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.

Best of 2024

 6) BIG | BRAVE - A Chaos of Flowers

As Donald signs executive orders demonizing and effectively outlawing the DEI movement, I've been reflecting on what DEI means to me and since the theme of this year is to talk less about music and more about my meaningless musings, here are my thoughts.

I've never chosen a metal band for my list simply because it was a female led project. Never consciously that is. I think music should be judged on merit alone and I simply don't give a shit about how societal movements see music or any artful expression for that matter. When Tipper Gore took on heavy metal, she thought it was evil and destructive, but what she was doing was evil and destructive. Any movement that attempts to artificially promote or obstruct art because of some subjective virtue is likely to end up harming society in some measurable way. The zeitgeist and time decides what is good and no arbitrary group has any right to tell the zeitgeist what it should favor.

This is easy to say about art in a vacuum, but the thing that makes it instantly complicated is money. If you see that some industry is dominated by white men and that industry is making boatloads of money, it seems obviously unfair that women or any other segment of society who isn't white and male don't get a piece of the pie. When it comes to heavy metal, no one cares about this because there simply is no money. Underground metal is only pursued because it is a personal passion and most of the involved musicians have day jobs. That's why it's so easy for me to say DEI is dogshit in respect to true art.

But, when men and women need to pay the same amount in rent, it becomes obviously unfair that men get jobs easier, get paid more, and have greater upward mobility.

And the whole, "companies must maximize merit" argument when applied to getting jobs is dogshit because of how the job market works. It just doesn't matter if the white male has an extra certification, or an extra 6 months, or happened to be slightly more charismatic in an interview. MOST jobs are completely arbitrary, can be learned in a short amount of time, and the people occupying those jobs are largely interchangeable. There's NO way to tell if a person is a good fit for a job until they succeed or fail, and any post hoc rationalization for a failure is going to be bullshit.

DEI was designed to confront this by making sure hiring practices are more fair. My employer at one time held quarterly reviews of how many women and people of color were hired over the past 3 months and celebrated when those numbers were high. Did that make me feel undesirable as an employee? Yes, but I'm paying for the sins of my brethren and didn't take it personally.

Many did take it personally, many who hold positions of power, and because of their insecurity, DEI is being systematically dismantled. This experiment failed.

So what's the next experiment going to look like? Or will it be back to the boys club? I'm honestly not sure. If I were in charge I would do something dumb like keep a registry of all parents who recently had a little girl and send them free copies of A Brief History of Time (for physics), How to Win Friends and Influence People (to understand how white men fuck other people into submission), and The Origin of Species (for biology). STEM and knowing how people fuck each other are essential for all children actually and a broader mandate including boys would probably just fix society generally speaking.

What I'm actually going to do is sit back and watch the zeitgeist swing its scythe. BIG | BRAVE might be spinning as failed progressive programs bleed out. They've created a remarkable record here, including truly original guitar arrangement and tone which builds an overall haunting and witchy atmosphere I hope they continue to develop.

Best of 2024

 7) Wormed - Omegon

Cosmic death metal album #2. Wormed are actually one of the OG cosmic death metal examples. And they happen to be one of the extreme metal bands that firmed up my passions when I was still young and malleable. I remember spinning them at the same time as Myrkskog, Zyklon, and Cryptopsy trying to decide which was most extreme. And, after 8 years of silence Wormed comes back with this, a polished, modern-sounding, expertly produced, punishingly brutal, cosmic death metal record.

Do I wish they produced more? Yep. I also admire the damn miracle it is to come off of a near decade hiatus with this caliber of record. I'm not the only one singing praises. Lots of lists I poked through mentioned this and for me, it was between this and Defeated Sanity, which was also on a lot of lists. But, because I am who I am, the nerdy sci-fi shit was enough to edge out that record. (Not to mention Defeated Sanity leaned way too far into the comically bad snare drum sound so commonly featured in brutal death metal, (you didn't hear it from me)).

Best of 2024

 8) Verberis - The Apophatic Wilderness

Hey, you all know Ulcerate came out with an album this year, it's in here, surprise spoiled. But, did you know Ulcerate's drummer Jamie Saint Merat is in another band that also had a release this year?! You would know if you read my list from years past because this isn't their first appearance.

Verberis plays progressive black metal strongly influenced by Deathspell Omega. Deathspell Omega has historically been accused of using a drum machine, but denied this in an obscure interview no one's ever read. Listening to Deathspell you'd understand where the speculation comes from, the drumming on on their albums seems superhuman. I would bet there's some production magic happening on those early albums, but I would fall short of accusation of it being faked with technology.

This being said, any band that chooses to take influence from Deathspell Omega is taking on a very specific burden. The percussion needs to feel like it's produced by an unhinged savant. In saying that you might be worried JSM might steal the show, but just like in Deathspell, the percussion is simply there to provide momentum to the compositions of existential hell. When he needs to be, JSM is a modest drummer, articulate, exacting, but ultimately in service to the music.

This is a "sit down and take it in" kind of album. It requires patience and attention. Given that, it's particularly interesting that it contains my favorite guitar solo of the year. It's at the 6 minute mark of the final track. Enjoy.

Best of 2024

 9) Siderean - Spilling the Astral Chalice

Remember last year, when I said Afterbirth was a flash in the pan, that no one else would be taking brutal death metal into the astral plane anytime soon, and I shouldn't get my hopes overinflated that death metal would transcend from pure violence?

It's happening, it's fucking happening right now. What we're witnessing is nothing short of a renaissance. The cause for this new direction could be argued. I have a feeling it has to do with a sort of pendulum swing. Death metal for a very long time has been about brutal violence, torture, rape, but it wasn't always like that. Death metal's beginning was characterized by bands seeking meaning. Death, Gorguts, Cynic. These bands took something that was relatively new and swung for the fences with existentialism. Then bands like Cannibal Corpse, Dying Fetus, Aborted, etc brought the genre into a much easier place of endless brutal gore. All you have to do to write violent death metal is to open any anatomy book and channel your inner abused child, let them free to run wild with abandon, let them dissect, bleed, and meat hook mount the women who rejected them, the parents who didn't understand them. This, while cathartic to some extent, is very childish and gets old very quickly.

So what are extremely intelligent post-modern death metal musicians expected to do in a space characterized by brutality? Transcend, reflect on what Chuck, Luc, and Paul were trying to accomplish in the 90s, reflect on what it means to truly break free from a society attempting to impose conformity onto every system it encounters.

I termed Afterbirth as Psychedelic Brutal Death Metal last year, but I want to take a step back and reassess (since I'm a genre whore) and begin using a different term that allows more bands into this merry troupe of miscreants: Cosmic Death Metal. The genre is characterized by brutal dissonance, by creativity, by transcendence beyond the earthly plane. I'm expecting many more to join the ranks over the next few years and I'm here for it.

In explaining this I haven't said a damn word about this particular album and I'm not going to correct that now. Just go listen to it if you give a damn about music.

Best of 2024

 10) Pijn - From Low Beams of Hope

This was my little secret of the year. It will not appear on any other lists unlike the rest of my picks. It's a modest little post-rock album, the best post-rock album of the year.

I was one of the misguided youths who got way too into Godspeed You Black Emperor and Explosions in the Sky in my 20s. Since then I've followed the zeitgeist and moved away from post-rock as a genre. There just isn't much interesting activity happening in this space. New bands are largely local acts retreading familiar ideas that have a hard time breaking through.

I'm not sure what it was about the 90's and 00's that created an environment where post-rock was allowed to gain popularity in the first place. The genre is missing the primary element that makes a band compelling, a charismatic leading presence. The genre instead relies on a continuous interplay of musical elements. The selling point is in dynamics. The best albums of the genre find a way to marry quiet moments with big cathartic crescendos in long-form compositions. But, I get the feeling it's incredibly difficult to strike gold with this formula because it happens so seldom.

Pijn reset my expectations for post-rock this year. I doubt it'll reinvigorate the genre, but I have been doing my best to spread the word.

Best of 2024

In the year 2024 I met a grown man who believed in astrology. I was talking to him at a bar and he was trying to sell it to me. "Oh everyone thinks star sign is the end all be all, but it's your moon sign bro, you should let me do your chart."

This one conversation had a fairly profound effect on my year overall because it made me realize everyone is operating in a space of self-delusion and in fact it is these completely untenable beliefs that bring people together, that form the basis of friendships, that bring people happiness and meaning.

It was because of this conversation and similar interactions that I experimented with my own delusion this year. I did the Gateway Experience. For those who aren't aware it was a meditation program developed in the 70s to enable people to remote view or remove their mind from their body and see things completely external. Think intelligence gathering through meditation. I never saw anything I could reasonably say was an actual event occurring, but it did have some benefit. While going through the program I was busy constructing an alternate reality. I can at this point disconnect my awareness of my physical body, go to the place I constructed, and exist there for as long as I choose to.

Nothing supernatural or extra-sensory is going on, however it does imply something about an ability of the human mind: People are living in their own subjective reality whether they're aware of it or not. There is no objective reality and anyone who tries to explain that there is objectivity to existence is ousted from every social group they encounter. I know from experience.

The belief system held by individuals is completely arbitrary depending on their location, upbringing, community, etc. Oftentimes this belief system is intensely influenced by corporations who co-opt the zeitgeist for their own ends. After having a long conversation with a female where she explained that makeup is bad for skin and how women shouldn't be taken in by large companies who don't care about women at all, I witnessed their bathroom countertop with about $1000 of "natural" lotions, potions, pigments, and tools from corporations. Everyone does this in some form or another.

I think very few people choose the reality in which they live. Most are simply living in the one their subconscious has constructed over the years of their existence. Even if someone put in a lot of effort constructing their reality purposefully, that reality wouldn't be nearly as complete or comforting to live in than the complex clockworks of an assumed reality.

I've tried really hard this year to allow this realization to soften my outlook on life. When I encounter grown adults who believe in astrology I try not to hate them by default even though the impulse to do so is strong. When I encounter grown adults who choose this corporation's useless products over that corporation's useless products because of their B Corp status I try not to roll my eyes.

The placebo effect works. Belief in the untenable provides meaning. Questioning people's beliefs results in loneliness. I learned these things too late. This wasn't a great year for metal, but I told people it was because I wanted it to be my reality. I'm not sure how successful I was in self-delusion, but it was an attempt, and... with no further delay, here is my best music of 2024 list.