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.
I didn’t pay as close attention as I typically do to new release throughout 2024, but I’ll give a handful of standouts I was either already looking forward to or happened to grab my attention for their quality.
Doedsmaghird - Omniverse Consciousness - Experimental Black Metal - I’m a Vicotnik überfan. This release hit a lot more squarely than the last Dødheimsgard. Stoked to see him back in peak form.
öXXö XööX - + - Avant Garde Prog Doom -This project just keeps getting better. I thought Ÿ was a masterpiece already, but they upped their game again. Brilliant stuff.
My Dying Bride - A Mortal Binding - Gothic Doom - Their grittiest release in at least 20 years. Still very apparently newer MDB, but they certainly didn’t shy away from dirtying it up on this one. Big fan of that, personally.
Wintersun - Time II - Symphonic Melodic Death Metal - Well holy fuck, this meme album ended up being the best thing since the debut. Pleasantly surprised to enjoy this like I did since I didn’t find anything after the debut to be particularly worth my time
Brodequin - Harbinger of Woe - Brutal Death Metal - I can understand pushback on the clean production from longtime fans given this band’s back catalogue, but that didn’t bother me at all. The 20 years since the last full length hasn’t dulled their songwriting capabilities even a bit. I don’t listen to a huge amount of straight death metal these days, but this album even got me to do back to back repeat listens more than once.
Wow yeah, I don’t feel cool enough to hang with you. 😅 The only one of those I recognize is Wintersun, and that’s the one you call meme, so I think I’m outclassed in metal here. I’m open though, so I’m gonna give those a listen, probably a brief sample before I commit to full album listening if I’m being honest though.
Cool isn’t really a factor. Everybody can and should like what they want, and shouldn’t be faulted for not having heard of this or that band.
The meme factor re: that Wintersun album has more to do with the backstory of how it would never get released with the stipulations Jari was putting up for years toward his record label and fans and whoever else before he would release the album. I didn’t follow the situation that closely, but it’s been a long standing saga in the metal scene chatter-sphere.
If there’s anything you ended up liking from my post, cheers. If not, cheers all the same. 👍