Best of 2024

 1) Blood Incantation - Absolute Elsewhere

I often think about what artistic expression would look like if artists didn't have to worry about paying bills, if they could devote every ounce of their attention to their vision regardless of whether or not that vision is economically viable, marketable, readily consumable by the masses.

I think about this because even in a world where people are forced to whore themselves to powers outside of their control there are clear examples where artists do it anyway, devote years to a project with no potential ROI in mind. But, how can you identify when this happens, what are the hallmarks of a complete un-fucked-with by the producers vision. This question has been rattling around my head all week when thinking about what to write here.

The best answer I can come up with is when the artist goes well outside of their skillset to complete the vision. It's so complete in their minds that it transcends the limits of the artist, it takes shape in unexpected ways, ways the artist has no choice but to flesh out conceptually and make their best effort to execute. The vision becomes obsession that needs to "finished."

Absolute Elsewhere has this quality. Before this record I viewed Blood Incantation as dabbling, experimenting, playing, making the connections necessary for the vision to begin taking shape. As it became more concrete they took their ideas to Hansa Tonstudios in Berlin, a place haunted by the presence of past projects by Bowie and Nick Cave. There they collaborated with musical giants well outside of death metal because they knew this wasn't just a cosmic death metal album. It was something more. They documented this recording process to invite prospective audiences in, to give them a taste of how captured they were.

It didn't stop there. Then they created a 20 minute long short film to visually represent the first half of the record. And this isn't just a little home movie, it is a deeply creative, occasionally silly, existential journey through what they term The Stargate.

It's this sort of complete vision I'm always hunting for, transcending style, transcending medium, transcending expectation.

Best of 2024

 2) ERRA - Cure

Most of my list year to year is composed of very challenging music. This is because I like to be challenged. I love when someone is able to challenge me on my beliefs. I love eating challenging food, seeing challenging films. Complex systems no matter where they exist give me a thrill and all I want to do is start dissecting them for analysis before moving on to the next complex system.

Yet, this is the album I've spent the most time with this year. It is not challenging, it is not complex, there's no jazz here, no classical counterpoint, the lyrics don't challenge my beliefs, I can readily recommend this album to the musical layman without prior knowledge of the complexities of heavy metal.

The term guilty pleasure has fallen out of fashion because people are trying so desperately hard to love themselves, and love what they like without worrying about the judgment of others. I can't be bothered by other people's perception of me, yet I do still like to identify certain tastes as guilty. Some music is simply a sweet treat for my gluttonous limbic system, a naughty indulgence.

This has been the album I put on when I'm working out, when I'm drinking alone, when my brain is exhausted from work. It has been the ultimate comfort zone this year, my security blanket, my warm wood fire cabin deep in the woods where I can go and feel my feels without tapping into the deeper complexities of my existentialism.

This is a collection of metal-core bangers, radio singles, 4 minute perfectly composed, perfectly satisfying tracks. Some of the tracks are so saccharine and sticky sweet they are barely tolerable to my x-rated psyche, but god damn do they feel good, especially at ragingly damaging levels of volume.

This is my guilty pleasure record of 2024, my dirty secret, my dumb monkey brain's happy place.

Best of 2024

 3) Ulcerate - Cutting the Throat of God

Ulcerate isn't cosmic death metal. Over the years of featuring them on my lists I don't think I've ever figured out exactly what they are. To me they provoke a feeling of witnessing something ancient, something ritualistic, something biblical, like a plague or culture defined by human sacrifice. 

On their previous record Stare into Death and Be Still I really felt like that was what I was doing while listening. Beneath the cacophony there was an unmistakable dark chasm of emptiness. I felt it trying to pull me in and consume me.

Upon hearing the name of this record I knew what I was going to get before the first spin. I knew I would be getting a much more violent record. Gone is the feeling of emptiness, replaced by a feeling of fury through apostasy. Every detail in this record bleeds of this imagery, from the engineering of the sounds themselves, sharper and more exacting, to the sustained tension one feels when witnessing a horrible disaster. Spinning this I occasionally feel overwhelmed, as if the violence is directed toward me the listener, but white knuckling through this record is a deeply rewarding experience.

Ulcerate have been at the top of their game for some time now and there's no signs of age, no indication of decline. I don't know what the next record is going to make me feel but I know it'll be something I've never felt before. 

Best of 2024

 4) Bedsore - Dreaming the Strife for Love

A bedsore is something you get due to inactivity, something you get when you're dying slowly in a hospital bed on rough, rigid sheets. I can't think of a less appropriate band name for this group of young men. They are obviously on a feverishly restless journey of discovery for what might be their ultimate vision of music and they've written my THIRD cosmic death metal album this year.

If I were to describe this album in the meanest way possible I would say, "this is what Opeth have been trying to accomplish in their late career but can never quite execute." There are heavy influences of the 70's progressive rock Opeth loves so much providing funky synth passages, but also plenty of jazz elements as well. This weird tapestry of influences is woven together in surprisingly cohesive tracks which occasionally wander but always deliver a cathartic climax. This is the element missing from the last few Opeth releases, the PURPOSE of the song.

But in saying that I think it's also hopeless for me to recommend an album like this unless you're specifically the guy or gal who's been disappointed by later Opeth. Death metal fans are largely going to see this as a snoozefest and progressive fans are going to wonder why they scream and wail over their moogs instead of doing jazz standards. But, how often do I have to say it. When a band breaks the rules, they're invited to my list. I can't count the number of rules broken on this record, all while creating a paradoxical nostalgia that feels like home to me. 

Best of 2024

 5) The Vision Bleak - Weird Tales

On first spin of Weird Tales all I could hear were egregious missteps in composition, tracks that seemed incomplete, but in the search for my favorite doom album this year I kept returning to this for seconds, thirds, and after a couple months, it wound up becoming my inexplicable sleeper album of the year.

The songs are so disappointing at first, sometimes arriving at their chorus too early, sometimes never at all, some tracks don't even have a chorus instead relying on a single quiet acoustic interlude verse without repetition. After a while the expectations I was projecting on this album started to fade and I started seeing beyond the abrupt starts and stops of the arbitrary track delimiters. This is an album that's meant to be consumed from start to finish and picking a "favorite track" or radio single would be an entirely fruitless effort.

Given this reorientation, Weird Tales is a deeply mature collection of doom metal ideas entirely eschewing the traditional LP format in favor of a unique narrative journey. Think of this as an artfully cropped novella, a picture book even, trimmed of all fat, showcasing the purity of its images and atmospheres. The ability to make a musical idea feel like home, to make it feel comforting and familiar in this context is exactly the sort of skill that lands you in the top 5 of my list. Well done indeed.