50. Esoteric – Paragon of Dissonance

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At this point, Esoteric can be called the forerunners of funeral doom metal, because they’re just that good. Paragon Of Dissonance is more of the same from the esteemed band, only this time massive improvements have been made. The rhythm section and melodies that weave into the thick, crushing guitars are more interesting than usual, making massive song lengths seem shorter than they are. When I say massive song lengths, I mean that the longest song here is eighteen minutes long – that’s pretty long. Still, as usual, Esoteric handle their songs excellently, somehow keeping the listener hypnotized the entire time. It’s no easy task, but they make it look like child’s play. Now that’s some proper funeral doom! – Pizzamachine

49. Grouper – A I A

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Well, isn’t this fitting. A I A, elusive and gorgeous little double-mini-album that it is, is perfectly content here, as the forty-ninth of fifty great albums this year, sandwiched between two metal albums you probably forgot to download. This is an album destined to be eternally lodged in the periphery of music criticism communities like the one we have here–something that distinguishes it from, say, Bon Iver, Bon Iver or James Blake or what have you. This isn’t to say that A I A is worse than those other albums–after all, it’s my fifth favorite release of the year–but to say that its scope is much narrower, much more personal. A I A didn’t really “define my 2011”; it didn’t have a great backstory; I wasn’t even sure I liked it all that much for about half the year. But I played it–a lot. I still haven’t gotten tired of the little melodic motif subtly buried under the gorgeous fog of ‘Moon is Sharp’, or how ‘Alien Observer’ sounds like just that, or the dark and grimy guitar that bolsters Liz Harris’s haunted vocal line on ‘Dragging the Streets’. In a year where the grimy zeitgeist seems to have defined our musical taste, it’s nice to have something intimate like A I A crop up–even if only at #49. – Robertsona

48. Corrupted – Garten Der Unbewusstheit

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Corrupted expand upon the slow, unfurling melancholy of the original ‘Gekkou no Daichi’ from their magnificent Se hace por los suenos asesinos and weave it into the cohesive hour-long journey that is Garten der Unbewusstheit. The album creeps forth with droning guitar work, not unlike the later work of Earth, eventually adding in the low, despondent growls of Hevi before erupting in a sea of noise guitar bliss. The Japanese outfit has managed to take the heaviness of sludge, the atmosphere of drone, the emotion of funeral doom, and the climactic pacing of post-rock and masterfully weave them all into one body of music. While this may fall into the category of “metal albums you forgot to download,” it’s safe to say you fucked up if that’s the case. – AngelofDeath

47. TV on the Radio – Nine Types of Light

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In a bizarre turn of events, TVotR haven’t managed to make the best album of the year like they threatened to with 2008’s brilliant Dear Science. With that said, they’ve still put together what is so far THE best second half of a 2011 album. Starting with the withered melancholy of ‘Will Do’ and ending with the aggravated swagger of ‘Caffeinated Consciousness’, these five songs are amongst the band’s finest ever work. The first half is not to be underrated, but tracks 6 through 10 are truly what pushes Nine Types… from goodness to utter greatness. The late Gerard Smith has left a remarkable legacy with this. – AtavanHalen

46. Shabazz Palaces – Black Up

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Black Up is far from perfect and also far from classic, but it is important and really just inspiring. In less than 35 minutes it blows through the already extraordinary hip-hop landscape of 2011 like a ship traveling in hyperspace. It is a thoroughly hot banger but it is also avant-garde art of an outstandingly high caliber. It reminds us of all the creativity and beauty that there is to be found in life by joyously presenting it to us in front of our faces. – ECRbubs

45. Fucked Up – David Comes To Life

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Since getting moshing banned on MTV, Canadian hardcore/punk outfit Fucked Up have been on a non-stop swan dive down the proverbial rabbit hole of music, and their third full length David Comes To Life sees the band finally hitting their Wonderland. Fucked Up do one thing correct that makes David Comes To Life a success and that is the systematic destruction of genre boundaries. No one can claim that Fucked Up isn’t one of the most ambitious hardcore acts in the market today with the way each of their albums are painstakingly crafted. Kind of like the career of Black Flag, never content with just being pigeon-holed into one certain sound, David Comes To Life serves as a beacon of light in a sea of monotony. The easy sound of Fucked Up’s third album will be sure to attract a crowd not normally accustomed to hardcore punk, so this album is highly recommended for those who would claim the abrasive nature and destructive attitude of the genre as the detracting point to enjoying the music.  For real though, where the fuck is the other shoe? – ThisLifeisGenocide

44. Giles Corey – Giles Corey

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If there is one album that’s truly stuck with me throughout 2011, it’s Giles Corey’s self-titled debut record.  It’s not because the record is instantly effectual, not in the least, but because it deals with matters most foreign, as the slow descent into the abysmal realm of depression and suicide blankets the entire record.  A side project of Dan Barrett, Giles Corey draws largely from folk influences, but with a moodier, darker atmosphere, much like the one employed by his main act, Have a Nice Life.  Giles Corey is a murky, dense record, and one that also happens to be truly unforgettable. – Xenophanes

43. The Jezabels – Prisoner

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Prisoner isn’t always an instant album. Moments that sound awkward and ill-conceived on first listen reveal an emotionally-charged vulnerability and honesty on repeated listens. The flow of the album seems slightly off-kilter at first, until the rapidly-amassing wall of longing, of sadness, of escapism and fantasy finally comes crashing down and reveals the album for what it truly is. For a debut album, Prisoner is a superb achievement, and The Jezabels truly do have the potential to become Australia’s premiere act in the next few years. But in the end, only one thing matters. For a few fleeting minutes in any given day, The Jezabels have the ability to captivate us all, to take us prisoner to their heartstring-tugging masterpiece. As the final notes of closer ‘Catch Me’ fade away, The Jezabels truly reveal their best part. The ability to remove us from the confines of everyday life, remove all of us everyday prisoners from our everyday prisons, and speed our escape with that little bit of fantasy and idealism, and perfectly encapsulate the emotions we feel. – Butkuiss

42. Opeth – Heritage

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Have you even heard Camel? – AngelofDeath

41. Youth Lagoon – The Year of Hibernation

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Earlier in the year, I wrote a review for The Year of Hibernation in which I felt so tacky and presumptuous and apparently omniscient as to include the following bit of prose:

“To my knowledge, the city of Boise is notorious as a place stuck between an archaic past and a bright future, with recent entrepreneurial generations putting their best foot forward in the attempt to tame the expansive Idaho landscape and to sprout an environmentally conscious city from the depths of Mother Nature’s creative prowess. The money-minded city-slickers aren’t the only ones leaving their mark on that staggering stretch of America, however. For as the townsfolk of the great Northwest get up and go about their quotidian affairs, something bigger than that, yet subtle as a snowflake descending slowly into Lake Tahoe, is coming to fruition beneath their very feet. Somewhere in a dark and damp Boise basement is Trevor Powers, the one-man force behind recently fabricated Youth Lagoon, endeavoring to bridge the daunting gap between past and present, to truly compromise his city’s role as a naturalist’s Eden and a playground for tycoons.”

And while there might be some truth in my grandiose attempts at literature, what’s truly important about The Year of Hibernation is Trevor Powers’ ability to convey both his own aspirations and desires and those of his mislead generation of over-educated yet under-learned daydreamers, in a voice that’s forever marred by the sadness and hopelessness that goes hand in hand with the looming possibility of failure.  Don’t just listen to Youth Lagoon, but hear Youth Lagoon – The Year of Hibernation is a record where it pays to know the difference between the two. – iFghtffyrdmns

40. Joyce Manor – Joyce Manor

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I can not for the life of me adequately articulate what makes Joyce Manor’s self-titled so damn good, nor can I properly justify its place in an end-of-the-year list, so before I even try, here’s a cool picture of Bruce Willis to get you on my side:

Really, the only thing I can do here is to implore you to listen to this record, again and again and again and again.  Because in a weird way, these feel like ten songs that any listener could have had a part in writing – raw and catchy, simply crafted yet perfectly executed – and with each successive listen through Joyce Manor, the tracks become as if they really are the listener’s creation.  So if you’ve ever been pissed or sad or disappointed or stoked or flawlessly intoxicated, there’s a track or two or ten for you on Joyce Manor.  If there is but a trace of blood running through your god damn veins, then surely there is a place in your heart for these songs. – iFghtffyrdmns

39. Crash Of Rhinos – Distal

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If you spend enough time on Reddit (or perhaps just the internet in general), you are more than likely familiar with the “Good Guy Greg” meme.  Crash Of Rhinos sort of seems like a group of five Good Guy Gregs, all hanging out in some damp basement somewhere in the U.K., jamming and shouting and smiling and reveling in life and in people and, most importantly, in each other.  In a way, Distal seems more like a casual Sunday jam than a record, with five best friends just playing their fingers numb and shouting their throats hoarse.  The impromptu, non-binding feel of the ordeal works exceedingly well, lending the finished product an atmosphere that is as fun as it is coordinated and as well-executed as it is ballsy.  Rarely do the fivesome slow down; when one instrument momentarily fades from the mix, it was most likely to down a swig of Carlsberg before jumping right back into the youthful cacophony.  So if 2011 wasn’t enough fun for you, or if you just need some awesome jams, or if you happened to wake up alive this morning, listen to Distal – it’s more important than the most important meal of the day. – iFghtffyrdmns

38. PJ Harvey – Let England Shake

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In the months following PJ Harvey’s prophetic words of Let England Shake, England did indeed ‘shake’; the London riots added an element of authenticity to Harvey’s concept, despite the fact that her eighth record is more concerned with the effect centuries of war has had on the nation’s consciousness. Nonetheless, it made the listening experience all the more gratifying. Thematic connotations aside, Let England Shake is by far Harvey’s most accomplished record, mature in its execution and thorough with its concept. Fans of her past material will definitely see the differences between Let England Shake and earlier albums; on the surface there is a lighter mood, signified by an extended foray into a pop aesthetic that Harvey had only toyed with on previous albums. However, with repeated listening and a deeper analysis, the record’s solemn and serious tone can at times be overwhelming.

Lyrically and thematically the record is an acerbic criticism of England’s military endeavours: lines such as “these are the words that maketh murder” and “what is the glorious fruit of our land? the fruit is orphaned children” are blunt in their meaning but juxtapose delicately with Harvey’s minimalist composition. The most invigorating aspect of Let England Shake is undeniably its flow and cohesion; each one of its 12 songs fits perfectly within its respective position on the record, and each comes together in a unifying context that makes Let England Shake all the more fulfilling. Some have criticised this work, others have made the point that it is ‘polarising’, but of course, there will always be naysayers for what is rated the best pop record of the year by many sources, even when the record actually deserves the title. Unfortunately Let England Shake polled relatively poorly on Sputnikmusic, so here’s hoping that this little blurb will move you to either rethink your opinion, or at the very least, relisten. – Rasputin

37. Touche Amore – Parting the Sea Between Brightness and Me

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Whoever came up with the phrase “less is more” is a fucking genius.  Touche Amore have trimmed up any semblance of sonic lethargy that may have been found on …To The Beat Of A Dead Horse and have presented us thirteen tracks filled to the brim with anguish, loss, and death anxiety all within the easily digestible and manageable time frame of not even half an hour.  Ending Parting The Sea Between Brightness And Me with an apology on album closer ‘Amends’ may have been a bit too self-deprecating for the band as the sea between brightness and Touche Amore has been parted.  Through clever lyricism, passionately executed guitar play and frenetic drum work, Parting The Sea Between Brightness And Me stands as a band outdoing themselves and one upping the entire game in the process. – ThisLifeisGenocide

36. St. Vincent – Strange Mercy

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The first time we saw Strange Mercy-era Annie Clark, she was being buried alive by an old white man and his two spoilt brats in the backyard of their Victorian home. As part of the visual accompaniment for the song ‘Cruel’, released two weeks before Strange Mercy hit the shelves, the American singer-songwriter is kidnapped by a motherless family, forced to be a housewife, and winds up being sealed away under hillocks of earth as punishment for failing miserably at her task. If that sounds like a Dean Koontz novel come to life, you don’t even know the half of it mate – at several points throughout the video it actually feels like one is being made to watch a three and a half minute reel of particularly gruesome Storm Thorgerson stills.

The same music video also features Clark lying underneath what appears to be a tarp, with only her disembodied limbs and her electric guitar visible as her supple fingers nonchalantly buzz out one of the song’s many filling riffs while she is driven away by her kidnappers to face her fate. It’s an image which I feel sits particularly well with the album, mainly due to the startling incongruency that exists between artist and musical instrument on this record. Really, one hardly expects such a pointy, luminous beauty like Clark to be capable of producing such vile and cacophonic sounds. Her guitar doesn’t only bite – it also whirrs, cackles, hisses, pirouettes, and spits in your face. At times it slides out from the speakers with forceful and affecting grace, but mostly it just clatters into the framework of Clark’s songs with all the stuttering awkwardness of a ballerina made to perform her art on a pair of stilts.

But if the end results are almost always this positively affecting, who gives a damn? Songs like ‘Chloe in the Afternoon’ and ‘Hysterical Strength’ are practically morphed from solid to flat-out phenomenal thanks to Clark’s mastery of her electric instrument. Elsewhere, Strange Mercy’s other songs, even if paired with wildly unrelatable lyrics – ‘Champagne Year’, for instance, has the American ranting about her career as an unsuccessful shrink, while several lines from ‘Surgeon’ were actually pilfered from Marilyn Monroe’s own private journal – can easily stake a claim to being some of the year’s finest, in no small thanks to Clark’s ingenuity at carving out her musical arrangements. Someone should go get a shovel quick; the lady can’t write if she’s buried six feet underground. – Irving

35. Russian Circles – Empros

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If 2009’s Geneva was a hesitant Russian Circles finally finding its unique voice, Empros is the sound of that band throwing off every restraint and going completely balls-out in their novel approach to a genre so tired as post-rock. From the crushing, Meshuggah-influenced riffing of ‘Batu’ to the shimmering leads of ‘Malko’ to the crunching bass of opener ‘309’ (which may very well be their best song to date), this album firmly cements Russian Circles as one of post-rock’s most original and engaging acts. It is entirely true that lauding a record with praises relating to its realization of its creators’ potential is an overused and arguably clichéd method: however, in this case, there is no other fitting description. Russian Circles have come to their own and fully realized a potential that has existed ever since their inception, and we are the better for it. – Ignimbrite

34. Bjork – Biophilia

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Bjork’s music has always been outlandish, but this album takes the cake and also tosses it in the face of the music industry. It’s the world’s first app album, but more importantly, the music itself is groundbreaking and completely unpredictable. The only thing that stays consistent throughout is its alien feel, but such is expected from the not-of-this-Earth Bjork. Indeed, Biophilia is a strange album, using many homemade instruments (like the gameleste, which is found in many songs), unusual instruments (for example, the Tesla coil in ‘Thunderbolt’), and the startlingly alien sounding female choir to create a consistently bizarre sound. On top of that, the album has fairly unexpected musical changes such as the out-of-nowhere bass-riddled chorus in ‘Mutual Core’, or the equally surprising breakcore section in ‘Crystalline’. Basically, Biophilia is a can of WTF, keeping the listener on the edge of their seat, excited for the next twist or turn. It may be a tad inconsistent, but it’s fascinatingly fun, and also proves that Bjork in 2011 is still the Bjork we know and love. – Pizzamachine

33. Ulcerate – The Destroyers of All

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Ulcerate turn in another solid performance nearly on par with 2009’s Everything Is Fire, creating a dynamic death metal album with some ominous atmosphere to go with the very technical instrumentation. Dissonant riffing and a downright bludgeoning rhythm section come wrapped in very lush but organic production. Bits of post-metal find their way into the heart of the album, oozing through the intense, sometimes grimy layers of death metal virtuosity, culminating in a fairly unique presence. Even with the impressive individual performances turned in on The Destroyers of All, Ulcerate manage to keep the songwriting sharp with plenty of nuance and winding fluidity while still flexing their chops now and again. While this certainly isn’t a complete departure from the already unique sound of the New Zealand outfit, there’s enough fresh blood here to demonstrate the band can still make a great record without resorting to cheap parlor tricks, gimmicks, or self-plagiarism. – AngelofDeath

32. O’Brother – Garden Window

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With excellent song writing and a singer that lays his heart on the table, Garden Window is an emotionally compelling album. Generally consisting of purposefully plodding progressive rock, O’Brother create a frightening musical world that is often an uncomfortable listen. Although their guitars can have apocalyptic levels of distortion (meaning a semi-sludge metal album), Garden Window is sinister and intense even when the guitar’s buzz is absent. It’s a fairly dreary atmosphere, yet within it, songs can still be fairly catchy. So really, the album is good for all occasions, and considering its emotional impact, it’s quite an intriguing listen.  – Pizzamachine

31. The Devin Townsend Project – Ghost

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Devin Townsend’s version of prog metal has always been fairly chill, but never in my wildest dreams did I imagine him going full-out ambient/acoustic on us. That’s right, Ghost is a pretty thing, mostly comprised of flutes, synths, and the already mentioned acoustic guitar. In conjunction with melodious ambience, Devin’s layered vocals work in making a slow, introspective, and ultimately charming album. Being released only one day after an insanely violent album, Deconstruction, Ghost is a pleasant surprise and proves that Devin can make great music outside the realm of metal. – Pizzamachine

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