50-31 | 30-11 | 10-1 | EP/Live/Compilation

30. Fit for an Autopsy – The Nothing That Is

[Bandcamp] // [Spotify]

29. Thou – Umbilical

[Bandcamp] // [Spotify]

Umbilical is comfortably frightening. It’s the usual sludging, trudging slog through the swamp of riffs that Thou have always pedaled (Pedaled? More like “Conjured via satanic incantations from a black magic-enchanted staff”). However, Thou have an impressive array of ways to utilize constant heavy-isms that achieve their tunnel-visioned ideologies of concentrated misanthropy and nihilism. They often employ riffs that sound more akin to the guttural rumbling of a mighty minotaur than any handcrafted instrument (e.g., “Emotional Terrorist”). Often, they will dive into massive southern-rock style grooves and swings a la “The Promise” or “Panic Stricken, I Flee”. In both cases, there is an impenetrable gravitational pull that the low end always brings, anchoring Thou firmly into a realm brimming with hellfire and settled in soot. Of course, to feed this eternal flame as well is Thou’s vocals, which are as snarly, as gnarly, and as scathing as they’ve ever been. There is a whole lot of ferocity and dismality behind this record, with the only human-esque comfort being that, no more how schizoid it may be, it always stays locked in some sweet-ass grooves. –Dedes

28. Slift – Ilion

[Bandcamp] // [Spotify]

The momentum of nearly all of these tracks is so immense. I can’t believe in 80 minutes of music there doesn’t seem to be much filler. Every second counts in this thing. I thought the previous album was incredible, but this even tops it already. The vocals are also so much more aggressive and fitting for the builds and climaxes. Ummon was something special, but this is just one great idea after another. This is one of those records you will throw on in 20 years and it will still be just a ridiculous then as it is now. Wow. Tripped on shrooms to this last night. Wild stuff. –Zakusz

27. Vampire Weekend – Only God Was Above Us

[Bandcamp] // [Spotify]

Love it or leave it, privilege runs through Vampire Weekend’s blood. The indie darlings formed at an Ivy League school, parlayed connections to hipster stardom, and took advantage of that quick rise to dig around the institutional upper hands that ushered them upward. Their commentary wasn’t always criticism though, and even as frontman Ezra Koenig dissected the pretentious veneer of opulence associated with coastal elite old money, enjoying the fruits of that easy labor made the band a harder sell to shrewder minds. Once upon a time, I was one such snob — full disclosure: my experience with their discography is limited at best — but Only God Was Above Us has made me reevaluate my prior disinterest.

It helps that the album clarifies some of the tension between the band’s origins and their stated hang-ups, but the real draw is that eleven years removed from their last universally-acclaimed effort, Koenig and co.’s personal experimentation coalesces with their highly referential catalogue in ways that no longer overshadow how sharp their songwriting can get when pushed beyond plastic platitudes. Though the group has since relocated to Los Angeles, the austere architecture and orderly chaos of their former home, New York City, permeate every inch of Only God through bizarre tonalities. Guitars screech like grinding subway car brakes. The melodies — at times jaunty, others downcast — adopt an air of regal elegance even as their jazzy and jangly proportions get mutilated by funhouse mirrors.

Koenig stands guard as the album’s approachable voice of reason, cleverly ruminating on classism and the passing of time like any museum docent with a healthy degree of detachment would while illuminating his tour group on the dead golden age from which they came. Only God Was Above Us doesn’t get its free pass simply for arriving at poetic conclusions after a life spent analyzing the riches and rot of lauded halls — Vampire Weekend earns one by bankrolling a literate, multifaceted, and audacious brand of lounge pop that feels as assured of itself as it does unsettled by its carnivalesque conclusions. –ashcrash9

26. JPEGMAFIA – I Lay Down My Life for You

[Bandcamp] // [Spotify]

AOTY contender for me. So much creativity and energy. I like this way better than Scaring The Hoes, which was already a great album. –brandaao

Serious AOTY contender for me. I honestly think at this point Peggy should be in the GOAT conversation as a producer. Dude is fuckin wild behind the boards and he’s got bars. “I Recovered from This” hit me a lot harder than I ever expected a Peggy song to. –Wildcardbitchesss

25. Frail Body – Artificial Bouquet

[Bandcamp] // [Spotify]

In a year of highs Skramz might not match again, Frail Body stand right near the top with their caustic barnburner sophomore LP Artificial Bouquet. I certainly bought into the brief hype train this album inspired, not only for its infectious energy, but also because of its stunning musicianship and cohesive, confident identity. Like all great bands, Frail Body are a threepiece who make more noise than any group with more members ever could. No one vies for the spotlight, yet each member brings a standout performance worth honing in on, every piece working in perfect synchronicity with the others: Nic Kuczynski’s hefty bass drives each song forward like a whip and Nicholas Clemenson’s spectacular drumming stands out in a year of drumming masterclasses, while guitarist Lowell Shaffer leads the group confidently with his anguished, throat-shredding shrieks providing Artificial Bouquet an emotional center that sticks with the listener well after “A Capsule in Sediment” has faded away. While ultimately not quite the revelation to pierce State Faults’ long shadow and claim the coveted “Skramz-album-to-cry-to of 2024” award, Artificial Bouquet is as excellent a Skramz release as any band could hope to put out and still well worth your time.  –FowlKrietzsche

24. Alcest – Les Chants de l’Aurore

[Bandcamp] // [Spotify]

Fantasy and metal’s past walk hand in hand: from Black Sabbath’s metaphors of black masses to power metal’s medieval aesthetics, the genre’s ugliness often begets a fascination with realms beyond our own. Alcest’s chief songwriter, Neige, once used a blueprint of black metal and shoegaze to artistically recreate the emotions of otherworldly visions he’d experienced as a child. In turn, he essentially became the earliest progenitor of “blackgaze,” a musical movement dedicated to intertwining the former genre’s tormented clamor and the latter’s textural intrepidity. The recipe has legs, enough so that it doesn’t suffice anymore to simply smash blackgaze’s two roots into one another and call it a day. Alcest’s last project, 2019’s Spiritual Instinct, was steady as ever, but only registered as another drop in the ocean, competing with too many artists who were getting more inventive mileage out of the band’s chief innovation.

Les Chants de l’Aurore backtracks to its benefit, revisiting the melodic catharsis of 2016’s Kodama and the metal-stripped dreaminess of 2014’s Shelter to create a hybrid within a hybrid. The new record is refreshed from a dewy morning glow, raised aloft by scores of angelic background vocals, hypnotic lead passages, and a seemingly bottomless helping of codas, circling back around for another ceremonial triumph right when you think each song is beginning to wind to a close. On one hand, you could argue the approach is stretched a tad thin, and I wouldn’t contest that. On the other, good Lord, it’s all so gorgeous.

Save for the stray harsh vocal and blast beat, Alcest’s metallic DNA only lurks in Les Chants de l’Aurore‘s shadows, inching closer and closer to extinction as the tunes become engulfed in light. The fantasy is still there: it’s just sublime, the “Hurrah! We have slain thee ill visions!” after the fabled doom and gloom. Coming from a longtime casual fan, this isn’t necessarily Alcest’s most pivotal work, but it may go down as the project’s best entry point for those willing to dip their toes into blackgaze’s marsh. In either case, it’s downright lovely to hear the band reclaim some jurisdiction over a sound from the great beyond that not too long ago seemed eager to outrun their capacity to daydream. –ashcrash9

23. Adrianne Lenker – Bright Future

[Bandcamp] // [Spotify]

For me, the best songwriter record since Carrie & Lowell. Its charm and simplicity reminds me of my all-time favorite songwriter record (Kristofer Astrom’s Loupita) crossed with the rawness of Bright Eyes’ Lifted… and the honesty of Elliott Smith. –FunJan

“Vampire Empire” punches me in the gut every listen and I love it. –AmericanFlagAsh

22. Crippling Alcoholism – With Love from a Padded Room

[Bandcamp] // [Spotify]

Is there a better band for the chronically online forum poster who has sex twice a year and sweats in weird places? Obviously noise rock is the premier musical genre for such modern goblins, but rarely has the relationship between the productive and sublimating valences of the basement dweller felt so visceral, so filthy, or so fucking good. With Love From a Padded Room drips grease, lurches sultry and cloying, and takes sick pleasure in subjecting you to every vicarious second of its monstrous, lascivious runtime. In fact, they want to watch. ; ) –FowlKrietzsche

21. Nala Sinephro – Endlessness

[Bandcamp] // [Spotify]

Few can achieve this level of payoff on a nearly ambient jazz project like Nala Sinephro. What an absolutely astounding and gorgeous work. –someone

A pretty reverie that flows between jazz and (forgive me for the term) electronica with spurts of ambient, piano that occasionally veers Ghibli-esque, and even harp apparently, to create quite a unique, dreamy and introspective experience that evokes the artwork to Coltrane’s First Meditations (For Quartet) to me. The music remains lovely and keeps me hooked; the piano finale on “Continuum 10” is short-lived but gorgeous. A strong album that I probably will jam again when I want to relax and daydream but don’t want to commit to a single genre. –Bedex

20. Defeated Sanity – Chronicles of Lunacy

[Bandcamp] // [Spotify]

Insane album. This is the pinnacle of this kind of music: the perfect synthesis of technical skill, artistic vision and barbaric slam riffs. –Dizchu

GOAT band doing GOAT shit. –grandfather

19. Convulsing – Perdurance

[Bandcamp] // [Facebook]

Ulcerate is great and all, but this is the first dissodeath album that appeals to me as a whole and not as an esoteric niche that I’m only rarely in the mood for. The musicality here is next level. An avalanche of riffs to the fucking skull is about right. –Comatorium.

The high average for this isn’t lying. This is really something, might be even better than Grievous. –Elynna

18. SUMAC – The Healer

[Bandcamp] // [Spotify]

Some of their most pummeling riffs since What One Becomes on this one; it’ll still filter folks who didn’t enjoy the improv on the last two though (a positive). The closer might be the best song they’ve ever written. –ZucchiniSurprise

This might be the best thing that Aaron Turner has ever done. –PrPillMNTNz

17. Job For A Cowboy – Moon Healer

[Bandcamp] // [Spotify]

Job for a Cowboy’s evolution has been like watching the flourishing of a vibrant flower from a bed of rotten carrion. To say that deathcore is dredged in mediocrity (moreso now than ever with everyone and their dog soiling their camo shorts over the new freaky animal noise) is not much of an overstatement, and so to escape those oppressive clutches is only the beginning of a great tunnel to light, one that brightly brimmed on Sun Eater. Jazzy winding guitar leads and whimsical bass lines weave in and out of each other, but the mastery of their new-found propensity for bouncy quasi-psychedelic tech death had yet to come into light. By god, how thou has sprinted forth from the shadow of true greatness into the stars in which it was forged. “Beyond the Chemical Doorway” is steeped in hypnosis while being equally so emboldened by chaos, thanks in no small part due to guitar work that joins fleeting arpeggios and choppy, almost dissonant chords together in a way that should shed all rhyme and reason, and yet it simply does not. Perhaps an understated aspect of how these gears turn so manically, yet fluidly is the vocal cadence, with Jonny Davy showcasing that even the snarliest of death growls can contain variance and flair — not through a variation in tone, but in enunciation/pronunciation. Perhaps it could be called a guttural drawl, but it would be a disservice to the pleasant oddity Davy presents on this record to fit his voice into any sort of box (OK, he sounds like filthier Atheist — take it or leave it!!). JFAC are now progenitors of their own sound, being the most exciting and refreshingly fun thing to emerge from modern tech death, and that makes me a very, very happy boy. The tl;dr: jam “The Agony Seeping Storm” and let the combustion of a cornucopia of stars be your only warmth as you are voraciously devoured by the great gravity well it conjures. –Dedes

16. Fontaines D.C. – Romance

[Bandcamp] // [Spotify]

Romance is a return to form for the Irish alt/punk rock fashionistas and their best release since their first LP Dogrel. After a slow intro, the songs pick up the energy and deliver without many misses in the track list. “Starburster”, “In the Modern World”, “Here’s the Thing” and “Death Kink” are the highlight tracks for me giving a mix of more upbeat catchy rock tunes and more emotional downbeat songs. The album finishes with “Favourite”, which is one of the group’s best songs to date; the transition from the last chorus to the last verse through the end of the song is sublime. One of the more exciting alt releases in a while. –cjbizzlebizzle

Just came back to this after a 3-week break and have to bump the score; the songs that felt like acquaintances three weeks ago feel like new old friends now (if that makes sense). It’s definitely a grower. Each time I come back to it, it impresses me all over again. Top 5 of the year for sure. –markjamie

15. Godspeed You! Black Emperor – No Title as of 13 Feb 2024 28,340 Dead

[Bandcamp] // [Spotify]

That was February. This is now: even conservative estimates suggest at least 45,000 people have been killed since Hamas’ October 7th, 2023 attack on Israel and the country’s subsequent slaughter. Over 95% of the dead were of Palestinian ancestry. At least 60% of those were women or children. Hundreds of humanitarian workers and journalists dispatched from around the globe have also perished on duty while covering the crisis or delivering basic aid. Israel’s “anti-terror” campaign has been classified as genocidal by basically every authority without a financial stake in its arms supply. This mess didn’t begin fifteen months ago, but the crux is this: an apartheid state is either admissible or it isn’t. Ethnic cleansing is either admissible or it isn’t. Clinging to the last dregs of colonial doctrine is either admissible or it isn’t. As I write this, my government — the world’s most omnipotent one — has determined it is, so long as the perpetrators are “our guys.”

Same as it ever was. Godspeed You! Black Emperor have propagated this warning their entire career, and they have ways of drilling the needle in. On turn-of-century classics F#A# ∞ and Lift Your Skinny Fists Like Antennas to Heaven, the post-rock ensemble painted the modern Western world in dystopian shades, reveling in the apocalyptic aftermath of capitalism’s divined downfall. While their rhetoric has proven righteous, their post-hiatus vision had largely usurped the oomph of their songwriting. It was time for all the fire and brimstone to yield a reckoning, and while — like Godspeed’s prior work — this album’s anarchist ethos remains mostly instrumental in nature, No Title…‘s non-name challenges you to not ignore the crisis that birthed it. Spin it with the deceased in mind, and it’s the band’s most emotional material since their golden period; its six gapless movements swell and shrivel with renewed intensity and minimal downtime, milking contrast between hopelessness and uplift not from some hypothetical doomsday scenario, but from a massacre already manifest on Earth, unfolding with each passing day.

Crucially, averse to the instant gratification of our times, it doesn’t offer a solution, either: its classical orchestrations and crescendoing guitar melodies weep and sigh as only an oppressed lament can, frustrated on a scale beyond words, beyond fear, and beyond treaty. If the triumphant closer “Grey Rubble – Green Shoots” suggests anything, it’s only that the natural world knows no other way than to keep on spinning; whether anyone gets to inhabit it is up to us. Godspeed’s wake-up call has sounded darker, lighter, and more impressionistic before, but it has never once been inextricable from an event this real. Superseding the notion of virtue-signaling hot air, No Title… is the dire soundtrack to that existential, ethical impasse we keep kicking down the road, eyes closed as the death toll climbs. –ashcrash9

14. Knocked Loose – You Won’t Go Before You’re Supposed To

[Bandcamp] // [Spotify]

Knocked Loose are fine diners in the realm of DJUN and have decided the banquet courses shant ever be altered, only improved. To savor the flavor of meaty riffs and feral wails is key, and to look for any dynamic in this aspect is all advised (not to say KL don’t whip out an almost cathartic surprise with “Sit and Mourn”, but that is a topic for later). It’s the pushing of envelopes that have been pushed perhaps too much by inadequate envelope pushers, pushed instead by those who decided they’d rather plow the whole fucking post office with a bulldozer. Yeah, they get heavy. “Thirst” is actually the first proper jumpscare I’ve had from hardcore in maybe a few years, swarming in like the buzzing of a mile of locusts feasting on flesh, sinew, and bone. Bryan Garris sounds discernibly pissed as usual, but only a touch more so than his Laugh Tracks days. I’d actually argue the use of interjecting both space and ambiance serves as a foundation to these moments in amplifying that image of intensity, with the opening cries of “I DREAM OF A CLEANSING WAVE” off of “Don’t Reach For Me” having the impact of a bona fide meteor shower. On that same track, we are introduced to the freakish beastly alien garbling whatever-the-fuck-it-is that Isaac  Hale whips out as an EXTREMELY welcome counterpart to Bryan’s more, uh, discernible disparaged wails. In addition to this, there is the even more immediately recognizable evolution of their career into progressively more downtuned hammer-over-the-head chugs that are heavy enough to feel like a tangible weight rather than anything resembling a soundwave.

Normally I’d argue this as a detractor, and yet the sheer fullness in which Knocked Loose actually manage to accomplish with this sledgehammer of noise goes too hard to ignore (you try ignoring your ribcage being splintered into a million shards like it were a bundle of toothpicks!). All this means that when “Sit and Mourn” arrives, it feels surreal — the melody and calm, for as disquieting and unnerving as it may be, illustrate how KL manage some new variations, and sweet Jesus it works. The hammer still comes down, and a veil of ethereal beauty precedes it. Thank you, Jimmy Kimmel, for supporting the underground — now here’s to the Jimmy Kimmel Ulcerate episode. –Dedes

13. Poppy – Negative Spaces

[Bandcamp] // [Spotify]

To anyone who hasn’t followed Poppy for years, her whole shtick might reek of artificiality. It’d be easy (and not entirely inaccurate) to parrot such a claim, as she rose to prominence through viral satire and piggybacked that success into a music career. Once she’d ousted her manipulative business partner in 2019, metal influences melded into her bubblegum pop arsenal; whereas 2020’s I Disagree beckoned for listeners to gape at the contrast of ditsy hooks and brutal breakdowns, Negative Spaces merges metal’s angst with pop’s stone-cold determination and doesn’t lean on that album’s gimmicky contrast. The disparate influences are no longer playfully at odds with one another, but thematically aligned to flesh out Poppy’s lingering distaste for emotional exploitation.

As such, it’s also framed like “the one where Poppy lets her guard down and gets real with us,” but the truth of that sentiment isn’t as important as the fact that Poppy inhabiting a persona no longer matters — her current musical actions don’t hinge on how much you buy into her act as performance art. She’s also not “acting” in the physical sense; her range of sparkling clean vocals and scathing harsh ones rarely percolates the squeaky, uncanny mask she was once synonymous with.

 Her new creative collaborator, ex-Bring Me The Horizon producer Jordan Fish, is a no-brainer complement to this reclaimed, post-nu metal grit.

12. Magdalena Bay – Imaginal Disk

[Bandcamp] // [Spotify]

Absolute no-skip album. I know this album is a little more “chill” than their debut, but it has no real downsides, probably about 4-5 songs that are SOTY candidates, and it flows like a damn dream. –JoyfulPlatypus

“That’s My Floor” more like “That’s My Jam” haha yes –MoF

11. Beth Gibbons – Lives Outgrown

[Official Site] // [Spotify]

This is exactly what you’d expect from a Beth Gibbons release: vocals saturated with vulnerability over lush, engulfing instrumentation that finds just the right ways to be artistically daring. This’ll scratch that itch if you’ve been waiting for new Portishead for the past 16 years. –LikeWindOnANipple

Nice to see she has cheered up a bit over the years. Absolutely amazing album. It just hits. “Oceans” is one of the best songs Beth has ever crooned. She has always had one of those voices that resonates, but couple it with the instrumentation on this thing and it is impeccable. –zakalwe

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