Albums are unranked between 2nd and 10th place and are alphabetical by artist instead, but I will list my top album of the year separately:
Blood Incantation - Absolute Elsewhere > Crazy beautiful progressive death metal from space
Chapel of Disease - Echoes of Light > Melodic death metal meets prog rock, super beautiful and super original
Charli XCX - Brat > It’s Brat, I don’t need to tell you what this is.
Future Islands - People Who Aren’t There Anymore > Great synthpop and maybe the coolest sound you might hear on mainstream radio right now
Knocked Loose - You Won’t Go Before You’re Supposed To > A basic choice, everyone loves this, but everyone loves it for a reason
Left to Suffer - Leap of Death > Hyper-melodic deathcore with nu metal sensibility; I think this album almost does for deathcore what Finch’s What It Is to Burn did for post-hardcore or A Day to Remember did for metalcore
The Cure - Songs of a Lost World > Really unexpected to me, this is beautiful and is my current favorite The Cure album
Thou - Umbilical > Dense and emotionally weighty sludge doom metal from one of the best bands in the sound
Tyler, The Creator - Chromakopia > I’m a Tyler stan; this doesn’t hit the heights of his best albums for me but is excellent still
And my top album of the year:
Bilmuri - AMERICAN MOTOR SPORTS > Simply the best country, alt metal, post-hardcore, pop punk crossover album I’ve ever heard, even if admittedly that’s an incredibly narrow field. Genuinely great, not just a novelty, AMERICAN MOTOR SPORTS is without the question the album I’ve returned to the most, and I don’t see any signs of tiring of it yet. Just a tremendous album.
Those were mine tops, but what did I miss? What were your top albums of 2024?
Or hey, if you hate any of my picks, feel free to tell me about that too, I’m cool with differing view points. It’s just fun to talk music.
Never heard of Glass Beams before, but I see they’re neo-psychedelia funk which I like, and on a brief preview they sound like they might kind of be in the Khruangbin / Moonchild post-hippie space a bit which I dig a lot. I’m adding Mahal to my listening list!
And yeah, I really can’t recommend Bilmuri’s American Motor Sports enough, but I will say that it’s a very radio-friendly rock kind of album, so if you aren’t into that kind of easily-accessible sound it may not be your thing. But for me, it’s a vibe and easily one of the best radio-friendly hard rock albums in a very long time.