangs her hat on: Fire-Toolz, who this year outdid itself with a bonkers, loving mix of volcanic metal vocals, lush jazz fusion, scrambled electronics, knotty prog riffs, and an unyielding devotion to making them all stick. Mark McGuire has a song called "Here Comes Every Color." And while good, doesn't capture the essence of the title. This is the actual sound of every color coming toward you.

Sleepytime Gorilla Museum - Of the Last Human Being The theater kids playing at being heavy music goes a number of ways. You can be Ghost and play Eurythmics and Broadway hits and be…that version. Or you can be the weirdos who literally don't care if anyone likes what you do or not, a puckish commitment to "this is what we are" in an unenviable sphere of people claiming to not care. You might not want the heavy metal riffs and weepy violins and and cabaret bullshit to slam into one another, to abut like table leafs affixed to couch cushions and thrown down a mineshaft. But they don't care. I do. It's good for you. A warning, though: if your comfort zone is madness, when things become linear again, you will need to regain your balance.

Carnosus - Wormtales Straight-up not as good as their last one. But better than the Wormed, the Wormhole and the Worm that came before it. Goddamn, other than the "void" and the word "threnody" there may be nothing metal loves more than worms. Anyway, Hath and Slugdge and Afterbirth with better vocals, more intricate and better mixed playing, and a psychotic devotion to complexity, but in a brutally dumb yet imaginative way. Like a monster who's suddenly become too smart for its own good and is too strong to be put down.

Blood Incantation - Absolute Elsewhere More goofs from arguably the world's most cosmic band. (Yes there are a billion black metal bands who play whole albums about the constellations of the Forever Winter but almost none of them have an equally stellar ambient catalog. Seriously I didn't make a list last year but Paul Riedl's Ocean of Peace would have made 2023 no sweat, best ambient of the year). What? Anyway, these guys are always amazing. Mixed in the thumbhole of a bowling ball, yeah, but with these guys, it's become a part of their charm.

Mamaleek - Vida Blue You may have noticed by now that I marinate in a bathtub of weird. Self-conscious or not, it's where sit, a throne of battered creosote siphoned from the pyrolysis of silly, disturbed, goofy or otherwise. And the erectors of that throne may very well be these deeply troubled, howling hierophants. It's shambling, it's the Scott Walker/Jesus Lizard/Bathory album from the abattoir of your own mind, and it's been melted into a glass floor. Stand on it and look down. There I am. In my bathtub of weird. No worries. But vocalizing all of them.

Orgone - Pleroma I don't want to describe "progressive metal" because that means everything to everyone, from Dream Theater to BTBAM to Ayreon to Ne Obliviscaris. And that's not why I write. I write because I like reading sentences like "More like Gorguts but if they broke into Opeth's house and broke all their stuff" and sometimes, if you wanna read stuff like that, you have to write it yourself. And sometimes, that's what a dense-ass album of stuff like this is. And while that sounds mundane to some people, this is one of the best THINGS, album or not, I've heard all year. I got weird rushes and my mind and heart went places they weren't meant to, and happier for it.

Opeth - The Last Will and Testament They said they were gonna do it. "We're going back to the growls as soon as people started to miss them." And then I saw them live and it changed my life. And that informs that this album, yes, has the growls, sure, but also has some odd songwriting choices that hooked me in, made me realize that I'm one of those people who genuinely would put Opeth in his favorite bands of all time. Compile a list of bands you wanna see before you shuffle off this mortal coil, and Opeth is on it? Favorite. If you're new to them, it won't win you over, but a longtime fan will find much to love.

Loscil & Lawrence English - Chroma Their previous album, Colours of Air, found these two people on opposite ends of the ambient spectrum - meditative vs. white noise, steadfast vs. dissonance - finding common ground within a 132-year-old pipe organ. It worked so well that they wanted to do more with one another. And, like with Wormtales, it's not as good as what came before, but it's still incredibly great, sublime, worth every minute. And this will be the only corner of the internet where an ambient album and a Carnosus album will be mentioned in the same sentence. See? I told you, it's why I write.

Caligula's Horse - Charcoal Grace Speaking of bands I saw live…this isn't one of them. It was a Wednesday and I have a day job and didn't have a phone yet, thus no Lyft or Uber, nor anyone else who wanted to go who ALSO had a car. And it burns me a little. Or a lot. People like comparing these guys to dudes like Haken or Leprous, and while not INaccurate, Caligula's Horse have two things over dudes like them, in my mind. One: a much more consistent discography with fewer albums, and by dint of that, fewer duds. (No shade at Haken and Leprous fans, I like them both quite a bit, both the bands and the fans). And the other thing that sets CH apart, for me, is Jim Grey's crystalline singing voice. Prog giants try to hit the Geddy Lee threshold and so often just…wail, tunelessly and louder than bombs (Looking at Coheed sideways…). No yawps, no yaps, no yowls, no lines that sound like someone who sat on a frozen toilet seat…just the prog sphere''s most crisp and clean vocals, in service to some of their best songs.

Replacire - The Center That Cannot Hold Sure, another proggish tech death brouhaha. But like Carnosus, seriously disciplined and FUN. I sing along to death metal, often, because I can, and this was that one growled line in "Why?" by Devin Townsend, just album-length. For me. Again, I like to sing along to stuff like this. Sure, members of Native Construct and the Black Crown Iniitiate. Sure, pedigree of Boston music nerds. People who know the band know this stuff. Live with it, it'll treat you right.

Sgàile - Traverse the Bealach I've heard some people call this guy the Scottish Devin Townsend. I don't think that's necessarily fair, but neither is it inaccurate. (Well, in terms of prolificness, Tony Dunn is nowhere near him, but he's also a bit younger). Anyway, dude's got a phenomenal voice, chops to spare, and is a songwriter who is ambitious without knowing whatever limits he's set for himself. But the main reason I put this on here is because it's an album that gave me HOPE early in 2024. Granted, a lot of them were dashed and despite being an eternal oprimist, I felt like this year Cormac McCarthy'd our collective psyches into the hard dirt. I needed a tonic, and there was no balm in Gilead. This album, a conceptual one about a man wandering a post-apocalyptic Scotland (heh, I didn't even mean for the Cormac thing to apply) really helped me work through some things I was internalizing. It gave me hope, more than once. There's something to be said for that. But the songs are also really great. Get on board.

Adam Wiltzie - Eleven Fugues For Sodium Pentothal Was this a gimme because Stars of the Lid have made some of my favorite ever music, both collectively and in collaboration with other people? (The Dead Texan is literally the best ambient album of all time and I haven't budged on that since 2014 when I finally heard all the Eno and Budd to that point and it still came ahead) Yes it was. Is it on its own a beautiful meditation with goofy titles and some of the most gentle transitions, pelagic swells (ha!) and effervescent sound engineering in ambient music? Yes it is.The fact that we lost one half of this iconic duo saddens me so much, and I'm happy that this is still in the living half, and I hope more comes.

Gaerea - Coma And rounding out the bands I saw live this year, who delivered an intensity that I did not think could be recorded…hi, Gaerea. Their intense, squealing, hellish brand of cult-world black metal really hits me where I live. This one won't be as flowery because this was a latecomer in the race, and I really felt this one more than I thought about it. To take a page from Victory Over the Sun, this is God, howling in a cage.

Sierra Ferrell - Trail of Flowers I am in love with this woman and her plaintive drawl. I am in love with her songs, I am in love with her retooling of a classic country sound. Country songs don't reach me because I relate to them, necessarily: they reach me, often, because they highlight a sadness I can identify and sympathize with without ever having experienced for myself. In other words, she makes me sympathize with things I hadn't thought about before, expanding where my heart can go. Willi Carlisle did it to me, too, but I HAD experienced, or at least I thought I had, what he sang about. Her emotions are here for me, and I am here for them, despite living in different parts of the world.

Ulcerate - Cutting the Throat of God The masters. The unchallenged champions. From not exactly a metal hotbed (New Zealand, arguably the least angsty place white people have ever read about), they somehow came for the crown of expansive, definition-straining dissonant death in like, 2009 (Everything Is Fire, yo) and nobody's been able to wrest the diadem from their gnarled hands. Everything is superfluous before their ashen breath, and they wield it like the smog coming for your lungs.

Replicant - Infinite Mortality I really could, conceivably, just cut and past the Replacire write-up here and it would apply equally. Replicant are heavier, less tech-y: in a cavernous ecosystem, they're not yet atop the food chain, but the climb is consistent and rapid. So maybe not. But they're pretty close. Not as clean a recording, but what, is a quibble like that gonna stand in your way? You like Gorguts worship? Would you like Imperial Triumphant better if the instruments were recorded separately and thus didn't sound like bees in a mayonnaise jar with the BEST headphones you can afford, to the point where the notes don't sound like separate notes? Replicant's your jam.

Alcest - Les Chants de l'Aurore The brightest, happiest, least-cheesy metal album I've heard in years, and the best thing Alcest have done since Kodama. And when I say least-cheesy: I've heard two Fellowship albums, and while I dug the optimism (again, a thing I regularly think is desperately needed), theirs sounds like a bunch of the Christian metal albums kids tried to get me into in high school. Not bad, but dangerous, almost toxic levels of optimism…also known as faith, I guess? But I'm not being fair, and this is becoming a slam on faith, suddenly, something else that is toxic in the wrong hands. But Alcest created something bright, something warm, something positively sunny, yet never losing the stewardship of what would eventually be known as blackgaze. And to make a hopeful, sunny blackgaze album in 2024 is maybe one of the most impressive things about this veteran band.

Resuscitate - Immortality Complex Hey, remember when I brought up Native Construct? The world misses them, and their ONE album. Isn't that always the way? Everyone wanted a SECOND Young Marble Giants album after the first one. Life Without Buildings? Rites of Spring? Sure. Green Mile? Op Ivy? Yeah, fine. And much like these bands, in 2015, Native Contrusct took the rulebook of their parent genre and didn't REWITE it. Just added extra chapters, better footnotes, fewer marching orders. And Resuscitate just took that rulebook and played with it some more, cribbed, took what they needed, wrote a great album with it. And it feels right. The rules don't always need to be rewritten, but enforcing them would take too much effort. And the end result is great. There are always stops between birth and transcendence, y'know?

Folterkammer - Weibermacht I will preface this by saying that I don't like Fleshgod Apocalypse. Not to start on the negative, but their marriage of black metal and opera is something that, on paper, does not work for me. So why does THIS marriage of the same two genres work for me? Is it because every song is about weird sex? Is it the way the German language sounds in my head? Is it because it kind of reminds me of Myrkur and their last album left me kinda cold? You feel it out for yourself. I am a fan of bombast, pomp AND circumstance. This is for me.

Iotunn - Kinship Ne Obliviscaris is one of my newest favorite bands. And while it might be incredibly reductive to say "but this'll do for now in their stead," it is the sentiment that comes most readily to my mind when I think of the write-up for this album. They definitely do enough different things with the formula: their guitarists definitely crib more from power metal than the melodeath world, and the death feels more Insomnium than Black Dhalia. And the songwriting veers into Pink Floyd, even, at times. Not so far away from NeO, but far enough that they've written their own name on the wall, and you can read it when you look in the mirror.

Lord Buffalo - Holus Bolus I don't know from "desert rock." I know from what I like, and what I like is American gothic, sun-bleached weird and morose. A sacrifice at the Bad Seeds/Wovenhand altar, with twangy stumbles and odd swaggering, and it's a sacrifice whose bones I will fish through for details for a little while longer. (The word "haruspex," speaking of picking through remains, is one metal bands LOVE. Metal bands with songs called "Haruspex" number in the dozens. And Maria BC.)

Melt-Banana - 3+5 Melt-Banana, along with Opeth, are a band that I've literally been enjoying since the late 90s. So, high school. So, one of the few bands on this list I can say that I've seen live, AND a band that's been active in all 4 decades I've been alive (though I've technically been alive in 5). And everything is JUST different enough to keep me coming back…or in the case of this band, forgot they existed until this came out. And then I said to myself, "oh wow, I remember them being good!" and since I really don't like nostalgia, for a while I was content with my memories. And then I listened to this, was so happy to have been wrong. This band still rips, they've always ripped. Long may they rip.

Kyros - Mannequin Imagine saying the word to me "pop-prog" in my 20s. I would have spit, sneered. But my edges have softened, my carapace molted, my exterior kinder and more open. And that's what this is. It's joyous, silly, and the theme I return to at all times in this list: hopeful. I need hope, I often HAVE hope. This album IS hope, with it's gorgeous instrumentation and floating, buyoant choruses, sparkling production and basslines that could have come from John Taylor or Simon Gallup. The companion EP that came out…a week ago? is also very nice, and arguably necessary to enjoy this album. But the full-length is love, as is their whole discography. Love Kyros. They most likely love you back.

Job For a Cowboy - Moon Healer Progressive death has many mad geniuses, or people who can claim to be. And it's full of people whose name makes me go "nah." JFAC are somehow both. Like, tell me that "Tombo's Wound" is a great song, and then read me that the band's name is The Number Twelve Looks Like You? Stop. But in keeping with my edges softening, I gave this band a try, and I'm incredibly happy I did. It's a reference point for every band that got me into the genre - Opeth, Gorguts, the Faceless, Dissection, Carcass - with enough distillation of elements that I found…memorable. Pleasing. Weird and comforting.

Pyrrhon - Exhaust The exact thing I gave Imperial Triumphant shit for - mixing everything so that instruments are all the exact same volume - Pyrrhon is guilty of. And they bring the same things to the table: scrabbling, scrawling dissonance, a hardcore band's rhythm section, an overall nihilsm that is convinced a better world ISN'T possible but it's important to fight the whole way down. However, there's an energy, a madness here that I straight up do not hear with IT. It's also paced way better than any of their albums: a brusque 38 miniutes of sustained hate, rage, despair…and a final hope. If for no other reason, listen to the song "Not Going To Mars." You can probably guess what it's about. But this album is more than what it ISN'T. For an album so dense, the riffs and song structures are remarkably accessible without sacrificing an ounce of challenging musicality. Shrooms and a cabin perfected Pyrrhon’s approach, and while I’m exhausted all of what we see, what we hear, what we do…Exhaust is providing me with a breath of fresh air and the vivacity to persevere.

#end of year #lists #long post

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