[Riff] #BSAS2024 - Brady's Top 20 Albums of, Part I + Honourable Mentions
Note: This art was originally posted on Christmas Eve 2024, right before our old site suffered an unexpected, untimely death on NYE (RIP).
BRIEF INTRO/RAMBLE:
This 'Riff' forms part of the Music category for our 2024 Behind Screen and Speaker wrap-up series. Have no clue what I'm talking about? Best follow along with the blog, then - check out this recent article which acts as a good introductory overview to the Behind Screen and Speaker category here at ISC.
Effectively, like the previous blog post right behind you - over there, look out! Argh! - you can consider the intent behind BSaS the same. i.e. a compendium of Riffs (articles), longer pieces and other media that is retrospective and/or prospective, with regards to my/our thoughts, feelings and observations regarding hobbies, arts, music, mental health and other domains.
Once completed, there’ll be an ‘omnibus’ article that ties the room together with a bunch of disparate Riffs. For example, a Riff on our Games Of The Year, as well as perhaps other topical pieces regarding specific genres (turn-based, RTS, FPS, open-world, etc).
A lot of podcasters and bloggers with a lot more time than myself or indeed, the entire ISC team, will do things like weekly/fortnightly/monthly ‘round-up’ style posts. Put simply, think of Behind Screen and Speaker as a much more ambitious version of that, covering a wider span of time, by our various topical domains.
TL:DR - currently in the foxhole loading belt-fed essays into the content machine because, despite all the tripe surrounding our lives in 2024/2025? It's been an overwhelmingly great and massive year from an artistic perspective.
Nowhere is that more readily apparent, than in the domain of music.
Shall we? Let’s review us some albums!
Credit: Our very own Elodie, aka Into The Weird Blue Yonder. Go back a few posts and check out our announcement - congrats again on the successful Kickstarter campaign, fam!
So, yeah….
Before we begin, let's get one thing straight - I *hate* top album lists.
Never used to, but then the music just went and gone done a 'let's all release insurmountable volumes of freaking awesome music, year after year'.
Not a bad problem at all, and not really wanting to make mountains out of molehills. Just me and my neurodivergent brain suffering both severe analysis-paralysis and guilt in trying to pick so, SO many great releases to make any form of AOTY-list cut.
I'll speak to my experience of music-listening habits themselves in an upcoming Riff, as that's a whole other topic of it's own. Today, I'm keeping it more contained.
See below for a slew of lists with some mini-reviews and other thoughts in the mix.
How I'll work this is such: a tippy-top 20 albums of the year, then filter these down into more genres as I go. I'll only be reviewing the Top 20, though, 'cause I'm only human.
THE TOP 20 - AN EXERCISE IN OPTION-OVERLOAD:
I wasn't really ready to spit the dummy over at Musolegion about my own choice-paralysis; not when everyone else is getting stuck in and giving it a fair go! So, I threw my hat in the ring after much angst and apologies to a horde of worthy honourable mentions (which will have their day in the sun on this post, dagnabbit).
That said, I cheekily snuck in an extra 10 on my AOTY list, because 10 never feels like enough. Hey, Ash did it too so uh... blame him? LOL.
You can check out the discourse over the community's top albums via our Facebook group, with an official blog post likely soon to follow on the Musolegion website. I also regularly feature outcomes of discussions and other fun updates in the From The Legion segment of our weekly Music Mondays column.
Oh, and none of these are in any particular order of preference.
They're all just too goddamn good, and I'll briefly overview why each of these just made the cut above what is a gargantuan mass of great releases from 2024.
Phew.
Here goes:
1. Spectral Wound - Songs Of Blood and Mire
Label: Profound Lore Records
Release Date: 23rd August
Official Artist Site
Album Stream:
Synopsis:
I know black metal has been experiencing quite a serious quality-renaissance of late, but this is truly something special.... and wicked. Clocking in at 43 minutes, Songs of Blood and Mire is a devilish mix of the genre's utmost barbaric savagery as much a demonstration for its' proclivity for clever, subtle melodic undertones. Brutal and evil, but just melodic enough to not be one-dimensional.
It's an album everyone from corpse-painted 4-track elitists to one-man-band atmospheric-BM sadboi's will enjoy in equal measure. If you listen to just one black metal record this year? Yeah, it's either this and/or the new Panzerfaust. Incredible stuff.
While you're at it, their previous LP A Diabolic Thirst kicks ten thousand kinds of arse, too. For me, these guys are poised to slaughter the competition in the traditional-BM arena if they keep this level of brilliance up.
2. Opeth- The Last Will and Testament
Label: Reigning Phoenix Music
Release Date: Nov 22nd, 2024
Album Stream:
Synopsis:
It's me. I've seen these guys eight times, and I'm about to hit up #9 next year. There's no way I'm going to be objective about an Opeth album, particularly when it's such a return to form. Sure, it's not up there with their classic canon, but for so much lamentation during the post-Watershed era (I'm a fan, just a much bigger fan of that album & prior) us rabid fans and the metal community have been treated to an album truly deserving of the hype.
There's the unanimously-rejoiced return of Daddy Mikael's death-growls, an impressively thought-out conceptual theme, tighter yet also very exploratory riffage and song-writing, and a sense of attention-holding even a fanboy like me hasn't experienced with a new 'Peth release since the late 00's.
Hamza wrote a fantastic review of this album here, by the way - do go check that one out, it's fantastic! Love your work, dude. :)
And if you'd like to see a mix of pure fanboying with some earnest heart-to-hear musician talk with my bass-idol, a reminder of our interview with Martin Mendez - see here. Truly a transcendent experience for me and one I'm very grateful and humbled for.
Synopsis:
Brendan Sloan is basically an extreme-metal millenial Devin Townsend at this rate. Dude helms not one, but two of some of Australia's finest disso/experimental/progressive death metal acts in Altars and Convulsing. Much as I was blown away by the recorded (and live) quality of the former's previous LP in Ascetic Reflection - the latter Aussie trio have upped their game considerably, somehow, with Convulsing's latest.
Conjoined by it's own nature to the growing miasma of disso-death clones infesting the scene, perdurance serves as clear evidence that to rise above the din these days... one truly has to provide something visceral, mind-bending, envelope-pushing and thuggishly solid. At the same time.
Not an easy feat, but one this album manages all the above splendidly with a heady mix of grace... and venom.
2024's been a fantastic year for Australian death metal, and perdurance shows an increasingly-apathetic, GPT-slop riddled world that us rowdy rabble of English-leftover-convict-refuse have plenty of snarl left in the tank.
Synopsis:
In a day and age where it seems like having social media presence is a must, these guys really slipped quietly onto the Internet-radar. It wasn't long, though, before the Aussie post-metal-meets-blackened-dissonant-everything act, formed in 2021, received massive critical acclaim for latest opus Divine Laughter.
Positing a sound I can only describe as the accretion disk of sludge, blackened death metal, post-rock and a slew of others, the band implement a brand of sonic destruction that is as lilting as it is morose and crushing. To have only been around the traps a few years and have created something currently pummelling AOTY lists all over the place is an impressive feat.
If I was to tropey moniker for any band here like 'OnE To WaTcH OuT FoR NexT YeaR!' in typical journalist-prose, it's surely these guys. I predict a groundswell taking off big-time in the aftermath of this wondrous album.
Don't believe me? Go listen to the album. They deserve the explosion of exposure and gratitude if this LP is a trend that continues.
Synopsis:
I'm sure some 4chan-coded, London basement-dwelling purist will sneer and come at me with an 'ackshually' for this take. I don't care, so here's my humble opinion - Winterfylleth are the best black metal act currently doing the rounds in England, for sure.
With a stellar discography of what feels like near-infallible alchemical proficiency, album after album, The Imperious Horizon is no different. Taking their self-identified brand of 'English Heritage Black Metal', the outfit push the supposed atmospheric sub-genre to it's fastest and most furious. In a scene filled with bands hamfistedly trying to weave electronica, folk, prog, post-rock or any other number of tonal elements to the trad template, I really can't think of any band that pulls it off as consistently and expertly as these guys.
If 'post-black', 'atmospheric black metal' or similar identifiers make your black-shirted skin crawl, go check this album out. Turns out you can weave both into an energetic and dynamic package without sacrificing an iota of heaviness or damp, fog-wreathed British spirit.
Eh up guv, top shelf innit.
HONOURABLE MENTIONS - LIST #1:
Okay.
So let's take a break from the Top 20 for a moment, as I'm dying to get out some Honourable Mentions for the year. And when I say 'honourable', I really fucking mean it.
Albums that I can't help but feel a significant pang of existential angst in having to leave off the Top 20. LP's that missed making it by a magnitude more akin to the microscopic difference between lethal/sub-lethal dosage in hard opiates, than a vast pedestal/gulf between Top 20 and Honourable Mentions.
As per the above, I'll kick off with say, five albums, and continue onwards in successive posts.
Yep, lots to cover, ergo lots to say.
I'll also add hyperlinks to full-album streams on Youtube, 'cause bombing the hell out of everyone I know with too much music is my neurodivergent love-language.
Please follow on.
And check out relevant links across artists’ platforms, if you like what you hear!
Devin Townsend - PowerNerd. So, so close, Devy! He's my favourite musician of all time, but admittedly that leans moreso towards his classic canon and pre-Empath material. Nevertheless, the leap in quality from Lightwork to PowerNerd is incredible. A bombastic, melodic and huge rockin' romp from our beloved Canadian mad-scientist. PowerNerd is the most I've dug his material since Empath, Casualties of Cool and the Devin Townsend Project. p.s. best video clip of 2024 fr.
While you're here, go check out far-less-fanboy perspective of the album. Another brilliant slice of album-review by fellow ISC colleague, Mal. (LINK).
2. Spiral Staircase - The Perfect Child. I get a LOT of press-release emails in my inbox folder for ISC. Like, no joke, minimum 4 to 500 per week. Sometimes it's just a case of picking something at random. Boy howdy am I glad I clicked THIS one in email. I'll be reviewing in future; suffice to say this is one of the most brutally cathartic releases I've heard in a while. Perfectly scary blend of noise-rock, doom, blackgaze and all manner of harsh glitchy tones. Not for the faint of heart, but relatable as FUCK, emotionally.
3. Knocked Loose - You Won't Go Before You're Supposed To. Durr-hurr, Jimmy Kemmel and Boomers-mad. Durr-hurr, me laughing every time I listen to this album after seeing a FB commenter note the vocalist kinda sounds like Mickey Mouse. Yeah, it's not cool to like this band. Don't give a shit - this is pure, distilled, refined caustic modern hardcore. There's a good reason why these dudes have gone stratospheric, and I'm not too addled with creatine and protein shakes to gatekeep such a stellar young act taking it up yet ANOTHER notch. I'll meme the band as hard as anyone else, but I'm also not going to be closeted about my love for this insanely-good HxC album dude.
4. Orgone - Pleroma. Another one off the pile that absolutely blew me sideways, up, down and in non-Euclidian-space directions of all sorts. Avant-garde, experimental and frankly insane. On that note, though, we're not talking Unexpect or Dog Fashion Disco level nuttery. This is baked into some furious, technical, blackened death metal that gives the impression of a dying hostile cyborg with its' behavioural inhibitors removed. Whack, technical, unrepentant. I LOVE it.
5. Conifere - Límport du sang. Proving Alcest and Les Discrets do not own colonial authorship of French-speaking black metal-adjacent musical periphery, these Quebecois natives put down the poutine to deliver a spooky and acerbic meld of black metal and dungeon-synth. You almost can't reconcile their location of origin with the whole stereotypes about Canadians being nice-folks, eh? Then you remember Gorguts and Trailer Park Boys. J'adore. Underrated as blackened hell.
BONUS - NOT-HEAVY/MISC FAVES LIST, #1:
