My Favorite Albums of 2022

Plenty of people seem to stop looking for new music as they get older, with the responsibilities of life piling up and the music of their younger years acting a balm to soothe themselves in the face of those responsibilities. And while I completely understand that, I seem to be going the complete opposite direction. I turned 30 this year, and despite my now deeply advanced age, I listened to more new releases this year than any other year that I can remember. And sure, a big chunk of those albums may not have stuck with me past a handful of listens, and I may have often gone back to those comforting classic albums. But there were also plenty of records I absolutely adored and couldn’t stop listening to. Here’s 15 of them.

15. The Callous Daoboys – Celebrity Therapist

Ever since The Dillinger Escape Plan called in quits in 2017, I’ve had a hole in my musical heart that has never quite been filled. Thankfully, their inspiration is still carrying on today in bands like SeeYouSpaceCowboy, Pupil Slicer, and The Callous Daoboys. And on the Daoboys’ Celebrity Therapist, they do take inspiration from that legendary mathcore band, but they’ve also used it as a launch pad on which to build their own thing as well. For every bit of frenzied math metal you’ll find alt rock hooks that would feel more at home on a System of a Down record, and a strong sense of melodic songwriting that ties those moments of craziness together. I liked the previous album Die on Mars well enough, but they’ve really upped their game and become something truly great on Celebrity Therapist.

14. Mothica – Nocturnal

Mothica is an artist that I hadn’t even HEARD of before catching her opening up for Coheed and Cambria this year. Her show instantly won me over with her intense and captivating stage presence, confessional lyricism, and the wide variety of sounds she was working with. On Nocturnal, Mothica blends electronic beats, hard-edged guitars, tinges of 2000s emo, and even the occasional bit of inspiration from the 1950s in order to spill her pain over music that is filled with hooks, ear-worm melodies, and intense honesty. These songs detail struggles with depression, suicide attempts, insecurity, social anxiety, and just the vicissitudes of modern life that we all deal with, and Mothica does it in a way that’s both deeply entertaining and easy to sing along with as it is emotionally cutting.

13. Hikaru Utada – Bad Mode

Hikaru Utada has always had an incredible voice, one which always feels wistful, longing, and full of grace. On Bad Mode, nothing has changed in that department, which Utada giving another standout vocal performance that always manages to somehow stir up feelings of nostalgia and warmth in me despite me not speaking Japanese. What HAS changed is the music backing her up: on Bad Mode, Utada has hired a wealth of amazing jazz musicians, including members of the ensemble Badbadnotgood, and the results are astounding. The music is buttery smooth, sensual, groovy, and even dance-able at times, and does that all without ever leaving the chilled out, late-night afterparty texture that Bad Mode invokes. It’s a wonderful album to put on when you’re assailed by the whirlpool of late night emotions.

12. Anthony Green – Boom. Done.

Anthony Green has had a hell of a year. After a relapse, a divorce, and his main band Circa Survive falling into a hiatus, there was plenty going wrong. But because he’s always been one of the bravest and most open songwriters of his era, he came through with a painfully brutal, honest, and soul-baring solo record in the form of Boom. Done. On this album he documents his battle with drugs, addiction, depression, and what sounds very much like a survived suicide type, and it makes for an absolutely harrowing listen. So – likely with a touch of intentional irony – he chose to couch these grim confessionals in the sound of crunchy ’90s grunge guitars and layers of spunky horn sections to liven things up. The contrast isn’t lost on me, and it makes for what is possibly the most compelling record he’s ever put his own name on.

11. Soul Glo – Diaspora Problems

I’ve said for years that punk and rap are genres more closely related than most people think they are from a surface level view. Both are made by groups of people that are often downtrodden by society, oppressed in some form or another, and fueled by the anger that comes from living lives that are so often rated as second class by others. So when I heard Soul Glo fuse the burning passion of hardcore punk with the attitude and swagger of rap, I was instantly in love with what I heard. Diaspora Problems is a relentlessly furious record that takes aim at modern society and its love of shallow consumerism, its deep racial divisions, and the twisted politics that are threatening the fabric of our world. It’s a vital, pissed off record with a lot to say, and it’s worth cranking up to make sure you hear that message.

10. Pusha T – It’s Almost Dry

Sure, Pusha T has been rapping about selling coke for decades at this point. Any other rapper would’ve run out of steam years ago, but somehow, Pusha always manages to keep things fresh and entertaining. On It’s Almost Dry, he’s joined by Kanye West and Pharrell on the boards, evenly splitting production duties. The result is an album full of varied, exciting beats and production that effortlessly match Pusha’s smooth coke bars. This is an album full of attitude, swagger, and confidence, and it’s a great listen for any rap fan.

9. Royal Coda – To Only A Few At First

This year was the year Dance Gavin Dance seemed to fall apart, and their new album Jackpot Juicer failed to inspire anything beyond apathy in me. Thankfully, we have Royal Coda, which notably features former DGD vocalist Kurt Travis as well as lead guitarist Will Swan, essentially recreating a big part of the magic from Happiness-era DGD. And this album fires on all cylinders, chock full of spidery guitar playing, great use of space and texture, and a powerhouse vocal performance from Kurt Travis. After so many years and so many bands, it’s incredible how Kurt only seems to get better at his craft with every passing year, and for me, it’s easy to say that Royal Coda is doing it better than Dance Gavin Dance.

8. Denzel Curry – Melt My Eyez, See Your Future

2022 seems to have been the year of therapy rap. Kendrick Lamar waded into these waters with his album Mr. Morale, but I found myself enjoying Denzel Curry’s take a bit more. Melt My Eyez is, simply put, one hell of a smooth record. Backed by a collection of jazz musicians and live performance takes, this is the most musical a Denzel record has ever sounded, effortlessly blending hip hop beats with stunning instrumentation. And over the top of these smooth tracks, Denzel switches gear from the revved up, near-metal singer energy he usually turns in to something that’s more refined, more inward, more introspective. Denzel deals with generational trauma, how those traumas have shaped him and even pushed him towards causing harm to others himself, and by the end of the album, offers himself and everyone else a path towards doing the work and becoming a better person not just for ourselves, but for everyone around us.

7. The Weeknd – Dawn FM

Abel Tesfaye, AKA The Weeknd, once kicked his career off with a trilogy of fantastically moody and sleazy dark R&B albums. Now, at the absolute height of his career, it seems he’s once again creating a trilogy. On 2019’s After Hours, Abel mined the excess and heartbreak that have been familiar themes in his work, but did it inside of a creative arc that seemingly ended with him (or his character) dying. Now on Dawn FM, Abel treats us to a warped version of ’80s nostalgia filtered through the eerie sounds of producer Daniel Lopatin of Oneohtrix Point Never. Dawn FM swerves through earnest, gorgeous takes on ’80s love ballads and heartbreak tunes, but does so in a way that feels just ever so slightly off, uncanny, even supernatural. And combined with Jim Carey’s radio DJ-esque interjections that speak of the afterlife and what one has to do to move their soul forward, it makes for a wonderful through line that holds this collection of great songs even more tightly together.

6. Ibaraki – Rashomon

Despite knowing of Matt Heafy and Trivium for, well, over a decade at this point, I’d never taken much time to explore them. That all changed after seeing Trivium life with Between the Buried and Me late this year, and I immediately dove into Trivium’s catalog. Along that journey, I found Matt Heafy’s new black metal inspired project Ibaraki, and it instantly became one of my favorite albums of the year. Immediately progressive, musically ambitious, conceptual in scope, and at times breathtakingly heavy, Rashomon is some of the best work Matt has ever done. I love how this album blends some of the traditional elements of black metal with a more operatic, dramatic feel, as well as blending in a lot of extra instruments and themes that often lie well outside of black metal’s purview (c’mon, how many black metal albums do you know of that focus solely on Japanese mythology?). It’s a fantastic album that I haven’t been able to stop listening to, and I hope there’s more to come under the Ibaraki name.

5. Greg Puciato – Mirrorcell

In 2020, Greg Puciato’s debut solo album was one of my favorite albums of the year. It was an adventurous record that covered a ton of stylistic ground, sometimes to a fault. However, on his second album Mirrorcell, Greg has locked into a consistent, steady groove across its 9 tracks. Greatly influenced by his time touring with Jerry Cantrell, this album is chock full of nods to ’90s grunge and alt rock, both musically and vocally. And while you’ll hear very little of his trademark paint-peeling screams here, there’s still plenty of aggression and emotional angst to be found, Greg has just found new avenues to channel that through. Mirrorcell is a pulsing, powerful album, and it proudly continues the creative winning streak that Greg has been on since the dissolution of The Dillinger Escape Plan.

4. The Mars Volta – Self Titled

It’s been a long time since we got new TMV. Even before their breakup, they had been trending away from the insanely complex prog rock they started off making, and into more streamlined, refined, traditional songwriting and structures. So while a lot of people were shocked when they came back with a record that bordered on pop (well, by TMV standards, anyway), I wasn’t. To me, this smooth, sensual sounding album feels like the next logical step after 2012’s Noctourniquet, trading guitar fireworks for powerful vocal melodies, sparse yet effective guitar atmospherics, and concise song lengths. And while this album sounds pretty and even upbeat for a large chunk of its runtime, a quick peek into its lyrics reveals a much darker, more traumatized core, making this album one hell of a compelling listen and a worthwhile comeback for the band.

3. Coheed and Cambria – Vaxis II: A Window of the Waking Mind

At first, I really didn’t like this album. My gut reaction was to be repelled at the idea of Coheed making something so akin to a pop rock album, especially after the return to their proggier roots on the preceeding album, Vaxis I. And yet, for whatever reason, I kept found myself thinking “eh, I’ll give it another try”. Then I had realized that just about every single song from it was mercilessly stuck in my head, and that was when I realized that Coheed was right all along. Yeah, Vaxis II does lean towards the straightforward (and I still can’t get over how badly they used autotune on some of the electronic tracks), but the songs are absolutely undeniable. Fun, energetic, hopeful, and just as cinematically conceptual as ever, Vaxis II spent a lot of time in my rotation this year.

2. The Smile – A Light for Attracting Attention

With The Smile, Thom Yorke and Jonny Greenwood have found a way to free themselves of the weight that the Radiohead name bears. Without the spectre of that band’s legacy hanging over their heads, they’ve turned in an album that – yes, sounds quite a bit like Radiohead – but is also more free, more loose, and more energetic than anything they’ve done under that banner since at least In Rainbows. On A Light…, the band powers through rollicking rock riffs, hazy dream like explorations of sonic tension, nervy kraut rock, and plenty more, with the band approaching the songs with a sense of recklessness and fire that gives this band plenty of reason to stand alone from its’ parent band. And after seeing them debut a slew of live material in November, I’m excited for what they do next.

1. The Wonder Years – The Hum Goes on Forever

I’ve known about the Wonder Years since about 2015 or so, but it wasn’t until late 2021 that they clicked for me and I became a full on super fan. Luckily for me, the timing couldn’t have been better, with them working on a brand new album and coming out of post-covid touring shutdowns recharged and ready to hit the road. And their new album, The Hum Goes On Forever, almost instantly took the title of not only my album of the year, but TWY’s best album. This record is packed full of heartbreaking emotional lows, life-affirming highs, and everything in between. On it, singer Dan Campbell explores the crushing clinical depression that has dogged him his entire life, hitting home for me in so many ways and putting words to things I’ve tried to explain for years. But at the same time, he’s not wallowing in that sadness, instead he spends much of the record working through it, trying to be better, trying to escape the clutches of this devil that has been in his bloodstream. Why? Because in the past few years, he became a new father. Now more than ever, he had a reason to fight this demon, a reason to be the best man he can be so that his children can be the best men THEY can be. So not only did I come away with a better perspective on my own depression through Dan’s lyrics, I also got a glimpse into what it must be like for my father, struggling with his own demons and seeing my struggle with my own. The Hum Goes On Forever is an absolute triumph of a record, and I haven’t been able to stop listening to it since its release. I hope you give it a listen, too.

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Honorable Mentions (in no particular order):

Chat Pile – God’s Country
LS Dunes – Past Lives
Armor for Sleep – The Rain Museum
The Devil Wears Prada – Color Decay
Crosses – Permanent.Radiant
Bartees Strange – Farm to Table
Oso Oso – Sore Thumb
Silversun Pickups – Phyiscal Thrills

For Tracy Hyde – Hotel Insomnia
Mares of Thrace – The Exile

The Mars Volta – The Mars Volta (2022)

When a beloved band breaks up and fades away into the ether, it’s always heart breaking. In my case, I had only just discovered The Mars Volta in 2012, mere months before they put that band to bed seemingly for good. After all, few, if any bands sounded quite like The Mars Volta, and for better (and occasionally for worse), they operated on a level of sustained chaos that often birthed masterpieces even in the face of disaster and tragedy. I had missed out on something special, and it didn’t seem very likely that it would ever be back.

So fast forward to 2019, when the first rumblings of Cedric Bixler Zavala and Omar Rodriguez Lopez restarting the project started hitting music media. Given the pair’s track record of starting an eye-watering amount of bands together, it seemed like one of those things that COULD very well happen, or just as well have been them simply thinking out loud and meaning nothing. And as the next few years passed, it seemed less and less likely that anything actually was to come of those rumors (besides the impressive vinyl reissues of their back catalog). But finally, the band began to dribble out new material over the summer of 2022 with an impressive art installation that previewed their first new song in ten years, reintroducing the band to the world in the most Volta way possible.

Billing this as their “pop” record, and having heard the singles, I knew it would be boneheaded of me to expect anything like the Volta of old. Even before their break up, the band was stepping further away from the wild insanity of material like Frances the Mute and Bedlam in Goliath and into moodier, more measured work within shorter song lengths and traditional structures. And with this new self titled record, they’ve finally fully committed those impulses, shedding off all pretext of prog rock and crafting an album that’s far more focused on beautiful soundscapes, confessional lyricism, immediate melodies, and groovy hooks all drenched in Latin percussion and textures. Restraint is rarely a word that has been used to describe The Mars Volta’s music, but nowhere in their discography is that word more applicable than on this album. For one thing, only a small handful of songs even pass the four minute mark, meaning that these songs are tight, focused, and concise, and the guitar heroics of their past are essentially non-existent, replaced by subtle leads, intricate chord progressions, and effects that swirl and burble beneath the surface of Cedric’s vocal melodies. And ironically, despite the fact that these songs are very much reigned in and musically conservative, these quietly gorgeous compositions are among the band’s most meticulously constructed and detailed. Nothing here feels superfluous or out of place, and nowhere does it feel like anyone is overplaying for the sake of showing off or padding time. Everything here serves the songs, not the musicians playing them, clearing the way for Cedric to step into the foreground more than ever vocally.

Because while past Volta records were an equal balance between long, searching instrumental passages and piercing vocals, on this self titled record Cedric is the glue holding it all together. Given the turbulent few years Cedric and his wife have had in regards to dealing with the cult of Scientology and the sexual abuse perpetrated by actor Danny Masterson, Cedric has a deep well of trauma and pain to dig into on this album, and he uses these gentle musical canvases as a foil on which to spill that pain. But if you weren’t listening closely to the lyrics – which are the most straightforward and honest of Cedric’s career – you’d really never even notice the darkness at this album’s core: his vocals are some of the most gorgeous that he’s ever laid down on record, switching up his trademark yowls and piercing highs for an easy, mellifluous stroll through his upper range. Despite being nearly 50, his voice sounds absolutely pristine here, casually hitting high notes vocalists half his age would struggle with. And beyond that, he uses these clean, expansive vocals to underpin every song with stirring melodies, fully embracing the strong melodic songwriting that was always hidden at the core of Volta’s older stuff.

But for as gorgeous and well put together as this album is, there are a few nagging complaints that don’t allow it to quite rise to the high water marks of their older work. While the new direction feels earnest and real, and both the sound design and songwriting is strong, it also feels like too much of a good thing. This record suffers terribly from a lack of variety, with most of the songs sitting in a similar tempo and mood that rarely budges. Occasionally there’s a flash of energy in songs like “No Case Gain” or the sensual simmer of “Graveyard Love”, but overall, this album already starts to blend together even by the time it arrives at its back half. With Cedric already restraining himself to more laid back vocals, the melodies on each track blur, and the instrumentation suffers from the same issue. While focusing so much on creating a cohesive mood across the record, they stepped a little too far in one direction and lost some of the excitement that truly makes The Mars Volta what they are. Obviously, they don’t have to put the pedal to the metal like on The Bedlam in Goliath, but it feels like some more energy of a different kind could’ve been injected into at least a couple of these songs in order to create a little more drama and tension, especially to bolster the impact of the heavy subject matter. If they continue exploring this direction, I hope that this album is something of a starting point in which to ground a new sound, and that they use it to explore and expand the way they so adventurously did on every album before. Because as it stands, it feels like they may have already exhausted this sound as-is by the time “The Requisition” closes things out.

Despite the huge jump in sound on this new self titled album, for the most part, I feel like the band has succeeded in forging a new path for themselves. Long time fans are surely going to be divided on this record, and that’s fair. After all, it’s a big ask for fans of intense prog rock to come along willingly for a Latin inspired pop rock album, and it won’t be everyone’s thing. But for me The Mars Volta were always a band that were selfish with their vision and more than willing to follow their muse into whatever direction felt vital and necessary to them, consequences be damned. That devotion to musical self-satisfaction is what so often led to genre-defying work that thrills and excites to this day, and is the very reason the band was so dearly missed in the first place. This album might not peel the paint off of anyone’s walls with conceptual drama and musical fireworks, but it IS the result of the band doing that same thing they’ve always done: following their muse as far as it will take them. So while The Mars Volta can occasionally suffer from a bit of same-yness, it still feels essential and unique, because it offers a completely new sound and experience that can’t be found anywhere else in the band’s catalog. After a decade apart, The Mars Volta have proved that their original raison d’etre is fully intact, and I believe it more than justifies the band’s re-emergence from the ashes.

I know I can’t wait to see where it takes them next.

My Favorite Albums of 2021

Often times, as people get older, they stop following new music. Which is totally understandable: new responsibilities creep in, free time gets shorter, and our tastes get more set in stone. But thanks to Spotify being a thing, I’m happy to say that 2021 has been my most active year for new listens ever. This year was absolutely jam packed with amazing albums, with so many I loved that this list was very hard to decide on, and honestly, could probably change if you asked me again a few weeks from now. Because beyond the albums that I outright loved, there were plenty more than still caught my ear and stayed in my rotation for a while, never leaving me wanting for options when it came time to put something new on this year. Take a look at what albums I loved this year, and hey, maybe find a few that sound interesting to you, too!

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16. Weezer – OK Human

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve given up on Weezer at this point. Every time they pull me back in with a great album, they drop another 2 or 3 that simply aren’t even remotely good. So while I’ve mostly written them off, every once in a while I’m pleasantly surprised, and this time that surprise is OK Human. On this album Weezer take their biggest musical leap ever, by replacing the majority of their guitars and power-pop instrumentation with a full orchestra. The result here is their most honest, plain-spoken, and beautiful piece of work possibly ever. These songs glitter with gorgeous, Beatles-esque orchestration, augmenting the band’s already powerful ear for melody with a wall of talented musicians, and it’s a joy to listen to. While in recent years Rivers Cuomo has been pretending to be a cool, partying Californian teenager on record, OK Human finds him simply discussing the realities and mundanities of his middle aged life, and while that sounds boring on paper, it’s honestly refreshing to hear him just be his real self. That’s the quality that made the Blue album so relateably geeky, and Pinkerton a harrowing dive into the mind of a man becoming horribly isolated and misguided. And it’s what makes OK Human feel, well, human. Of course, Weezer would release the horribly corny Van Weezer just a few months later, making it the shortest lived cycle of me enjoying Weezer again yet, but this wonderful record dropped during a dark time early in the year, and it was exactly what I needed.

15. Circa Survive – A Dream About Love

After 4 long years without new Circa material (their longest gap yet), they’re back with an EP that I just couldn’t get enough of. On their previous album The Amulet, they dove into softer sounds that burned slower and sighed instead of shouted, and they’ve continued down that path here. On A Dream About Love, they introduce some twinkly keyboards to the mix, augmenting their already spacey and dreamy sound even more with a touch of ’80s nostalgia mixed in. These songs all sound beautifully sad, yet gleam with the glint of hope that maybe those good things won’t just have to be a dream.

14. Portrayal of Guilt – We Are Always Alone & CHRISTF****R

Portrayal of Guilt actually put out two short and sweet records this year, one early on in January and another to cap the year off in November. Both of these albums are hellish blasts of screamo, black metal, thrash, and maybe even a little post-metal, creating a dizzying array of ways to punish the listener. We Are Always Alone has a bit more of a spacier side, with some quieter sections peeking in to contrast against the more hateful ones, and CHRISTF****R burns with rage at almost every turn, as necessitated by such a ire-inducing title. I knew nothing about these guys when 2021 started, but as it ends, they’re very much on my radar for a while to come.

13. Halsey – If I Can’t Have Love, I Want Power

As a big Nine Inch Nails fan, I couldn’t help but get excited at the idea of NIN producing a pop album. Because for as noisy and harsh as NIN could get in their heyday, they still always flirted with those radio rock sensibilities that landed them their biggest hits, even though there wasn’t room for much more than flirting. On Halsey’s If I Can’t Have Love…, NIN and Halsey strike gold together. Halsey gets to dip into a darker, edgier sound that her previous outings couldn’t offer, and NIN get to write those big hooks and straightforward pop songs they’ve probably always wanted to write. This record drips with the sonic DNA of NIN, with plenty of buzzsaw guitars and eerie piano/synthisizer sounds creating a thick atmosphere of unease and power, while Halsey uses these dark beds of sound to empower herself within her newfound motherhood and as a woman making her way through the spotlight while relentlessly seeking her own happiness. The result is a vital record that finds darkness in the beautiful things and beauty in the darkness, and I hope NIN decide to produce more artists this way in the future.

12. Genghis Tron – Dream Weapon

I’ll admit that I was never really hip to Genghis Tron in their scene days, because their particular brand of crazy electronic math metal was far away from something I would’ve liked in 2008. But with Dream Weapon reintroducing them to the world, I dove into their back catalog and found a lot to love there. But as much as I’ve come to love a record like Board Up the House, Dream Weapon takes the cake for me. Shedding all traces of their metallic past, you won’t find any blasts of hardcore or harsh vocals on this record. Instead, they opt for a dreamy fusion that could best be described as Nine Inch Nails making shoegaze. Dream Weapon earns its name by somehow being propulsive and spacey at the same time, grounded through superb drumming and absolutely thick with synth pads, effects-laden guitars, and dreamy vocals that act not so much as strong lyrical or melodic hooks but as another instrument and melody to blend into the haze. A lot of times that can work against a band, making their sounds hopelessly blend into each other and just becoming a vague murk. And while I’ve seen people say that about this record, too, I personally love it. It combines a lot of my favorite sounds in a way that makes it ridiculously easy to just put on a good pair of headphones and get lost inside of it, and Dream Weapon scratches a particular itch for me that I didn’t know needed scratching.

11. LiSA – Ladybug

Sometimes I need a musical pick-me-up, something to cleanse my palette and give me a break from the often angsty and dark stuff I thrive on. And almost every time, I find myself dipping into some kind of J-pop or J-rock, and LiSA has been one of my favorite artists in those realms for a while now. So when she dropped Ladybug this year, a project that straddles the line between EP and album, I just couldn’t get enough of it. Working as a sort of musical retrospective on her first ten years in the music business, it combines some nostalgic sounds of of her past while also pushing into fresher ones of the present, which means careening from sentimental ballads, upbeat pop rock songs, pure J-pop bubblegum, and a dark electronic track that borders on rap with ease. Simply put, it’s an easy, fun listen, with plenty of different styles packed into its short runtime that make it impossible for me to get bored of.

10. Cynic – Ascension Codes

Cynic has had a rough go of things this decade. In 2014, the band seemed to implode after a series of shows in Japan, and they went radio silent for years after. And then, in the midst of an already hard year, they tragically lost two of their key founding members, drummer Sean Reinhert and bassist Sean Malone. It was heartbreaking to see such wonderful musicians have their time cut short, and it would’ve been easy for the sole remaining member Paul Masvidal to hang up his hat and call it a day on Cynic. Instead, looking to honor the memory of his lost friends, he crafted the gorgeous Ascension Codes. Cynic has always drawn influence from deep wells of spirituality and alternative theories on human consciousness, and that unique take on progressive metal is always what put them head and shoulders above their peers. And on Ascension Codes, they’ve dialed that up to 11. While some of their metal DNA is still deeply embedded into these tracks, they’ve also taken a bit of a different approach here. Replacing traditional bass with synth bass and a heavy use of keyboards, Cynic has dove into the more classic side of progressive music, creating lush soundscapes that are indebted to jazz and ’70s prog just as much as they are to Death. Records like Focus and Traced in Air are thick with complex guitars, relentless drumming, and screams to heighten the tension and give a more metal edge to the band. But Ascension Codes relishes in the negative space, leaving plenty of room for each song to breath and each instrument to play its role in its own time, instead of trying to compete against something else. These songs are not only couched in atmosphere and multitudinous layers of sound, but are also surrounded by gentle interludes that let the record flow more gently from one main track to the next. And ironically, Cynic now couldn’t possibly be further away from their own name, because this record positively glows with positive energy, and band leader Paul Masvidal uses every second of it to tell us that death is not the end, more is out there, and we’ll see our friends again.

9. Gojira – Fortitude

While I’ll always miss the more death metal feel of Gojira’s earlier stuff, I really ended up loving this year’s Fortitude. While they’re not quite as heavy these days, they’ve really grown into their own as songwriters, and they’ve put together a memorable batch of songs that balance mainstream rock accessibility with some of that classic Gojira bite. Of course, there may be a reason that they’re looking to make this record a bit more accessible. Because on Fortitude, they’ve come warning us about the looming climate destruction that humanity has brought upon itself, as we hurtle towards the point of no return. These songs pummel and push in the hopes of bringing some of us to our senses, and that’s a message worth spreading. No matter how far from their death metal roots they might stray, Gojira remains one of the most intellectual and compassionate metal bands working today, and those lofty ideals and hard-hitting sounds are why Fortitude is one of my favorite albums of the year.

8. Godspeed You! Black Emperor – G_d’s Pee at State’s End

I’ve been a fan of GYBE for a while now, but I couldn’t help but feel pretty disappointed with their last offering, 2017’s Luciferian Towers. It dragged on too long and had too little in the way of their usual climatic resolution, often feeling like it was building to something that either never came or didn’t feel satisfying once it did. Thankfully, after putting out what I thought was their weakest record, they came back this year with one of their strongest records ever, one I feel is on par at least with 2012’s Allelujah. Here, the band dips their toes back into the samples and street recordings that once made their music so eerie and unsettling, using them to fill in the slower spots of the record and to amplify the atmosphere of the more drone-focused, ambient sections. But on top of that, the band has found their inner editor again, tightening up these tracks to just the right lengths to fully let them both build tension, explode, and resolve themselves into the next piece. And yet, for all the darkness that GYBE is capable of, and exhibits all over this record, there actually feels like there’s an undercurrent of hope and happiness burbling away, too. When these tracks finally open up, they often feel celebratory and energetic, landing a ways away from the apocalyptic fare that made them perfect to score 28 Days Later. Maybe they sense that the state’s end really is near as the world seemingly falls apart, and GYBE is just dancing on those impeding ashes. Either way, I couldn’t get enough of this one this year, and I’m really glad one of my instrumental bands absolutely knocked it out of the park again.

7. CHVRCHES – Screen Violence

I loved CHVRCHES’ debut album in 2013, but I never kept a close eye on them after that. Maybe I just didn’t happen to be in the mood for them, or maybe it was because I just didn’t like their second album nearly as much, but they fell off my radar. However it happened, I got to rediscover them this year when Spotify suggested I listen to Screen Violence immediately, so I figured I’d give them another whirl. And boy I’m glad I did, because Screen Violence might just be their best – or at least my favorite – record from them yet. Slightly re-tooling their synthpop sound with a darker 1980s horror film score edge, CHVRCHES uses that unsettling edge to allow for confessional, vulnerable lyricism that explores the pressures of being a woman in modern society and dealing with the taxes and traumas that can come with nearly a decade in the music industry. These songs very quickly wormed their way into my brain and simply never left, because every song is jam-packed with effortless hooks and melodic production that insures even certain drum beats will be looping in your head for days. This was one of those records that, as soon as it ended for the first time, I just had to start it again from the top. And like a lot of the records here in my top 15, this one was never far from my repeat button.

6. Deafheaven – Infinite Granite

I’ve been a big fan of Deafheaven since the instant classic Sunbather dropped in 2013, and I’ve loved how each record was able to capture a new angle on the band’s sound. However, after the release of 2018’s Ordinary Corrupt Human Love, I started to feel like they could be doing more. That album was good, but it didn’t quite grab me the way the previous two had, and I think I wasn’t the only one in that boat. Because on their newest record Infinite Granite, Deafheaven has flipped their script entirely. They’ve taken the shoegaze influences that made Sunbather such a unique record and blown them out into the core of this album, transforming themselves from black metal-adjacent to something much closer to the Cure. Infinite Granite twinkles and sparkles, opting to focus on gentle vocals and cooing melodies with huge washes of guitars underneath, instead of chest pummeling blast beats. And while this record was pretty controversial among their fans, I fucking loved it. Because for as radically different as this album sounds from their past work, they’ve somehow managed to still make it feel distinctly like Deafheaven. The vocals still retain some of that stacatto, cold edge that was present in their harsher stuff, and the swirling pools of reverbed guitars will still sound familiar to any fan of Sunbather. This was the reinvention of Deafheaven that I was looking for, and I found myself lost in this record over and over again.

5. The Armed – Ultrapop

A couple of years back, The Armed absolutely blew my mind with their hard pivot into a maximalist version of hardcore punk on their opus ONLY LOVE. That record felt like a screamy fever dream, jam packed with as many layers of guitars, synths, drums, and flat out noise as an engineer could humanly fit into each track. And while it wasn’t for everyone, I adored both its bravery to commit to such a unique sound, and the insane sound itself. It was a sensory overload in the best way, and it’s still one of my favorite albums. So naturally, I couldn’t have been more excited for the follow up to that album, which came in the form of Ultrapop. I knew they were up to something when I was one of the lucky few fans who received a mysterious cassette from them in early January, cheekily labeled under the name “Kanye West”. What followed was a cult-like ARG filled with band-sanctioned themed Discord chats, a fake cult website straight out of the ’90s, and plenty of strange writings and ephemera to sift through from those sources. All of that set the stage for Ultrapop, a record which picks up immediately from Only Love and develops it even further. Where Only Love was still a hardcore record, Ultrapop has dropped most of that pretense. Instead, the band puts together a laser-focused fusion of the heavier sounds of hardcore with the straightforward melody and ear-catching hooks of pop music, throwing in massive shout along choruses and foot-stomping power alongside gargantuan riffs and pounding drums. The proceedings ultimately feel a little less manic than its predecessor, but instead give way to an overwhelming sense of positivity and hope that feels so rare in this genre, tying together the mishmash of genre conventions with the through-line of self-empowerment.

4. Teenage Wrist – Earth is a Black Hole

Every once in a while, a band I never heard of even in passing suddenly pops up on my radar and drops a record I end up adoring. This year, that surprise was Teenage Wrist. On Earth is a Black Hole, Teenage Wrist manage to create something of a time machine with their sound, fully absorbing so much of ’90s grunge and alt rock that it wouldn’t be hard to imagine this record was just simply written IN the ’90s. But nostalgia bait would be insipid and boring if that was all they had to offer, but thankfully, Teenage Wrist are also incredible songwriters. Every track on this record is immediately catchy, and I found myself singing along with these songs on my first listen by the time the last choruses rolled around. Earth is a Black Hole is a perfect blend of nostalgic influence, impeccable sound design, tasteful production choices, and excellent songwriting, and it earned a spot on this list very early in the year.

3. Bo Burnham – Inside

It goes without saying that the past couple of years have been pretty fucking bleak. Covid has hit us hard, climate change is lurking in the background, and a lot of us spent a fair bit of time locked in our homes with no other connection to the outside world other than the internet. And like the rest of us mere mortals, Bo Burnham also found himself in this strange situation. Right as he was about to make a long-awaited return to comedy, the world shut down, leaving him suddenly adrift. Thankfully, he took all these things and channeled them into what is easily his one-man masterpiece, the comedy special/long form music video Inside. I could write an essay about that special by itself, so we’ll leave that for another time. On a purely musical level, Inside is a phenomenal record that finds Bo at the absolute top of his game. Because once upon a time, Bo wasn’t the greatest songwriter. His early stuff sometimes felt like he was just playing the piano so that he’d have something to tell his jokes over, but that’s no longer the case. Inside is full of incredibly well-crafted songs that brim with clever chord progressions, slick and precise production, and enough hooks to open a meat packing plant. And besides being expertly put together, there’s a wide range of genres here, too: there’s dark pop, EDM, folky singer-songwriter stuff, and even theater-kid showtunes that delight in their showmanship. Inside feels like the album Bo always wanted to make, but probably never had the time to sit down and put together, and as such it’s just bursting at the seems with highlights. But beyond these songs simply being well-written and insanely catchy, there’s a lot of depth to be found, too. In between jokes, Bo covers mental breakdowns and anxiety, depression, loneliness and online dating, society’s addiction to the internet, and the exploitative nature of modern capitalism. It’s a flat out impressive thesis on the state of our world in 2021, and the most clever part of it all? Inside never once mentions the pandemic or Covid by name. It manages to be both incredibly timely while also allowing it the privilege of not dating itself by referencing this very specific time frame, which fully allows Inside tofunction as genre-hopping, society-examining piece of work full of laughs and great songs that it is.

2. Every Time I Die – Radical

When Low Teens dropped in 2016, I quickly became a late convert to the ETID party. I quickly blew through their whole catalog and became a massive fan of theirs practically overnight, and I started looking forward to whatever their next album would be. But a strange thing happened…or didn’t. Normally one of the most prolific and reliable bands in hardcore, the years started passing without any new ETID. And that was for a number of reasons: even before the pandemic pressed the pause button on so many musician’s livelihoods, vocalist Keith Buckley was in the middle of a radical shift in his life. He found himself getting divorced, finding sobriety, trying to love himself, and ultimately discovering new love. And like the trauma that birthed Low Teens, much of that turbulent period of his life has found its way into the bedrock of Radical. This is a powerfully pissed off record, but the anger feels much more righteous than injurious. While Radical does take turns skewering corrupt, cowardly police officers and the selfish pricks dragging us through hell in 2021, it also uses anger as a form of release. Here, Keith has pushed himself to the edge, expecting to fall off the cliff, only to find a path forward after all. And after discovering that there’s a way forward after all, Keith directs his anger at the person he used to be, the one who walked up to that cliff in the first place, and now has the perspective to lash himself for all the damage he’d done to his own life and to others. It’s a powerfully cathartic record full of incredible lyricism, and Keith’s presence alone would make this record for me. Thankfully though, the rest of the band comes equally supercharged. It’s pretty par for the course for metal bands to get increasingly less hungry and fiery as they hit the 20 year mark in their careers, but ETID is still as torqued up and fucking terrifying as ever. Song after song is just jammed full of finger-demolishing guitar work, stomping bass, and pummeling drums, lending this record an urgency and propulsion that a lot of bands half their age don’t even have. And most impressively, they’ve given us 16 tracks on this beast, and they’ve managed to not only make each one feel necessary and important to the record, they’ve made them flow so that this nearly hour long album never blends together or wears out its welcome. On the contrary, I’ve found myself starting it again from the top several times this year, and I still can’t get enough of it.

1. Between the Buried and Me – Colors II

Sequels are fucking scary. More often than not, they take the things we loved and bastardize them, stripping them down to what focus groups think we loved about the originals and trying to squeeze a little more cash out of the properties. So when Between the Buried and Me announced a sequel to what I consider their best album, Colors, I felt a powerful mix of emotions. Part of me was excited at the opportunity to hear more of the music that completely blew 16 year old me’s mind, but part of me had a swirl of questions: does this mean they’re out of ideas? Is there any way they could ever live up to the original, 14 years after the fact? Is this just a cynical cash grab to revitalize their career? They were taking a massive gamble, and I was nervous.

As it turns out, I never had any reason to doubt BTBAM. Colors II is one of the rare sequels that takes the blueprint laid out by the original and manages to both give us more of the thing we loved, while also building upon it and taking it in a new direction. There was an easy road for them to take when making this record, that that would’ve been to sit down and pick the bones of the original to rehash it with nothing new to say. But in the 14 years that have passed since the original, this band has done a lot of experimenting and maturing. So instead of picking the bones, they’ve used them as a blueprint: Colors II does indeed feature a good helping of that dark, hard-hitting, mind-bending progressive metal that cemented them as one of the most forward thinking bands in the genre back in 2007. But there’s also just as much of the more classic ’70s prog sound that they developed on their Coma Ecliptic album, which is one of my favorites of theirs. Colors II starts off ridiculously heavy, just like their older work, and dips back into some of the zanier, off the wall ideas that made Colors such an exciting record. But for every crushing riff and mosh-worthy breakdown here, there’s also something pretty, something melodic, or something cinematic that gives the record a powerful through-line. The record slowly and subtly shifts from the heavy to the pretty, letting the band build a wash of keyboards, soaring clean vocals, and flashy instrumental runs that give these songs room to breathe and explore while maintaining strong, coherent song structures that move with purpose and direction. Colors II acts as a roadmap of the band’s musical evolution, featuring a little of everything they’ve ever done, and yet by putting it all together like this they’ve created an album that’s wholly unique in their catalog. The genius of this album is in how they’ve managed to not only dip back into the sounds that built their career, but do it without parodying themselves or paying too much fan service. It would’ve been easy to rewrite their past for a quick buck, but instead, they bet on themselves and created something new from something old. 2021 was a great year for this band, as they lovingly remixed and reissued their back catalog, played online live stream shows, and finally pulled off a two-set “Evening With” tour that was delayed by the pandemic. So for them to top that off with an album that both looked to their past and their future was the icing on the cake for me, and it quickly cemented Colors II as the best thing I heard all year.

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Honorable Mentions, in no particular order:

Jeff Rosenstock – Ska Dream
Nas – King’s Disease II/Magic
Little Simz – Sometimes I Might Be Introvert
Sleigh Bells – Texis
Pupil Slicer – Wounds Upon My Skin
Eidola – The Architect
Lingua Ignota – Sinner Get Ready
IDLES – Crawler
Thrice – Horizons/East
Full of Hell – Garden of Burning Apparitions
Converge & Chelsea Wolfe – Blood Moon
Manchester Orchestra – The Million Masks of God
Kaonashi – Dear Lemon House, You Ruined Me: Senior Year
Floating Points & Pharoah Sanders – Promises
Bilmuri – 400LB BACK SQUAT
Origami Angel – Gami Gang
Tiger’s Jaw – I Won’t Care How You Remember Me
Turnstile – GLOW ON
Silk Sonic – An Evening With Silk Sonic
Frontierer – Oxidized
Tyler, The Creator – Call Me If You Get Lost
Modest Mouse – The Golden Casket
Olivia Rodrigo – Sour
Limp Bizkit – Still Sucks
Kero Kero Bonito – Civilisation
Kanye West – Donda
Zack Fox – Shut the Fuck Up Talking to Me

Deafheaven – Infinite Granite [2021]

From the moment Sunbather blasted Deafheaven into…whatever counts as the mainstream for this kind of music, they’ve been polarizing. Not only do metal fans either love them or revile them, the music itself often operates within very disparate styles. They’ve never had much middle ground, after all: they’re either arresting in their beautiful washes of shoegaze guitars and blissed out tremolo textures, or they’re demolishing everything in their path through siren-esque shrieks and pummeling blast beats. They borrow as much from My Bloody Valentine as they do Mayhem, but they’ve also never shied away from evolution either. New Bermuda breathed closer to metalcore and hardcore than shoegaze, and Ordinary Corrupt Human Love was a varied – if sometimes a bit confused collection – of textures, spoken word, metal, alt rock, and morbid atmosphere. But no matter what they were doing, Deafheaven never quite settled into one lane, as they seemed content to operate in the extreme ends of whatever they were exploring. And for as exciting as that tendency towards the extremes made their music, their last album showed signs that maybe they were ready for a big change, but where that change would bring them was anyone’s guess.

Well, where they’ve gone next is that fabled middle ground. Infinite Granite builds upon the promise of Sunbather’s love of shoegaze and texture and retools the band’s entire sound towards that end. That by itself feels like an evolution that was an inevitability for them, but that’s not what makes this album such a surprise. Instead of George Clarke’s paint-peeling missives, he’s instead shifted gears to almost entirely clean vocals. And to be perfectly honest, I’ve long since wanted a bit more variety in his vocal style. But considering just how harsh his vocals are – and how strained they were starting to sound – I wasn’t sure he’d be able to pull off clean singing. I’ve been happily proven wrong, however, because George’s vocals here have a shockingly delicate, soft spoken quality to them. And while he doesn’t have a huge range, he does has great control of what he does have, using it to lend these songs a hypnotic and rhythmic edge. His vocal lines sound as if he was able to transfer the patterns he’d normally use for his screamed vocals into sung ones instead, giving his cadences a unique stutter/stop edge that contrasts perfectly against the hazier, dream-like music that envelops him like a warm blanket.

Much like the huge step George has taken with his vocals, the rest of the band has taken big steps instrumentally as well. While they’ve always had those shoegaze influences as a core part of their sound, it still felt more like they were flirting with the style rather than fully committing to it. On Infinite Granite, though, they’ve found a way to stretch those influences far enough to carry entire songs, and create a bed of lush, vibrant music on every track. So much of this album pushes and pulls with a constant subtle tension, tension that is far removed from the more obvious and foot stomping attack in their metal-centric work. Yet, there’s still plenty to be recognized as distinctly Deafheaven in the way they utilize cathartic build ups and climaxes, black metal-inspired tremolo guitars, and that thick wall of sound that made their previous records so transfixing. It’s impressive how they’ve managed to retain so much of the intensity from their heavier work on such intimate, shy, and emotional compositions. And while it would be easy for a metal band to underpin these delicate tracks with their former aggression and fire, or push them unnecessarily towards big finishes just to take a half-measure towards pleasing fans of the older stuff, Deafheaven excellently walks the line of reserving those powerful finishes for the moments when they count most, making the blistering finishes of Villain and Mombasa so hard hitting when they finally do break out the screams.

However, for as much as I love the new turn Deafheaven has taken here, there’s still a few wrinkles to be ironed out if they’re to continue down this road. George’s vocals are great for what they are, but he still has a little bit of a way to go towards making sure his vocal lines are distinct from track to track and grab the ear. There’s a few stand out moments on these songs that hint at his ability to pull this off in the future, and I’ve found several of the hooks here stuck in my head for days. But his vocals can also start to turn into a bit of a blur towards the end of the album, making it difficult to latch onto specific lyrics and hooks since he essentially has one gear and one gear only. Sometimes this works in the album’s favor, and I do love the hazy hypnotism of those staccato, soft vocals, but other times it wears thin and ironically, could still use a bit more variety in tone and dynamics. The music itself suffers from a similar problem, as well. These songs are engineered to sound thick, lush, and foggy, creating dense layers of sound that are so easy to get lost in. But like George’s vocals, towards the end of the album the trick starts to wear out its welcome, sacrificing atmosphere for memorable guitar parts or tantalizing lead work. I’m hard pressed to pick out any guitar parts here that really wow me, and sometimes that’s a sign that a band knows when to focus on the songwriting instead of showing off their chops, but I can’t help but wish that the guitar work had more meat on its bones than shoegaze-y textures and simple chord progressions.

Despite all that, overall I’m intrigued and in love with Deafheaven’s new sound. They’ve taken a bold risk by jettisoning most of their trademark sound and vocal style, and it seems like Infinite Granite is a record they’ve wanted to make since Sunbather. There’s a lot of promise in how the band utilizes sound and texture to emphasize atmospheres, emotion, and George’s clean vocals, and many parts of this album truly feel like a triumph. But at the same time, there are moments where the band has simply ventured too far into that middle ground that they have avoided for so long. Infinite Granite occasionally yearns for some higher highs, more rise-and-fall dynamics, or even just the odd stand out guitar part to liven up some of what can become one-note and monotonous towards the end of its runtime. But because so much of this record is simply so good at what it is going for right off the bat, this all feels more like transitory growing pains than failure to rise to the occasion. Either way, Deafheaven have opened up a world of doors for themselves with this album, and if it was already hard to guess what direction they would go next, with Infinite Granite they’ve made the possibilities limitless.

Between the Buried and Me – Colors II [2021]

Anyone who’s consumed any form of media knows what an uneasy prospect a sequel can be. So often that word has come to be synonymous with diminishing returns, compromised visions, and creative bankruptcy that is only justified by an accountant’s balance sheet. So when Between the Buried and Me announced a sequel to what I consider their best work – and some of the best prog metal in general – I felt a weird mix of emotions. My inner 15 year old was over the moon at the prospect of more Colors, but my present self was full of nerves. After all, so many things could go wrong, right? They could phone it in and copy themselves in that cynical, jaded way so that many bands do when they attempt to “go back to their roots”. Or they could go so far off the map that it doesn’t resemble the original at all, setting needlessly high expectations just to dash them…because after all, their sound has deviated from Colors quite a bit since 2007. With all these questions in mind, I was excited for Colors II in a way I haven’t been excited for an album in a minute, and I couldn’t wait to hear what the guys had come up with.

However, right from the jump, this record clearly has a lot of Colors baked into its DNA. Tracks like “The Double Helix of Extinction” and “Fix the Error” both echo and build upon the frenzied, dissonant heaviness of this record’s predecessor, hitting hard and fast while leaving nothing but devastation in their wake. “Fix the Error” especially captures that rambunctious, everything-AND-the-kitchen-sink approach of Colors as it sprints from gospel-inspired organs, a blistering set of drum solos, and a crazed punk energy that holds this call for rebellion together. And between these tracks we find “Revolution in Limbo”, a 9 minute beast that finds the band veering through soaring choruses, thick slabs of crunchy technical metal, Cannibal Corpse-esque growls from drummer Blake Richardson, and even a Latin-inspired bit of bossa nova to close things out. A song like this sounds absolutely insane on paper – just like much of the original Colors did as it jumped between bluegrass, prog, jazz, metalcore, and more – and by all rights would be a mess if written by any other band. But this track actually highlights one of the strongest qualities of Colors II, which is the long way the band has come as song writers in the intervening 14 years. Because where once their wild genre excursions could come off as jarring and almost random, herethe band has managed to make these knotty twists and turns feel completely logical and necessary for each song, and each “wtf” moment turns from surprise to sheer pleasure in a heartbeat.

And that’s not just a feature of the individual songs on this record, but rather of the album as a whole. There’s a beautiful flow to it that is so smooth you may not even notice just how much things have changed until you’re 7 tracks deep, and starting with “Never Seen / Future Shock” is where we hit the real turning point. This track starts off as another blast of hard hitting prog in line with the more classic-sounding BTBAM tracks before it, but this is also where the record starts to play with the sounds the band has developed in the 14 years since Colors. On the back half of this song, things shift gears into some slow cinematic prog rock, with Tommy’s clean vocals reaching for the skies over a bed of tightly woven clean guitar leads from Paul Waggoner and Dustie Waring that ricochet off of each other in jazzy lock step. And for the big finish, the band pays homage to pretty much every ’80s prog record ever by bringing in a blast of reverb drenched drums before kicking off into a dramatic finish full of uplifting guitars and sci-fi movie keyboards. This is the jumping off point as Colors II shifts gears from what we expect into what we don’t, and the record takes on a focus much more its own.

It would’ve been quite easy for the band to sit down and write an honest to god clone of the original, retreading the same stylistic beats and sounds for a quick cash grab. But while the first half of the album does play with some of their classic sounds, the real power of what they’ve made here is how they’ve effortlessly blended so much more into that Colors framework. Because from here on out, the band starts wholeheartedly diving into the classic rock side of progressive music on tracks like “Stare Into the Abyss”, “Bad Habits”, “The Future is Behind Us” and “Turbulent”. Each one of these songs does have a familiar Colors slant to it, whether it be through a bit of harsh vocals to liven things up or just by adding extra oomph to a dramatic moment with angular riffs and crunchy power chords. But for as much Colors as you’ll hear throughout this album, there’s an equal amount of the underrated Coma Ecliptic too. That album found the band ditching a large chunk of their complex metal riffing and labyrinthine song structure in favor of a more streamlined, simplified approach, which meant utilizing much more in the way of clean vocals, negative space, eerie atmosphere, keyboard-driven melodies, and well as their ’70s prog heroes to guide the way. I found that record to be a fantastic bit of experimentation – and a bold move from a band with a history of bold moves – but it also received a fair bit of backlash for deviating so far from the blueprint, too.

But risks like that define this band, and they’re why Colors II makes for such a compelling sequel. By cross-pollinating one of their most beloved records with one of their most controversial, they’ve created an album that both lovingly echoes the best parts of their catalog, while simultaneously daring to bring together all the evolution and experiments that comprise Between the Buried and Me in 2021. This isn’t the sound of a band navel-gazing at their own past and patting themselves on the back, but rather a band that seized the opportunity to build upon that past in a way that they could only do after 14 years of living, writing, and playing together. Because for as much as the band winks and nods at their past through the occasional musical reference and lyrical interstitial on this album, Colors II firmly stands as its own work. If you had never heard the original Colors (or this thing had simply been called anything else), it would still be just as excitingly aggressive and heavy, gorgeously emotional and atmospheric, and adventurously written as it is now. And yeah, when the album was first announced, that 15 year old me really just wanted another helping of Colors, because honestly, why wouldn’t I? But instead, the band took this chance to do something much more important. They’ve created a record that does indeed find joy in acknowledging who you used to be, and how that person you were has shaped the person that you are now. But at the same time, they’ve also highlighted just how important it is to never stop growing, to never stop finding new things that excite and challenge you, and to never rest on your past accomplishments. So while Colors II may not be the exact stylistic successor that some people may have been hoping for, it does absolutely embody the mold-breaking, genre-defying attitude that made Colors such a special record. We were never going to get the same record again, and the truth is…we didn’t need to. I applaud Between the Buried and Me for being brave enough to recognize that, and for crafting such an amazing record this deep into their career.

My Top 15 Albums of 2020

15. Oneohtrix Point Never – Magic Oneohtrix Point Never

OPN first caught my attention on Daniel’s opening spot for Nine Inch Nails back in 2014. I wasn’t immediately in love, but there was something about his unsettling take on ambient music that got its hooks in me. And on an album like Magic Oneohtrix Point Never, it’s clear to see why. Daniel Lopatin has always been a master at building and maintaining a mood throughout his records, and this one is no exception. Here he explores a twisted sense of nostalgia, mining the sounds and textures of 1980s elevator muzak, afterschool specials, and other incidental bits of background music that were once used to set a happy go lucky tone. But in OPN’s world, this nostalgia curdles into something more sinister and menacing, bleeding from bright warbling synths into walls of noise and atonal clash without a second’s notice. Beyond that, Magic OPN also plays with more pop-based song structures as well. While he doesn’t use vocals often, here he uses them on several tracks as the focus of the song, or at least a melodic center to hold the more abstract moments together (or even just to poke fun at indie rock with the tongue-in-cheek “I Don’t Love Me Anymore”). But beyond including more vocals in his arsenal, he also flirts more with traditional verse-chorus-verse structures, which allow him to more easily lure you into a false sense of security during the album’s more syrupy, saccharine moments. Because those moments are only brief respites before Daniel throws you headlong back into musical uncanny valley, flipping what almost sounding like a traditional bit of pop, rock, or electronic back on its head. Oneohtrix Point Never’s music can be hard to digest or even get into at times, but if you have any interest in electronic or experimental music, this one is definitely worth a listen.

14. Beabadoobee – Fake It Flowers

When both my brother and a good friend of mine were suddenly talking about beabadoobee nonstop, I knew I had to check her out. I knew next to nothing about her going into this album, outside of hearing a few non-album tracks I’d been linked, so I was definitely caught off guard by what I heard. Because on Fake It Flowers, this 20 year old woman has faithfully replicated the sound of music that was already out of fashion before she was even born. Beabadoobee handily mines that 1990s singer/songwriter alternative rock vibe, lovingly and unironically paying tribute to and revitalizing that sound. But were nostalgia the only thing Fake It Flowers had to offer, well, it wouldn’t be here in my top 15. Because once the veneer of nostalgia is stripped away, it’s clear that this girl has some incredible songwriting chops. These songs are raw and emotional, with Beabadoobee pouring her heart out lyrically and vocally amidst a bed of lush acoustic guitars, gentle keyboards, and rich string arrangements. It’s a warm and inviting sounding record, made even more so by her easy melodic prowess and ear for dynamics. This is easily one of the best put together debut albums I’ve heard in quite a while, and if the beginning of her career is this good, well…I can’t wait to hear what’s next.

13. IDLES- Ultra Mono

It’s rare to see public opinion of a band sway so quickly. IDLES were post-punk darlings just a couple of years ago with the release of Brutalism, being held up for their leftist-leaning lyricism and inclusivity. But now they’re being painted as having “gentrified punk” by espousing those same views without the (un)luxury of having lived in squalor or not having been sufficiently oppressed by the things they decry in their music. Personally, I couldn’t give less of a fuck about any of that. On Ultra Mono, IDLES have written the closest thing they’ll probably get to their pop record, leaning hard into hooky battle cries and tight songwriting. These are songs that leap out of the speakers with explosive energy by keeping things simple and raw. And sure, some of the lyrics do come off as trying too hard occasionally, but I believe that they believe everything they’re saying, and I believe in those things as well. Just because they haven’t experienced an equal helping of injustice doesn’t invalidate their positions: in fact, there’s just as much merit in using your more privileged position to bring injustice to light, as long as you’re doing it intelligently and respectfully. So when you marry those beliefs with jagged punk riffs, big choruses, anthemic one liners, and a sense of raw, fun energy, well, you get Ultra Mono.

12. Hum – Inlet

Hum is one of those bands that never quite got their due when they were first active, but they developed a cult following and quietly influenced their fair share of rock and metal bands through the years because of it. So when they suddenly announced that they’d be dropping a brand new album in just a few days time earlier this year, it was a huge shock: after all, it’d been something like 20 years since their last one, and nothing really pointed to them being even close to writing a record. And man, are there a lot of things that can go wrong when a band has decades – plural – between their last release. Thankfully, Hum picked up exactly where they left off and gifted us with a wonderful comeback album. Inlet is packed with towering guitar riffs that sound a thousand miles wide, creating a nearly overwhelming sense of distortion and power. And while most bands that opt for such attention-grabbing guitars would go for a heavier, more traditionally metal approach, Hum leaves plenty of room for delicate ambiance and reverb to make it feel like you’re hearing these instruments bouncing off of high cliffs (instead of simply getting blasted by a dimed amp). But this record does feel plenty heavy too, driving along at a steady pace and becoming almost hypnotizing with its sense of repetition and slow development, and paired with its understated vocals. Hum starts each track with a clear destination in mind, but no set time to get there: there’s plenty of room in the middle to explore and enchant along the way.

11. The Fall of Troy – Mukiltearth

After their original line up reunited and released a brand new album in 2016, The Fall of Troy soon found themselves in trouble again. Bass player and backup screamer Tim left the band once again, derailing the band’s momentum and leaving them in an awkward place. After all, they’d written a few new tunes together, but now they wouldn’t have enough to make an album, and they had to figure out how to move forward with the band and leave the past behind. On Mukiltearth, they found the perfect way to do that. The first 6 tracks on this record are re-recordings of the very first material that line up wrote together as a different band, Thirty Years War, and the other 4 tracks are the very last tracks they wrote together. The older tracks brim with the fire and naivety of youth, throwing caution to the wind and writing winding, energetic tunes influenced by emo and post-hardcore. They hadn’t quite found their wildly chaotic style that would be on full display by Doppelganger, and this material does sound a bit less developed when being revisited after 6 full length albums as The Fall of Troy. But they also feel freshly updated, as the nearly 20 years of experience as a band has quite obviously not only changed them as musicians but as people, and it gives that youthful energy a more refined maturity.

And while it would be easy for these 6 tracks to feel like a total tonal whiplash when set against the 4 new ones, they aren’t: for as much as The Fall of Troy may have changed in the intervening years, some things always stay the same. These tracks are a bit more straightforwardly structured – and a little more immediately catchy – but they still feature those classic twisting, winding, and complex guitar lines, colossal bass riffs, and hard hitting drum patterns that only Thomas Erak, Andrew Forsman, and Tim Ward could put together. So with one eye on the past they’re leaving behind, and the other on the future of The Fall of Troy (now that they’ve acquired a new bassist), Mukiltearth perfectly sums up not only the band’s sound and style, but their history as well.

10. Loathe – I Let It In and It Took Everything

I never would’ve thought at the beginning of this year that Deftones would drop a new album, and I would be…just not that enthusiastic about it. And I also wouldn’t have thought that a brand new band would be able to pick up their torch and out-Deftones them at their own game. But here we are: Loathe dropped I Let It In and It Took Everything to immediate acclaim, and for good reason. While a large chunk of this album is made up of drop tuned, extended range guitar riffs that are more reminiscent of Meshuggah and Car Bomb, there’s also a lot more going on. For every bit of crushing heaviness and throat-shredding screaming here, you’ll find an equal measure of blissed out ’90s alt-rock that borrows a vibe from Deftones and Hum. Tracks like Two Way Mirror, Screaming, and A Sad Cartoon are ethereal takes on grunge rock, featuring plenty of breathy vocal lines and long corridors of reverb. These are tracks that you can fully lose yourself in, and almost forget just how heavy stuff like Red Room and New Faces in the Dark are, until another one comes along to snap you out of that dream-like reverie. And while it would be easy to accuse these guys of cribbing a bit too much from their heroes, I don’t quite see it that way. While plenty of aspects of their sound remind me of other bands I love, they manage to blend these influences in a way that still feels engaging and unique to Loathe, and I’ll never not be a sucker for a band that can expertly glide between heavy and soft without coming off as goofy good cop/bad cop metalcore goons.

9. Touche Amore – Lament

Touche Amore have spent years shouting their pain at the top of their lungs, struggling through personal struggles and tragic losses by transforming that hurt into words. Not just any words, but words that mirror your own struggles, and words that you can scream along with and channel your own pain through. But on Lament, Touche Amore seem to be seeking a different form of catharsis. For the first time, it feels like they have their eyes on something akin to hope: there may not yet be anything but a dim bulb at the end of the tunnel, but its enough to prove that all the work hasn’t been for naught. Lament is an album that focuses on learning who you are and how you work, accepting the best and worst parts of yourself in equal measure, and then finding ways to short circuit those dark parts and find a way to the better ones before they can drag you back down. And in a year that’s been full of so much darkness trying to drag us all down, well, Lament resonated with me pretty damn quickly.

8. END – Splinters From an Ever-Changing Face

Fuck me if END didn’t deliver one of the filthiest, heaviest metal albums of 2020. Admittedly, they landed on my radar because former Dillinger Escape Plan drummer Billy Rymer snagged a spot on their drum throne, but they earned their spot in my rotation for much more than a connection to another band. From start to finish, Splinters From an Ever-Changing Face is bleak, nihilistic, and just unrepentantly pissed off, with each riff hitting harder than the last. It’s honestly kind of tough to write about a record like this, because it offers up everything about itself immediately: crushing guitars, breakneck drumming, relentlessly dark lyricism, and grim production that leaves just enough grit to make this thing feel convincing in its ugliness. And END aren’t content to stay in one lane, because their sound blends a wide variety of metal subgenres together into something that defies easy categorization. Since you’ll find little bits of death, grind, thrash, and core here, it’s easier to just say that END is fucking heavy, fucking dark, and fucking excellent.

7. Mac Miller – Circles

Few celebrity deaths hit me hard, but for some reason, Mac Miller’s did. I didn’t even really know his music very well when he passed, I had mostly just seen his come up from afar, transforming from a scrappy young kid spitting backpack raps into a full-fledged musician producing, writing, and playing a plethora of instruments to craft something that was truly his own. After his death, I had checked out his final album Swimming and instantly loved what I heard in its combination of funk, jazz, cloud rap, and traditional hip hop beats, and Mac’s unique singing voice that he peppered into his bars.

So when I found out that he had a companion album to that on deck, that was almost fully done at the time of his passing, I was pretty damn excited. Bur when the first single dropped, Good News, my excitement turned to heartbreak. Mac’s lyrics revealed someone who was bone-tired, already seeming to look at himself in the past tense, and realizing that the hole he had fallen into might be too deep to dig out of. It was downright eerie hearing someone practically eulogize themselves over a year after they had left us, and I wasn’t sure I’d be ready for the rest of the record. However, Circles is mostly a different beast than that track. On it Mac almost entirely abandons rap and focuses mostly on a hybrid of singing with rap cadences, to the point where it’s almost hard to even call this a rap release. It’s an almost sunny record full of bouyant keys and lush string arrangements courtesy of Jon Brion, and yet its brilliant in its low-key vibe and minimalism. You could look at that minimalism as the result of an artist dying before completing what would be his final work, but to me it feels deliberate. Nothing here is overused, and the slimmed down instrumentation serves only to highlight Mac’s character to its fullest. Whether we’re getting bars that remind us of the effervescent kid in Blue Slide Park, the downtrodden moments where he reflects on addiction and heartbreak, or even the rays of hope as he longs to start his own family and raise a child one day, Circles gives us a full picture of who Mac really was. It also proves that he really had nowhere to go but up: his writing, playing, and production was only getting better and more experimental with each release, and he was shifting into a lane all his own. Mac so clearly had much more love and music to give, and the world is worse off without him in it.

6. Protest the Hero – Palimpsest

Time sure flies, huh? While Protest the Hero dropped a 6 track EP in 2016, it has been 7 long years since their last full length album, Volition. That record was a crowning achievement for them, a masterpiece created in the midst of what nearly ended up being the end of the band. And while most bands lose the fire that made them so great after losing key members and taking a long break, Protest the Hero hasn’t. Because on Palimpsest, the band explores a more refined side of their sound. They’ve spent a lot of time pulling back on some of the constant guitar heroics, and instead use that space for dramatic string arrangements, layered keyboards, and some powerfully melodic vocal passages that create a strong sense of push and pull throughout the album. And they pair these emotional arrangements with an equally stirring concept: Rody Walker uses the lyrics here to explore different aspects of America’s revisionist history.

Because let’s face it, no matter which side of the aisle you may fall on, America has a lot of skeletons in its closest. From our genocidal treatment of the Native Americans, our willingness to massage a narrative and trick the public, the ugliness and abuse so prevalent in our celebrity culture, and even the bloody outlaws that played such a part in building our country. But while Rody spends a lot of time calling out and bringing to light the harsh parts of his neighboring country’s history, he doesn’t mean any ill will. Instead, with the album’s closing track we find him repurposing a dog whistle phrase that’s less about returning to some golden standard of living and more about reconstituting a more racially segregated, unequal society. Because when Rody calls to “make America great again”, what he really means is to recapture (or create) the American spirit of ingenuity, equality, rebelliousness, and innovation. America is built on some lofty ideals that we very often don’t live up to, but the potential to meet them is always there. And after an album that spends its runtime digging up America’s dark secrets and undoing the rewrites we’ve used to paint ourselves as the heroes, it asks us to rewrite the only thing that really matters: how we treat each other.

5. Cloudkicker – Solitude

Generally when Cloudkicker releases an album, it’s pretty much a guarantee to land somewhere on my year end list. But sadly, it’s actually been a long while since Ben Sharp’s last full length record: Unending came close last year, but it wasn’t quite as full-fledged as I would’ve liked. Thankfully(?), due to the pandemic, Ben suddenly found himself with a lot more free time. With a pandemic looming heavy in the air and forcing everyone to stay home for an indefinite, interminable amount of time, there was an easy source of inspiration, too. That inspiration led to Solitude, easily Ben’s darkest sounding material to date and possibly his heaviest. Cloudkicker hasn’t been exceptionally heavy for a while now, so right from the opening notes of this record, I knew I was in for a ride. And like the year it was born from, Solitude rarely lets up on the darkness. These songs rarely stop to catch their breath, delivering riff after thundering riff, and filling every nook and cranny of empty space with drums, gritty bass, or ambient guitar textures to create a cinematic sense of push and pull in each moment. And even when the album finally does land on a slower moment, there’s not really much sense of relief: there’s still tension hiding in the corners, never letting you forget what Solitude‘s goal is: bloodletting the pain of a rough year.

4. The Weeknd – After Hours

I’ll admit to not having paid the Weeknd much attention over the years. I’ve liked his singles here and there, but outside of his Trilogy stuff, I always found his full length albums lacking either for direction or for some of the fat to be trimmed. I wanted to like him more than I did, because his voice is golden and I love the dark pop he does so well, but it just wasn’t to be…until After Hours. This record grabbed me immediately, and here at the end of 2020, it’s still in my rotation pretty damn often. Here Abel finds his more cohesive and coherent vision by mining the sounds of both the past and the future, focusing on a heavy dose of ’80s pop nostalgia and filtering it through a turbulent, foreboding lens of drug addiction, personal struggle, and failed relationships. Cuts like Snowchild, Heartless, After Hours, and Until I Bleed Out are murky, washed out tracks detailing everything from his troubled childhood to his inability to love, and even the grim fate that awaits him should he continue down this path.

But the darkness that pervades this album is excellently balanced out by some of his biggest pop hits yet. In Your Eyes, Blinding Lights, Hardest to Love, and Save Your Tears are just absolutely massive earworms, finding their way into your brain and refusing to leave for days. These tracks take that same murky ’80s pop influence as the darker cuts on the record, but they go for sugar instead of the spice, delivering the dopamine-rush only an excellent pop song can. And above all, After Hours is impeccably produced, leaving plenty of air to breathe when the mood requires it, and knowing when to hit harder and create fuller soundscapes and washes of texture, making this an incredibly rewarding album to listen to again and again.

3. Bring Me the Horizon – Post Human: Survival Horror

Bring Me the Horizon has had one hell of a fascinating career. Once upon a time they were deathcore darlings, young kids caked in eyeliner and swoopy emo haircuts that cared more about churning out breakdowns than songs. And even back then, I had a soft spot for a lot of stuff on Count Your Blessings and Suicide Season, but I always felt like they could be more than they were. And they must have felt the same, because with each album, their sound grew: from atmospheric metalcore, then to mainstream radio rock, and finally to unabashed, dark electronic pop, they weren’t content to stay in any lane long. And of course, lots of people felt lots of ways about these shifts to more accessible sounds, but I loved them all and found myself amazed at how easily they could craft a hook.

But after all those years of experimentation and focusing on landing in the mainstream, it’d be easy for them to lose their way, or sell out their values. Instead, on Survival Horror the band completely throws caution to the wind and focuses down every single one of those sounds into one seven song EP. The opening track Dear Diary, is a ripper that could’ve come directly from those Suicide Season days, Kingslayer (feat. Babymetal) toys with Count Your Blessings-era death growls and some absolutely massive riffs, and One Day the Only Butterflies Left… would sound right at home alongside Sempiternal‘s more somber, slower tracks. And then there’s tracks like Obey and Teardrops that seem to blend all of those things together at once: huge earworm choruses, aggressive guitars, a heavy dose of keyboards and programming, even a touch of nu-metal, and both sung and screamed vocals. In fact, Oli is screaming all over this album, which makes me quite happy since I was pretty convinced he either wouldn’t or just couldn’t scream ever again. And Kingslayer might be one of the finest tracks they’ve ever laid down, careening drunkenly from barreling riffs, glitchy electronics, devilish screams, and the airy-yet-powerful vocals of Suzuka Nakamoto to complete this metal kaleidoscope of a song. Survival Horror is jam packed with moments that will please just about every fan of Bring Me the Horizon, no matter which album may be their favorite, and it excels at proving why this band has managed to stay relevant and interesting for over 14 years now. With this release, they’ve created a funhouse that collides together metal, pop, rock, and electronic into one succinct package that somehow feels completely natural and absolutely vital. This band has become a powerhouse and I’m no longer ashamed to call them one of my favorites.

2. Greg Puciato – Child Soldier: Creator of God

From the moment I first heard a Dillinger Escape Plan record, I knew Greg Puciato was a vocalist of unmatched caliber. The man can scream like the victim of a possession, softly coo and croon his way over jazzier, quieter moments, and even belt out a wickedly catchy chorus worthy of constant radio rotation. And yet, these moments were always fleeting in Dillinger: you would only get a small taste of the full range Greg was capable of before the song would move into something else entirely, and it left me long wishing for him to put together a project that could fully explore his talents.

Thankfully, we’ve finally gotten that with his first full-fledged solo album. Outside of the drums, Greg has written and recorded everything you hear on this record, being the sole creator of his own vision, and that vision encompasses a vast range of possibilities. On Child Soldier: Creator of God you’ll find both the familiar and the unfamiliar. Of course, you’ll get a fair helping of outright heaviness, like on the Dillinger-infused cut Fire For Water (featuring former Dillinger drummer Chris Pennie, no less), the furious grunge rock of Deep Set, or the hateful screed of Roach Hiss. But it would’ve been both too easy and too predictable for Greg to turn in an album that was nothing but metal and hard rock, and thankfully he hasn’t pigeonholed himself. Because outside of the heavier sounds, this album finds plenty of room for the pretty and the melancholy. Temporary Object is a glittering piece of 80s-inspired synthpop that would be perfectly at home on his other project, The Black Queen, easily doling out some gorgeous melodic falsettos over a bed of blissful electronics. Earlier than that though, you’ll find a noisy piece of pulsing, pounding, distorted electronica in the album’s title track, and later on in the tracklist you’ll find Evacuation, which takes some of the sparkle of Temporary Object and then blows it out halfway through with stomping guitars and vicious screams that make for a track that wouldn’t be out of place on a Nine Inch Nails album. And even more out of left field comes Down When I’m Not, a track that somehow seems to fuse the aesthetic of ’90s pop punk with the guitar wash of My Bloody Valentine’s Loveless. On paper, this sounds like it should be an absolute mess of genre-hopping with no coherent vision. But instead, despite the massive variations in sound and mood from track to track, everything on this record feels purposeful and coherent, with each piece serving as the foil to another. Without a strong personality holding this thing together, a lesser artist would fall apart. But Greg’s character comes through on every track, no matter what he may be trying his hand at, and that creates a through-line that makes Child Solider: Creator of God one of the most compelling and impossible to define records of the year.

1. Run the Jewels – Run the Jewels 4

Well, I don’t think I need to say it, but I will anyway: 2020 fucking sucked. Not only have we had to contend with the worse pandemic since the Spanish Flu, but it seemed like our number was coming up on every front. Our government abandoned any pretense of pretending they represent us, income inequality grew by leaps and bounds while the rest of us were evicted from their homes, racial tensions simmered in the face of a party that no longer couched its hatred in economic theory, and the Trump administration seemed hellbent on corrupting and breaking every part of government they could if they thought if could enrich or reelect them. And then at the end of May, that powder keg finally exploded. George Floyd was murdered by police for the crime of passing a fake $20 bill, and cell phone video showed all 9 minutes that the officers spent holding him down and kneeling on his neck while he begged for a breath.

So who would’ve known, months before all this had happened, that Run the Jewels were writing the album that would come to define 2020? Because no piece of music this year was more powerful or hair raising than a line from Killer Mike on “Walking in the Snow”. On it, he references the 2014 murder of Eric Garner, a black man who was killed for the crime of selling loose cigarettes and who also begged for a breath in his final moments. Hearing Killer Mike say the words “I can’t breathe”, after watching protests against police brutality erupt across the country – fueled by tens of millions of rightfully angry people – didn’t just feel prophetic, it was downright depressing. What should have been a six year old reference was now suddenly brand new again, highlighting the complete impasse that America is stuck at in terms of its racial relations. These guys would love nothing more than to just be angry middle aged dudes yelling at the clouds, with no basis in reality for their indignation. But instead, their rage is just as justified as ever, as the elites rob and pillage everything they can and leave the scraps for the rest of us to fight each other over.

And yet, for as heavy as things can get on RTJ4, social commentary isn’t the only thing Run the Jewels have going for them. This record is the duo’s clearest mission statement yet, perfectly distilling the best parts of their sound and attitude into one concise package. El-P’s production has always been ahead of his time, and after 20 years in the game, its fully congealed into something that’s entirely his own. In his toolbox you’ll find everything from nods to classic boom-bap to flashes of modern trap, and in between you’ll find the futuristic hyper-beats that only El-P can create, layered with everything from eerie guitars, ghostly backing vocals, and even a cinematic saxophone solo. And yet, for everything going on in the sound design of this record, nothing is wasted or overstays its welcome: these tracks are refined into the absolute best versions of themselves, wasting no time on drawn out instrumental sections or superfluous verses. These rich beats are nothing without great rappers on top of them though, and both Killer Mike and El-P turn in rabble rousing performances throughout. These two men have a brotherly camaraderie that’s impossible to replicate, easily trading bars, finishing each others lines, and bigging each other up with nothing but love. And of course, for as serious as they can get while dealing with the social ills of our time, they’re still hilarious MCs too. These guys can have to wanting to tear something down one moment and laughing at a dick joke the next, or defiantly spitting in the face of the devil with grim gallows humor. These guys have seen it all, and haven’t been broken by it yet, instead finding fuel in the strife and trying to find some light in the dark. One can only hope that one day these guys will start being wrong – that the world won’t be such an ugly place, that black people won’t have to fear walking past an officer, that the poor may have some representation and a chance to earn an honest living, that things aren’t just completely fucked all around. But until that day comes, well, I couldn’t think of two better men to be the voice of our times.

Babymetal – Metal Galaxy [2019]

If you’ve spent any time on the internet in the past few years, odds are you’ve come into contact with Babymetal. After finding their way into the meme-stream with 2014’s zany viral hit Gimme Chocolate, the group was suddenly everywhere: reaction videos, social media, metal magazines and websites, music festivals, and more. But this band wasn’t just a meme: their music was genuinely boundary-pushing, allowing brutal metal to coexist with upbeat and energetic pop sounds with ease. Of course, this immediately drew the ire of “true” metalheads, who insisted that the band’s manufactured idol background and catchy choruses did nothing but bastardize metal and everything it stood for. But with 2016’s Metal Resistance, the band once again proved that they were the real deal, fusing the very best of metal’s vast array of styles with a level of theatrical flair, emotion, performance, and sheer songwriting craft that was impossible to resist. And with this jewel in their crown, the band continued building a huge, dedicated fanbase by playing over a dozen countries around the world over the next two years, and made an unprecedented success out of themselves.

But sadly, no success story goes untarnished. After capping off their Metal Resistance world tour with a pair of massive arena shows in Japan, Babymetal soon met the new year with tragedy. Guitarist Mikio Fujioka, a member of the group’s live band, suffered serious injuries from a fall in late December 2017, and sadly passed away from them on January 5^th. Losing a member so tragically took a huge toll on the group, and things were quiet for a while. But there was another reason for their radio silence, too: Yui-metal. She had been absent from those two arena shows in Japan, and fans weren’t told much outside of a brief mention of health issues. And when it came time for the band’s US tour in May, she was still missing in action, instead replaced by a series of seven revolving dancers that varied in formation from show to show. But by now the writing was on the wall, and in October 2018, Yui finally revealed that she was indeed leaving Babymetal. She was simply too ill to perform with such a demanding group, and had hopes to start a career under her own name.

In the face of all this turmoil, Babymetal’s future was uncertain for the first time in their career. With Yui gone, it spurred anxieties of Su-metal or Moa-metal departing as well, or the band ending altogether. At the very least, big changes were coming, and instead of caving to the pressure, Babymetal rose from the ashes in 2019. They got a lock on Yui’s departure by replacing her with a series of three “Avengers”, who are rotating dancers that fill her spot live and bring the group back to its traditional trio. They soon started to debut new material live too, making is abundantly clear that Babymetal was not going anywhere anytime soon, and was ready to broaden its horizons and look towards the future.

All of this brings us to their new album, Metal Galaxy. Just like the name suggests, the band is reaching for the stars and grabbing as many of them as they can. And that’s not just a metaphor: this album is star-studded with guest features, featuring Joakim Broden of Sabaton, Alissa White-Gluz of Arch Enemy, Tim Henson and Scott LePage of Polyphia, Tak Matsumoto of B’z, and Thai rapper F. Hero. This wide ranging cast of characters is necessary for the vision Babymetal is chasing with this album, though: after spending years touring the globe from young ages, both the girls and the band’s producers have plenty of new inspiration to draw on, and they do. That manifests itself in a host of sounds, most immediately in the form of Shanti Shanti Shanti. This song mixes a crunchy guitar stomp with an Indian flavor, layering in sitars and register-jumping Eastern vocal melismas with great success. Elsewhere, Night Night Burn takes djent-inflected guitar riffs and juts them against a dash of Latin rhythms and flamenco lines, all fusing to create a pulse pounding pop-metal song. On Brand New Day, Polyphia’s dazzlingly chill jazz metal effortlessly blends with the song’s unadulterated J-pop vibe, and Elevator Girl is one of the hookiest songs you’ll hear all year. But Oh! Majinai is a song that almost defies categorization, sounding like a bizzaro pirate shanty courtesy of Joakim Broden’s gravelly chants and shouts overlaid on groovy riffs and jaunty accordion leads. The Japanese edition of Metal Galaxy has even more surprises, though: we find Su-metal spitting bars and flashing attitude over a trap-inspired beat on BxMxC, that’s expertly thickened up by fat 8 string guitar lines. And the other Japanese exclusive track, BBAB, is a trip through chiptune and future bass which is loaded with chiming synths, pulsing keys, and a dose of metal to make this one of the most unique odes to video games ever put to tape.

But for all these big jumps in genre and style, there’s plenty of classic-sounding Babymetal to go around too. Distortion pummels along with with exuberant synth lines reminiscent of their first two albums, staccato riffs, and expressive lead guitar lines. It’s also given an extra injection of aggression with Alissa White-Gluz’s harsh screams, fitting so seamlessly into the song that you almost can’t tell its not the original single released last year. Pa Pa Ya!! is a groove metal stomp that features an instantly shout-able chorus and an aggressive rap verse courtesy of Thailand’s F. Hero, and Kagerou takes their unique sound and pares it down into a slick hard rock track that would slot perfectly onto American rock radio (you know, were it not sung in Japanese). Then there’s Starlight, a song that’s packed with drop tuned djent riffs and serves as a heartfelt tribute to fallen guitarist Miko Fujioka. And Arkadia sounds as if it were cut from the same cloth as Road of Resistance and The One, packed with the sky scraping guitar work you can only get from the very best of power metal.

That’s the thing about this album, though. Just about every song here, taken on its own, is an immediate and excellently written earworm that blends genres and cultures without even blinking. But when you zoom out and look at the album as a whole, problems begin to surface. Simply put, these massive genre jumps quickly become dizzying, especially on the album’s first half. From IN THE NAME OF on, the album does settles into a more consistent and cohesive whole, but by then its already run the gamut of dance-pop, jazz metal, pirate shanties, and Eastern music, and its easy to feel fatigued at the halfway mark. Because at its heart, this album is literally taking on the world and trying to incorporate it all into the Babymetal universe. With that in mind, its hard to tell if Metal Galaxy simply suffers from a non-optimal track order, or if cuts need to be made, but things are soon clouded by another matter entirely. That cloud is the album’s production and mixing, which takes the album’s mission statement of “everything AND the kitchen sink” and runs with it. There is simply no sonic real estate left untouched here, with every nook and cranny filled by some sort of guitar layer or riff, vocal harmony, synth line, studio effect, extra percussion, finger snaps, or folk instrument. This makes an album that’s already unsure of its own flow and cohesiveness even harder to follow along with, as it is just constantly throwing everything it has at the listener. Sadly, the worst of these production issues fall upon Su-metal’s vocals. Having seen Babymetal last month, I’m well aware of what an amazing singer she is, exhibiting tone, control, and power well beyond her 21 years and all while dancing and jumping around like a woman possessed. But on Metal Galaxy, her voice is absolutely buried in unnecessary effects that range from vocoders, pitch shifters, Harmonizer, and autotune. It’s clear that this is an aesthetic choice, meant to suit the album’s futuristic and poppier vibe, but what it mostly serves to do is bury Su’s voice in the mix and obscure her powerful vocal melodies. In a way, it’s a testament to the skill of everyone involved in Babymetal that these songs actually sound better live, but it’s a shame that the recorded versions are so bogged down by bad sound design.

So what’s the verdict on Metal Galaxy? Well, it’s not a perfect album. It lacks for a cohesive flow and has a tendency to pogo around genres like a kid in a candy shop, all while suffering from some over the top production choices that often drown out the best parts of the songs. But really, those issues are pretty easy to overlook given the absolute scale and ambition of this album. Babymetal tries just about everything under the sun here, and the vast majority of these songs only end up the better for it. Elevator Girl, Shanti Shanti Shanti, Brand New Day, Kagerou, Starlight and Arkadia are all easily some of the best songs this band has ever written, and the weirder experiments are an absolute joy to listen to even if your mileage will vary greatly with some of them (Oh! Majinai, anyone?). While these songs don’t always complement each other in the tracklist, on their own they’re simply great songs, and that’s always been the litmus test for Babymetal’s music. As long as they’re still finding ways to kick down new doors and dare the listener to tell them not to, then they’re still just as vital and exciting as the day they started. This band has seen the world and come away better for it, and in their quest to incorporate a little bit of everything into their universe, they’ve shown us that the one true way through adversity is an open mind, a willing spirit, and the fearlessness to dive headfirst in things that may or may not work. Because as long as you’re reaching for the stars, you’re bound to grab a few, and those are the ones that light up Babymetal’s Metal Galaxy.

William Patrick Corgan – Ogilala [2017]

Things haven’t been too great for Billy Corgan the past few years. The Smashing Pumpkins auteur has found himself embroiled in a number of embarrassing spectacles and creative flunks, and has seemed to be lost for years now. The proof of that came most strikingly with his 2014 release under the Pumpkins banner, Monuments to an Elegy. This was an album that showcased a musician stuck between giving his fans the sound they wanted, yet who was also desperately trying to shoehorn his current musical ambitions into. The result was a strange amalgamation of classic Pumpkins guitarwork, fused with puzzling new age synths and lyrics that would be more apt coming from a 12-year-old boy than a 46-year-old man. Suffice to say, when he announced that he would be releasing a new solo album after a 12-year gap, I had virtually nonexistent expectations – this was a man who was lying to himself musically for years and seemed completely without a rudder, what would change now?

What’s changed is immediately apparent from the first piano chords of “Zowie”, the album’s first track. Here, Corgan has stripped away everything but the bare necessities, opting for something more akin to a singer-songwriter approach than the in-your-face maximalism that was the Pumpkins’ bread and butter for so long. This track (and the album at large) is carried solely by Corgan’s gentle, melancholy piano strains and a restrained, refined vocal performance. Where he once might have layered three or four tracks of vocals on any given song, he has nothing to hide behind here – his voice is raw and exposed, perhaps putting greater pressure on himself to truly deliver. And where his voice was once full of grit, rage, snark, and sneer, on Ogilala the overriding emotion is love, exploration, acceptance, and hope. He’s no longer belting out his pain towards anyone who will listen: instead, he sounds at peace, writing these songs as much for himself as for anyone else.

However, sometimes this bare-bones approach shoots the album in the foot. While there’s nothing as outright clunky or cringe-worthy as “Run2Me” or “Anaise!”, at times it feels fairly one dimensional, with one song flowing into the next without much to differentiate it. There ARE a few moments that break up the flow and add color to the proceedings, like the yearning strings behind Corgan’s earnest vocals on “Aeronaut”. And then there’s James Iha’s shocking turn on guitar for the track “Processional”, marking the first time the pair have recorded music together since 2000’s Machina. But overall, Ogilala’s palette could have used a little expanding, as several of these songs feel more underwritten than stripped down.

But despite Ogilala’s faults, this album represents a marked return to form for a musician that has been lost for a long while now, and it presents perhaps his most honest and humble songwriting in his entire career (or at the very least, this second stage of it). He is no longer grappling with what side of himself to present to the world: It is just William Patrick Corgan, for better and for worse – stripped of anger and overwrought ambition, more at peace with himself than ever before, and making music that seems to truly strike a chord inside himself. It’s a step in the right direction, and for the first time since the Pumpkins reformed in 2005, it feels like the man is genuinely inspired. Ogilala might be more quiet, meditative, and sedate than any of his prior work, but in this case, that’s a good thing.

The Burial Choir – The Burial Choir [2017]

The Burial Choir is a mysterious new rock band out of Wisconsin. Outside of a smattering of cryptic Facebook updates and studio photographs, it’s a project cloaked in secrecy. But in an age of social media oversharing, that’s a blessing: on their debut EP, less is certainly more. Without any outside expectations to color it in one way or another, and a run time of just 3 songs spanning 19 minutes, the only legs it has to stand on are the ones the music creates for itself.

And thankfully, those merits are many. Opening track “The Devil Laughs At Us All” kicks things off in chilling fashion, with chiming church bells and ascending vocals blending together to lure you in, before exploding into a stomping stoner metal groove. It manages to walk the fine line of hammering away at its main riff without letting it overstay its welcome, inserting just enough layers to keep things fresh while also leaving room for its dark vocal melodies to carry the rest.

Elswhere, “Archibald Beechcroft” positions itself as both the centerpiece of the EP and its closing track. This track is a nearly 9 minute long journey that works its way through a chiming, siren-like intro guitar lead and later into massive, lumbering post-metal riffs akin to ISIS and Russian Circles, all with the swagger and groove of Queens of the Stone Age at their best.

If you like dark, moody music with a touch of aggression and plenty of power, then The Burial Choir is a project you need to check out immediately. It’s music out to please no one but itself, and because of that, becomes something that will please a wide range of music fans. It’s time to get buried.

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The Dillinger Escape Plan w/Cult Leader, Car Bomb, and O’Brother – Union Transfer, November 15th, 2016

For the second time in a week, I’ve had the bittersweet pleasure of seeing one of my favorite bands on their final tour. This time around, I saw the total polar opposite to Brand New: The Dillinger Escape Plan. The band recently released their sixth, and unfortunately final, studio album this October, bringing to a close a nearly perfect discography with one of its strongest entries ever. And now with their swan song tucked away neatly under their belt, the only thing left to do is tear through the world one last time, bringing their violently intense show to cities across the world.

Out of all the places in the world that I could’ve caught this band in, I got to see them in one of their favorite cites and at one of their favorite venues, Philadelphia’s Union Transfer. Philly is already known for having nearly feral audiences, and the band obviously loves and feeds on that energy, as they’ve made sure to visit the venue nearly every year since I started following them in 2010. And this night was no different – having sold out completely, the energy was palpable even as the venue was filling with excited fans, ready to see this band tear the place down for the last time ever. The only exception to the usual Dillinger/Union Transfer combo was that this time around, the venue opted to put up a barrier. The band has made a point of getting the crowd to flood the stage during their final song, and it seems like the venue finally tired of it. But besides that small let down, the night was stacked with a group of diverse and exciting bands, and it was clear that the night would be a thriller.

First up was Cult Leader, a band out of Utah that brought with them a sound heavily informed by the noisier edge of Converge, the sludgier side of death metal, and a big helping of punk. While the venue wasn’t even half full yet, it didn’t put any visible dent in their energy, as they tore through their set with reckless abandon and expertly delivered their pummeling music. In stark contrast to Cult Leader was Car Bomb – following up Cult Leader’s raw, angry edge, it was clear that Car Bomb exists firmly on the other end of metal’s spectrum. The Long Island quartet brought with them a blend of mind-bending time signatures, clinical guitar precision, glitchy effects, and inhuman rhythmic technicality. Yet for all that precision, the band clearly didn’t lack for a punk edge, either. All these things combined makes Car Bomb quite possibly the only real successor to Dillinger’s throne in the wake of their imminent demise, and it’s clear why they decided to take them out on this final round of touring. Finally, perhaps as a way of creating breathing room in the set, Atlanta rockers O’Brother were up next. Veering away from the hard edges of Cult Leader and Car Bomb, O’Brother instead brought a smoky, sludgy, stoner rock vibe instead. While it was clear that some of the energy drained from the room due to their comparatively laid back sound, I already enjoyed some of their music prior to seeing the show and was glad to have the chance to see them and allow my neck a few minutes’ respite from headbanging. And any reservations the crowd had were not shared by the band, as they were fully present and had just as much stage presence as their predecessors.

But as with any great meal, the appetizers should only serve to make you hungrier for the main course, and by this point we were hungry for Dillinger and nothing else. And they were fully aware of that – even though it was clear that the band’s equipment was ready to go, they faked us out by abruptly ending their intro music and starting a fog machine, only to restart the music from the top again. But it only made the band walking out and launching into “Limerent Death” from Dissociation so much more powerful. As soon as the opening chords hit, the surge of the crowd was incredible, and I watched from the rail as several rows worth of people were suddenly compressed into the width of one. They only upped the ante from there, tearing into the classic cut “Panasonic Youth” and fueling the flames even further before coming back down momentarily with the more pop-leaning “Symptom of Terminal Illness”. But there were very few moments of respite built into their set, with “Black Bubblegum”, “One of Us is the Killer”, and the recently revived “Mouth of Ghosts” (which was a highlight of the set, featuring Ben Weinman taking up a spot on the piano while Greg Puciato crooned over his gorgeous jazzy chords) being the only moments one could catch their breath during. Otherwise, the band leaned heavily on Dissociation, which made for quite an emotional night, since many of that album’s lyrics are pretty clearly focused on the creative and personal relationship between Weinman and Puciato, as well as the band’s end. Screaming “Please let me be by myself, I don’t need anyone” from Nothing to Forget or “I’m afraid of how this ends” from Surrogate along with Puciato was a loaded and intense experience, as we all knew exactly what it meant and were in the middle of that very end.

But while they might’ve leaned on Dissociation for obvious reasons, the band knows how to put together a set, and didn’t ignore the rest of their catalog. The band covered everything from Calculating Infinity onward, touching on “hits” like “Milk Lizard”, “Sunshine the Werewolf”, and “Sugar Coated Sour”, as well as the most iconic song in their discography, “43% Burnt”. But as always, their discography wasn’t the only thing they looked to be inclusive about during the night. Greg, Ben, and Kevin Atreassian were unable to keep themselves on stage, taking heroic leaps into the crowd at every opportunity. I’ve been fan girling to myself for the past week over the fact that I got to help hold up both Ben and Greg during the last few songs of the set, over getting to be that close to the people who made the music that’s held ME up in dark times. It’s obvious that the band has so much passion for this music, and so much love and trust placed in their fans, and because of it they truly make their shows a personal experience by getting right in the middle of the shit with us. And even outside of that physical connection, the band is a joy to watch – even during the slower songs, they’re impossible to keep still. Demonstrating insane athleticism, intensity and fearlessness, bands half Dillinger’s age couldn’t hope to match their crazed showmanship even if they were in the middle of a psychotic episode.

But perhaps the realest moment of the show came from one simple sentence from Puciato, just before launching into the classic “Sugar Coated Sour”. He only said, “This is an old one, and it’s your last fuckin’ chance to sing it along with us, Philly”. This was a band very clearly on top of their game in all respects, literally proving it just feet away from me, and knowing that the better ending is always to leave people wanting more. By highlighting the biggest and best songs of their career through this set, as well as hitting us with the most emotional tracks from their newest and final record, the band was showing us exactly what we’re always going to want more of without giving into nostalgia or despair. Instead, we were celebrating together, screaming together, dancing together, all because of this strange, angular, aggressive, sense-assaulting music. This final tour is a precious and fleeting experience, as are all things worth experiencing in life, and you should always fuckin’ sing along like it’s your last chance.