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https://www.europesays.com/uk/557496/ Mrs. Frighthouse – Solitude Over Control Review #2.5 #2025 #CouchSlut #Drone #Entertainment #industrial #JulieChristmas #Khanate #LaTortureDesTénèbres #LäjäÄijälä&AlbertWitchfinder #LinguaIgnota #Mrs.Frighthouse #music #noise #Oscillotron #Review #Reviews #ScottishMetal #SelfRelease #Sep25 #SolitudeOverControl #Theatruum #UK #Ulveblod #UnitedKingdom

Mrs. Frighthouse – Solitude Over Control Review

By Dear Hollow

How much noise is too much? I used to believe you could never have too much noise, with bands like Theatruum and La Torture des Ténèbres weaponizing it for respectively vicious and otherworldly approaches. Then bands like Ulveblod and the infamous Ordeal & Triumph collaboration happened – and I lost my naivety. Ultimately, as we will see with duo Mrs. Frighthouse, diving into the noise genre offers a low ceiling and an equally low floor. Some of the worst music I’ve reviewed has had the “noise” tag attached to it, while some of the most okayest music I’ve reviewed also has noise attached to it – previously mentioned acts being controversial exceptions. It’s either the worst thing you’ve heard or okay. Mrs. Frighthouse is a light, er, fright in a sea of noise – for better or worse.

Glasgow-based Mrs. Frighthouse consists of wife and wife duo Carys and Luna Frighthouse, known as Mrs. and Mrs. on stage. Featuring an unflinching lyrical attack on misogyny, homophobia, and transphobia, and a musical approach as venomous, it recalls the likes of early Lingua Ignota, Couch Slut, and Julie Christmas. What hooked me was its mastering by Khanate bassist James Plotkin – anything that reminds of the menacing crawl that the drone legends conjure was a perk. However, like any noise album that focuses on ugliness and discordance, the audience is limited, the replay value is near null, and its strengths are a novelty in many ways. Featuring manic vocals both harsh and operatic to contrast with the suffocating noise, Mrs. Frighthouse wins points for charisma, but Solitude Over Control is still very much a noise album.

To my relief, Mrs. Frighthouse utilizes opaqueness and density to its benefit, avoiding the painful awkwardness of Läjä Äijälä & Albert Witchfinder’s trainwreck of a collaboration. Plotkin’s services are put to good use, as the backbone of sound is suffocating and all-encompassing in a way that recalls drone’s colossal density, an expanse of ominous tones upon which Mrs. and Mrs. traverse with their vocal journeys. Throw in some haunting ritualistic drumming patterns and minor organ trills, Mrs. Frighthouse crafts horrific soundscapes using an expert blend of clarity, melody, and discordance to match their surprisingly dynamic foray into noise. This is no Oscillotron – Mrs. Frighthouse knows how to write songs. While at first glance the sea of noise is a constant hum, those willing to delve beneath the surface will find smart songwriting aplenty.

The contrast between clarity and density is a clear priority in Solitude Over Control – which ends up being its most controversial element. From the aggressive industrial pulse paired with thick waves of noise easy to get lost in (“DIY Exorcism,” “White Plaster Rooms”) to more subtle crawling pieces with screeching soprano trills that feel strangely confrontational (“Seagulls” part 1 and 2, “Let My Spit Be Poison”), while creeping melodic motifs are warped and bastardized by the static (“Our Culture Without Autonomy,” “My Body is a Crime Scene”), Mrs. Frighthouse is a tour-de-force of metallic aggression without a riff in sight. Solitude Over Control wears its themes on its sleeves in sometimes awkward forthrightness, as both Mrs.’s spew vitriol over the misogyny, homophobia, and transphobia witnessed and experienced, matching the aggression and viciousness of the music. The closing title track is worthy of mention, because its slow-burning crescendo is a maddening and horrifying end to a maddening and horrifying album – a nerve-frying culmination of Mrs. Frighthouse’s best and worst.

Almost everything about Solitude Over Control feels intentional, but holy shit, is it unflinching and uncomfortable. Mrs. Frighthouse’s two vocals are insanely charismatic in their blend of shrieks, growls, operatic belts, whispers, and shouts, propelling the movement of the noise as it emerges and disappears in the sea of noise. Plotkin’s mastering adds a suffocating and claustrophobic quality that adds to the menace and aggression. Some tracks you’ll find yourself getting lost in the swaths of noise and industrial harshness, others you’ll find yourself blushing in the awkward stark clarity of the vocals. Mrs. Frighthouse offers a better noise album than most and is closer to the ceiling, but due to the divisiveness of the style and the starkness of some of the minimalist pieces, the reception will be mixed. Noise fans rejoice, all others steer clear.

Rating: 2.5/5.0
DR: 8 | Format Reviewed: PCM
Label: Self-Release
Websites: mrsfrighthouse.bandcamp.com | facebook.com/mrsfrighthouse
Releases Worldwide: September 26th, 2025

#25 #2025 #CouchSlut #Drone #Industrial #JulieChristmas #Khanate #LaTortureDesTénèbres #LäjäÄijäläAlbertWitchfinder #LinguaIgnota #MrsFrighthouse #Noise #Oscillotron #Review #Reviews #ScottishMetal #SelfRelease #Sep25 #SolitudeOverControl #Theatruum #Ulveblod

Mrs. Frighthouse – Solitude Over Control Review

By Dear Hollow

How much noise is too much? I used to believe you could never have too much noise, with bands like Theatruum and La Torture des Ténèbres weaponizing it for respectively vicious and otherworldly approaches. Then bands like Ulveblod and the infamous Ordeal & Triumph collaboration happened – and I lost my naivety. Ultimately, as we will see with duo Mrs. Frighthouse, diving into the noise genre offers a low ceiling and an equally low floor. Some of the worst music I’ve reviewed has had the “noise” tag attached to it, while some of the most okayest music I’ve reviewed also has noise attached to it – previously mentioned acts being controversial exceptions. It’s either the worst thing you’ve heard or okay. Mrs. Frighthouse is a light, er, fright in a sea of noise – for better or worse.

Glasgow-based Mrs. Frighthouse consists of wife and wife duo Carys and Luna Frighthouse, known as Mrs. and Mrs. on stage. Featuring an unflinching lyrical attack on misogyny, homophobia, and transphobia, and a musical approach as venomous, it recalls the likes of early Lingua Ignota, Couch Slut, and Julie Christmas. What hooked me was its mastering by Khanate bassist James Plotkin – anything that reminds of the menacing crawl that the drone legends conjure was a perk. However, like any noise album that focuses on ugliness and discordance, the audience is limited, the replay value is near null, and its strengths are a novelty in many ways. Featuring manic vocals both harsh and operatic to contrast with the suffocating noise, Mrs. Frighthouse wins points for charisma, but Solitude Over Control is still very much a noise album.

To my relief, Mrs. Frighthouse utilizes opaqueness and density to its benefit, avoiding the painful awkwardness of Läjä Äijälä & Albert Witchfinder’s trainwreck of a collaboration. Plotkin’s services are put to good use, as the backbone of sound is suffocating and all-encompassing in a way that recalls drone’s colossal density, an expanse of ominous tones upon which Mrs. and Mrs. traverse with their vocal journeys. Throw in some haunting ritualistic drumming patterns and minor organ trills, Mrs. Frighthouse crafts horrific soundscapes using an expert blend of clarity, melody, and discordance to match their surprisingly dynamic foray into noise. This is no Oscillotron – Mrs. Frighthouse knows how to write songs. While at first glance the sea of noise is a constant hum, those willing to delve beneath the surface will find smart songwriting aplenty.

The contrast between clarity and density is a clear priority in Solitude Over Control – which ends up being its most controversial element. From the aggressive industrial pulse paired with thick waves of noise easy to get lost in (“DIY Exorcism,” “White Plaster Rooms”) to more subtle crawling pieces with screeching soprano trills that feel strangely confrontational (“Seagulls” part 1 and 2, “Let My Spit Be Poison”), while creeping melodic motifs are warped and bastardized by the static (“Our Culture Without Autonomy,” “My Body is a Crime Scene”), Mrs. Frighthouse is a tour-de-force of metallic aggression without a riff in sight. Solitude Over Control wears its themes on its sleeves in sometimes awkward forthrightness, as both Mrs.’s spew vitriol over the misogyny, homophobia, and transphobia witnessed and experienced, matching the aggression and viciousness of the music. The closing title track is worthy of mention, because its slow-burning crescendo is a maddening and horrifying end to a maddening and horrifying album – a nerve-frying culmination of Mrs. Frighthouse’s best and worst.

Almost everything about Solitude Over Control feels intentional, but holy shit, is it unflinching and uncomfortable. Mrs. Frighthouse’s two vocals are insanely charismatic in their blend of shrieks, growls, operatic belts, whispers, and shouts, propelling the movement of the noise as it emerges and disappears in the sea of noise. Plotkin’s mastering adds a suffocating and claustrophobic quality that adds to the menace and aggression. Some tracks you’ll find yourself getting lost in the swaths of noise and industrial harshness, others you’ll find yourself blushing in the awkward stark clarity of the vocals. Mrs. Frighthouse offers a better noise album than most and is closer to the ceiling, but due to the divisiveness of the style and the starkness of some of the minimalist pieces, the reception will be mixed. Noise fans rejoice, all others steer clear.

Rating: 2.5/5.0
DR: 8 | Format Reviewed: PCM
Label: Self-Release
Websites: mrsfrighthouse.bandcamp.com | facebook.com/mrsfrighthouse
Releases Worldwide: September 26th, 2025

#25 #2025 #CouchSlut #Drone #Industrial #JulieChristmas #Khanate #LaTortureDesTénèbres #LäjäÄijäläAlbertWitchfinder #LinguaIgnota #MrsFrighthouse #Noise #Oscillotron #Review #Reviews #ScottishMetal #SelfRelease #Sep25 #SolitudeOverControl #Theatruum #Ulveblod

Mrs. Frighthouse – Solitude Over Control Review

By Dear Hollow

How much noise is too much? I used to believe you could never have too much noise, with bands like Theatruum and La Torture des Ténèbres weaponizing it for respectively vicious and otherworldly approaches. Then bands like Ulveblod and the infamous Ordeal & Triumph collaboration happened – and I lost my naivety. Ultimately, as we will see with duo Mrs. Frighthouse, diving into the noise genre offers a low ceiling and an equally low floor. Some of the worst music I’ve reviewed has had the “noise” tag attached to it, while some of the most okayest music I’ve reviewed also has noise attached to it – previously mentioned acts being controversial exceptions. It’s either the worst thing you’ve heard or okay. Mrs. Frighthouse is a light, er, fright in a sea of noise – for better or worse.

Glasgow-based Mrs. Frighthouse consists of wife and wife duo Carys and Luna Frighthouse, known as Mrs. and Mrs. on stage. Featuring an unflinching lyrical attack on misogyny, homophobia, and transphobia, and a musical approach as venomous, it recalls the likes of early Lingua Ignota, Couch Slut, and Julie Christmas. What hooked me was its mastering by Khanate bassist James Plotkin – anything that reminds of the menacing crawl that the drone legends conjure was a perk. However, like any noise album that focuses on ugliness and discordance, the audience is limited, the replay value is near null, and its strengths are a novelty in many ways. Featuring manic vocals both harsh and operatic to contrast with the suffocating noise, Mrs. Frighthouse wins points for charisma, but Solitude Over Control is still very much a noise album.

To my relief, Mrs. Frighthouse utilizes opaqueness and density to its benefit, avoiding the painful awkwardness of Läjä Äijälä & Albert Witchfinder’s trainwreck of a collaboration. Plotkin’s services are put to good use, as the backbone of sound is suffocating and all-encompassing in a way that recalls drone’s colossal density, an expanse of ominous tones upon which Mrs. and Mrs. traverse with their vocal journeys. Throw in some haunting ritualistic drumming patterns and minor organ trills, Mrs. Frighthouse crafts horrific soundscapes using an expert blend of clarity, melody, and discordance to match their surprisingly dynamic foray into noise. This is no Oscillotron – Mrs. Frighthouse knows how to write songs. While at first glance the sea of noise is a constant hum, those willing to delve beneath the surface will find smart songwriting aplenty.

The contrast between clarity and density is a clear priority in Solitude Over Control – which ends up being its most controversial element. From the aggressive industrial pulse paired with thick waves of noise easy to get lost in (“DIY Exorcism,” “White Plaster Rooms”) to more subtle crawling pieces with screeching soprano trills that feel strangely confrontational (“Seagulls” part 1 and 2, “Let My Spit Be Poison”), while creeping melodic motifs are warped and bastardized by the static (“Our Culture Without Autonomy,” “My Body is a Crime Scene”), Mrs. Frighthouse is a tour-de-force of metallic aggression without a riff in sight. Solitude Over Control wears its themes on its sleeves in sometimes awkward forthrightness, as both Mrs.’s spew vitriol over the misogyny, homophobia, and transphobia witnessed and experienced, matching the aggression and viciousness of the music. The closing title track is worthy of mention, because its slow-burning crescendo is a maddening and horrifying end to a maddening and horrifying album – a nerve-frying culmination of Mrs. Frighthouse’s best and worst.

Almost everything about Solitude Over Control feels intentional, but holy shit, is it unflinching and uncomfortable. Mrs. Frighthouse’s two vocals are insanely charismatic in their blend of shrieks, growls, operatic belts, whispers, and shouts, propelling the movement of the noise as it emerges and disappears in the sea of noise. Plotkin’s mastering adds a suffocating and claustrophobic quality that adds to the menace and aggression. Some tracks you’ll find yourself getting lost in the swaths of noise and industrial harshness, others you’ll find yourself blushing in the awkward stark clarity of the vocals. Mrs. Frighthouse offers a better noise album than most and is closer to the ceiling, but due to the divisiveness of the style and the starkness of some of the minimalist pieces, the reception will be mixed. Noise fans rejoice, all others steer clear.

Rating: 2.5/5.0
DR: 8 | Format Reviewed: PCM
Label: Self-Release
Websites: mrsfrighthouse.bandcamp.com | facebook.com/mrsfrighthouse
Releases Worldwide: September 26th, 2025

#25 #2025 #CouchSlut #Drone #Industrial #JulieChristmas #Khanate #LaTortureDesTénèbres #LäjäÄijäläAlbertWitchfinder #LinguaIgnota #MrsFrighthouse #Noise #Oscillotron #Review #Reviews #ScottishMetal #SelfRelease #Sep25 #SolitudeOverControl #Theatruum #Ulveblod

Mrs. Frighthouse – Solitude Over Control Review

By Dear Hollow

How much noise is too much? I used to believe you could never have too much noise, with bands like Theatruum and La Torture des Ténèbres weaponizing it for respectively vicious and otherworldly approaches. Then bands like Ulveblod and the infamous Ordeal & Triumph collaboration happened – and I lost my naivety. Ultimately, as we will see with duo Mrs. Frighthouse, diving into the noise genre offers a low ceiling and an equally low floor. Some of the worst music I’ve reviewed has had the “noise” tag attached to it, while some of the most okayest music I’ve reviewed also has noise attached to it – previously mentioned acts being controversial exceptions. It’s either the worst thing you’ve heard or okay. Mrs. Frighthouse is a light, er, fright in a sea of noise – for better or worse.

Glasgow-based Mrs. Frighthouse consists of wife and wife duo Carys and Luna Frighthouse, known as Mrs. and Mrs. on stage. Featuring an unflinching lyrical attack on misogyny, homophobia, and transphobia, and a musical approach as venomous, it recalls the likes of early Lingua Ignota, Couch Slut, and Julie Christmas. What hooked me was its mastering by Khanate bassist James Plotkin – anything that reminds of the menacing crawl that the drone legends conjure was a perk. However, like any noise album that focuses on ugliness and discordance, the audience is limited, the replay value is near null, and its strengths are a novelty in many ways. Featuring manic vocals both harsh and operatic to contrast with the suffocating noise, Mrs. Frighthouse wins points for charisma, but Solitude Over Control is still very much a noise album.

To my relief, Mrs. Frighthouse utilizes opaqueness and density to its benefit, avoiding the painful awkwardness of Läjä Äijälä & Albert Witchfinder’s trainwreck of a collaboration. Plotkin’s services are put to good use, as the backbone of sound is suffocating and all-encompassing in a way that recalls drone’s colossal density, an expanse of ominous tones upon which Mrs. and Mrs. traverse with their vocal journeys. Throw in some haunting ritualistic drumming patterns and minor organ trills, Mrs. Frighthouse crafts horrific soundscapes using an expert blend of clarity, melody, and discordance to match their surprisingly dynamic foray into noise. This is no Oscillotron – Mrs. Frighthouse knows how to write songs. While at first glance the sea of noise is a constant hum, those willing to delve beneath the surface will find smart songwriting aplenty.

The contrast between clarity and density is a clear priority in Solitude Over Control – which ends up being its most controversial element. From the aggressive industrial pulse paired with thick waves of noise easy to get lost in (“DIY Exorcism,” “White Plaster Rooms”) to more subtle crawling pieces with screeching soprano trills that feel strangely confrontational (“Seagulls” part 1 and 2, “Let My Spit Be Poison”), while creeping melodic motifs are warped and bastardized by the static (“Our Culture Without Autonomy,” “My Body is a Crime Scene”), Mrs. Frighthouse is a tour-de-force of metallic aggression without a riff in sight. Solitude Over Control wears its themes on its sleeves in sometimes awkward forthrightness, as both Mrs.’s spew vitriol over the misogyny, homophobia, and transphobia witnessed and experienced, matching the aggression and viciousness of the music. The closing title track is worthy of mention, because its slow-burning crescendo is a maddening and horrifying end to a maddening and horrifying album – a nerve-frying culmination of Mrs. Frighthouse’s best and worst.

Almost everything about Solitude Over Control feels intentional, but holy shit, is it unflinching and uncomfortable. Mrs. Frighthouse’s two vocals are insanely charismatic in their blend of shrieks, growls, operatic belts, whispers, and shouts, propelling the movement of the noise as it emerges and disappears in the sea of noise. Plotkin’s mastering adds a suffocating and claustrophobic quality that adds to the menace and aggression. Some tracks you’ll find yourself getting lost in the swaths of noise and industrial harshness, others you’ll find yourself blushing in the awkward stark clarity of the vocals. Mrs. Frighthouse offers a better noise album than most and is closer to the ceiling, but due to the divisiveness of the style and the starkness of some of the minimalist pieces, the reception will be mixed. Noise fans rejoice, all others steer clear.

Rating: 2.5/5.0
DR: 8 | Format Reviewed: PCM
Label: Self-Release
Websites: mrsfrighthouse.bandcamp.com | facebook.com/mrsfrighthouse
Releases Worldwide: September 26th, 2025

#25 #2025 #CouchSlut #Drone #Industrial #JulieChristmas #Khanate #LaTortureDesTénèbres #LäjäÄijäläAlbertWitchfinder #LinguaIgnota #MrsFrighthouse #Noise #Oscillotron #Review #Reviews #ScottishMetal #SelfRelease #Sep25 #SolitudeOverControl #Theatruum #Ulveblod

Mrs. Frighthouse – Solitude Over Control Review

By Dear Hollow

How much noise is too much? I used to believe you could never have too much noise, with bands like Theatruum and La Torture des Ténèbres weaponizing it for respectively vicious and otherworldly approaches. Then bands like Ulveblod and the infamous Ordeal & Triumph collaboration happened – and I lost my naivety. Ultimately, as we will see with duo Mrs. Frighthouse, diving into the noise genre offers a low ceiling and an equally low floor. Some of the worst music I’ve reviewed has had the “noise” tag attached to it, while some of the most okayest music I’ve reviewed also has noise attached to it – previously mentioned acts being controversial exceptions. It’s either the worst thing you’ve heard or okay. Mrs. Frighthouse is a light, er, fright in a sea of noise – for better or worse.

Glasgow-based Mrs. Frighthouse consists of wife and wife duo Carys and Luna Frighthouse, known as Mrs. and Mrs. on stage. Featuring an unflinching lyrical attack on misogyny, homophobia, and transphobia, and a musical approach as venomous, it recalls the likes of early Lingua Ignota, Couch Slut, and Julie Christmas. What hooked me was its mastering by Khanate bassist James Plotkin – anything that reminds of the menacing crawl that the drone legends conjure was a perk. However, like any noise album that focuses on ugliness and discordance, the audience is limited, the replay value is near null, and its strengths are a novelty in many ways. Featuring manic vocals both harsh and operatic to contrast with the suffocating noise, Mrs. Frighthouse wins points for charisma, but Solitude Over Control is still very much a noise album.

To my relief, Mrs. Frighthouse utilizes opaqueness and density to its benefit, avoiding the painful awkwardness of Läjä Äijälä & Albert Witchfinder’s trainwreck of a collaboration. Plotkin’s services are put to good use, as the backbone of sound is suffocating and all-encompassing in a way that recalls drone’s colossal density, an expanse of ominous tones upon which Mrs. and Mrs. traverse with their vocal journeys. Throw in some haunting ritualistic drumming patterns and minor organ trills, Mrs. Frighthouse crafts horrific soundscapes using an expert blend of clarity, melody, and discordance to match their surprisingly dynamic foray into noise. This is no Oscillotron – Mrs. Frighthouse knows how to write songs. While at first glance the sea of noise is a constant hum, those willing to delve beneath the surface will find smart songwriting aplenty.

The contrast between clarity and density is a clear priority in Solitude Over Control – which ends up being its most controversial element. From the aggressive industrial pulse paired with thick waves of noise easy to get lost in (“DIY Exorcism,” “White Plaster Rooms”) to more subtle crawling pieces with screeching soprano trills that feel strangely confrontational (“Seagulls” part 1 and 2, “Let My Spit Be Poison”), while creeping melodic motifs are warped and bastardized by the static (“Our Culture Without Autonomy,” “My Body is a Crime Scene”), Mrs. Frighthouse is a tour-de-force of metallic aggression without a riff in sight. Solitude Over Control wears its themes on its sleeves in sometimes awkward forthrightness, as both Mrs.’s spew vitriol over the misogyny, homophobia, and transphobia witnessed and experienced, matching the aggression and viciousness of the music. The closing title track is worthy of mention, because its slow-burning crescendo is a maddening and horrifying end to a maddening and horrifying album – a nerve-frying culmination of Mrs. Frighthouse’s best and worst.

Almost everything about Solitude Over Control feels intentional, but holy shit, is it unflinching and uncomfortable. Mrs. Frighthouse’s two vocals are insanely charismatic in their blend of shrieks, growls, operatic belts, whispers, and shouts, propelling the movement of the noise as it emerges and disappears in the sea of noise. Plotkin’s mastering adds a suffocating and claustrophobic quality that adds to the menace and aggression. Some tracks you’ll find yourself getting lost in the swaths of noise and industrial harshness, others you’ll find yourself blushing in the awkward stark clarity of the vocals. Mrs. Frighthouse offers a better noise album than most and is closer to the ceiling, but due to the divisiveness of the style and the starkness of some of the minimalist pieces, the reception will be mixed. Noise fans rejoice, all others steer clear.

Rating: 2.5/5.0
DR: 8 | Format Reviewed: PCM
Label: Self-Release
Websites: mrsfrighthouse.bandcamp.com | facebook.com/mrsfrighthouse
Releases Worldwide: September 26th, 2025

#25 #2025 #CouchSlut #Drone #Industrial #JulieChristmas #Khanate #LaTortureDesTénèbres #LäjäÄijäläAlbertWitchfinder #LinguaIgnota #MrsFrighthouse #Noise #Oscillotron #Review #Reviews #ScottishMetal #SelfRelease #Sep25 #SolitudeOverControl #Theatruum #Ulveblod

Novarupta – Astral Sands Review

By Carcharodon

Novarupta’s Astral Sands is the fourth and final part of a tetralogy based on the elements fire, water, air, and earth. Covering the ‘earth’ part of that equation, Astral Sands follows ‘air,’ which came in the form of 2022’s Carrion Movements. A departure from previous outings, that album was an instrumental piece, comprising just two sprawling compositions but was executed so well that I couldn’t help but award it a 4.0. Astral Sands sees Novarupta not only reintroduce the vocals but return to the model seen on the series’ first two installments, Disillusioned Fire and Marine Snow, respectively, working with a different vocalist for each track on the album. Despite this choice having the potential to sap cohesion, to date Novarupta has somehow made it work. Can the band see out its ambitious series on a high?

Compared to the ethereal grandeur and restraint of Carrion Movements, there is an instant sense of presence and immediacy to Astral Sands from the off, even on instrumental intro “Ensamstående: Enastående.” The whole record combines a heavily distorted sound, that borders on sludge in the atmosphere it generates, without actually delivering sludge in the music (opening of “Seven Collides” or the back half of “Terraforming Celestial Bodies,” for example). In that sense, there’s something of Bossk’s Migration about it. Paired with upbeat drumming that borders on d-beat in places (closer “Now We are Here (at the Inevitable End)” or “The Clay Keeps”), Novarupta has a propulsive energy throughout that is at odds with much of their previous output, which is often ponderous and slow build. Even as Novarupta descend into morose trad doom a la Tiamat (“Breathe Breathe,” with vocals from Patrik Wirén of Misery Loves Co.) there’s a shimmering lightness to the guitars, enhanced by the synths, which slide from left to right and back again in the mix, that keeps the whole surprisingly vibrant.

Inevitably, with an album that changes vocalist on eight of its nine tracks (with one instrumental number), your enjoyment of Astral Sands will vary somewhat track by track, according to whose voice you like best. The indisputable highlight of the piece—at least for me and it’s my review, so it’s indisputable for present purposes—is closer, “Now We are Here (at the Inevitable End),” which finds Martin Wegeland of Domkraft on mic duties. Initially airy, vulnerable, and breathy in his delivery, by the end of the track and, therefore, the album, Wegeland hits the sort of manic intensity and urgency that I look for in the likes of Julie Christmas. Other standouts include the almost poppy “Endless Joy” and “Terraforming Celestial Bodies,” with the latter (featuring Greanleaf’s Arvid Hällagård on vox) nodding towards The Cure.1

Throughout the shifts in pacing and mood on Astral Sands, driven principally by the ever-changing vocal line-up, there’s a consistency in the sound, which knits together Novarupta’s songwriting. Whether it’s the lush post-metal guitars and bass groove (“Cosmographia”), or the spangly, fizzing synths, there’s a through line to the record that holds it together. It also helps that the various singers adopt a broadly comparable approach, with no harsh vocals on show and most taking a slightly distant, almost 80s-synthwave approach to their delivery. The production throughout, presumably to deliver that earthy feel, leans heavily into fuzz and distortion at the front of the soundstage, even though there’s an almost crystalline quality to some of the soundscapes and melodies behind that.

To be honest, I had no idea what to expect from Astral Sands. I had been tipped off in advance that the vocals were back but had resolutely resisted listening to the singles. And I’ll admit I was nervous. While I enjoyed Marine Snow, for me the highlight of Novarupta’s catalogue was Carrion Movements, where the abandonment of ever-shifting vocalists allowed mainmen Alex Stjernfeldt and Arjen Kunnen to focus on their compositions, which were huge in scope and delicately executed. On Astral Sands, the pair have reverted to their previous model, while learning from what they delivered on Carrion Movements. Although the album is structured as nine tracks, there is flow and a sense of grandeur to it, which builds on Carrion Movements. Even the bookending of the album, with reflected similarities between the start of sonorous opener “Ensamstående: Enastående” and more intense closer “Now We are Here (at the Inevitable End),” highlights this. More than a worthy closing movement in Novarupta’s tetralogy, Astral Sands is the pick of the series.

Rating: 4.0/5.0
DR: 6 | Format Reviewed: 320 kb/s mp3
Label: Suicide Records
Website: facebook.com/novaruptaband
Releases Worldwide: February 14th, 2025

#2025 #40 #AlternativeMetal #AmbientMetal #AstralSands #Bossk #Domkraft #Feb25 #Geenleaf #JulieChristmas #MiseryLovesCo_ #Novarupta #PostMetal #Review #Reviews #SuicideRecords #SwedishMetal #TheCure #Tiamat

Novarupta – Astral Sands Review

By Carcharodon

Novarupta’s Astral Sands is the fourth and final part of a tetralogy based on the elements fire, water, air, and earth. Covering the ‘earth’ part of that equation, Astral Sands follows ‘air,’ which came in the form of 2022’s Carrion Movements. A departure from previous outings, that album was an instrumental piece, comprising just two sprawling compositions but was executed so well that I couldn’t help but award it a 4.0. Astral Sands sees Novarupta not only reintroduce the vocals but return to the model seen on the series’ first two installments, Disillusioned Fire and Marine Snow, respectively, working with a different vocalist for each track on the album. Despite this choice having the potential to sap cohesion, to date Novarupta has somehow made it work. Can the band see out its ambitious series on a high?

Compared to the ethereal grandeur and restraint of Carrion Movements, there is an instant sense of presence and immediacy to Astral Sands from the off, even on instrumental intro “Ensamstående: Enastående.” The whole record combines a heavily distorted sound, that borders on sludge in the atmosphere it generates, without actually delivering sludge in the music (opening of “Seven Collides” or the back half of “Terraforming Celestial Bodies,” for example). In that sense, there’s something of Bossk’s Migration about it. Paired with upbeat drumming that borders on d-beat in places (closer “Now We are Here (at the Inevitable End)” or “The Clay Keeps”), Novarupta has a propulsive energy throughout that is at odds with much of their previous output, which is often ponderous and slow build. Even as Novarupta descend into morose trad doom a la Tiamat (“Breathe Breathe,” with vocals from Patrik Wirén of Misery Loves Co.) there’s a shimmering lightness to the guitars, enhanced by the synths, which slide from left to right and back again in the mix, that keeps the whole surprisingly vibrant.

Inevitably, with an album that changes vocalist on eight of its nine tracks (with one instrumental number), your enjoyment of Astral Sands will vary somewhat track by track, according to whose voice you like best. The indisputable highlight of the piece—at least for me and it’s my review, so it’s indisputable for present purposes—is closer, “Now We are Here (at the Inevitable End),” which finds Martin Wegeland of Domkraft on mic duties. Initially airy, vulnerable, and breathy in his delivery, by the end of the track and, therefore, the album, Wegeland hits the sort of manic intensity and urgency that I look for in the likes of Julie Christmas. Other standouts include the almost poppy “Endless Joy” and “Terraforming Celestial Bodies,” with the latter (featuring Greanleaf’s Arvid Hällagård on vox) nodding towards The Cure.1

Throughout the shifts in pacing and mood on Astral Sands, driven principally by the ever-changing vocal line-up, there’s a consistency in the sound, which knits together Novarupta’s songwriting. Whether it’s the lush post-metal guitars and bass groove (“Cosmographia”), or the spangly, fizzing synths, there’s a through line to the record that holds it together. It also helps that the various singers adopt a broadly comparable approach, with no harsh vocals on show and most taking a slightly distant, almost 80s-synthwave approach to their delivery. The production throughout, presumably to deliver that earthy feel, leans heavily into fuzz and distortion at the front of the soundstage, even though there’s an almost crystalline quality to some of the soundscapes and melodies behind that.

To be honest, I had no idea what to expect from Astral Sands. I had been tipped off in advance that the vocals were back but had resolutely resisted listening to the singles. And I’ll admit I was nervous. While I enjoyed Marine Snow, for me the highlight of Novarupta’s catalogue was Carrion Movements, where the abandonment of ever-shifting vocalists allowed mainmen Alex Stjernfeldt and Arjen Kunnen to focus on their compositions, which were huge in scope and delicately executed. On Astral Sands, the pair have reverted to their previous model, while learning from what they delivered on Carrion Movements. Although the album is structured as nine tracks, there is flow and a sense of grandeur to it, which builds on Carrion Movements. Even the bookending of the album, with reflected similarities between the start of sonorous opener “Ensamstående: Enastående” and more intense closer “Now We are Here (at the Inevitable End),” highlights this. More than a worthy closing movement in Novarupta’s tetralogy, Astral Sands is the pick of the series.

Rating: 4.0/5.0
DR: 6 | Format Reviewed: 320 kb/s mp3
Label: Suicide Records
Website: facebook.com/novaruptaband
Releases Worldwide: February 14th, 2025

#2025 #40 #AlternativeMetal #AmbientMetal #AstralSands #Bossk #Domkraft #Feb25 #Geenleaf #JulieChristmas #MiseryLovesCo_ #Novarupta #PostMetal #Review #Reviews #SuicideRecords #SwedishMetal #TheCure #Tiamat

Novarupta – Astral Sands Review

By Carcharodon

Novarupta’s Astral Sands is the fourth and final part of a tetralogy based on the elements fire, water, air, and earth. Covering the ‘earth’ part of that equation, Astral Sands follows ‘air,’ which came in the form of 2022’s Carrion Movements. A departure from previous outings, that album was an instrumental piece, comprising just two sprawling compositions but was executed so well that I couldn’t help but award it a 4.0. Astral Sands sees Novarupta not only reintroduce the vocals but return to the model seen on the series’ first two installments, Disillusioned Fire and Marine Snow, respectively, working with a different vocalist for each track on the album. Despite this choice having the potential to sap cohesion, to date Novarupta has somehow made it work. Can the band see out its ambitious series on a high?

Compared to the ethereal grandeur and restraint of Carrion Movements, there is an instant sense of presence and immediacy to Astral Sands from the off, even on instrumental intro “Ensamstående: Enastående.” The whole record combines a heavily distorted sound, that borders on sludge in the atmosphere it generates, without actually delivering sludge in the music (opening of “Seven Collides” or the back half of “Terraforming Celestial Bodies,” for example). In that sense, there’s something of Bossk’s Migration about it. Paired with upbeat drumming that borders on d-beat in places (closer “Now We are Here (at the Inevitable End)” or “The Clay Keeps”), Novarupta has a propulsive energy throughout that is at odds with much of their previous output, which is often ponderous and slow build. Even as Novarupta descend into morose trad doom a la Tiamat (“Breathe Breathe,” with vocals from Patrik Wirén of Misery Loves Co.) there’s a shimmering lightness to the guitars, enhanced by the synths, which slide from left to right and back again in the mix, that keeps the whole surprisingly vibrant.

Inevitably, with an album that changes vocalist on eight of its nine tracks (with one instrumental number), your enjoyment of Astral Sands will vary somewhat track by track, according to whose voice you like best. The indisputable highlight of the piece—at least for me and it’s my review, so it’s indisputable for present purposes—is closer, “Now We are Here (at the Inevitable End),” which finds Martin Wegeland of Domkraft on mic duties. Initially airy, vulnerable, and breathy in his delivery, by the end of the track and, therefore, the album, Wegeland hits the sort of manic intensity and urgency that I look for in the likes of Julie Christmas. Other standouts include the almost poppy “Endless Joy” and “Terraforming Celestial Bodies,” with the latter (featuring Greanleaf’s Arvid Hällagård on vox) nodding towards The Cure.1

Throughout the shifts in pacing and mood on Astral Sands, driven principally by the ever-changing vocal line-up, there’s a consistency in the sound, which knits together Novarupta’s songwriting. Whether it’s the lush post-metal guitars and bass groove (“Cosmographia”), or the spangly, fizzing synths, there’s a through line to the record that holds it together. It also helps that the various singers adopt a broadly comparable approach, with no harsh vocals on show and most taking a slightly distant, almost 80s-synthwave approach to their delivery. The production throughout, presumably to deliver that earthy feel, leans heavily into fuzz and distortion at the front of the soundstage, even though there’s an almost crystalline quality to some of the soundscapes and melodies behind that.

To be honest, I had no idea what to expect from Astral Sands. I had been tipped off in advance that the vocals were back but had resolutely resisted listening to the singles. And I’ll admit I was nervous. While I enjoyed Marine Snow, for me the highlight of Novarupta’s catalogue was Carrion Movements, where the abandonment of ever-shifting vocalists allowed mainmen Alex Stjernfeldt and Arjen Kunnen to focus on their compositions, which were huge in scope and delicately executed. On Astral Sands, the pair have reverted to their previous model, while learning from what they delivered on Carrion Movements. Although the album is structured as nine tracks, there is flow and a sense of grandeur to it, which builds on Carrion Movements. Even the bookending of the album, with reflected similarities between the start of sonorous opener “Ensamstående: Enastående” and more intense closer “Now We are Here (at the Inevitable End),” highlights this. More than a worthy closing movement in Novarupta’s tetralogy, Astral Sands is the pick of the series.

Rating: 4.0/5.0
DR: 6 | Format Reviewed: 320 kb/s mp3
Label: Suicide Records
Website: facebook.com/novaruptaband
Releases Worldwide: February 14th, 2025

#2025 #40 #AlternativeMetal #AmbientMetal #AstralSands #Bossk #Domkraft #Feb25 #Geenleaf #JulieChristmas #MiseryLovesCo_ #Novarupta #PostMetal #Review #Reviews #SuicideRecords #SwedishMetal #TheCure #Tiamat

Carcharodon and Cherd’s Top Ten(ish) of 2024

By Carcharodon

Carcharodon

I’ve been writing here since 2018. This has been the hardest year to date. I feel like I say this every year right around this time but, for whatever reason, I’ve really struggled this year to find the motivation and inspiration to write. Indeed, I’ve often felt that I lacked the passion for the music. Rather than exploring the murkier depths of Bandcamp, I was often to be found in the company of old, non-metal friends like Nick Cave, 16 Horsepower and Tom Waits.

Despite my disappointment with the world, most of which is on literal or metaphorical fire, and my disillusionment with people, whose choices have caused most of that, there were bright glimmers. The phenomenal response to our Gondor-esque call for aid, when Kenstrosity‘s life was ripped apart by Hurricane Helene, reassured me there are still a few good people out there, a good number of whom read this blog.

Still, I managed to turn out a few reviews this year, including my first ever 5.0—more of which below—which was worth it for the Steel Ire it evoked alone. And there was the Fifteenalia, a celebration the like of which we will not see again (for obvious reasons), which I had the honour of steering from questionable inception to creaky delivery.

Ironically, despite my struggles on the writing front, This Place has played a significant part in keeping me sane. It’s been tolerable to welcome a few new staffers—some even raised up from the awful Place Below—to our serried ranks, while the older hands feel almost like family at this point, with everything that that entails. As ever, particular thanks go to Steel Druhm for his tireless intimidation, which just about keeps us honest, while Dolph, Dear Hollow, El Cuervo, Grier, Maddog, Sentynel and Thus Spoke, among others, have proved adequate companions for banter and gigs.

And with that, I wish you all the happiest of Listurnalias.

#ish. Pillar of Light // Caldera – A very late entry to this list, Pillar of Light should be a cautionary tale to bands and labels: release your shit earlier! With more time, the stunning Amenra-meets-Cult of Luna post-misery of Caldera could easily have placed in the top half of this list. While I know this is an album I will come to love and fully expect to regret not placing it higher here, the reality is that other entries have had longer to sink their hooks into me. I will just say that, for me, the apparently divisive vocals are a perfect fit for Pillar of Light’s style.

#10. Seth // La France des Maudits – Way back when,1 French black metallers Seth snuck onto my list of Honorable Mentions with La Morsure du Christ, a fantastic return to form after a lengthy absence. After a short gap, they’re back and this year’s La France des Maudits has cracked the list proper. Melodic, bordering on symphonic with the keys and choral arrangements, but also visceral and feral, Seth dropped an absolute banger. It doesn’t hurt that, as Thus Spoke pointed out in her review, it’s “downright impressive how rich and dynamic this sounds.”

#9. The Vision Bleak // Weird Tales – The Vision Bleak is not, to paraphrase Dr Grier, a band that has ever ‘got’ me. Or perhaps, I’ve never got them. But Weird Tales resonated with me enormously. And perhaps that’s because it’s not really like anything The Vision Bleak has done before. Structuring their gothic black metal (or should that be blackened goth metal?) into a single, flowing song (albeit one broken into parts) got my attention. But they held my attention because they actually managed to pull off this very-hard-to-execute vision. Weird Tales’ Type O Negative / Moonspell-inspired blackened sound clicked into place almost instantly for me and now I need to go back to TVB’s discography with newly-opened eyes.

#8. Necrowretch // Swords of Dajjal – The first 4.0 I delivered in an alarmingly high-scoring year, Necrowretch’s black-death fusion is something that I have returned to again. Hiding beneath the vicious, downright nasty surface of Swords of Dajjal, is a surprisingly subtle and well-crafted concept album. As I said in my review, there is zero bloat or filler on this record, which blazes with intensity, driven as much by the scything, razor-sharp riffs as the rasping, sepulchral vocals. The range of influences cited, both by me and by impressed commenters, shows how many different aspects there are to this killer record.

#7. Panzerfaust // The Suns of Perdition – Chapter IV: To Shadow Zion – After Chapter III: The Astral Drain, I was worried that Panzerfaust were running out of steam and inspiration to close out The Suns of Perdition saga. Thankfully, my concerns were misplaced. To Shadow Zion reeks of doom and destiny. Huge, brooding and intense, it is a captivating listen, with the stunning “The Damascene Conversions” sitting at its heart. From the sulfuric vocals to the masterful drumming, this was a worthy final chapter for The Suns of Perdition, which must go down as one of the best executed, most consistent multi-album concept pieces in metal.

#6. Spectral Wound // Songs of Blood and Mire – Spectral Wound just can’t miss. For a band that, superficially at least, plays fairly old school black metal, songwriting chops paired with brilliant execution mean these guys are anything but derivative. My favourite album of theirs to date, Songs of Blood and Mire is just tons of wicked, nasty fun. It’s hard to say exactly why, but I feel like everything Spectral Wound does has a slight knowing wink to it, which suggests that the band doesn’t take itself too seriously. For me, this is a huge positive, as a lot of black metal is so tediously earnest, where this is unflinchingly harsh, surprisingly melodic and drowning in swaggering groove. Great stuff.

#5. Mother of Graves // The Periapt of Absence – I’m a sucker for death doom. And The Periapt of Absence is some fucking great death doom. Mother of Graves were unknown to me before I stumbled across this album but their blending of old school Opeth (think somewhere between Morningrise and Orchid) with early Katatonia and Paradise Lost, plus a sprinkling of Clouds is stunning. All wrapped up in a pleasingly tight package, Mother of Graves smother the listener in unflinching, heartwrenching misery. And I love every minute of it. It’s that Peaceville Three sound we love, but feeling fresh, vibrant and vital.

#4. Devenial Verdict // Blessing of Despair – Me and death metal don’t always see eye to eye, and the last Devenial Verdict left only a passing impression. But Thus Spoke‘s tireless tongue-bathing promotion of Blessing of Despair convinced me to give it a chance. While I enjoy the stomping thuggery of Devenial Verdict’s dissonant death well enough, it’s the sudden mood swings into what TS described as “lethally graceful restraint” that really hooked me. Although worlds apart stylistically, on Blessing of Despair DV achieved what Chained to the Bottom of the Ocean did on Obsession Destruction: knowing precisely how far to push the suffocating, claustrophobic heaviness, before taking their foot off your throat for a minute. Then stamping on it again.

#3. Julie Christmas // Ridiculous and Full of Blood – Maddog predicted that I would lambast him as an underrating bastard for the 3.5 he deigned to award Ms Christmas. And he was quite correct. He’s a charlatan of the highest order. However, even I’m surprised by how high Ridiculous and Full of Blood has landed here. But, as someone not given to overly emotional reactions to music, I’m continually stunned by the reactions Julie—Can I call you Julie? No? Ok—extracts from me. I’m often on the edge of tears by the end of “The Lighthouse,” just like that cad Maddog, while the likes of “Not Enough” and “End of the World” (the latter with CoL’s Johannes Persson) have a scary edge to them, with Christmas at her maniacal, crooning, possessed, unpredictable best.

#2. A Swarm of the Sun // An Empire – Speaking of emotional responses, A Swarm of the Sun’s stripped back melancholy is right up there. If I say that An Empire is brighter and more uplifting than previous efforts The Rifts and The Woods, understand that this is a very relative statement. An Empire is drowning in sorrow and misery, and yet there is just a hint of brightness that shimmers and hovers around the edges, like a lunar halo. Slow and deliberate, haunting and cathartic, A Swarm of the Sun’s latest outing is just beautiful. End of. No discussion.2

#1. Kanonenfieber // Die Urkatastrophe – Y’all know I dropped a 5.0 on Die Urkatastophe, so it’s no surprise to find it here, sitting pretty, atop my list. There’s not much more praise that I can heap on Kanonenfieber’s sophomore record than I already did in my review. For me, it has everything and is more than I dared hope for as a follow up to my beloved Menschenmühle (my album of the year for 2021). It is brutal and vicious (“Panzerhenker” and “Ausblutingsschlacht”), anthemic (“Der Maulwurf” and “Menschenmühle”) and more. Crafted—and yes, that is the correct word—with huge skill and attention to detail, it is the storytelling, based on original source materials, that elevates this record to the next level for me. And if you don’t speak German, or are simply not into narrative in your metal, just go bang your fucking head to “Gott mit der Kavallerie”!

Honorable mentions In alphabetical order by band:

• 40 Watt Sun // Little Weight – Little Weight actually carries a lot of emotional weight. Melancholic, beautiful post-doom and shoegaze, rife with a rough honesty.
• Anciients // Beyond the Reach of the Sun – Long-form (arguably too-long-form in some respects) progressive death, which is wonderfully ambitious and overblown in its scale and delivery.
• Crypt Sermon // The Stygian Rose – Fantastic trad doom, channeling heavy doses of Candlemass. Early in the year, I thought this was top-5 material but it’s uneven, with the back half much stronger than the front, and I’ve cooled on it a touch.
• Nyktophobia // To the Stars – Just great, stomping melodeath. As I said in my review, it’s not massively original but it’s tight and well written, and easy to just kick back to. Sometimes, I don’t need more.
• Silhouette // Les Dires de l’​Â​me – This fantastic post-black album had a place on the list proper until Pillar of Light bulldozed its way in there very late in the day. Haunting, harrowing and beautiful, Silhouette’s debut is Great!
• Sumac // The Healer – Nothing about The Healer makes it an easy listen but Sumac’s fifth record is curiously beautiful for all its wandering, free-form abrasiveness.
• Vorga // Beyond the Palest Star – While it’s hard to disagree with Kenstrosity‘s criticism of the production on Beyond the Palest Star, what can I say? I still love it. It’s chunky, well written, well paced and powerful.

Surprises o’ the Year Ordered by most astounding first:

• Opeth // The Last Will and Testament – It’s been a long time since I was last genuinely interested in an Opeth album (2005’s Ghost Reveries, in case you were wondering). But, wouldn’t you just know it, Mikael Åkerfeldt and co are back (roars and all). I’m not ready to commit to a score for The Last Will (though I think El Cuervo‘s was possibly a smidge high) as I’ve not been able to spend enough time with it. But the fact I want to spend more time with it is, after 19 years of having no interest in Opeth’s output, a surprise. And a welcome one.
• Grand Magus // Sunraven – Another Swedish favourite of old, which I’d all but given up on, Grand Magus roared back this year with Sunraven. As an equally surprised Steel Druhm said in his review, this was the album he “feverishly hoped to get from Grand Magus … a grand return to prime form with the fire firmly back in the Balrog … the best Magus outing since 2012’s The Hunt”.

Disappointment o’ the Year Limited to a single musical disappointment, to avoid submitting a lengthy thesis:

• Zeal & Ardor // GREIF – I’m not angry, or even very surprised, just disappointed.3 While I accept that this is the album of a band in transition, there’s no getting away from the fact that it was a hugely disappointing album from a band that has abandoned the sound that made it what it was. And for what? They have not transitioned to something new and exciting, but with kinks to be worked out. Rather, on this record, Zeal & Ardor became something so pedestrian that any number of post-rock bands could’ve written it and, probably, done a better job. I may have overrated it.

Songs o’ the Year

1. Julie Christmas – “The Lighthouse”
2. Kanonenfieber – “Der Maulwurf”
3. Selbst – “The Stench of a Dead Spirit”
4. Panzerfaust – “The Damascene Conversions”
5. Kanonenfieber – “Gott mit der Kavallerie”
6. Devenial Verdict – “Garden of Eyes”
7. Spectral Wound – “Aristocratic Suicidal Black Metal”
8. Silhouette – “Les Dires de l’​Â​me”
9. Blue Heron – “Everything Fades”
10. Zeal & Ardor – “Hide in Shade”
11. Glare of the Sun – “Rain”

Cherd

Twenty-twenty-four was certainly a year that followed previous years and will precede still others. When I look back, I’ll likely remember it as the year I discovered the wonders of ADHD medication after decades of non-treatment, the difficult transition my poor Cherdlet experienced from kindergarten to first grade, and the incredible bucket list trip my wife and I took to Toronto to watch our favorite TV franchise filming new content courtesy of my very important Hollywood connections. No, not Robert Downey Jr. Much more important and better-looking. Hmm? Margot Robbie? She wishes. I also had the pleasure of meeting several of my fellow writers in person, and they are all much homelier than they let on with the exception of Madam X, who is a goddamned ray of sunshine.

On the musical front, I was able to check two bands off my “need to see live” list in Judas Priest and Archspire, whereby I discovered that Halford does exactly zero audience banter, and Archspire do nothing but. Fun shows, both. I didn’t listen to as much new music by volume this year than I have in previous years when I’d log between 200 and 400 releases, and that was largely due to my kid’s age and the level of interaction he needs. I have a feeling, however, that 2025 will see an uptick thanks to the new Heavys headphones I got for Christmas this year. As always, I want to thank the editors, particularly Steel Druhm and Doc Grier, for not sending me a mailbomb after all the late reviews I turned in (I’ll work on that in 2025), and the man himself, AMG, for building this community and for agreeing that Deep Space Nine is the best Star Trek show.4

(ish) Chat Pile // Cool World – This is what it sounds like when Chat Pile make a “mature” record. As I noted in my October review, some of the most glaring weirdness and black humor the band is known for is missing in Cool World, which is why it’s here on my list instead of matching the lofty heights of my 2022 AOTY God’s Country. That said, this is consistently bleak in a way I like, and it boasts what are in my opinion the two best–if not most memorable–songs the band have written to date in “New World” and “Masc.” I’m a sucker for these Oklahomans and look forward to how their sound evolves from here.

#10. Glacial Tomb // Lightless Expanse – I’ve had an up and down journey with Glacial Tomb’s sophomore record, but that doesn’t mean I don’t still view this as one of the best things I’ve listened to this year. To consider a record this closely means you have to listen to it a lot, and I wouldn’t be surprised if I logged more hours with Lightless Expanse than with any other album. I’ve made a big deal about the one-three punch of “Voidwomb/Enshrined in Concrete/Abyssal Host”, but it bears repeating since it’s my favorite consecutive stretch of death metal in 2024.

#9. Replicant // Infinite Mortality – If you peel back the veneer of disso-death and blackened blasts on Infinite Mortality, you’ll find a pounding hardcore heart comprised of equal parts beatdown and Converge. As technical as this music gets, and there is a lot going on here, Replicant never forget their primary duty as a metal band: snapping necks. On their third album, they’ve exquisitely composed a missive to unbridled aggression. I completely missed their previous albums, so I’m glad our Kenfren wouldn’t shut his excitable yap about this one.

#8. Spectral Voice // Sparagmos – “Alright skaters! This is the end of our free skate period. We’d like to once again thank you for spending your Saturday with us here at Family Fun Roller Rink and Arcade. It’s time to slow things down, down, way down, and you know what that means. That’s right, it’s couples’ skate. So, find that special someone you want to be interred on a cold stone slab with, gaze into each other’s empty eye sockets, and make your way around the rink as wave after wave of Spectral Voice’s death/funeral doom forcefully separates you from any light, hope, or happiness this wretched world might have accidentally given you. Remember, those who survive the next 45 minutes of tectonic plates colliding will get the chance to compete in roller limbo!”

#7. Crypt Sermon // The Stygian Rose – Despite being one of the biggest doom apologists on this site, Crypt Sermon failed to grab me with their highly acclaimed debut nearly ten years ago. I chalk this up to my unfamiliarity with the traditional doom style at the time. In recent years, I’ve binged large amounts of Candlemass, Saint Vitus, Cathedral, Solitude Aeturnus et al., so I finally have the frame of reference to see just how well Crypt Sermon’s third LP captures the swagger, majesty, and grit of a style few contemporary bands seem interested in playing. After the growing pains displayed on The Ruins of Fading Light, these Philly natives have worked out the kinks and delivered an air-tight slab of doomy goodness.

#6. Full of Hell // Coagulated Bliss – I regret waiving my seniority claim to Full of Hell releases, thus allowing Dolph to snap up review duties for Coagulated Bliss. It’s not that he did a bad job of reviewing the prolific experimental grind outfit’s latest. He did great, and he awarded it a deserved 4.0. But then he had the cheek, the nerve, the gall, the audacity, and the gumption to incorrectly lower his score. To make matters worse, it appeared nowhere on his year-end list. Not even a goll dern honorable mention. I’ve told him to his cetacean face that he’s wrong and I’m likely to do so again because this is Full of Hell’s best work since Trumpeting Ecstasy. In fact, it might be better.

#5. Ulcerate // Cutting the Throat of God – For most of their existence, Ulcerate was a highly acclaimed band that I just couldn’t get into. That changed four years ago with the release of Stare into Death and Be Still. Little changed in their intricate approach to dissonant death metal, but there was something warmer and more human to what I had previously considered a rather detached style. That trend continues with Cutting the Throat of God. I find this record best when taken as a whole, letting the experience unfold over the full runtime, like dream-walking through a hedge maze or being trapped in a velvet sack and discovering it’s much larger on the inside.5

#4. Thou // Umbilical – I waited a long time for a chance to review a new record by Thou, and when it finally came, they did not disappoint. As I said in my June review, “Like their chimerical American metal brethren Inter Arma, it doesn’t matter how many influences the band stuff into one album. They are all unified in sound under Thou’s banner. Bryan Funck’s acid-bit vocals are unmistakable and apparently unchangeable after 20 throat-shredding years. Also unchangeable? Thou’s ability to craft the most metallic-sounding guitar tone out there. As the standard bearer for…hell, as the entire sum of the second generation of Louisiana sludge, the sound they’ve forged isn’t the kind of sloppy muck you may associate with the term. It’s certainly thick, but it has a quality like two enormous steel I-beams violently striking each other.” If that doesn’t sell Umbilical for you, then here is where our paths diverge.

#3. Devenial Verdict // Blessing of Despair – I didn’t listen to Blessing of Despair for several weeks after it came out in October despite the fact Devenial Verdict’s previous record, Ash Blind, made my year-end list in 2022. When I finally got around to it earlier in December, it threatened to blow the doors right off my still nebulous list, climbing fast and high until ultimately landing here at number three. There is more immediacy than on Ash Blind, which took me a while to warm up to. That doesn’t mean the band skimps on the kind of thoughtful transitions and atmospherics they’ve come to be known for. It’s just that Blessing of Despair HAZ THE RIFFS, including my favorite death metal riff of the year in “Solus.”

#2. Void Witch // Horripilating Presence – When I revisited Horripilating Presence with the purpose of sorting out this list’s pecking order, I expected death-doomers Void Witch to fall mid-to-late top 10. Obviously, the opposite happened. For the life of me I don’t understand how this album didn’t gain more traction amongst the other writers and you, the unwashed commentariat. As I said back in July, “…the material on Horripilating Presence is Mohamed Ali levels of confident. The editing of ideas in each song and across the album’s taut 39 minutes is masterful, especially for a debut. No song hews too closely to any of the others, but all are of a piece, locking comfortably into place like an intricate puzzle box, and Void Witch have such sights to show you.”

#1. Inter Arma // New Heaven – Inter Arma never miss. Aside from being one of the best live acts in metal, every album they’ve released going back to 2013’s Sky Burial has been one successful evolution after another. As a very wise reviewer once said, “They’re the same shaggy beast as ever, but beneath that matted, coarse coat is a rippling form mid-shape shift, stretching, pulling, and crossing back on itself constantly over the course of New Heaven’s shockingly concise 42 minutes…If being all over the musical map sounds like a negative, you’ve probably never heard an Inter Arma record before. It seems whatever they throw at the wall sticks, and the listening experience across their (usually much longer) records never feels uneven. This is because they play everything with the same smoldering intensity and volatile mean streak.” What a record.

Honorable Mentions:

• Convulsing // Perdurance – I like this quote from Dear Hollow‘s review, so I’ll let him do the talking: “…Convulsing explores every nook and twist of a rhythm and melody until its inevitable conclusion is happened upon in tragic and fatal fashion.”
• Spectral Wound // Songs of Blood and Mire – Pound for pound, Spectral Wound are probably the most consistent no-frills black metal band currently in operation. Songs of Blood and Mire is another rager that’s as melodic as it is acidic.
• Lord Buffalo // Holus Bolus – This record was one redundant instrumental away from landing higher on this list. Looking forward to where these gothic country rockers go next.

Songs o’ the Year:

In alphabetical order by band:

Show 5 footnotes

1. Apparently it was only 2021 but my goodness that feels a lifetime ago. ↩
2. Regrettably, I suspect this may be the perfect way to start a discussion. Sigh. ↩
3. Can you tell I’m a parent? ↩
4. How could anyone disagree? – AMG ↩
5. Like a TARDIS. ↩

#2024 #40WattSun #ASwarmOfTheSun #Anciients #BlogPosts #BlueHeron #CarcharodonAndCherdSTopTenIshOf2024 #ChatPile #Convulsing #CryptSermon #DevenialVerdict #FullOfHell #GlareOfTheSun #GrandMagus #InterArma #JulieChristmas #Kanonenfieber #Listurnalia #LordBuffalo #MotherOfGraves #Necrowretch #Nyktophobia #Opeth #Panzerfaust #PillarOfLight #Replicant #Selbst #Seth #Silhouette #SpectralVoice #SpectralWound #Sumac #TheVisionBleak #Thou #Ulcerate #VoidWitch #Vorga #ZealArdor

Carcharodon and Cherd’s Top Ten(ish) of 2024

By Carcharodon

Carcharodon

I’ve been writing here since 2018. This has been the hardest year to date. I feel like I say this every year right around this time but, for whatever reason, I’ve really struggled this year to find the motivation and inspiration to write. Indeed, I’ve often felt that I lacked the passion for the music. Rather than exploring the murkier depths of Bandcamp, I was often to be found in the company of old, non-metal friends like Nick Cave, 16 Horsepower and Tom Waits.

Despite my disappointment with the world, most of which is on literal or metaphorical fire, and my disillusionment with people, whose choices have caused most of that, there were bright glimmers. The phenomenal response to our Gondor-esque call for aid, when Kenstrosity‘s life was ripped apart by Hurricane Helene, reassured me there are still a few good people out there, a good number of whom read this blog.

Still, I managed to turn out a few reviews this year, including my first ever 5.0—more of which below—which was worth it for the Steel Ire it evoked alone. And there was the Fifteenalia, a celebration the like of which we will not see again (for obvious reasons), which I had the honour of steering from questionable inception to creaky delivery.

Ironically, despite my struggles on the writing front, This Place has played a significant part in keeping me sane. It’s been tolerable to welcome a few new staffers—some even raised up from the awful Place Below—to our serried ranks, while the older hands feel almost like family at this point, with everything that that entails. As ever, particular thanks go to Steel Druhm for his tireless intimidation, which just about keeps us honest, while Dolph, Dear Hollow, El Cuervo, Grier, Maddog, Sentynel and Thus Spoke, among others, have proved adequate companions for banter and gigs.

And with that, I wish you all the happiest of Listurnalias.

#ish. Pillar of Light // Caldera – A very late entry to this list, Pillar of Light should be a cautionary tale to bands and labels: release your shit earlier! With more time, the stunning Amenra-meets-Cult of Luna post-misery of Caldera could easily have placed in the top half of this list. While I know this is an album I will come to love and fully expect to regret not placing it higher here, the reality is that other entries have had longer to sink their hooks into me. I will just say that, for me, the apparently divisive vocals are a perfect fit for Pillar of Light’s style.

#10. Seth // La France des Maudits – Way back when,1 French black metallers Seth snuck onto my list of Honorable Mentions with La Morsure du Christ, a fantastic return to form after a lengthy absence. After a short gap, they’re back and this year’s La France des Maudits has cracked the list proper. Melodic, bordering on symphonic with the keys and choral arrangements, but also visceral and feral, Seth dropped an absolute banger. It doesn’t hurt that, as Thus Spoke pointed out in her review, it’s “downright impressive how rich and dynamic this sounds.”

#9. The Vision Bleak // Weird Tales – The Vision Bleak is not, to paraphrase Dr Grier, a band that has ever ‘got’ me. Or perhaps, I’ve never got them. But Weird Tales resonated with me enormously. And perhaps that’s because it’s not really like anything The Vision Bleak has done before. Structuring their gothic black metal (or should that be blackened goth metal?) into a single, flowing song (albeit one broken into parts) got my attention. But they held my attention because they actually managed to pull off this very-hard-to-execute vision. Weird Tales’ Type O Negative / Moonspell-inspired blackened sound clicked into place almost instantly for me and now I need to go back to TVB’s discography with newly-opened eyes.

#8. Necrowretch // Swords of Dajjal – The first 4.0 I delivered in an alarmingly high-scoring year, Necrowretch’s black-death fusion is something that I have returned to again. Hiding beneath the vicious, downright nasty surface of Swords of Dajjal, is a surprisingly subtle and well-crafted concept album. As I said in my review, there is zero bloat or filler on this record, which blazes with intensity, driven as much by the scything, razor-sharp riffs as the rasping, sepulchral vocals. The range of influences cited, both by me and by impressed commenters, shows how many different aspects there are to this killer record.

#7. Panzerfaust // The Suns of Perdition – Chapter IV: To Shadow Zion – After Chapter III: The Astral Drain, I was worried that Panzerfaust were running out of steam and inspiration to close out The Suns of Perdition saga. Thankfully, my concerns were misplaced. To Shadow Zion reeks of doom and destiny. Huge, brooding and intense, it is a captivating listen, with the stunning “The Damascene Conversions” sitting at its heart. From the sulfuric vocals to the masterful drumming, this was a worthy final chapter for The Suns of Perdition, which must go down as one of the best executed, most consistent multi-album concept pieces in metal.

#6. Spectral Wound // Songs of Blood and Mire – Spectral Wound just can’t miss. For a band that, superficially at least, plays fairly old school black metal, songwriting chops paired with brilliant execution mean these guys are anything but derivative. My favourite album of theirs to date, Songs of Blood and Mire is just tons of wicked, nasty fun. It’s hard to say exactly why, but I feel like everything Spectral Wound does has a slight knowing wink to it, which suggests that the band doesn’t take itself too seriously. For me, this is a huge positive, as a lot of black metal is so tediously earnest, where this is unflinchingly harsh, surprisingly melodic and drowning in swaggering groove. Great stuff.

#5. Mother of Graves // The Periapt of Absence – I’m a sucker for death doom. And The Periapt of Absence is some fucking great death doom. Mother of Graves were unknown to me before I stumbled across this album but their blending of old school Opeth (think somewhere between Morningrise and Orchid) with early Katatonia and Paradise Lost, plus a sprinkling of Clouds is stunning. All wrapped up in a pleasingly tight package, Mother of Graves smother the listener in unflinching, heartwrenching misery. And I love every minute of it. It’s that Peaceville Three sound we love, but feeling fresh, vibrant and vital.

#4. Devenial Verdict // Blessing of Despair – Me and death metal don’t always see eye to eye, and the last Devenial Verdict left only a passing impression. But Thus Spoke‘s tireless tongue-bathing promotion of Blessing of Despair convinced me to give it a chance. While I enjoy the stomping thuggery of Devenial Verdict’s dissonant death well enough, it’s the sudden mood swings into what TS described as “lethally graceful restraint” that really hooked me. Although worlds apart stylistically, on Blessing of Despair DV achieved what Chained to the Bottom of the Ocean did on Obsession Destruction: knowing precisely how far to push the suffocating, claustrophobic heaviness, before taking their foot off your throat for a minute. Then stamping on it again.

#3. Julie Christmas // Ridiculous and Full of Blood – Maddog predicted that I would lambast him as an underrating bastard for the 3.5 he deigned to award Ms Christmas. And he was quite correct. He’s a charlatan of the highest order. However, even I’m surprised by how high Ridiculous and Full of Blood has landed here. But, as someone not given to overly emotional reactions to music, I’m continually stunned by the reactions Julie—Can I call you Julie? No? Ok—extracts from me. I’m often on the edge of tears by the end of “The Lighthouse,” just like that cad Maddog, while the likes of “Not Enough” and “End of the World” (the latter with CoL’s Johannes Persson) have a scary edge to them, with Christmas at her maniacal, crooning, possessed, unpredictable best.

#2. A Swarm of the Sun // An Empire – Speaking of emotional responses, A Swarm of the Sun’s stripped back melancholy is right up there. If I say that An Empire is brighter and more uplifting than previous efforts The Rifts and The Woods, understand that this is a very relative statement. An Empire is drowning in sorrow and misery, and yet there is just a hint of brightness that shimmers and hovers around the edges, like a lunar halo. Slow and deliberate, haunting and cathartic, A Swarm of the Sun’s latest outing is just beautiful. End of. No discussion.2

#1. Kanonenfieber // Die Urkatastrophe – Y’all know I dropped a 5.0 on Die Urkatastophe, so it’s no surprise to find it here, sitting pretty, atop my list. There’s not much more praise that I can heap on Kanonenfieber’s sophomore record than I already did in my review. For me, it has everything and is more than I dared hope for as a follow up to my beloved Menschenmühle (my album of the year for 2021). It is brutal and vicious (“Panzerhenker” and “Ausblutingsschlacht”), anthemic (“Der Maulwurf” and “Menschenmühle”) and more. Crafted—and yes, that is the correct word—with huge skill and attention to detail, it is the storytelling, based on original source materials, that elevates this record to the next level for me. And if you don’t speak German, or are simply not into narrative in your metal, just go bang your fucking head to “Gott mit der Kavallerie”!

Honorable mentions In alphabetical order by band:

• 40 Watt Sun // Little Weight – Little Weight actually carries a lot of emotional weight. Melancholic, beautiful post-doom and shoegaze, rife with a rough honesty.
• Anciients // Beyond the Reach of the Sun – Long-form (arguably too-long-form in some respects) progressive death, which is wonderfully ambitious and overblown in its scale and delivery.
• Crypt Sermon // The Stygian Rose – Fantastic trad doom, channeling heavy doses of Candlemass. Early in the year, I thought this was top-5 material but it’s uneven, with the back half much stronger than the front, and I’ve cooled on it a touch.
• Nyktophobia // To the Stars – Just great, stomping melodeath. As I said in my review, it’s not massively original but it’s tight and well written, and easy to just kick back to. Sometimes, I don’t need more.
• Silhouette // Les Dires de l’​Â​me – This fantastic post-black album had a place on the list proper until Pillar of Light bulldozed its way in there very late in the day. Haunting, harrowing and beautiful, Silhouette’s debut is Great!
• Sumac // The Healer – Nothing about The Healer makes it an easy listen but Sumac’s fifth record is curiously beautiful for all its wandering, free-form abrasiveness.
• Vorga // Beyond the Palest Star – While it’s hard to disagree with Kenstrosity‘s criticism of the production on Beyond the Palest Star, what can I say? I still love it. It’s chunky, well written, well paced and powerful.

Surprises o’ the Year Ordered by most astounding first:

• Opeth // The Last Will and Testament – It’s been a long time since I was last genuinely interested in an Opeth album (2005’s Ghost Reveries, in case you were wondering). But, wouldn’t you just know it, Mikael Åkerfeldt and co are back (roars and all). I’m not ready to commit to a score for The Last Will (though I think El Cuervo‘s was possibly a smidge high) as I’ve not been able to spend enough time with it. But the fact I want to spend more time with it is, after 19 years of having no interest in Opeth’s output, a surprise. And a welcome one.
• Grand Magus // Sunraven – Another Swedish favourite of old, which I’d all but given up on, Grand Magus roared back this year with Sunraven. As an equally surprised Steel Druhm said in his review, this was the album he “feverishly hoped to get from Grand Magus … a grand return to prime form with the fire firmly back in the Balrog … the best Magus outing since 2012’s The Hunt”.

Disappointment o’ the Year Limited to a single musical disappointment, to avoid submitting a lengthy thesis:

• Zeal & Ardor // GREIF – I’m not angry, or even very surprised, just disappointed.3 While I accept that this is the album of a band in transition, there’s no getting away from the fact that it was a hugely disappointing album from a band that has abandoned the sound that made it what it was. And for what? They have not transitioned to something new and exciting, but with kinks to be worked out. Rather, on this record, Zeal & Ardor became something so pedestrian that any number of post-rock bands could’ve written it and, probably, done a better job. I may have overrated it.

Songs o’ the Year

1. Julie Christmas – “The Lighthouse”
2. Kanonenfieber – “Der Maulwurf”
3. Selbst – “The Stench of a Dead Spirit”
4. Panzerfaust – “The Damascene Conversions”
5. Kanonenfieber – “Gott mit der Kavallerie”
6. Devenial Verdict – “Garden of Eyes”
7. Spectral Wound – “Aristocratic Suicidal Black Metal”
8. Silhouette – “Les Dires de l’​Â​me”
9. Blue Heron – “Everything Fades”
10. Zeal & Ardor – “Hide in Shade”
11. Glare of the Sun – “Rain”

Cherd

Twenty-twenty-four was certainly a year that followed previous years and will precede still others. When I look back, I’ll likely remember it as the year I discovered the wonders of ADHD medication after decades of non-treatment, the difficult transition my poor Cherdlet experienced from kindergarten to first grade, and the incredible bucket list trip my wife and I took to Toronto to watch our favorite TV franchise filming new content courtesy of my very important Hollywood connections. No, not Robert Downey Jr. Much more important and better-looking. Hmm? Margot Robbie? She wishes. I also had the pleasure of meeting several of my fellow writers in person, and they are all much homelier than they let on with the exception of Madam X, who is a goddamned ray of sunshine.

On the musical front, I was able to check two bands off my “need to see live” list in Judas Priest and Archspire, whereby I discovered that Halford does exactly zero audience banter, and Archspire do nothing but. Fun shows, both. I didn’t listen to as much new music by volume this year than I have in previous years when I’d log between 200 and 400 releases, and that was largely due to my kid’s age and the level of interaction he needs. I have a feeling, however, that 2025 will see an uptick thanks to the new Heavys headphones I got for Christmas this year. As always, I want to thank the editors, particularly Steel Druhm and Doc Grier, for not sending me a mailbomb after all the late reviews I turned in (I’ll work on that in 2025), and the man himself, AMG, for building this community and for agreeing that Deep Space Nine is the best Star Trek show.4

(ish) Chat Pile // Cool World – This is what it sounds like when Chat Pile make a “mature” record. As I noted in my October review, some of the most glaring weirdness and black humor the band is known for is missing in Cool World, which is why it’s here on my list instead of matching the lofty heights of my 2022 AOTY God’s Country. That said, this is consistently bleak in a way I like, and it boasts what are in my opinion the two best–if not most memorable–songs the band have written to date in “New World” and “Masc.” I’m a sucker for these Oklahomans and look forward to how their sound evolves from here.

#10. Glacial Tomb // Lightless Expanse – I’ve had an up and down journey with Glacial Tomb’s sophomore record, but that doesn’t mean I don’t still view this as one of the best things I’ve listened to this year. To consider a record this closely means you have to listen to it a lot, and I wouldn’t be surprised if I logged more hours with Lightless Expanse than with any other album. I’ve made a big deal about the one-three punch of “Voidwomb/Enshrined in Concrete/Abyssal Host”, but it bears repeating since it’s my favorite consecutive stretch of death metal in 2024.

#9. Replicant // Infinite Mortality – If you peel back the veneer of disso-death and blackened blasts on Infinite Mortality, you’ll find a pounding hardcore heart comprised of equal parts beatdown and Converge. As technical as this music gets, and there is a lot going on here, Replicant never forget their primary duty as a metal band: snapping necks. On their third album, they’ve exquisitely composed a missive to unbridled aggression. I completely missed their previous albums, so I’m glad our Kenfren wouldn’t shut his excitable yap about this one.

#8. Spectral Voice // Sparagmos – “Alright skaters! This is the end of our free skate period. We’d like to once again thank you for spending your Saturday with us here at Family Fun Roller Rink and Arcade. It’s time to slow things down, down, way down, and you know what that means. That’s right, it’s couples’ skate. So, find that special someone you want to be interred on a cold stone slab with, gaze into each other’s empty eye sockets, and make your way around the rink as wave after wave of Spectral Voice’s death/funeral doom forcefully separates you from any light, hope, or happiness this wretched world might have accidentally given you. Remember, those who survive the next 45 minutes of tectonic plates colliding will get the chance to compete in roller limbo!”

#7. Crypt Sermon // The Stygian Rose – Despite being one of the biggest doom apologists on this site, Crypt Sermon failed to grab me with their highly acclaimed debut nearly ten years ago. I chalk this up to my unfamiliarity with the traditional doom style at the time. In recent years, I’ve binged large amounts of Candlemass, Saint Vitus, Cathedral, Solitude Aeturnus et al., so I finally have the frame of reference to see just how well Crypt Sermon’s third LP captures the swagger, majesty, and grit of a style few contemporary bands seem interested in playing. After the growing pains displayed on The Ruins of Fading Light, these Philly natives have worked out the kinks and delivered an air-tight slab of doomy goodness.

#6. Full of Hell // Coagulated Bliss – I regret waiving my seniority claim to Full of Hell releases, thus allowing Dolph to snap up review duties for Coagulated Bliss. It’s not that he did a bad job of reviewing the prolific experimental grind outfit’s latest. He did great, and he awarded it a deserved 4.0. But then he had the cheek, the nerve, the gall, the audacity, and the gumption to incorrectly lower his score. To make matters worse, it appeared nowhere on his year-end list. Not even a goll dern honorable mention. I’ve told him to his cetacean face that he’s wrong and I’m likely to do so again because this is Full of Hell’s best work since Trumpeting Ecstasy. In fact, it might be better.

#5. Ulcerate // Cutting the Throat of God – For most of their existence, Ulcerate was a highly acclaimed band that I just couldn’t get into. That changed four years ago with the release of Stare into Death and Be Still. Little changed in their intricate approach to dissonant death metal, but there was something warmer and more human to what I had previously considered a rather detached style. That trend continues with Cutting the Throat of God. I find this record best when taken as a whole, letting the experience unfold over the full runtime, like dream-walking through a hedge maze or being trapped in a velvet sack and discovering it’s much larger on the inside.5

#4. Thou // Umbilical – I waited a long time for a chance to review a new record by Thou, and when it finally came, they did not disappoint. As I said in my June review, “Like their chimerical American metal brethren Inter Arma, it doesn’t matter how many influences the band stuff into one album. They are all unified in sound under Thou’s banner. Bryan Funck’s acid-bit vocals are unmistakable and apparently unchangeable after 20 throat-shredding years. Also unchangeable? Thou’s ability to craft the most metallic-sounding guitar tone out there. As the standard bearer for…hell, as the entire sum of the second generation of Louisiana sludge, the sound they’ve forged isn’t the kind of sloppy muck you may associate with the term. It’s certainly thick, but it has a quality like two enormous steel I-beams violently striking each other.” If that doesn’t sell Umbilical for you, then here is where our paths diverge.

#3. Devenial Verdict // Blessing of Despair – I didn’t listen to Blessing of Despair for several weeks after it came out in October despite the fact Devenial Verdict’s previous record, Ash Blind, made my year-end list in 2022. When I finally got around to it earlier in December, it threatened to blow the doors right off my still nebulous list, climbing fast and high until ultimately landing here at number three. There is more immediacy than on Ash Blind, which took me a while to warm up to. That doesn’t mean the band skimps on the kind of thoughtful transitions and atmospherics they’ve come to be known for. It’s just that Blessing of Despair HAZ THE RIFFS, including my favorite death metal riff of the year in “Solus.”

#2. Void Witch // Horripilating Presence – When I revisited Horripilating Presence with the purpose of sorting out this list’s pecking order, I expected death-doomers Void Witch to fall mid-to-late top 10. Obviously, the opposite happened. For the life of me I don’t understand how this album didn’t gain more traction amongst the other writers and you, the unwashed commentariat. As I said back in July, “…the material on Horripilating Presence is Mohamed Ali levels of confident. The editing of ideas in each song and across the album’s taut 39 minutes is masterful, especially for a debut. No song hews too closely to any of the others, but all are of a piece, locking comfortably into place like an intricate puzzle box, and Void Witch have such sights to show you.”

#1. Inter Arma // New Heaven – Inter Arma never miss. Aside from being one of the best live acts in metal, every album they’ve released going back to 2013’s Sky Burial has been one successful evolution after another. As a very wise reviewer once said, “They’re the same shaggy beast as ever, but beneath that matted, coarse coat is a rippling form mid-shape shift, stretching, pulling, and crossing back on itself constantly over the course of New Heaven’s shockingly concise 42 minutes…If being all over the musical map sounds like a negative, you’ve probably never heard an Inter Arma record before. It seems whatever they throw at the wall sticks, and the listening experience across their (usually much longer) records never feels uneven. This is because they play everything with the same smoldering intensity and volatile mean streak.” What a record.

Honorable Mentions:

• Convulsing // Perdurance – I like this quote from Dear Hollow‘s review, so I’ll let him do the talking: “…Convulsing explores every nook and twist of a rhythm and melody until its inevitable conclusion is happened upon in tragic and fatal fashion.”
• Spectral Wound // Songs of Blood and Mire – Pound for pound, Spectral Wound are probably the most consistent no-frills black metal band currently in operation. Songs of Blood and Mire is another rager that’s as melodic as it is acidic.
• Lord Buffalo // Holus Bolus – This record was one redundant instrumental away from landing higher on this list. Looking forward to where these gothic country rockers go next.

Songs o’ the Year:

In alphabetical order by band:

#2024 #40WattSun #ASwarmOfTheSun #Anciients #BlogPosts #BlueHeron #CarcharodonAndCherdSTopTenIshOf2024 #ChatPile #Convulsing #CryptSermon #DevenialVerdict #FullOfHell #GlareOfTheSun #GrandMagus #InterArma #JulieChristmas #Kanonenfieber #Listurnalia #LordBuffalo #MotherOfGraves #Necrowretch #Nyktophobia #Opeth #Panzerfaust #PillarOfLight #Replicant #Selbst #Seth #Silhouette #SpectralVoice #SpectralWound #Sumac #TheVisionBleak #Thou #Ulcerate #VoidWitch #Vorga #ZealArdor

Carcharodon and Cherd’s Top Ten(ish) of 2024

By Carcharodon

Carcharodon

I’ve been writing here since 2018. This has been the hardest year to date. I feel like I say this every year right around this time but, for whatever reason, I’ve really struggled this year to find the motivation and inspiration to write. Indeed, I’ve often felt that I lacked the passion for the music. Rather than exploring the murkier depths of Bandcamp, I was often to be found in the company of old, non-metal friends like Nick Cave, 16 Horsepower and Tom Waits.

Despite my disappointment with the world, most of which is on literal or metaphorical fire, and my disillusionment with people, whose choices have caused most of that, there were bright glimmers. The phenomenal response to our Gondor-esque call for aid, when Kenstrosity‘s life was ripped apart by Hurricane Helene, reassured me there are still a few good people out there, a good number of whom read this blog.

Still, I managed to turn out a few reviews this year, including my first ever 5.0—more of which below—which was worth it for the Steel Ire it evoked alone. And there was the Fifteenalia, a celebration the like of which we will not see again (for obvious reasons), which I had the honour of steering from questionable inception to creaky delivery.

Ironically, despite my struggles on the writing front, This Place has played a significant part in keeping me sane. It’s been tolerable to welcome a few new staffers—some even raised up from the awful Place Below—to our serried ranks, while the older hands feel almost like family at this point, with everything that that entails. As ever, particular thanks go to Steel Druhm for his tireless intimidation, which just about keeps us honest, while Dolph, Dear Hollow, El Cuervo, Grier, Maddog, Sentynel and Thus Spoke, among others, have proved adequate companions for banter and gigs.

And with that, I wish you all the happiest of Listurnalias.

#ish. Pillar of Light // Caldera – A very late entry to this list, Pillar of Light should be a cautionary tale to bands and labels: release your shit earlier! With more time, the stunning Amenra-meets-Cult of Luna post-misery of Caldera could easily have placed in the top half of this list. While I know this is an album I will come to love and fully expect to regret not placing it higher here, the reality is that other entries have had longer to sink their hooks into me. I will just say that, for me, the apparently divisive vocals are a perfect fit for Pillar of Light’s style.

#10. Seth // La France des Maudits – Way back when,1 French black metallers Seth snuck onto my list of Honorable Mentions with La Morsure du Christ, a fantastic return to form after a lengthy absence. After a short gap, they’re back and this year’s La France des Maudits has cracked the list proper. Melodic, bordering on symphonic with the keys and choral arrangements, but also visceral and feral, Seth dropped an absolute banger. It doesn’t hurt that, as Thus Spoke pointed out in her review, it’s “downright impressive how rich and dynamic this sounds.”

#9. The Vision Bleak // Weird Tales – The Vision Bleak is not, to paraphrase Dr Grier, a band that has ever ‘got’ me. Or perhaps, I’ve never got them. But Weird Tales resonated with me enormously. And perhaps that’s because it’s not really like anything The Vision Bleak has done before. Structuring their gothic black metal (or should that be blackened goth metal?) into a single, flowing song (albeit one broken into parts) got my attention. But they held my attention because they actually managed to pull off this very-hard-to-execute vision. Weird Tales’ Type O Negative / Moonspell-inspired blackened sound clicked into place almost instantly for me and now I need to go back to TVB’s discography with newly-opened eyes.

#8. Necrowretch // Swords of Dajjal – The first 4.0 I delivered in an alarmingly high-scoring year, Necrowretch’s black-death fusion is something that I have returned to again. Hiding beneath the vicious, downright nasty surface of Swords of Dajjal, is a surprisingly subtle and well-crafted concept album. As I said in my review, there is zero bloat or filler on this record, which blazes with intensity, driven as much by the scything, razor-sharp riffs as the rasping, sepulchral vocals. The range of influences cited, both by me and by impressed commenters, shows how many different aspects there are to this killer record.

#7. Panzerfaust // The Suns of Perdition – Chapter IV: To Shadow Zion – After Chapter III: The Astral Drain, I was worried that Panzerfaust were running out of steam and inspiration to close out The Suns of Perdition saga. Thankfully, my concerns were misplaced. To Shadow Zion reeks of doom and destiny. Huge, brooding and intense, it is a captivating listen, with the stunning “The Damascene Conversions” sitting at its heart. From the sulfuric vocals to the masterful drumming, this was a worthy final chapter for The Suns of Perdition, which must go down as one of the best executed, most consistent multi-album concept pieces in metal.

#6. Spectral Wound // Songs of Blood and Mire – Spectral Wound just can’t miss. For a band that, superficially at least, plays fairly old school black metal, songwriting chops paired with brilliant execution mean these guys are anything but derivative. My favourite album of theirs to date, Songs of Blood and Mire is just tons of wicked, nasty fun. It’s hard to say exactly why, but I feel like everything Spectral Wound does has a slight knowing wink to it, which suggests that the band doesn’t take itself too seriously. For me, this is a huge positive, as a lot of black metal is so tediously earnest, where this is unflinchingly harsh, surprisingly melodic and drowning in swaggering groove. Great stuff.

#5. Mother of Graves // The Periapt of Absence – I’m a sucker for death doom. And The Periapt of Absence is some fucking great death doom. Mother of Graves were unknown to me before I stumbled across this album but their blending of old school Opeth (think somewhere between Morningrise and Orchid) with early Katatonia and Paradise Lost, plus a sprinkling of Clouds is stunning. All wrapped up in a pleasingly tight package, Mother of Graves smother the listener in unflinching, heartwrenching misery. And I love every minute of it. It’s that Peaceville Three sound we love, but feeling fresh, vibrant and vital.

#4. Devenial Verdict // Blessing of Despair – Me and death metal don’t always see eye to eye, and the last Devenial Verdict left only a passing impression. But Thus Spoke‘s tireless tongue-bathing promotion of Blessing of Despair convinced me to give it a chance. While I enjoy the stomping thuggery of Devenial Verdict’s dissonant death well enough, it’s the sudden mood swings into what TS described as “lethally graceful restraint” that really hooked me. Although worlds apart stylistically, on Blessing of Despair DV achieved what Chained to the Bottom of the Ocean did on Obsession Destruction: knowing precisely how far to push the suffocating, claustrophobic heaviness, before taking their foot off your throat for a minute. Then stamping on it again.

#3. Julie Christmas // Ridiculous and Full of Blood – Maddog predicted that I would lambast him as an underrating bastard for the 3.5 he deigned to award Ms Christmas. And he was quite correct. He’s a charlatan of the highest order. However, even I’m surprised by how high Ridiculous and Full of Blood has landed here. But, as someone not given to overly emotional reactions to music, I’m continually stunned by the reactions Julie—Can I call you Julie? No? Ok—extracts from me. I’m often on the edge of tears by the end of “The Lighthouse,” just like that cad Maddog, while the likes of “Not Enough” and “End of the World” (the latter with CoL’s Johannes Persson) have a scary edge to them, with Christmas at her maniacal, crooning, possessed, unpredictable best.

#2. A Swarm of the Sun // An Empire – Speaking of emotional responses, A Swarm of the Sun’s stripped back melancholy is right up there. If I say that An Empire is brighter and more uplifting than previous efforts The Rifts and The Woods, understand that this is a very relative statement. An Empire is drowning in sorrow and misery, and yet there is just a hint of brightness that shimmers and hovers around the edges, like a lunar halo. Slow and deliberate, haunting and cathartic, A Swarm of the Sun’s latest outing is just beautiful. End of. No discussion.2

#1. Kanonenfieber // Die Urkatastrophe – Y’all know I dropped a 5.0 on Die Urkatastophe, so it’s no surprise to find it here, sitting pretty, atop my list. There’s not much more praise that I can heap on Kanonenfieber’s sophomore record than I already did in my review. For me, it has everything and is more than I dared hope for as a follow up to my beloved Menschenmühle (my album of the year for 2021). It is brutal and vicious (“Panzerhenker” and “Ausblutingsschlacht”), anthemic (“Der Maulwurf” and “Menschenmühle”) and more. Crafted—and yes, that is the correct word—with huge skill and attention to detail, it is the storytelling, based on original source materials, that elevates this record to the next level for me. And if you don’t speak German, or are simply not into narrative in your metal, just go bang your fucking head to “Gott mit der Kavallerie”!

Honorable mentions In alphabetical order by band:

• 40 Watt Sun // Little Weight – Little Weight actually carries a lot of emotional weight. Melancholic, beautiful post-doom and shoegaze, rife with a rough honesty.
• Anciients // Beyond the Reach of the Sun – Long-form (arguably too-long-form in some respects) progressive death, which is wonderfully ambitious and overblown in its scale and delivery.
• Crypt Sermon // The Stygian Rose – Fantastic trad doom, channeling heavy doses of Candlemass. Early in the year, I thought this was top-5 material but it’s uneven, with the back half much stronger than the front, and I’ve cooled on it a touch.
• Nyktophobia // To the Stars – Just great, stomping melodeath. As I said in my review, it’s not massively original but it’s tight and well written, and easy to just kick back to. Sometimes, I don’t need more.
• Silhouette // Les Dires de l’​Â​me – This fantastic post-black album had a place on the list proper until Pillar of Light bulldozed its way in there very late in the day. Haunting, harrowing and beautiful, Silhouette’s debut is Great!
• Sumac // The Healer – Nothing about The Healer makes it an easy listen but Sumac’s fifth record is curiously beautiful for all its wandering, free-form abrasiveness.
• Vorga // Beyond the Palest Star – While it’s hard to disagree with Kenstrosity‘s criticism of the production on Beyond the Palest Star, what can I say? I still love it. It’s chunky, well written, well paced and powerful.

Surprises o’ the Year Ordered by most astounding first:

• Opeth // The Last Will and Testament – It’s been a long time since I was last genuinely interested in an Opeth album (2005’s Ghost Reveries, in case you were wondering). But, wouldn’t you just know it, Mikael Åkerfeldt and co are back (roars and all). I’m not ready to commit to a score for The Last Will (though I think El Cuervo‘s was possibly a smidge high) as I’ve not been able to spend enough time with it. But the fact I want to spend more time with it is, after 19 years of having no interest in Opeth’s output, a surprise. And a welcome one.
• Grand Magus // Sunraven – Another Swedish favourite of old, which I’d all but given up on, Grand Magus roared back this year with Sunraven. As an equally surprised Steel Druhm said in his review, this was the album he “feverishly hoped to get from Grand Magus … a grand return to prime form with the fire firmly back in the Balrog … the best Magus outing since 2012’s The Hunt”.

Disappointment o’ the Year Limited to a single musical disappointment, to avoid submitting a lengthy thesis:

• Zeal & Ardor // GREIF – I’m not angry, or even very surprised, just disappointed.3 While I accept that this is the album of a band in transition, there’s no getting away from the fact that it was a hugely disappointing album from a band that has abandoned the sound that made it what it was. And for what? They have not transitioned to something new and exciting, but with kinks to be worked out. Rather, on this record, Zeal & Ardor became something so pedestrian that any number of post-rock bands could’ve written it and, probably, done a better job. I may have overrated it.

Songs o’ the Year

1. Julie Christmas – “The Lighthouse”
2. Kanonenfieber – “Der Maulwurf”
3. Selbst – “The Stench of a Dead Spirit”
4. Panzerfaust – “The Damascene Conversions”
5. Kanonenfieber – “Gott mit der Kavallerie”
6. Devenial Verdict – “Garden of Eyes”
7. Spectral Wound – “Aristocratic Suicidal Black Metal”
8. Silhouette – “Les Dires de l’​Â​me”
9. Blue Heron – “Everything Fades”
10. Zeal & Ardor – “Hide in Shade”
11. Glare of the Sun – “Rain”

Cherd

Twenty-twenty-four was certainly a year that followed previous years and will precede still others. When I look back, I’ll likely remember it as the year I discovered the wonders of ADHD medication after decades of non-treatment, the difficult transition my poor Cherdlet experienced from kindergarten to first grade, and the incredible bucket list trip my wife and I took to Toronto to watch our favorite TV franchise filming new content courtesy of my very important Hollywood connections. No, not Robert Downey Jr. Much more important and better-looking. Hmm? Margot Robbie? She wishes. I also had the pleasure of meeting several of my fellow writers in person, and they are all much homelier than they let on with the exception of Madam X, who is a goddamned ray of sunshine.

On the musical front, I was able to check two bands off my “need to see live” list in Judas Priest and Archspire, whereby I discovered that Halford does exactly zero audience banter, and Archspire do nothing but. Fun shows, both. I didn’t listen to as much new music by volume this year than I have in previous years when I’d log between 200 and 400 releases, and that was largely due to my kid’s age and the level of interaction he needs. I have a feeling, however, that 2025 will see an uptick thanks to the new Heavys headphones I got for Christmas this year. As always, I want to thank the editors, particularly Steel Druhm and Doc Grier, for not sending me a mailbomb after all the late reviews I turned in (I’ll work on that in 2025), and the man himself, AMG, for building this community and for agreeing that Deep Space Nine is the best Star Trek show.4

(ish) Chat Pile // Cool World – This is what it sounds like when Chat Pile make a “mature” record. As I noted in my October review, some of the most glaring weirdness and black humor the band is known for is missing in Cool World, which is why it’s here on my list instead of matching the lofty heights of my 2022 AOTY God’s Country. That said, this is consistently bleak in a way I like, and it boasts what are in my opinion the two best–if not most memorable–songs the band have written to date in “New World” and “Masc.” I’m a sucker for these Oklahomans and look forward to how their sound evolves from here.

#10. Glacial Tomb // Lightless Expanse – I’ve had an up and down journey with Glacial Tomb’s sophomore record, but that doesn’t mean I don’t still view this as one of the best things I’ve listened to this year. To consider a record this closely means you have to listen to it a lot, and I wouldn’t be surprised if I logged more hours with Lightless Expanse than with any other album. I’ve made a big deal about the one-three punch of “Voidwomb/Enshrined in Concrete/Abyssal Host”, but it bears repeating since it’s my favorite consecutive stretch of death metal in 2024.

#9. Replicant // Infinite Mortality – If you peel back the veneer of disso-death and blackened blasts on Infinite Mortality, you’ll find a pounding hardcore heart comprised of equal parts beatdown and Converge. As technical as this music gets, and there is a lot going on here, Replicant never forget their primary duty as a metal band: snapping necks. On their third album, they’ve exquisitely composed a missive to unbridled aggression. I completely missed their previous albums, so I’m glad our Kenfren wouldn’t shut his excitable yap about this one.

#8. Spectral Voice // Sparagmos – “Alright skaters! This is the end of our free skate period. We’d like to once again thank you for spending your Saturday with us here at Family Fun Roller Rink and Arcade. It’s time to slow things down, down, way down, and you know what that means. That’s right, it’s couples’ skate. So, find that special someone you want to be interred on a cold stone slab with, gaze into each other’s empty eye sockets, and make your way around the rink as wave after wave of Spectral Voice’s death/funeral doom forcefully separates you from any light, hope, or happiness this wretched world might have accidentally given you. Remember, those who survive the next 45 minutes of tectonic plates colliding will get the chance to compete in roller limbo!”

#7. Crypt Sermon // The Stygian Rose – Despite being one of the biggest doom apologists on this site, Crypt Sermon failed to grab me with their highly acclaimed debut nearly ten years ago. I chalk this up to my unfamiliarity with the traditional doom style at the time. In recent years, I’ve binged large amounts of Candlemass, Saint Vitus, Cathedral, Solitude Aeturnus et al., so I finally have the frame of reference to see just how well Crypt Sermon’s third LP captures the swagger, majesty, and grit of a style few contemporary bands seem interested in playing. After the growing pains displayed on The Ruins of Fading Light, these Philly natives have worked out the kinks and delivered an air-tight slab of doomy goodness.

#6. Full of Hell // Coagulated Bliss – I regret waiving my seniority claim to Full of Hell releases, thus allowing Dolph to snap up review duties for Coagulated Bliss. It’s not that he did a bad job of reviewing the prolific experimental grind outfit’s latest. He did great, and he awarded it a deserved 4.0. But then he had the cheek, the nerve, the gall, the audacity, and the gumption to incorrectly lower his score. To make matters worse, it appeared nowhere on his year-end list. Not even a goll dern honorable mention. I’ve told him to his cetacean face that he’s wrong and I’m likely to do so again because this is Full of Hell’s best work since Trumpeting Ecstasy. In fact, it might be better.

#5. Ulcerate // Cutting the Throat of God – For most of their existence, Ulcerate was a highly acclaimed band that I just couldn’t get into. That changed four years ago with the release of Stare into Death and Be Still. Little changed in their intricate approach to dissonant death metal, but there was something warmer and more human to what I had previously considered a rather detached style. That trend continues with Cutting the Throat of God. I find this record best when taken as a whole, letting the experience unfold over the full runtime, like dream-walking through a hedge maze or being trapped in a velvet sack and discovering it’s much larger on the inside.5

#4. Thou // Umbilical – I waited a long time for a chance to review a new record by Thou, and when it finally came, they did not disappoint. As I said in my June review, “Like their chimerical American metal brethren Inter Arma, it doesn’t matter how many influences the band stuff into one album. They are all unified in sound under Thou’s banner. Bryan Funck’s acid-bit vocals are unmistakable and apparently unchangeable after 20 throat-shredding years. Also unchangeable? Thou’s ability to craft the most metallic-sounding guitar tone out there. As the standard bearer for…hell, as the entire sum of the second generation of Louisiana sludge, the sound they’ve forged isn’t the kind of sloppy muck you may associate with the term. It’s certainly thick, but it has a quality like two enormous steel I-beams violently striking each other.” If that doesn’t sell Umbilical for you, then here is where our paths diverge.

#3. Devenial Verdict // Blessing of Despair – I didn’t listen to Blessing of Despair for several weeks after it came out in October despite the fact Devenial Verdict’s previous record, Ash Blind, made my year-end list in 2022. When I finally got around to it earlier in December, it threatened to blow the doors right off my still nebulous list, climbing fast and high until ultimately landing here at number three. There is more immediacy than on Ash Blind, which took me a while to warm up to. That doesn’t mean the band skimps on the kind of thoughtful transitions and atmospherics they’ve come to be known for. It’s just that Blessing of Despair HAZ THE RIFFS, including my favorite death metal riff of the year in “Solus.”

#2. Void Witch // Horripilating Presence – When I revisited Horripilating Presence with the purpose of sorting out this list’s pecking order, I expected death-doomers Void Witch to fall mid-to-late top 10. Obviously, the opposite happened. For the life of me I don’t understand how this album didn’t gain more traction amongst the other writers and you, the unwashed commentariat. As I said back in July, “…the material on Horripilating Presence is Mohamed Ali levels of confident. The editing of ideas in each song and across the album’s taut 39 minutes is masterful, especially for a debut. No song hews too closely to any of the others, but all are of a piece, locking comfortably into place like an intricate puzzle box, and Void Witch have such sights to show you.”

#1. Inter Arma // New Heaven – Inter Arma never miss. Aside from being one of the best live acts in metal, every album they’ve released going back to 2013’s Sky Burial has been one successful evolution after another. As a very wise reviewer once said, “They’re the same shaggy beast as ever, but beneath that matted, coarse coat is a rippling form mid-shape shift, stretching, pulling, and crossing back on itself constantly over the course of New Heaven’s shockingly concise 42 minutes…If being all over the musical map sounds like a negative, you’ve probably never heard an Inter Arma record before. It seems whatever they throw at the wall sticks, and the listening experience across their (usually much longer) records never feels uneven. This is because they play everything with the same smoldering intensity and volatile mean streak.” What a record.

Honorable Mentions:

• Convulsing // Perdurance – I like this quote from Dear Hollow‘s review, so I’ll let him do the talking: “…Convulsing explores every nook and twist of a rhythm and melody until its inevitable conclusion is happened upon in tragic and fatal fashion.”
• Spectral Wound // Songs of Blood and Mire – Pound for pound, Spectral Wound are probably the most consistent no-frills black metal band currently in operation. Songs of Blood and Mire is another rager that’s as melodic as it is acidic.
• Lord Buffalo // Holus Bolus – This record was one redundant instrumental away from landing higher on this list. Looking forward to where these gothic country rockers go next.

Songs o’ the Year:

In alphabetical order by band:

#2024 #40WattSun #ASwarmOfTheSun #Anciients #BlogPosts #BlueHeron #CarcharodonAndCherdSTopTenIshOf2024 #ChatPile #Convulsing #CryptSermon #DevenialVerdict #FullOfHell #GlareOfTheSun #GrandMagus #InterArma #JulieChristmas #Kanonenfieber #Listurnalia #LordBuffalo #MotherOfGraves #Necrowretch #Nyktophobia #Opeth #Panzerfaust #PillarOfLight #Replicant #Selbst #Seth #Silhouette #SpectralVoice #SpectralWound #Sumac #TheVisionBleak #Thou #Ulcerate #VoidWitch #Vorga #ZealArdor

Carcharodon and Cherd’s Top Ten(ish) of 2024

By Carcharodon

Carcharodon

I’ve been writing here since 2018. This has been the hardest year to date. I feel like I say this every year right around this time but, for whatever reason, I’ve really struggled this year to find the motivation and inspiration to write. Indeed, I’ve often felt that I lacked the passion for the music. Rather than exploring the murkier depths of Bandcamp, I was often to be found in the company of old, non-metal friends like Nick Cave, 16 Horsepower and Tom Waits.

Despite my disappointment with the world, most of which is on literal or metaphorical fire, and my disillusionment with people, whose choices have caused most of that, there were bright glimmers. The phenomenal response to our Gondor-esque call for aid, when Kenstrosity‘s life was ripped apart by Hurricane Helene, reassured me there are still a few good people out there, a good number of whom read this blog.

Still, I managed to turn out a few reviews this year, including my first ever 5.0—more of which below—which was worth it for the Steel Ire it evoked alone. And there was the Fifteenalia, a celebration the like of which we will not see again (for obvious reasons), which I had the honour of steering from questionable inception to creaky delivery.

Ironically, despite my struggles on the writing front, This Place has played a significant part in keeping me sane. It’s been tolerable to welcome a few new staffers—some even raised up from the awful Place Below—to our serried ranks, while the older hands feel almost like family at this point, with everything that that entails. As ever, particular thanks go to Steel Druhm for his tireless intimidation, which just about keeps us honest, while Dolph, Dear Hollow, El Cuervo, Grier, Maddog, Sentynel and Thus Spoke, among others, have proved adequate companions for banter and gigs.

And with that, I wish you all the happiest of Listurnalias.

#ish. Pillar of Light // Caldera – A very late entry to this list, Pillar of Light should be a cautionary tale to bands and labels: release your shit earlier! With more time, the stunning Amenra-meets-Cult of Luna post-misery of Caldera could easily have placed in the top half of this list. While I know this is an album I will come to love and fully expect to regret not placing it higher here, the reality is that other entries have had longer to sink their hooks into me. I will just say that, for me, the apparently divisive vocals are a perfect fit for Pillar of Light’s style.

#10. Seth // La France des Maudits – Way back when,1 French black metallers Seth snuck onto my list of Honorable Mentions with La Morsure du Christ, a fantastic return to form after a lengthy absence. After a short gap, they’re back and this year’s La France des Maudits has cracked the list proper. Melodic, bordering on symphonic with the keys and choral arrangements, but also visceral and feral, Seth dropped an absolute banger. It doesn’t hurt that, as Thus Spoke pointed out in her review, it’s “downright impressive how rich and dynamic this sounds.”

#9. The Vision Bleak // Weird Tales – The Vision Bleak is not, to paraphrase Dr Grier, a band that has ever ‘got’ me. Or perhaps, I’ve never got them. But Weird Tales resonated with me enormously. And perhaps that’s because it’s not really like anything The Vision Bleak has done before. Structuring their gothic black metal (or should that be blackened goth metal?) into a single, flowing song (albeit one broken into parts) got my attention. But they held my attention because they actually managed to pull off this very-hard-to-execute vision. Weird Tales’ Type O Negative / Moonspell-inspired blackened sound clicked into place almost instantly for me and now I need to go back to TVB’s discography with newly-opened eyes.

#8. Necrowretch // Swords of Dajjal – The first 4.0 I delivered in an alarmingly high-scoring year, Necrowretch’s black-death fusion is something that I have returned to again. Hiding beneath the vicious, downright nasty surface of Swords of Dajjal, is a surprisingly subtle and well-crafted concept album. As I said in my review, there is zero bloat or filler on this record, which blazes with intensity, driven as much by the scything, razor-sharp riffs as the rasping, sepulchral vocals. The range of influences cited, both by me and by impressed commenters, shows how many different aspects there are to this killer record.

#7. Panzerfaust // The Suns of Perdition – Chapter IV: To Shadow Zion – After Chapter III: The Astral Drain, I was worried that Panzerfaust were running out of steam and inspiration to close out The Suns of Perdition saga. Thankfully, my concerns were misplaced. To Shadow Zion reeks of doom and destiny. Huge, brooding and intense, it is a captivating listen, with the stunning “The Damascene Conversions” sitting at its heart. From the sulfuric vocals to the masterful drumming, this was a worthy final chapter for The Suns of Perdition, which must go down as one of the best executed, most consistent multi-album concept pieces in metal.

#6. Spectral Wound // Songs of Blood and Mire – Spectral Wound just can’t miss. For a band that, superficially at least, plays fairly old school black metal, songwriting chops paired with brilliant execution mean these guys are anything but derivative. My favourite album of theirs to date, Songs of Blood and Mire is just tons of wicked, nasty fun. It’s hard to say exactly why, but I feel like everything Spectral Wound does has a slight knowing wink to it, which suggests that the band doesn’t take itself too seriously. For me, this is a huge positive, as a lot of black metal is so tediously earnest, where this is unflinchingly harsh, surprisingly melodic and drowning in swaggering groove. Great stuff.

#5. Mother of Graves // The Periapt of Absence – I’m a sucker for death doom. And The Periapt of Absence is some fucking great death doom. Mother of Graves were unknown to me before I stumbled across this album but their blending of old school Opeth (think somewhere between Morningrise and Orchid) with early Katatonia and Paradise Lost, plus a sprinkling of Clouds is stunning. All wrapped up in a pleasingly tight package, Mother of Graves smother the listener in unflinching, heartwrenching misery. And I love every minute of it. It’s that Peaceville Three sound we love, but feeling fresh, vibrant and vital.

#4. Devenial Verdict // Blessing of Despair – Me and death metal don’t always see eye to eye, and the last Devenial Verdict left only a passing impression. But Thus Spoke‘s tireless tongue-bathing promotion of Blessing of Despair convinced me to give it a chance. While I enjoy the stomping thuggery of Devenial Verdict’s dissonant death well enough, it’s the sudden mood swings into what TS described as “lethally graceful restraint” that really hooked me. Although worlds apart stylistically, on Blessing of Despair DV achieved what Chained to the Bottom of the Ocean did on Obsession Destruction: knowing precisely how far to push the suffocating, claustrophobic heaviness, before taking their foot off your throat for a minute. Then stamping on it again.

#3. Julie Christmas // Ridiculous and Full of Blood – Maddog predicted that I would lambast him as an underrating bastard for the 3.5 he deigned to award Ms Christmas. And he was quite correct. He’s a charlatan of the highest order. However, even I’m surprised by how high Ridiculous and Full of Blood has landed here. But, as someone not given to overly emotional reactions to music, I’m continually stunned by the reactions Julie—Can I call you Julie? No? Ok—extracts from me. I’m often on the edge of tears by the end of “The Lighthouse,” just like that cad Maddog, while the likes of “Not Enough” and “End of the World” (the latter with CoL’s Johannes Persson) have a scary edge to them, with Christmas at her maniacal, crooning, possessed, unpredictable best.

#2. A Swarm of the Sun // An Empire – Speaking of emotional responses, A Swarm of the Sun’s stripped back melancholy is right up there. If I say that An Empire is brighter and more uplifting than previous efforts The Rifts and The Woods, understand that this is a very relative statement. An Empire is drowning in sorrow and misery, and yet there is just a hint of brightness that shimmers and hovers around the edges, like a lunar halo. Slow and deliberate, haunting and cathartic, A Swarm of the Sun’s latest outing is just beautiful. End of. No discussion.2

#1. Kanonenfieber // Die Urkatastrophe – Y’all know I dropped a 5.0 on Die Urkatastophe, so it’s no surprise to find it here, sitting pretty, atop my list. There’s not much more praise that I can heap on Kanonenfieber’s sophomore record than I already did in my review. For me, it has everything and is more than I dared hope for as a follow up to my beloved Menschenmühle (my album of the year for 2021). It is brutal and vicious (“Panzerhenker” and “Ausblutingsschlacht”), anthemic (“Der Maulwurf” and “Menschenmühle”) and more. Crafted—and yes, that is the correct word—with huge skill and attention to detail, it is the storytelling, based on original source materials, that elevates this record to the next level for me. And if you don’t speak German, or are simply not into narrative in your metal, just go bang your fucking head to “Gott mit der Kavallerie”!

Honorable mentions In alphabetical order by band:

• 40 Watt Sun // Little Weight – Little Weight actually carries a lot of emotional weight. Melancholic, beautiful post-doom and shoegaze, rife with a rough honesty.
• Anciients // Beyond the Reach of the Sun – Long-form (arguably too-long-form in some respects) progressive death, which is wonderfully ambitious and overblown in its scale and delivery.
• Crypt Sermon // The Stygian Rose – Fantastic trad doom, channeling heavy doses of Candlemass. Early in the year, I thought this was top-5 material but it’s uneven, with the back half much stronger than the front, and I’ve cooled on it a touch.
• Nyktophobia // To the Stars – Just great, stomping melodeath. As I said in my review, it’s not massively original but it’s tight and well written, and easy to just kick back to. Sometimes, I don’t need more.
• Silhouette // Les Dires de l’​Â​me – This fantastic post-black album had a place on the list proper until Pillar of Light bulldozed its way in there very late in the day. Haunting, harrowing and beautiful, Silhouette’s debut is Great!
• Sumac // The Healer – Nothing about The Healer makes it an easy listen but Sumac’s fifth record is curiously beautiful for all its wandering, free-form abrasiveness.
• Vorga // Beyond the Palest Star – While it’s hard to disagree with Kenstrosity‘s criticism of the production on Beyond the Palest Star, what can I say? I still love it. It’s chunky, well written, well paced and powerful.

Surprises o’ the Year Ordered by most astounding first:

• Opeth // The Last Will and Testament – It’s been a long time since I was last genuinely interested in an Opeth album (2005’s Ghost Reveries, in case you were wondering). But, wouldn’t you just know it, Mikael Åkerfeldt and co are back (roars and all). I’m not ready to commit to a score for The Last Will (though I think El Cuervo‘s was possibly a smidge high) as I’ve not been able to spend enough time with it. But the fact I want to spend more time with it is, after 19 years of having no interest in Opeth’s output, a surprise. And a welcome one.
• Grand Magus // Sunraven – Another Swedish favourite of old, which I’d all but given up on, Grand Magus roared back this year with Sunraven. As an equally surprised Steel Druhm said in his review, this was the album he “feverishly hoped to get from Grand Magus … a grand return to prime form with the fire firmly back in the Balrog … the best Magus outing since 2012’s The Hunt”.

Disappointment o’ the Year Limited to a single musical disappointment, to avoid submitting a lengthy thesis:

• Zeal & Ardor // GREIF – I’m not angry, or even very surprised, just disappointed.3 While I accept that this is the album of a band in transition, there’s no getting away from the fact that it was a hugely disappointing album from a band that has abandoned the sound that made it what it was. And for what? They have not transitioned to something new and exciting, but with kinks to be worked out. Rather, on this record, Zeal & Ardor became something so pedestrian that any number of post-rock bands could’ve written it and, probably, done a better job. I may have overrated it.

Songs o’ the Year

1. Julie Christmas – “The Lighthouse”
2. Kanonenfieber – “Der Maulwurf”
3. Selbst – “The Stench of a Dead Spirit”
4. Panzerfaust – “The Damascene Conversions”
5. Kanonenfieber – “Gott mit der Kavallerie”
6. Devenial Verdict – “Garden of Eyes”
7. Spectral Wound – “Aristocratic Suicidal Black Metal”
8. Silhouette – “Les Dires de l’​Â​me”
9. Blue Heron – “Everything Fades”
10. Zeal & Ardor – “Hide in Shade”
11. Glare of the Sun – “Rain”

Cherd

Twenty-twenty-four was certainly a year that followed previous years and will precede still others. When I look back, I’ll likely remember it as the year I discovered the wonders of ADHD medication after decades of non-treatment, the difficult transition my poor Cherdlet experienced from kindergarten to first grade, and the incredible bucket list trip my wife and I took to Toronto to watch our favorite TV franchise filming new content courtesy of my very important Hollywood connections. No, not Robert Downey Jr. Much more important and better-looking. Hmm? Margot Robbie? She wishes. I also had the pleasure of meeting several of my fellow writers in person, and they are all much homelier than they let on with the exception of Madam X, who is a goddamned ray of sunshine.

On the musical front, I was able to check two bands off my “need to see live” list in Judas Priest and Archspire, whereby I discovered that Halford does exactly zero audience banter, and Archspire do nothing but. Fun shows, both. I didn’t listen to as much new music by volume this year than I have in previous years when I’d log between 200 and 400 releases, and that was largely due to my kid’s age and the level of interaction he needs. I have a feeling, however, that 2025 will see an uptick thanks to the new Heavys headphones I got for Christmas this year. As always, I want to thank the editors, particularly Steel Druhm and Doc Grier, for not sending me a mailbomb after all the late reviews I turned in (I’ll work on that in 2025), and the man himself, AMG, for building this community and for agreeing that Deep Space Nine is the best Star Trek show.4

(ish) Chat Pile // Cool World – This is what it sounds like when Chat Pile make a “mature” record. As I noted in my October review, some of the most glaring weirdness and black humor the band is known for is missing in Cool World, which is why it’s here on my list instead of matching the lofty heights of my 2022 AOTY God’s Country. That said, this is consistently bleak in a way I like, and it boasts what are in my opinion the two best–if not most memorable–songs the band have written to date in “New World” and “Masc.” I’m a sucker for these Oklahomans and look forward to how their sound evolves from here.

#10. Glacial Tomb // Lightless Expanse – I’ve had an up and down journey with Glacial Tomb’s sophomore record, but that doesn’t mean I don’t still view this as one of the best things I’ve listened to this year. To consider a record this closely means you have to listen to it a lot, and I wouldn’t be surprised if I logged more hours with Lightless Expanse than with any other album. I’ve made a big deal about the one-three punch of “Voidwomb/Enshrined in Concrete/Abyssal Host”, but it bears repeating since it’s my favorite consecutive stretch of death metal in 2024.

#9. Replicant // Infinite Mortality – If you peel back the veneer of disso-death and blackened blasts on Infinite Mortality, you’ll find a pounding hardcore heart comprised of equal parts beatdown and Converge. As technical as this music gets, and there is a lot going on here, Replicant never forget their primary duty as a metal band: snapping necks. On their third album, they’ve exquisitely composed a missive to unbridled aggression. I completely missed their previous albums, so I’m glad our Kenfren wouldn’t shut his excitable yap about this one.

#8. Spectral Voice // Sparagmos – “Alright skaters! This is the end of our free skate period. We’d like to once again thank you for spending your Saturday with us here at Family Fun Roller Rink and Arcade. It’s time to slow things down, down, way down, and you know what that means. That’s right, it’s couples’ skate. So, find that special someone you want to be interred on a cold stone slab with, gaze into each other’s empty eye sockets, and make your way around the rink as wave after wave of Spectral Voice’s death/funeral doom forcefully separates you from any light, hope, or happiness this wretched world might have accidentally given you. Remember, those who survive the next 45 minutes of tectonic plates colliding will get the chance to compete in roller limbo!”

#7. Crypt Sermon // The Stygian Rose – Despite being one of the biggest doom apologists on this site, Crypt Sermon failed to grab me with their highly acclaimed debut nearly ten years ago. I chalk this up to my unfamiliarity with the traditional doom style at the time. In recent years, I’ve binged large amounts of Candlemass, Saint Vitus, Cathedral, Solitude Aeturnus et al., so I finally have the frame of reference to see just how well Crypt Sermon’s third LP captures the swagger, majesty, and grit of a style few contemporary bands seem interested in playing. After the growing pains displayed on The Ruins of Fading Light, these Philly natives have worked out the kinks and delivered an air-tight slab of doomy goodness.

#6. Full of Hell // Coagulated Bliss – I regret waiving my seniority claim to Full of Hell releases, thus allowing Dolph to snap up review duties for Coagulated Bliss. It’s not that he did a bad job of reviewing the prolific experimental grind outfit’s latest. He did great, and he awarded it a deserved 4.0. But then he had the cheek, the nerve, the gall, the audacity, and the gumption to incorrectly lower his score. To make matters worse, it appeared nowhere on his year-end list. Not even a goll dern honorable mention. I’ve told him to his cetacean face that he’s wrong and I’m likely to do so again because this is Full of Hell’s best work since Trumpeting Ecstasy. In fact, it might be better.

#5. Ulcerate // Cutting the Throat of God – For most of their existence, Ulcerate was a highly acclaimed band that I just couldn’t get into. That changed four years ago with the release of Stare into Death and Be Still. Little changed in their intricate approach to dissonant death metal, but there was something warmer and more human to what I had previously considered a rather detached style. That trend continues with Cutting the Throat of God. I find this record best when taken as a whole, letting the experience unfold over the full runtime, like dream-walking through a hedge maze or being trapped in a velvet sack and discovering it’s much larger on the inside.5

#4. Thou // Umbilical – I waited a long time for a chance to review a new record by Thou, and when it finally came, they did not disappoint. As I said in my June review, “Like their chimerical American metal brethren Inter Arma, it doesn’t matter how many influences the band stuff into one album. They are all unified in sound under Thou’s banner. Bryan Funck’s acid-bit vocals are unmistakable and apparently unchangeable after 20 throat-shredding years. Also unchangeable? Thou’s ability to craft the most metallic-sounding guitar tone out there. As the standard bearer for…hell, as the entire sum of the second generation of Louisiana sludge, the sound they’ve forged isn’t the kind of sloppy muck you may associate with the term. It’s certainly thick, but it has a quality like two enormous steel I-beams violently striking each other.” If that doesn’t sell Umbilical for you, then here is where our paths diverge.

#3. Devenial Verdict // Blessing of Despair – I didn’t listen to Blessing of Despair for several weeks after it came out in October despite the fact Devenial Verdict’s previous record, Ash Blind, made my year-end list in 2022. When I finally got around to it earlier in December, it threatened to blow the doors right off my still nebulous list, climbing fast and high until ultimately landing here at number three. There is more immediacy than on Ash Blind, which took me a while to warm up to. That doesn’t mean the band skimps on the kind of thoughtful transitions and atmospherics they’ve come to be known for. It’s just that Blessing of Despair HAZ THE RIFFS, including my favorite death metal riff of the year in “Solus.”

#2. Void Witch // Horripilating Presence – When I revisited Horripilating Presence with the purpose of sorting out this list’s pecking order, I expected death-doomers Void Witch to fall mid-to-late top 10. Obviously, the opposite happened. For the life of me I don’t understand how this album didn’t gain more traction amongst the other writers and you, the unwashed commentariat. As I said back in July, “…the material on Horripilating Presence is Mohamed Ali levels of confident. The editing of ideas in each song and across the album’s taut 39 minutes is masterful, especially for a debut. No song hews too closely to any of the others, but all are of a piece, locking comfortably into place like an intricate puzzle box, and Void Witch have such sights to show you.”

#1. Inter Arma // New Heaven – Inter Arma never miss. Aside from being one of the best live acts in metal, every album they’ve released going back to 2013’s Sky Burial has been one successful evolution after another. As a very wise reviewer once said, “They’re the same shaggy beast as ever, but beneath that matted, coarse coat is a rippling form mid-shape shift, stretching, pulling, and crossing back on itself constantly over the course of New Heaven’s shockingly concise 42 minutes…If being all over the musical map sounds like a negative, you’ve probably never heard an Inter Arma record before. It seems whatever they throw at the wall sticks, and the listening experience across their (usually much longer) records never feels uneven. This is because they play everything with the same smoldering intensity and volatile mean streak.” What a record.

Honorable Mentions:

• Convulsing // Perdurance – I like this quote from Dear Hollow‘s review, so I’ll let him do the talking: “…Convulsing explores every nook and twist of a rhythm and melody until its inevitable conclusion is happened upon in tragic and fatal fashion.”
• Spectral Wound // Songs of Blood and Mire – Pound for pound, Spectral Wound are probably the most consistent no-frills black metal band currently in operation. Songs of Blood and Mire is another rager that’s as melodic as it is acidic.
• Lord Buffalo // Holus Bolus – This record was one redundant instrumental away from landing higher on this list. Looking forward to where these gothic country rockers go next.

Songs o’ the Year:

In alphabetical order by band:

#2024 #40WattSun #ASwarmOfTheSun #Anciients #BlogPosts #BlueHeron #CarcharodonAndCherdSTopTenIshOf2024 #ChatPile #Convulsing #CryptSermon #DevenialVerdict #FullOfHell #GlareOfTheSun #GrandMagus #InterArma #JulieChristmas #Kanonenfieber #Listurnalia #LordBuffalo #MotherOfGraves #Necrowretch #Nyktophobia #Opeth #Panzerfaust #PillarOfLight #Replicant #Selbst #Seth #Silhouette #SpectralVoice #SpectralWound #Sumac #TheVisionBleak #Thou #Ulcerate #VoidWitch #Vorga #ZealArdor

Carcharodon and Cherd’s Top Ten(ish) of 2024

By Carcharodon

Carcharodon

I’ve been writing here since 2018. This has been the hardest year to date. I feel like I say this every year right around this time but, for whatever reason, I’ve really struggled this year to find the motivation and inspiration to write. Indeed, I’ve often felt that I lacked the passion for the music. Rather than exploring the murkier depths of Bandcamp, I was often to be found in the company of old, non-metal friends like Nick Cave, 16 Horsepower and Tom Waits.

Despite my disappointment with the world, most of which is on literal or metaphorical fire, and my disillusionment with people, whose choices have caused most of that, there were bright glimmers. The phenomenal response to our Gondor-esque call for aid, when Kenstrosity‘s life was ripped apart by Hurricane Helene, reassured me there are still a few good people out there, a good number of whom read this blog.

Still, I managed to turn out a few reviews this year, including my first ever 5.0—more of which below—which was worth it for the Steel Ire it evoked alone. And there was the Fifteenalia, a celebration the like of which we will not see again (for obvious reasons), which I had the honour of steering from questionable inception to creaky delivery.

Ironically, despite my struggles on the writing front, This Place has played a significant part in keeping me sane. It’s been tolerable to welcome a few new staffers—some even raised up from the awful Place Below—to our serried ranks, while the older hands feel almost like family at this point, with everything that that entails. As ever, particular thanks go to Steel Druhm for his tireless intimidation, which just about keeps us honest, while Dolph, Dear Hollow, El Cuervo, Grier, Maddog, Sentynel and Thus Spoke, among others, have proved adequate companions for banter and gigs.

And with that, I wish you all the happiest of Listurnalias.

#ish. Pillar of Light // Caldera – A very late entry to this list, Pillar of Light should be a cautionary tale to bands and labels: release your shit earlier! With more time, the stunning Amenra-meets-Cult of Luna post-misery of Caldera could easily have placed in the top half of this list. While I know this is an album I will come to love and fully expect to regret not placing it higher here, the reality is that other entries have had longer to sink their hooks into me. I will just say that, for me, the apparently divisive vocals are a perfect fit for Pillar of Light’s style.

#10. Seth // La France des Maudits – Way back when,1 French black metallers Seth snuck onto my list of Honorable Mentions with La Morsure du Christ, a fantastic return to form after a lengthy absence. After a short gap, they’re back and this year’s La France des Maudits has cracked the list proper. Melodic, bordering on symphonic with the keys and choral arrangements, but also visceral and feral, Seth dropped an absolute banger. It doesn’t hurt that, as Thus Spoke pointed out in her review, it’s “downright impressive how rich and dynamic this sounds.”

#9. The Vision Bleak // Weird Tales – The Vision Bleak is not, to paraphrase Dr Grier, a band that has ever ‘got’ me. Or perhaps, I’ve never got them. But Weird Tales resonated with me enormously. And perhaps that’s because it’s not really like anything The Vision Bleak has done before. Structuring their gothic black metal (or should that be blackened goth metal?) into a single, flowing song (albeit one broken into parts) got my attention. But they held my attention because they actually managed to pull off this very-hard-to-execute vision. Weird Tales’ Type O Negative / Moonspell-inspired blackened sound clicked into place almost instantly for me and now I need to go back to TVB’s discography with newly-opened eyes.

#8. Necrowretch // Swords of Dajjal – The first 4.0 I delivered in an alarmingly high-scoring year, Necrowretch’s black-death fusion is something that I have returned to again. Hiding beneath the vicious, downright nasty surface of Swords of Dajjal, is a surprisingly subtle and well-crafted concept album. As I said in my review, there is zero bloat or filler on this record, which blazes with intensity, driven as much by the scything, razor-sharp riffs as the rasping, sepulchral vocals. The range of influences cited, both by me and by impressed commenters, shows how many different aspects there are to this killer record.

#7. Panzerfaust // The Suns of Perdition – Chapter IV: To Shadow Zion – After Chapter III: The Astral Drain, I was worried that Panzerfaust were running out of steam and inspiration to close out The Suns of Perdition saga. Thankfully, my concerns were misplaced. To Shadow Zion reeks of doom and destiny. Huge, brooding and intense, it is a captivating listen, with the stunning “The Damascene Conversions” sitting at its heart. From the sulfuric vocals to the masterful drumming, this was a worthy final chapter for The Suns of Perdition, which must go down as one of the best executed, most consistent multi-album concept pieces in metal.

#6. Spectral Wound // Songs of Blood and Mire – Spectral Wound just can’t miss. For a band that, superficially at least, plays fairly old school black metal, songwriting chops paired with brilliant execution mean these guys are anything but derivative. My favourite album of theirs to date, Songs of Blood and Mire is just tons of wicked, nasty fun. It’s hard to say exactly why, but I feel like everything Spectral Wound does has a slight knowing wink to it, which suggests that the band doesn’t take itself too seriously. For me, this is a huge positive, as a lot of black metal is so tediously earnest, where this is unflinchingly harsh, surprisingly melodic and drowning in swaggering groove. Great stuff.

#5. Mother of Graves // The Periapt of Absence – I’m a sucker for death doom. And The Periapt of Absence is some fucking great death doom. Mother of Graves were unknown to me before I stumbled across this album but their blending of old school Opeth (think somewhere between Morningrise and Orchid) with early Katatonia and Paradise Lost, plus a sprinkling of Clouds is stunning. All wrapped up in a pleasingly tight package, Mother of Graves smother the listener in unflinching, heartwrenching misery. And I love every minute of it. It’s that Peaceville Three sound we love, but feeling fresh, vibrant and vital.

#4. Devenial Verdict // Blessing of Despair – Me and death metal don’t always see eye to eye, and the last Devenial Verdict left only a passing impression. But Thus Spoke‘s tireless tongue-bathing promotion of Blessing of Despair convinced me to give it a chance. While I enjoy the stomping thuggery of Devenial Verdict’s dissonant death well enough, it’s the sudden mood swings into what TS described as “lethally graceful restraint” that really hooked me. Although worlds apart stylistically, on Blessing of Despair DV achieved what Chained to the Bottom of the Ocean did on Obsession Destruction: knowing precisely how far to push the suffocating, claustrophobic heaviness, before taking their foot off your throat for a minute. Then stamping on it again.

#3. Julie Christmas // Ridiculous and Full of Blood – Maddog predicted that I would lambast him as an underrating bastard for the 3.5 he deigned to award Ms Christmas. And he was quite correct. He’s a charlatan of the highest order. However, even I’m surprised by how high Ridiculous and Full of Blood has landed here. But, as someone not given to overly emotional reactions to music, I’m continually stunned by the reactions Julie—Can I call you Julie? No? Ok—extracts from me. I’m often on the edge of tears by the end of “The Lighthouse,” just like that cad Maddog, while the likes of “Not Enough” and “End of the World” (the latter with CoL’s Johannes Persson) have a scary edge to them, with Christmas at her maniacal, crooning, possessed, unpredictable best.

#2. A Swarm of the Sun // An Empire – Speaking of emotional responses, A Swarm of the Sun’s stripped back melancholy is right up there. If I say that An Empire is brighter and more uplifting than previous efforts The Rifts and The Woods, understand that this is a very relative statement. An Empire is drowning in sorrow and misery, and yet there is just a hint of brightness that shimmers and hovers around the edges, like a lunar halo. Slow and deliberate, haunting and cathartic, A Swarm of the Sun’s latest outing is just beautiful. End of. No discussion.2

#1. Kanonenfieber // Die Urkatastrophe – Y’all know I dropped a 5.0 on Die Urkatastophe, so it’s no surprise to find it here, sitting pretty, atop my list. There’s not much more praise that I can heap on Kanonenfieber’s sophomore record than I already did in my review. For me, it has everything and is more than I dared hope for as a follow up to my beloved Menschenmühle (my album of the year for 2021). It is brutal and vicious (“Panzerhenker” and “Ausblutingsschlacht”), anthemic (“Der Maulwurf” and “Menschenmühle”) and more. Crafted—and yes, that is the correct word—with huge skill and attention to detail, it is the storytelling, based on original source materials, that elevates this record to the next level for me. And if you don’t speak German, or are simply not into narrative in your metal, just go bang your fucking head to “Gott mit der Kavallerie”!

Honorable mentions In alphabetical order by band:

• 40 Watt Sun // Little Weight – Little Weight actually carries a lot of emotional weight. Melancholic, beautiful post-doom and shoegaze, rife with a rough honesty.
• Anciients // Beyond the Reach of the Sun – Long-form (arguably too-long-form in some respects) progressive death, which is wonderfully ambitious and overblown in its scale and delivery.
• Crypt Sermon // The Stygian Rose – Fantastic trad doom, channeling heavy doses of Candlemass. Early in the year, I thought this was top-5 material but it’s uneven, with the back half much stronger than the front, and I’ve cooled on it a touch.
• Nyktophobia // To the Stars – Just great, stomping melodeath. As I said in my review, it’s not massively original but it’s tight and well written, and easy to just kick back to. Sometimes, I don’t need more.
• Silhouette // Les Dires de l’​Â​me – This fantastic post-black album had a place on the list proper until Pillar of Light bulldozed its way in there very late in the day. Haunting, harrowing and beautiful, Silhouette’s debut is Great!
• Sumac // The Healer – Nothing about The Healer makes it an easy listen but Sumac’s fifth record is curiously beautiful for all its wandering, free-form abrasiveness.
• Vorga // Beyond the Palest Star – While it’s hard to disagree with Kenstrosity‘s criticism of the production on Beyond the Palest Star, what can I say? I still love it. It’s chunky, well written, well paced and powerful.

Surprises o’ the Year Ordered by most astounding first:

• Opeth // The Last Will and Testament – It’s been a long time since I was last genuinely interested in an Opeth album (2005’s Ghost Reveries, in case you were wondering). But, wouldn’t you just know it, Mikael Åkerfeldt and co are back (roars and all). I’m not ready to commit to a score for The Last Will (though I think El Cuervo‘s was possibly a smidge high) as I’ve not been able to spend enough time with it. But the fact I want to spend more time with it is, after 19 years of having no interest in Opeth’s output, a surprise. And a welcome one.
• Grand Magus // Sunraven – Another Swedish favourite of old, which I’d all but given up on, Grand Magus roared back this year with Sunraven. As an equally surprised Steel Druhm said in his review, this was the album he “feverishly hoped to get from Grand Magus … a grand return to prime form with the fire firmly back in the Balrog … the best Magus outing since 2012’s The Hunt”.

Disappointment o’ the Year Limited to a single musical disappointment, to avoid submitting a lengthy thesis:

• Zeal & Ardor // GREIF – I’m not angry, or even very surprised, just disappointed.3 While I accept that this is the album of a band in transition, there’s no getting away from the fact that it was a hugely disappointing album from a band that has abandoned the sound that made it what it was. And for what? They have not transitioned to something new and exciting, but with kinks to be worked out. Rather, on this record, Zeal & Ardor became something so pedestrian that any number of post-rock bands could’ve written it and, probably, done a better job. I may have overrated it.

Songs o’ the Year

1. Julie Christmas – “The Lighthouse”
2. Kanonenfieber – “Der Maulwurf”
3. Selbst – “The Stench of a Dead Spirit”
4. Panzerfaust – “The Damascene Conversions”
5. Kanonenfieber – “Gott mit der Kavallerie”
6. Devenial Verdict – “Garden of Eyes”
7. Spectral Wound – “Aristocratic Suicidal Black Metal”
8. Silhouette – “Les Dires de l’​Â​me”
9. Blue Heron – “Everything Fades”
10. Zeal & Ardor – “Hide in Shade”
11. Glare of the Sun – “Rain”

Cherd

Twenty-twenty-four was certainly a year that followed previous years and will precede still others. When I look back, I’ll likely remember it as the year I discovered the wonders of ADHD medication after decades of non-treatment, the difficult transition my poor Cherdlet experienced from kindergarten to first grade, and the incredible bucket list trip my wife and I took to Toronto to watch our favorite TV franchise filming new content courtesy of my very important Hollywood connections. No, not Robert Downey Jr. Much more important and better-looking. Hmm? Margot Robbie? She wishes. I also had the pleasure of meeting several of my fellow writers in person, and they are all much homelier than they let on with the exception of Madam X, who is a goddamned ray of sunshine.

On the musical front, I was able to check two bands off my “need to see live” list in Judas Priest and Archspire, whereby I discovered that Halford does exactly zero audience banter, and Archspire do nothing but. Fun shows, both. I didn’t listen to as much new music by volume this year than I have in previous years when I’d log between 200 and 400 releases, and that was largely due to my kid’s age and the level of interaction he needs. I have a feeling, however, that 2025 will see an uptick thanks to the new Heavys headphones I got for Christmas this year. As always, I want to thank the editors, particularly Steel Druhm and Doc Grier, for not sending me a mailbomb after all the late reviews I turned in (I’ll work on that in 2025), and the man himself, AMG, for building this community and for agreeing that Deep Space Nine is the best Star Trek show.4

(ish) Chat Pile // Cool World – This is what it sounds like when Chat Pile make a “mature” record. As I noted in my October review, some of the most glaring weirdness and black humor the band is known for is missing in Cool World, which is why it’s here on my list instead of matching the lofty heights of my 2022 AOTY God’s Country. That said, this is consistently bleak in a way I like, and it boasts what are in my opinion the two best–if not most memorable–songs the band have written to date in “New World” and “Masc.” I’m a sucker for these Oklahomans and look forward to how their sound evolves from here.

#10. Glacial Tomb // Lightless Expanse – I’ve had an up and down journey with Glacial Tomb’s sophomore record, but that doesn’t mean I don’t still view this as one of the best things I’ve listened to this year. To consider a record this closely means you have to listen to it a lot, and I wouldn’t be surprised if I logged more hours with Lightless Expanse than with any other album. I’ve made a big deal about the one-three punch of “Voidwomb/Enshrined in Concrete/Abyssal Host”, but it bears repeating since it’s my favorite consecutive stretch of death metal in 2024.

#9. Replicant // Infinite Mortality – If you peel back the veneer of disso-death and blackened blasts on Infinite Mortality, you’ll find a pounding hardcore heart comprised of equal parts beatdown and Converge. As technical as this music gets, and there is a lot going on here, Replicant never forget their primary duty as a metal band: snapping necks. On their third album, they’ve exquisitely composed a missive to unbridled aggression. I completely missed their previous albums, so I’m glad our Kenfren wouldn’t shut his excitable yap about this one.

#8. Spectral Voice // Sparagmos – “Alright skaters! This is the end of our free skate period. We’d like to once again thank you for spending your Saturday with us here at Family Fun Roller Rink and Arcade. It’s time to slow things down, down, way down, and you know what that means. That’s right, it’s couples’ skate. So, find that special someone you want to be interred on a cold stone slab with, gaze into each other’s empty eye sockets, and make your way around the rink as wave after wave of Spectral Voice’s death/funeral doom forcefully separates you from any light, hope, or happiness this wretched world might have accidentally given you. Remember, those who survive the next 45 minutes of tectonic plates colliding will get the chance to compete in roller limbo!”

#7. Crypt Sermon // The Stygian Rose – Despite being one of the biggest doom apologists on this site, Crypt Sermon failed to grab me with their highly acclaimed debut nearly ten years ago. I chalk this up to my unfamiliarity with the traditional doom style at the time. In recent years, I’ve binged large amounts of Candlemass, Saint Vitus, Cathedral, Solitude Aeturnus et al., so I finally have the frame of reference to see just how well Crypt Sermon’s third LP captures the swagger, majesty, and grit of a style few contemporary bands seem interested in playing. After the growing pains displayed on The Ruins of Fading Light, these Philly natives have worked out the kinks and delivered an air-tight slab of doomy goodness.

#6. Full of Hell // Coagulated Bliss – I regret waiving my seniority claim to Full of Hell releases, thus allowing Dolph to snap up review duties for Coagulated Bliss. It’s not that he did a bad job of reviewing the prolific experimental grind outfit’s latest. He did great, and he awarded it a deserved 4.0. But then he had the cheek, the nerve, the gall, the audacity, and the gumption to incorrectly lower his score. To make matters worse, it appeared nowhere on his year-end list. Not even a goll dern honorable mention. I’ve told him to his cetacean face that he’s wrong and I’m likely to do so again because this is Full of Hell’s best work since Trumpeting Ecstasy. In fact, it might be better.

#5. Ulcerate // Cutting the Throat of God – For most of their existence, Ulcerate was a highly acclaimed band that I just couldn’t get into. That changed four years ago with the release of Stare into Death and Be Still. Little changed in their intricate approach to dissonant death metal, but there was something warmer and more human to what I had previously considered a rather detached style. That trend continues with Cutting the Throat of God. I find this record best when taken as a whole, letting the experience unfold over the full runtime, like dream-walking through a hedge maze or being trapped in a velvet sack and discovering it’s much larger on the inside.5

#4. Thou // Umbilical – I waited a long time for a chance to review a new record by Thou, and when it finally came, they did not disappoint. As I said in my June review, “Like their chimerical American metal brethren Inter Arma, it doesn’t matter how many influences the band stuff into one album. They are all unified in sound under Thou’s banner. Bryan Funck’s acid-bit vocals are unmistakable and apparently unchangeable after 20 throat-shredding years. Also unchangeable? Thou’s ability to craft the most metallic-sounding guitar tone out there. As the standard bearer for…hell, as the entire sum of the second generation of Louisiana sludge, the sound they’ve forged isn’t the kind of sloppy muck you may associate with the term. It’s certainly thick, but it has a quality like two enormous steel I-beams violently striking each other.” If that doesn’t sell Umbilical for you, then here is where our paths diverge.

#3. Devenial Verdict // Blessing of Despair – I didn’t listen to Blessing of Despair for several weeks after it came out in October despite the fact Devenial Verdict’s previous record, Ash Blind, made my year-end list in 2022. When I finally got around to it earlier in December, it threatened to blow the doors right off my still nebulous list, climbing fast and high until ultimately landing here at number three. There is more immediacy than on Ash Blind, which took me a while to warm up to. That doesn’t mean the band skimps on the kind of thoughtful transitions and atmospherics they’ve come to be known for. It’s just that Blessing of Despair HAZ THE RIFFS, including my favorite death metal riff of the year in “Solus.”

#2. Void Witch // Horripilating Presence – When I revisited Horripilating Presence with the purpose of sorting out this list’s pecking order, I expected death-doomers Void Witch to fall mid-to-late top 10. Obviously, the opposite happened. For the life of me I don’t understand how this album didn’t gain more traction amongst the other writers and you, the unwashed commentariat. As I said back in July, “…the material on Horripilating Presence is Mohamed Ali levels of confident. The editing of ideas in each song and across the album’s taut 39 minutes is masterful, especially for a debut. No song hews too closely to any of the others, but all are of a piece, locking comfortably into place like an intricate puzzle box, and Void Witch have such sights to show you.”

#1. Inter Arma // New Heaven – Inter Arma never miss. Aside from being one of the best live acts in metal, every album they’ve released going back to 2013’s Sky Burial has been one successful evolution after another. As a very wise reviewer once said, “They’re the same shaggy beast as ever, but beneath that matted, coarse coat is a rippling form mid-shape shift, stretching, pulling, and crossing back on itself constantly over the course of New Heaven’s shockingly concise 42 minutes…If being all over the musical map sounds like a negative, you’ve probably never heard an Inter Arma record before. It seems whatever they throw at the wall sticks, and the listening experience across their (usually much longer) records never feels uneven. This is because they play everything with the same smoldering intensity and volatile mean streak.” What a record.

Honorable Mentions:

• Convulsing // Perdurance – I like this quote from Dear Hollow‘s review, so I’ll let him do the talking: “…Convulsing explores every nook and twist of a rhythm and melody until its inevitable conclusion is happened upon in tragic and fatal fashion.”
• Spectral Wound // Songs of Blood and Mire – Pound for pound, Spectral Wound are probably the most consistent no-frills black metal band currently in operation. Songs of Blood and Mire is another rager that’s as melodic as it is acidic.
• Lord Buffalo // Holus Bolus – This record was one redundant instrumental away from landing higher on this list. Looking forward to where these gothic country rockers go next.

Songs o’ the Year:

In alphabetical order by band:

Show 5 footnotes

1. Apparently it was only 2021 but my goodness that feels a lifetime ago. ↩
2. Regrettably, I suspect this may be the perfect way to start a discussion. Sigh. ↩
3. Can you tell I’m a parent? ↩
4. How could anyone disagree? – AMG ↩
5. Like a TARDIS. ↩

#2024 #40WattSun #ASwarmOfTheSun #Anciients #BlogPosts #BlueHeron #CarcharodonAndCherdSTopTenIshOf2024 #ChatPile #Convulsing #CryptSermon #DevenialVerdict #FullOfHell #GlareOfTheSun #GrandMagus #InterArma #JulieChristmas #Kanonenfieber #Listurnalia #LordBuffalo #MotherOfGraves #Necrowretch #Nyktophobia #Opeth #Panzerfaust #PillarOfLight #Replicant #Selbst #Seth #Silhouette #SpectralVoice #SpectralWound #Sumac #TheVisionBleak #Thou #Ulcerate #VoidWitch #Vorga #ZealArdor

Dolphin Whisperer’s and Ferox’s Top Ten(ish) of 2024

By Dolphin Whisperer

Dolphin Whisperer

Every year, its end becomes more shocking and swift. Once, some guy told me, simply, “it only gets worse.” Not life though—attributing a better or worse or any sort of constant determination of our passage leaves a lot of room for falling into a void of enjoyment—life is, after all, a constant until its not. But time, or our sense of being in its too ever-present stream, flows at a rate that changes in ways to which we never quite catch up.

As such, there’s a comfort in knowing how much time an album, particularly one you enjoy will take. For the ten-to-twenty minutes it takes for grindcore proper to slap me silly or the forty-to-eighty minutes that it takes for my deepest progressive loves to wring out a moaning confession, I know where my attention lies, even if it’s only half there and half on a task at hand. Time and tasks, day to night, play to stop, music makes my world a better place. And entering my now third year at Angry Metal Guy, an institution that has been a fixture of my musical journey for even longer, I continue to hold a profound gratitude and excitement for another year of discovery.

2024 has had its challenges professionally and personally. 2025 will be no doubt the same, even if some trials we can see forming in the distance. But you want to know about the music, right? On that end, 2024 has yielded a heaping trove of great albums. Heck, even a Rodeö pick scratched at the rungs of an honorable mention. The below list barely scratches the surface of the breadth that the year has offered. Further down you will see Ferox‘s list, which captures a different collection equally rooted in joy. He might be more right than I am. But that matters little. Celebrate with us, your favorite collective of writers on the world wide web! Come hang with some of us on Discord too if you’d like. Most of the people there are certified flea-free. And don’t be too upset if 2025 doesn’t hit you the same at first. It’s just another year, and it’ll be over before you know it.

#ish. Kalandra // A Frame of Mind – At my core, I consider myself a Norwegian sad girl. Usually, this manifests in some sort of weepy, melancholy prog, the likes of Age of Silence or Madder Mortem.1 But Kalandra’s enfolkened an impassioned take on an artsy, progressive collection of empowering tunes hit me square in my aching heart from the moment I heard it. Most importantly, though, Kalandra knows that suffering is just a step on the path of growth and happiness, which is a message that inspires me every day.

#10. Dawnwalker // The Unknowing – The power to dream and envision a world driven by mysticism has an allure that’s hard to ignore. And while we know that more determinable laws guide the happenings of our daily lives, a glimpse of the unknown will always find its way into sequence. Dawnwalker putting this esoteric but ever-present concept into an atmospheric, genre-warped, playfully progressive package hardly surprises me, though. The British troupe has had my number since their unsung classic In Rooms,2 so I’m doing my last in continuing to love them despite Twelve‘s best efforts to underrate them.3

#9. Lizzard // Mesh – Lizzard’s 2021 opus Eroded is my favorite album of this decade so far. The French trio’s ability to warp deep, rhythm-tricky layers into driving and emotional rock songs his me at the core of my musical desire for cathartic hope expressed in an unassuming and lush framework. Mesh doesn’t present any differently in that regard. But its wrinkles on Lizzard’s timeless yet ’90s alternative-rooted oeuvre fuel Mesh’s inherent melancholy with a hope that’s jubilant, like a cracked smile on an overcast day.

#8. Dissimulator // Lower Form Resistance – [INCOMING TRANSMISSION.] “My name is Clyde, and I arrive from beyond with wonderful news. My good friend Ferox has survived this timeline after all, having learned to navigate the Lower Form Resistance assault of fast-twitch rhythms and slow-twitch death metal punctuation. His head, fully intact, sways wildly in its hairless glory—big dives for big skanking breaks, snappy rolls for whiplash accelerations. He may not be as rhythmically gifted in pit-galloping cadence as the virtuoso drum and bass duo that provides life to Dissimulator’s effortless strides, but Ferox is my everything nonetheless.” [END TRANSMISSION.]

#7. Mamaleek // Vida Blue – I couldn’t begin to tell you what has never landed about Mamaleek’s works before with a weird precision. As an act dedicated to sounding only like Mamaleek, their singular expression of tortured black(ish) metal warped by jazzy and slogging attitudes has manifested quite the take-it-or-leave-it musical experience. And while you, dear reader, may assume this is firmly up my alley, it has not been. At least not until Vida Blue served a bottom of the ninth heart-shaker as an ode to a departed friend.4 With a soulful swing, a tortured connection, and an exit velocity powered by equal parts loss and love, Mamaleek has clinched a campaign for my attention.

#6. Defeated Sanity // Chronicles of Lunacy – As an apex predator in the brutal death metal world, Defeated Sanity’s appearance arouses not questions of competency but rather calculations of the carnage wrought. Chronicles of Lunacy does not mark a turning point or novel twist in the Defeated Sanity timeline—its finely tuned lashings hit as inescapable all the same. When neither a beast’s reach, nor mass, nor attack speed goes contested, an exhibition of its might will flash with morbid glee. As such, Defeated Sanity need not surprise to strike mortal wound. Chronicles’ fangs glisten with an aged-imbrued tarnish, tearing at my flesh in every way I would expect. And I want more.

#5. Orgone // Pleroma – Meticulous and constructed as a master-work, Pleroma’s opening notes signal a trance. Acoustic twang and chamber instrument-fueled swoon build an atmosphere of wonder against a fervent and languished march of post-genre swells and death-fueled crescendos. Cycling through its many shades feels less like a fever dream and more of a trial-filled journey. Wielding a demure grandeur, Pleroma’s effortless realization of Orgone’s peerless vision never feels like the epic journey its runtime suggests. Were my time truly infinite, Pleroma would be even harder to rip away from the queue.

#4. Julie Christmas // Ridiculous and Full of Blood – A lady screaming bloody murder shouldn’t go down this smooth, but that’s always been the promise and success of Julie Christmas. Few vocalists leave me slack-jawed and ear-shaken in the wake of piercing cries, raw-throated shrieks, and impassioned lyrical slather. Yet, Ridiculous and Full of Blood cuts track after track out of sonic patterns that do exactly that, all while empowering a full band expression of alternative-laced grooves, post-informed climbs, and punk-tied sneer. The Christmas season sums a flurry of inspired performances under the banner of a madwoman. And I stand at the ready to fray my vocal cords in attempt to crack with the same battle-tested precision that Ms. Christmas has earned from a life hard-worn.

#3. Ingurgitating Oblivion // Ontology of Nought – Though born of minds unrelated, Ontology of Nought exists as an esoteric companion to the Pleroma embodiment. Orgone is the twin that went to conservatory, graduated with honors, and holds an honorable performing chair, all while remembering its young love for death metal. Ingurgitating Oblivion, on the other hand, dropped out, spiraled into entheogenic dissociation, earns a living gigging at jazz clubs—also maintains its youthful lust for the clamoring riff and hammering blast. Maximalism oozes a frothing wonder in the hiss of distorted chatter and rhythmic mastery. An imperfect and breathing construction rises and falls in ethereal inhales and vision-spinning mantras. Ontology of Nought deserves each of its over-budget minutes. Invest time in the freedom that it promises… “and cease to be.”

#2. OU // 蘇醒 II: Frailty – The casualness of OU’s inception belies its profound leap into my necessary rotation. No incumbent love ever has a defined position in the halls of end-of-year accolades,5 and even more so when the act’s very presence rang suspicious in its finely-tuned invasion to my critical wiles. But, as I noted when I first blew my love for 蘇醒 II: Frailty over the pages of Angry Metal Guy, it’s OU’s “idiosyncratic atmosphere” that pulls from a “polyrhythmic hypnosis” and masterful “energetic flow” that continues to chart them deservedly high in the annals of ’20s progressive music. And while this collision of classically-minded, synth-addicted madness slowly expands its universe one OU release at a time, I’m content to sit here and yell their praises at anyone who will listen.

#1. Pyrrhon // Exhaust – You know you’re getting old when an album about modern burnout and the pains of traffic resonates with you all the way from frozen shoulder to radiating lower back to cold-groaning knee. But when Pyrrhon stealth-bombed my aging metalhead mind with a tech-dial riff barrage of noisy and shouting proportions, I had no choice but to surrender. Exhaust demands attention from its initial irony-laced lift-off to its closing brutalist clock-out, swinging skronk-enabled splatters and ache-addled vituperation around every faded line and pothole in its death metal architecture. Though Pyrrhon uses simpler blocks, their construction here defies convention at every step. One fine commenter summed up Exhaust in the most succinct manner in that regard: “Death Metal, Hardcore, Noise Rock, Technical Death Metal. It’s just mathcore.” Except they took away the wrong message from that distillation. The verdict, in fact, is fuck you.

Honorable Mentions:

• • Inner Strength // Daydreaming in Moonlight – Another way you know you’re getting old is that you love an album that sounds like it should have released in 1995. Alas, here we are.
  • Dysrhythmia // Coffin of Conviction – Instrumental progressive music should be as exciting as Dysrhythmia. Comes for the Martyr riffs. Stay for the Metheny floating.
  • Beaten to Death // Sunrise Over Rigor Mortis – Beaten to Death is still the best grindcore band on the planet. They probably won’t ever release a better album than D​ø​dsfest!, but that’s OK. Their discography is now about two hours total. Go listen to it if you haven’t.
  • Stygian Crown // Funeral for a King – Doom should always have a guitar tone that feels equally powered by swords and beer alongside vocals that feel soft like bar-stained leather stools.
  • Kollapse // AR – I didn’t know KEN mode had a Danish doppelgänger with a frightening, large pink face. But they do, and boy does Kollapse know how to yell and riff.
  • Sleepytime Gorilla Museum // of the Last Human Being – Had I infinitely more listening time, I may have been able to parse better this deeply cinematic and wacky slab of no wave emboldened prog. Most don’t actually earn the avant-garde tag the way SGT does.
  • Defying // Wadera – Hour-long albums based on old Polish werewolf stories and horror movies shouldn’t be this easy to repeat, but I find myself often falling into Wadera’s unbreakable spell.
  • Arthouse Fatso // Sycophantic Seizures: A Double Feature – I didn’t have radically-minded industrial deathgrind about the frustrated escapades of a fictional Orson Welles life on my 2024 bingo, but here I am telling you to listen to it anyway.
  • Concrete Winds // Concrete Winds – Just this. And shitloads of riffs.

Disappointments o’ the Year:

• Myrath // Karma – I love Shehili so much. My love for power metal isn’t what it used to be, but Myrath’s exuberance while staying rooted in both the trickier waters of prog and the anthemic cries of power metal gave me hope both that I’d continue to latch on to the kind of playful love it can offer. But the arrangements on Karma, despite Myrath’s still life-affirming messages, do absolutely nothing to bolster that same joy for me. Karma sinks my listening brain. And that hurts.
• Pallbearer // Mind Burns Alive – The continued non-success of Pallbearer and their sleepy-toned take on creaky prog rock hurts the Dolph who fell in love with their weepy doom classic (and still controversial to true doomsters) Heartless. And yet the general blogging population seems to praise them for trying to reinvent sadboi roots rock with worse lyrics. And, for my money, Pallbearer is sounding increasingly thin live. If a return to glory is in store for Pallbearer, it will begin with them finally playing a riff again.
• Polterguts // Nobody Likes You – Okay, this EP actually rips because Polterguts rips. Hard. But, Polterguts, if you’re reading this, please put it on Bandcamp so I can link the shit out of it and give you money. I am disappointed that I have no way to contribute currency to your cause. “Ricky Has a Knife2” is worth the price of admission alone.

Songs o’ the Year:

Why give you one when I can give you twenty-seven? Why twenty-seven? That’s my secret. Now, I’ve talked enough, go out there and enjoy some music, friends. And enjoy this photo of my dogs.

Coconut (left), Kiwi (right) in a stylish Adidog sweater.

Ferox

I worked way too much in 2024. I can’t complain; it was meaningful work that I chose to take on, and it got me that much closer to not having to work at all if I don’t want to. Still, that’s what I’ll think of when I think of 2024: lots and lots of work. That had a knock-on effect, especially when it comes to hobbies like lifting, getting out to national parks, and writing here. I did very little of any of that. I kept up with metal as best I could, and embarked on a big end-of-year listening push to have an accurate picture of what came out in 2024. I’m grateful that I got to do a list at all this year, so I took the responsibility seriously… but I’d be lying if I said I was buried in the scene all year.

One of the highlights of my 2024 was meeting a whole slew of staffers in person. I traveled a bunch this year, both for work and for my daughter’s ballet pursuits, and with that came the chance to hang with some of the people who make this place go. My body count of staffers met this year: Steel Druhm, Madam X, Cherd, Twelve, Dr. Wyrm, Thus Spoke, El Cuervo, Doom et al, and Holdeneye. It was a veritable orgy of almost entirely chaste fellowship, and only one (1) bad hang among the lot!6

I’m grateful to Steel Druhm and Angry Metal Guy for indulging my schedule, and for the real leadership they provide at my fake job. I found this unique community because it had the best music writing on the internet, and that remains true today thanks to the talented people who contribute their time and enthusiasm to keeping the machinery humming. I’m lucky to be a small part of it, and hopeful that 2025 will give me more time to spend in the Hall.

#ish. Mother of Graves // The Periapt of Absence – My “-ish” spot typically goes to an album that might have listed if I just had more time with it. That holds true of the sophomore effort from Indianapolis’s Mother of Graves, which landed on my radar by way of Carcharadon‘s excellent TYHMHM piece. This slab of classic sadboi death doom transcends any tribcore concerns through sheer quality of execution. From opener “Gallows” through final track “Like Darkness to a Dying Flame,” The Periapt of Absence guides the listener through the stages of grief with varied compositions that maintain a consistent mood throughout. Classic death doom is alive and well.

#10. Wormed // Omegon – Maddog‘s compelling rave for Omegon is my personal Review o’ the Year; fortunately, the prose was well spent on this efficient and brutal riff delivery system. Wormed has been creating slam-adjacent otherworldly death metal for a good while now, and Omegon is a distillation of everything the band has learned over the past two decades. 2024 is the year I realized I’ve been a brutal death metal guy all along. With songs like “Pareidolia Robotica” and “Virtual Teratogenesis,” Wormed took me by the hand and guided me through this journey of self-discovery… all while the people in the offices around me called in noise complaints.

#9. Ripped to Shreds // Sanshi – The already impressive Ripped to Shreds leveled up with Sanshi, a blast of aggressive but technically adept death metal that never left my rotation after its release. The guitar hero shredding plays like a release valve to the vicious and punky energy that Andrew Lee injects into his compositions. This cycle of tension and release makes for an addictive listen that feels like it ends mere moments after you hit play. The thrash elements of the R2S sounds are more prevalent on Sanshi, meaning the band now scratches the same itch for me that Horrendous did with their last killer slab.

#8. Scumbag // Homicide Cult – Scumbag! SCUUUMMMMBAGGGG. This nasty bit of business, with its deathgrind touches and morbid sense of humor (“Pure Adrenaline Hard-On,” “The Meating”), was tailor-made for the Ferox sensibility. Herein lie twenty-eight minutes of death metal that never slams but still walks the same line that Wormhole managed to last year: brutal but somehow cheerful, and stoopid without being remotely dumb. Dylan Cruz, of this band and Noxis, came out of nowhere to occupy a huge chunk of my limited listening time this year.

#7. Black Curse // Burning in Celestial Poison – With Burning in Celestial Poison, Black Curse stages a forty-five-minute takeover of your central nervous system. Eldritch Elitist captured the elemental power of these five compositions better than I ever could, but this album gave me exactly what I needed in a 2024 that was characterized by an extreme lack of work-life balance. Metal can provide a safe outlet for less-than-savory feelings, and Black Curse expressed a lot of things for me that I couldn’t express myself and stay employed. Lose yourself in these five tracks and emerge scoured but smarter.

#6. Spectral Wound // Songs of Blood and Mire – The hot streak continues; Songs of Blood and Mire, Spectral Wound’s fourth album, is their best effort yet. Carcharadon capably cataloged crisp new cross-currents in the band’s sound, but the song quality remains the same. Tracks like “At Wine-Dark Midnight in the Mouldering Halls” and Song o’ the Year “Aristocratic Suicidal Black Metal” showcase the band’s gift for coupling aggression with sweeping melody. In this way, Spectral Wound recalls Watain without so much distracting ooga-booga. Songs of Blood and Mire finds them continuing to refine their sound and grow in confidence.

#5. Endonomos // Endonomos II – Enlightenment – Endonomos carried the torch for doom in 2024. Enlightenment is a stately procession, its six long tracks blending influences from all across the doom spectrum. This is music that soars as it plods. Steel Druhm noted similarities to both Khemmis and Fvneral Fvkk. Those comps are perfect; not since Carnal Confessions has a doom album so effectively cut through the clutter of genre tropes to evoke genuine emotion.

#4. Pyrrhon // Exhaust – I hate it when the promotional push for an album ties a record too strongly to the narrative of its creation. It’s like the record company is trying to force a reaction that the album itself might or might not evoke. So when Exhaust arrived with heavy-handed descriptions of process and what Pyrrhon went through trying to make the album happen, I bristled and stopped reading. Fortunately, the music on Exhaust speaks for itself. This is a bitter and blistering record that finds the band raging against their rage’s inability to change even a single thing. I’ve always appreciated Pyrrhon, but I’ve never connected with their music as immediately as I did on Exhaust.

#3. Defeated Sanity // Chronicles of Lunacy – Defeated Sanity has had quite the AMG journey. They’ve gone from being brushed aside by a n00b named Potato Jim to being on the receiving end of a double-4.0 fellating from the tenured likes of Dolphin Whisperer and Maddog. Chronicles of Lunacy finds Defeated Sanity extending the Colin Marston-enabled peak that they hit on 2020’s The Sanguinary Impetus. It takes extreme skill to weaponize the base and the stoopid this effectively. Defeated Sanity is more than up for the job.

#2. Inter Arma // New Heaven – Here’s another band that could be wrestling with The Law of Diminishing Recordings by now, but instead persists with quality release after quality release. Inter Arma never repeats themselves, but each of their albums could only come from them. Hot take: Sky Funeral has remained my favorite Inter Arma album even as they’ve racked up an epic run of excellence. New Heaven makes a run at unseating it. This is a slab that rewards the many repeated listens I gave it in 2024; it sat in my top slot for much of the year until a late-breaking favorite pushed it aside.

#1. Noxis // Violence Inherent in the System – This is my third time publishing a list at AMG; each previous year, I had clear Album o’the Year winners in Immolation’s Acts of God and Afterbirth’s In But Not Of. 2024 marked the first Listurnalia that began with an opening for my top slot. But as I weeded through my favorite music of the year, I realized: Noxis drew me in with the bass flourish at the beginning of album opener “Skullcrushing Defilement,” and they still haven’t let go. The Pittsburgher in me hates to credit anything from Cleveland, but Noxis weeded out that deeply rooted prejudice with their inventive and fresh take on death metal. Every track on Violence Inherent in the System is a wild ride that alternately crushes, challenges, and tickles. The only break from the madcap pace comes on mid-album interlude “Excursion,” but that just prepares you for the utter barking lunacy of “Horns Echo Over Chorazim.” That song incorporates strange arrangements that include various woodwind instruments, and somehow they do it with zero pretension and abundant commitment to brutality. Listurnalia may have begun with a blank space atop my list, but it ended with Noxis firmly entrenched as the winner of 2024.

Honorable Mentions:

• • • Stenched // Purulence Gushing from the Coffin – This one-man outfit captured that elusive filthy magic and spewed out the annum’s premiere filthy wallow.
    • Aborted // Vault of Horrors – These Belgian veterans, long under-appreciated in the Hall, finally found their champion in Grier. They hooked themselves up to the juvenation machine by leaning into the melodeath that has been creeping into their sound, and cranked out their best set in years.
    • Vitriol // Suffer and Become – Here’s a mean and heavy slab that seemed to fade from the general consciousness as the year wore on, but remains worthy of note.

Disappointment o’the Year:

Ferox! I just didn’t have time to make a meaningful contribution here this year. It has been a pleasure to watch other members of my n00b class like Dolph and Maddog and Thus become AMG institutions, even as I mostly watch from the sidelines and come out to play when I can.

Song o’the Year:

Imagine being asked to name your favorite song of the year, and responding with a twenty-seven song playlist!7

Show 7 footnotes

1. Whose very good outing is another in a long line of successes. Old Eyes, New Heart missing the cut should ring testament to how wonderful 2024 has been. ↩
2. In case you don’t know, Ampwall is a music e-commerce hub built by members of Woe as an alternative experience to Bandcamp. Vowing to maintain an artist-first and community-influenced direction, Ampwall holds a lot of promise to the musical underground. And the whole Dawnwalker discography digitally! ↩
3. Seems like a 4.0 innit. ilu Twelve. <3 ↩
4. Former Mamaleek keys maestro Eric Livingston. RIP. ↩
5. Pain of Salvation, feel free to read this and prove me a liar. ↩
6. It was Grier, right? – Steel ↩
7. Who would do such a thing? Surely, if one were to commit such a heinous act, they’d at least provide a cute dog picture to atone. – Dolph ↩

#2024 #AFrameOfMind #Aborted #AR #ArthouseFatso #BeatenToDeath #BlackCurse #BurningInCelestialPoison #ChroniclesOfLunacy #CoffinOfConviction #ConcreteWinds #Dawnwalker #DaydreamingInMoonlight #DefeatedSanity #Defying #Dissimulator #Dysrhythmia #Endonomos #EndonomosIIEnlightenment #Exhaust #FuneralForAKing #GodsOverBrokenPeople #HomicideCult #Horrendous #IngurgitatingOblivion #InnerStrength #InterArma #JulieChristmas #Kalandra #Khemmis #Kollapse #Lists #Listurnalia #Listurnalia2024 #Lizzard #LowerFormResistance #Mamaleek #Mesh #MotherOfGraves #Myrath #NewHeaven #NobodyLikesYou #Noxis #OfTheLastHumanBeing #Omegon #OntologyOfNought #Orgone #OU #Pallbearer #Pleroma #Polterguts #PurulenceGushingFromTheCoffin #Pyrrhon #RidiculousAndFullOfBlood #RippedToShreds #Sanshi #SaveThisUtility #Scumbag #SleepytimeGorillaMuseum #SongsOfBloodAndMire #SpectralWound #Stenched #StygianCrown #SufferAndBecome #SunriseOverRigorMortis #SycophanticSeizuresADoubleFeature #ThePeriaptOfAbsence #TheUnknowing #VaultOfHorrors #VidaBlue #ViolenceInherentInTheSystem #Vitriol #Wadera #Watain #Wormed #蘇醒IIFrailty

Dolphin Whisperer’s and Ferox’s Top Ten(ish) of 2024

By Dolphin Whisperer

Dolphin Whisperer

Every year, its end becomes more shocking and swift. Once, some guy told me, simply, “it only gets worse.” Not life though—attributing a better or worse or any sort of constant determination of our passage leaves a lot of room for falling into a void of enjoyment—life is, after all, a constant until its not. But time, or our sense of being in its too ever-present stream, flows at a rate that changes in ways to which we never quite catch up.

As such, there’s a comfort in knowing how much time an album, particularly one you enjoy will take. For the ten-to-twenty minutes it takes for grindcore proper to slap me silly or the forty-to-eighty minutes that it takes for my deepest progressive loves to wring out a moaning confession, I know where my attention lies, even if it’s only half there and half on a task at hand. Time and tasks, day to night, play to stop, music makes my world a better place. And entering my now third year at Angry Metal Guy, an institution that has been a fixture of my musical journey for even longer, I continue to hold a profound gratitude and excitement for another year of discovery.

2024 has had its challenges professionally and personally. 2025 will be no doubt the same, even if some trials we can see forming in the distance. But you want to know about the music, right? On that end, 2024 has yielded a heaping trove of great albums. Heck, even a Rodeö pick scratched at the rungs of an honorable mention. The below list barely scratches the surface of the breadth that the year has offered. Further down you will see Ferox‘s list, which captures a different collection equally rooted in joy. He might be more right than I am. But that matters little. Celebrate with us, your favorite collective of writers on the world wide web! Come hang with some of us on Discord too if you’d like. Most of the people there are certified flea-free. And don’t be too upset if 2025 doesn’t hit you the same at first. It’s just another year, and it’ll be over before you know it.

#ish. Kalandra // A Frame of Mind – At my core, I consider myself a Norwegian sad girl. Usually, this manifests in some sort of weepy, melancholy prog, the likes of Age of Silence or Madder Mortem.1 But Kalandra’s enfolkened an impassioned take on an artsy, progressive collection of empowering tunes hit me square in my aching heart from the moment I heard it. Most importantly, though, Kalandra knows that suffering is just a step on the path of growth and happiness, which is a message that inspires me every day.

#10. Dawnwalker // The Unknowing – The power to dream and envision a world driven by mysticism has an allure that’s hard to ignore. And while we know that more determinable laws guide the happenings of our daily lives, a glimpse of the unknown will always find its way into sequence. Dawnwalker putting this esoteric but ever-present concept into an atmospheric, genre-warped, playfully progressive package hardly surprises me, though. The British troupe has had my number since their unsung classic In Rooms,2 so I’m doing my last in continuing to love them despite Twelve‘s best efforts to underrate them.3

#9. Lizzard // Mesh – Lizzard’s 2021 opus Eroded is my favorite album of this decade so far. The French trio’s ability to warp deep, rhythm-tricky layers into driving and emotional rock songs his me at the core of my musical desire for cathartic hope expressed in an unassuming and lush framework. Mesh doesn’t present any differently in that regard. But its wrinkles on Lizzard’s timeless yet ’90s alternative-rooted oeuvre fuel Mesh’s inherent melancholy with a hope that’s jubilant, like a cracked smile on an overcast day.

#8. Dissimulator // Lower Form Resistance – [INCOMING TRANSMISSION.] “My name is Clyde, and I arrive from beyond with wonderful news. My good friend Ferox has survived this timeline after all, having learned to navigate the Lower Form Resistance assault of fast-twitch rhythms and slow-twitch death metal punctuation. His head, fully intact, sways wildly in its hairless glory—big dives for big skanking breaks, snappy rolls for whiplash accelerations. He may not be as rhythmically gifted in pit-galloping cadence as the virtuoso drum and bass duo that provides life to Dissimulator’s effortless strides, but Ferox is my everything nonetheless.” [END TRANSMISSION.]

#7. Mamaleek // Vida Blue – I couldn’t begin to tell you what has never landed about Mamaleek’s works before with a weird precision. As an act dedicated to sounding only like Mamaleek, their singular expression of tortured black(ish) metal warped by jazzy and slogging attitudes has manifested quite the take-it-or-leave-it musical experience. And while you, dear reader, may assume this is firmly up my alley, it has not been. At least not until Vida Blue served a bottom of the ninth heart-shaker as an ode to a departed friend.4 With a soulful swing, a tortured connection, and an exit velocity powered by equal parts loss and love, Mamaleek has clinched a campaign for my attention.

#6. Defeated Sanity // Chronicles of Lunacy – As an apex predator in the brutal death metal world, Defeated Sanity’s appearance arouses not questions of competency but rather calculations of the carnage wrought. Chronicles of Lunacy does not mark a turning point or novel twist in the Defeated Sanity timeline—its finely tuned lashings hit as inescapable all the same. When neither a beast’s reach, nor mass, nor attack speed goes contested, an exhibition of its might will flash with morbid glee. As such, Defeated Sanity need not surprise to strike mortal wound. Chronicles’ fangs glisten with an aged-imbrued tarnish, tearing at my flesh in every way I would expect. And I want more.

#5. Orgone // Pleroma – Meticulous and constructed as a master-work, Pleroma’s opening notes signal a trance. Acoustic twang and chamber instrument-fueled swoon build an atmosphere of wonder against a fervent and languished march of post-genre swells and death-fueled crescendos. Cycling through its many shades feels less like a fever dream and more of a trial-filled journey. Wielding a demure grandeur, Pleroma’s effortless realization of Orgone’s peerless vision never feels like the epic journey its runtime suggests. Were my time truly infinite, Pleroma would be even harder to rip away from the queue.

#4. Julie Christmas // Ridiculous and Full of Blood – A lady screaming bloody murder shouldn’t go down this smooth, but that’s always been the promise and success of Julie Christmas. Few vocalists leave me slack-jawed and ear-shaken in the wake of piercing cries, raw-throated shrieks, and impassioned lyrical slather. Yet, Ridiculous and Full of Blood cuts track after track out of sonic patterns that do exactly that, all while empowering a full band expression of alternative-laced grooves, post-informed climbs, and punk-tied sneer. The Christmas season sums a flurry of inspired performances under the banner of a madwoman. And I stand at the ready to fray my vocal cords in attempt to crack with the same battle-tested precision that Ms. Christmas has earned from a life hard-worn.

#3. Ingurgitating Oblivion // Ontology of Nought – Though born of minds unrelated, Ontology of Nought exists as an esoteric companion to the Pleroma embodiment. Orgone is the twin that went to conservatory, graduated with honors, and holds an honorable performing chair, all while remembering its young love for death metal. Ingurgitating Oblivion, on the other hand, dropped out, spiraled into entheogenic dissociation, earns a living gigging at jazz clubs—also maintains its youthful lust for the clamoring riff and hammering blast. Maximalism oozes a frothing wonder in the hiss of distorted chatter and rhythmic mastery. An imperfect and breathing construction rises and falls in ethereal inhales and vision-spinning mantras. Ontology of Nought deserves each of its over-budget minutes. Invest time in the freedom that it promises… “and cease to be.”

#2. OU // 蘇醒 II: Frailty – The casualness of OU’s inception belies its profound leap into my necessary rotation. No incumbent love ever has a defined position in the halls of end-of-year accolades,5 and even more so when the act’s very presence rang suspicious in its finely-tuned invasion to my critical wiles. But, as I noted when I first blew my love for 蘇醒 II: Frailty over the pages of Angry Metal Guy, it’s OU’s “idiosyncratic atmosphere” that pulls from a “polyrhythmic hypnosis” and masterful “energetic flow” that continues to chart them deservedly high in the annals of ’20s progressive music. And while this collision of classically-minded, synth-addicted madness slowly expands its universe one OU release at a time, I’m content to sit here and yell their praises at anyone who will listen.

#1. Pyrrhon // Exhaust – You know you’re getting old when an album about modern burnout and the pains of traffic resonates with you all the way from frozen shoulder to radiating lower back to cold-groaning knee. But when Pyrrhon stealth-bombed my aging metalhead mind with a tech-dial riff barrage of noisy and shouting proportions, I had no choice but to surrender. Exhaust demands attention from its initial irony-laced lift-off to its closing brutalist clock-out, swinging skronk-enabled splatters and ache-addled vituperation around every faded line and pothole in its death metal architecture. Though Pyrrhon uses simpler blocks, their construction here defies convention at every step. One fine commenter summed up Exhaust in the most succinct manner in that regard: “Death Metal, Hardcore, Noise Rock, Technical Death Metal. It’s just mathcore.” Except they took away the wrong message from that distillation. The verdict, in fact, is fuck you.

Honorable Mentions:

• • Inner Strength // Daydreaming in Moonlight – Another way you know you’re getting old is that you love an album that sounds like it should have released in 1995. Alas, here we are.
  • Dysrhythmia // Coffin of Conviction – Instrumental progressive music should be as exciting as Dysrhythmia. Comes for the Martyr riffs. Stay for the Metheny floating.
  • Beaten to Death // Sunrise Over Rigor Mortis – Beaten to Death is still the best grindcore band on the planet. They probably won’t ever release a better album than D​ø​dsfest!, but that’s OK. Their discography is now about two hours total. Go listen to it if you haven’t.
  • Stygian Crown // Funeral for a King – Doom should always have a guitar tone that feels equally powered by swords and beer alongside vocals that feel soft like bar-stained leather stools.
  • Kollapse // AR – I didn’t know KEN mode had a Danish doppelgänger with a frightening, large pink face. But they do, and boy does Kollapse know how to yell and riff.
  • Sleepytime Gorilla Museum // of the Last Human Being – Had I infinitely more listening time, I may have been able to parse better this deeply cinematic and wacky slab of no wave emboldened prog. Most don’t actually earn the avant-garde tag the way SGT does.
  • Defying // Wadera – Hour-long albums based on old Polish werewolf stories and horror movies shouldn’t be this easy to repeat, but I find myself often falling into Wadera’s unbreakable spell.
  • Arthouse Fatso // Sycophantic Seizures: A Double Feature – I didn’t have radically-minded industrial deathgrind about the frustrated escapades of a fictional Orson Welles life on my 2024 bingo, but here I am telling you to listen to it anyway.
  • Concrete Winds // Concrete Winds – Just this. And shitloads of riffs.

Disappointments o’ the Year:

• Myrath // Karma – I love Shehili so much. My love for power metal isn’t what it used to be, but Myrath’s exuberance while staying rooted in both the trickier waters of prog and the anthemic cries of power metal gave me hope both that I’d continue to latch on to the kind of playful love it can offer. But the arrangements on Karma, despite Myrath’s still life-affirming messages, do absolutely nothing to bolster that same joy for me. Karma sinks my listening brain. And that hurts.
• Pallbearer // Mind Burns Alive – The continued non-success of Pallbearer and their sleepy-toned take on creaky prog rock hurts the Dolph who fell in love with their weepy doom classic (and still controversial to true doomsters) Heartless. And yet the general blogging population seems to praise them for trying to reinvent sadboi roots rock with worse lyrics. And, for my money, Pallbearer is sounding increasingly thin live. If a return to glory is in store for Pallbearer, it will begin with them finally playing a riff again.
• Polterguts // Nobody Likes You – Okay, this EP actually rips because Polterguts rips. Hard. But, Polterguts, if you’re reading this, please put it on Bandcamp so I can link the shit out of it and give you money. I am disappointed that I have no way to contribute currency to your cause. “Ricky Has a Knife2” is worth the price of admission alone.

Songs o’ the Year:

Why give you one when I can give you twenty-seven? Why twenty-seven? That’s my secret. Now, I’ve talked enough, go out there and enjoy some music, friends. And enjoy this photo of my dogs.

Coconut (left), Kiwi (right) in a stylish Adidog sweater.

Ferox

I worked way too much in 2024. I can’t complain; it was meaningful work that I chose to take on, and it got me that much closer to not having to work at all if I don’t want to. Still, that’s what I’ll think of when I think of 2024: lots and lots of work. That had a knock-on effect, especially when it comes to hobbies like lifting, getting out to national parks, and writing here. I did very little of any of that. I kept up with metal as best I could, and embarked on a big end-of-year listening push to have an accurate picture of what came out in 2024. I’m grateful that I got to do a list at all this year, so I took the responsibility seriously… but I’d be lying if I said I was buried in the scene all year.

One of the highlights of my 2024 was meeting a whole slew of staffers in person. I traveled a bunch this year, both for work and for my daughter’s ballet pursuits, and with that came the chance to hang with some of the people who make this place go. My body count of staffers met this year: Steel Druhm, Madam X, Cherd, Twelve, Dr. Wyrm, Thus Spoke, El Cuervo, Doom et al, and Holdeneye. It was a veritable orgy of almost entirely chaste fellowship, and only one (1) bad hang among the lot!6

I’m grateful to Steel Druhm and Angry Metal Guy for indulging my schedule, and for the real leadership they provide at my fake job. I found this unique community because it had the best music writing on the internet, and that remains true today thanks to the talented people who contribute their time and enthusiasm to keeping the machinery humming. I’m lucky to be a small part of it, and hopeful that 2025 will give me more time to spend in the Hall.

#ish. Mother of Graves // The Periapt of Absence – My “-ish” spot typically goes to an album that might have listed if I just had more time with it. That holds true of the sophomore effort from Indianapolis’s Mother of Graves, which landed on my radar by way of Carcharadon‘s excellent TYHMHM piece. This slab of classic sadboi death doom transcends any tribcore concerns through sheer quality of execution. From opener “Gallows” through final track “Like Darkness to a Dying Flame,” The Periapt of Absence guides the listener through the stages of grief with varied compositions that maintain a consistent mood throughout. Classic death doom is alive and well.

#10. Wormed // Omegon – Maddog‘s compelling rave for Omegon is my personal Review o’ the Year; fortunately, the prose was well spent on this efficient and brutal riff delivery system. Wormed has been creating slam-adjacent otherworldly death metal for a good while now, and Omegon is a distillation of everything the band has learned over the past two decades. 2024 is the year I realized I’ve been a brutal death metal guy all along. With songs like “Pareidolia Robotica” and “Virtual Teratogenesis,” Wormed took me by the hand and guided me through this journey of self-discovery… all while the people in the offices around me called in noise complaints.

#9. Ripped to Shreds // Sanshi – The already impressive Ripped to Shreds leveled up with Sanshi, a blast of aggressive but technically adept death metal that never left my rotation after its release. The guitar hero shredding plays like a release valve to the vicious and punky energy that Andrew Lee injects into his compositions. This cycle of tension and release makes for an addictive listen that feels like it ends mere moments after you hit play. The thrash elements of the R2S sounds are more prevalent on Sanshi, meaning the band now scratches the same itch for me that Horrendous did with their last killer slab.

#8. Scumbag // Homicide Cult – Scumbag! SCUUUMMMMBAGGGG. This nasty bit of business, with its deathgrind touches and morbid sense of humor (“Pure Adrenaline Hard-On,” “The Meating”), was tailor-made for the Ferox sensibility. Herein lie twenty-eight minutes of death metal that never slams but still walks the same line that Wormhole managed to last year: brutal but somehow cheerful, and stoopid without being remotely dumb. Dylan Cruz, of this band and Noxis, came out of nowhere to occupy a huge chunk of my limited listening time this year.

#7. Black Curse // Burning in Celestial Poison – With Burning in Celestial Poison, Black Curse stages a forty-five-minute takeover of your central nervous system. Eldritch Elitist captured the elemental power of these five compositions better than I ever could, but this album gave me exactly what I needed in a 2024 that was characterized by an extreme lack of work-life balance. Metal can provide a safe outlet for less-than-savory feelings, and Black Curse expressed a lot of things for me that I couldn’t express myself and stay employed. Lose yourself in these five tracks and emerge scoured but smarter.

#6. Spectral Wound // Songs of Blood and Mire – The hot streak continues; Songs of Blood and Mire, Spectral Wound’s fourth album, is their best effort yet. Carcharadon capably cataloged crisp new cross-currents in the band’s sound, but the song quality remains the same. Tracks like “At Wine-Dark Midnight in the Mouldering Halls” and Song o’ the Year “Aristocratic Suicidal Black Metal” showcase the band’s gift for coupling aggression with sweeping melody. In this way, Spectral Wound recalls Watain without so much distracting ooga-booga. Songs of Blood and Mire finds them continuing to refine their sound and grow in confidence.

#5. Endonomos // Endonomos II – Enlightenment – Endonomos carried the torch for doom in 2024. Enlightenment is a stately procession, its six long tracks blending influences from all across the doom spectrum. This is music that soars as it plods. Steel Druhm noted similarities to both Khemmis and Fvneral Fvkk. Those comps are perfect; not since Carnal Confessions has a doom album so effectively cut through the clutter of genre tropes to evoke genuine emotion.

#4. Pyrrhon // Exhaust – I hate it when the promotional push for an album ties a record too strongly to the narrative of its creation. It’s like the record company is trying to force a reaction that the album itself might or might not evoke. So when Exhaust arrived with heavy-handed descriptions of process and what Pyrrhon went through trying to make the album happen, I bristled and stopped reading. Fortunately, the music on Exhaust speaks for itself. This is a bitter and blistering record that finds the band raging against their rage’s inability to change even a single thing. I’ve always appreciated Pyrrhon, but I’ve never connected with their music as immediately as I did on Exhaust.

#3. Defeated Sanity // Chronicles of Lunacy – Defeated Sanity has had quite the AMG journey. They’ve gone from being brushed aside by a n00b named Potato Jim to being on the receiving end of a double-4.0 fellating from the tenured likes of Dolphin Whisperer and Maddog. Chronicles of Lunacy finds Defeated Sanity extending the Colin Marston-enabled peak that they hit on 2020’s The Sanguinary Impetus. It takes extreme skill to weaponize the base and the stoopid this effectively. Defeated Sanity is more than up for the job.

#2. Inter Arma // New Heaven – Here’s another band that could be wrestling with The Law of Diminishing Recordings by now, but instead persists with quality release after quality release. Inter Arma never repeats themselves, but each of their albums could only come from them. Hot take: Sky Funeral has remained my favorite Inter Arma album even as they’ve racked up an epic run of excellence. New Heaven makes a run at unseating it. This is a slab that rewards the many repeated listens I gave it in 2024; it sat in my top slot for much of the year until a late-breaking favorite pushed it aside.

#1. Noxis // Violence Inherent in the System – This is my third time publishing a list at AMG; each previous year, I had clear Album o’the Year winners in Immolation’s Acts of God and Afterbirth’s In But Not Of. 2024 marked the first Listurnalia that began with an opening for my top slot. But as I weeded through my favorite music of the year, I realized: Noxis drew me in with the bass flourish at the beginning of album opener “Skullcrushing Defilement,” and they still haven’t let go. The Pittsburgher in me hates to credit anything from Cleveland, but Noxis weeded out that deeply rooted prejudice with their inventive and fresh take on death metal. Every track on Violence Inherent in the System is a wild ride that alternately crushes, challenges, and tickles. The only break from the madcap pace comes on mid-album interlude “Excursion,” but that just prepares you for the utter barking lunacy of “Horns Echo Over Chorazim.” That song incorporates strange arrangements that include various woodwind instruments, and somehow they do it with zero pretension and abundant commitment to brutality. Listurnalia may have begun with a blank space atop my list, but it ended with Noxis firmly entrenched as the winner of 2024.

Honorable Mentions:

• • • Stenched // Purulence Gushing from the Coffin – This one-man outfit captured that elusive filthy magic and spewed out the annum’s premiere filthy wallow.
    • Aborted // Vault of Horrors – These Belgian veterans, long under-appreciated in the Hall, finally found their champion in Grier. They hooked themselves up to the juvenation machine by leaning into the melodeath that has been creeping into their sound, and cranked out their best set in years.
    • Vitriol // Suffer and Become – Here’s a mean and heavy slab that seemed to fade from the general consciousness as the year wore on, but remains worthy of note.

Disappointment o’the Year:

Ferox! I just didn’t have time to make a meaningful contribution here this year. It has been a pleasure to watch other members of my n00b class like Dolph and Maddog and Thus become AMG institutions, even as I mostly watch from the sidelines and come out to play when I can.

Song o’the Year:

Imagine being asked to name your favorite song of the year, and responding with a twenty-seven song playlist!7

#2024 #AFrameOfMind #Aborted #AR #ArthouseFatso #BeatenToDeath #BlackCurse #BurningInCelestialPoison #ChroniclesOfLunacy #CoffinOfConviction #ConcreteWinds #Dawnwalker #DaydreamingInMoonlight #DefeatedSanity #Defying #Dissimulator #Dysrhythmia #Endonomos #EndonomosIIEnlightenment #Exhaust #FuneralForAKing #GodsOverBrokenPeople #HomicideCult #Horrendous #IngurgitatingOblivion #InnerStrength #InterArma #JulieChristmas #Kalandra #Khemmis #Kollapse #Lists #Listurnalia #Listurnalia2024 #Lizzard #LowerFormResistance #Mamaleek #Mesh #MotherOfGraves #Myrath #NewHeaven #NobodyLikesYou #Noxis #OfTheLastHumanBeing #Omegon #OntologyOfNought #Orgone #OU #Pallbearer #Pleroma #Polterguts #PurulenceGushingFromTheCoffin #Pyrrhon #RidiculousAndFullOfBlood #RippedToShreds #Sanshi #SaveThisUtility #Scumbag #SleepytimeGorillaMuseum #SongsOfBloodAndMire #SpectralWound #Stenched #StygianCrown #SufferAndBecome #SunriseOverRigorMortis #SycophanticSeizuresADoubleFeature #ThePeriaptOfAbsence #TheUnknowing #VaultOfHorrors #VidaBlue #ViolenceInherentInTheSystem #Vitriol #Wadera #Watain #Wormed #蘇醒IIFrailty

Dolphin Whisperer’s and Ferox’s Top Ten(ish) of 2024

By Dolphin Whisperer

Dolphin Whisperer

Every year, its end becomes more shocking and swift. Once, some guy told me, simply, “it only gets worse.” Not life though—attributing a better or worse or any sort of constant determination of our passage leaves a lot of room for falling into a void of enjoyment—life is, after all, a constant until its not. But time, or our sense of being in its too ever-present stream, flows at a rate that changes in ways to which we never quite catch up.

As such, there’s a comfort in knowing how much time an album, particularly one you enjoy will take. For the ten-to-twenty minutes it takes for grindcore proper to slap me silly or the forty-to-eighty minutes that it takes for my deepest progressive loves to wring out a moaning confession, I know where my attention lies, even if it’s only half there and half on a task at hand. Time and tasks, day to night, play to stop, music makes my world a better place. And entering my now third year at Angry Metal Guy, an institution that has been a fixture of my musical journey for even longer, I continue to hold a profound gratitude and excitement for another year of discovery.

2024 has had its challenges professionally and personally. 2025 will be no doubt the same, even if some trials we can see forming in the distance. But you want to know about the music, right? On that end, 2024 has yielded a heaping trove of great albums. Heck, even a Rodeö pick scratched at the rungs of an honorable mention. The below list barely scratches the surface of the breadth that the year has offered. Further down you will see Ferox‘s list, which captures a different collection equally rooted in joy. He might be more right than I am. But that matters little. Celebrate with us, your favorite collective of writers on the world wide web! Come hang with some of us on Discord too if you’d like. Most of the people there are certified flea-free. And don’t be too upset if 2025 doesn’t hit you the same at first. It’s just another year, and it’ll be over before you know it.

#ish. Kalandra // A Frame of Mind – At my core, I consider myself a Norwegian sad girl. Usually, this manifests in some sort of weepy, melancholy prog, the likes of Age of Silence or Madder Mortem.1 But Kalandra’s enfolkened an impassioned take on an artsy, progressive collection of empowering tunes hit me square in my aching heart from the moment I heard it. Most importantly, though, Kalandra knows that suffering is just a step on the path of growth and happiness, which is a message that inspires me every day.

#10. Dawnwalker // The Unknowing – The power to dream and envision a world driven by mysticism has an allure that’s hard to ignore. And while we know that more determinable laws guide the happenings of our daily lives, a glimpse of the unknown will always find its way into sequence. Dawnwalker putting this esoteric but ever-present concept into an atmospheric, genre-warped, playfully progressive package hardly surprises me, though. The British troupe has had my number since their unsung classic In Rooms,2 so I’m doing my last in continuing to love them despite Twelve‘s best efforts to underrate them.3

#9. Lizzard // Mesh – Lizzard’s 2021 opus Eroded is my favorite album of this decade so far. The French trio’s ability to warp deep, rhythm-tricky layers into driving and emotional rock songs his me at the core of my musical desire for cathartic hope expressed in an unassuming and lush framework. Mesh doesn’t present any differently in that regard. But its wrinkles on Lizzard’s timeless yet ’90s alternative-rooted oeuvre fuel Mesh’s inherent melancholy with a hope that’s jubilant, like a cracked smile on an overcast day.

#8. Dissimulator // Lower Form Resistance – [INCOMING TRANSMISSION.] “My name is Clyde, and I arrive from beyond with wonderful news. My good friend Ferox has survived this timeline after all, having learned to navigate the Lower Form Resistance assault of fast-twitch rhythms and slow-twitch death metal punctuation. His head, fully intact, sways wildly in its hairless glory—big dives for big skanking breaks, snappy rolls for whiplash accelerations. He may not be as rhythmically gifted in pit-galloping cadence as the virtuoso drum and bass duo that provides life to Dissimulator’s effortless strides, but Ferox is my everything nonetheless.” [END TRANSMISSION.]

#7. Mamaleek // Vida Blue – I couldn’t begin to tell you what has never landed about Mamaleek’s works before with a weird precision. As an act dedicated to sounding only like Mamaleek, their singular expression of tortured black(ish) metal warped by jazzy and slogging attitudes has manifested quite the take-it-or-leave-it musical experience. And while you, dear reader, may assume this is firmly up my alley, it has not been. At least not until Vida Blue served a bottom of the ninth heart-shaker as an ode to a departed friend.4 With a soulful swing, a tortured connection, and an exit velocity powered by equal parts loss and love, Mamaleek has clinched a campaign for my attention.

#6. Defeated Sanity // Chronicles of Lunacy – As an apex predator in the brutal death metal world, Defeated Sanity’s appearance arouses not questions of competency but rather calculations of the carnage wrought. Chronicles of Lunacy does not mark a turning point or novel twist in the Defeated Sanity timeline—its finely tuned lashings hit as inescapable all the same. When neither a beast’s reach, nor mass, nor attack speed goes contested, an exhibition of its might will flash with morbid glee. As such, Defeated Sanity need not surprise to strike mortal wound. Chronicles’ fangs glisten with an aged-imbrued tarnish, tearing at my flesh in every way I would expect. And I want more.

#5. Orgone // Pleroma – Meticulous and constructed as a master-work, Pleroma’s opening notes signal a trance. Acoustic twang and chamber instrument-fueled swoon build an atmosphere of wonder against a fervent and languished march of post-genre swells and death-fueled crescendos. Cycling through its many shades feels less like a fever dream and more of a trial-filled journey. Wielding a demure grandeur, Pleroma’s effortless realization of Orgone’s peerless vision never feels like the epic journey its runtime suggests. Were my time truly infinite, Pleroma would be even harder to rip away from the queue.

#4. Julie Christmas // Ridiculous and Full of Blood – A lady screaming bloody murder shouldn’t go down this smooth, but that’s always been the promise and success of Julie Christmas. Few vocalists leave me slack-jawed and ear-shaken in the wake of piercing cries, raw-throated shrieks, and impassioned lyrical slather. Yet, Ridiculous and Full of Blood cuts track after track out of sonic patterns that do exactly that, all while empowering a full band expression of alternative-laced grooves, post-informed climbs, and punk-tied sneer. The Christmas season sums a flurry of inspired performances under the banner of a madwoman. And I stand at the ready to fray my vocal cords in attempt to crack with the same battle-tested precision that Ms. Christmas has earned from a life hard-worn.

#3. Ingurgitating Oblivion // Ontology of Nought – Though born of minds unrelated, Ontology of Nought exists as an esoteric companion to the Pleroma embodiment. Orgone is the twin that went to conservatory, graduated with honors, and holds an honorable performing chair, all while remembering its young love for death metal. Ingurgitating Oblivion, on the other hand, dropped out, spiraled into entheogenic dissociation, earns a living gigging at jazz clubs—also maintains its youthful lust for the clamoring riff and hammering blast. Maximalism oozes a frothing wonder in the hiss of distorted chatter and rhythmic mastery. An imperfect and breathing construction rises and falls in ethereal inhales and vision-spinning mantras. Ontology of Nought deserves each of its over-budget minutes. Invest time in the freedom that it promises… “and cease to be.”

#2. OU // 蘇醒 II: Frailty – The casualness of OU’s inception belies its profound leap into my necessary rotation. No incumbent love ever has a defined position in the halls of end-of-year accolades,5 and even more so when the act’s very presence rang suspicious in its finely-tuned invasion to my critical wiles. But, as I noted when I first blew my love for 蘇醒 II: Frailty over the pages of Angry Metal Guy, it’s OU’s “idiosyncratic atmosphere” that pulls from a “polyrhythmic hypnosis” and masterful “energetic flow” that continues to chart them deservedly high in the annals of ’20s progressive music. And while this collision of classically-minded, synth-addicted madness slowly expands its universe one OU release at a time, I’m content to sit here and yell their praises at anyone who will listen.

#1. Pyrrhon // Exhaust – You know you’re getting old when an album about modern burnout and the pains of traffic resonates with you all the way from frozen shoulder to radiating lower back to cold-groaning knee. But when Pyrrhon stealth-bombed my aging metalhead mind with a tech-dial riff barrage of noisy and shouting proportions, I had no choice but to surrender. Exhaust demands attention from its initial irony-laced lift-off to its closing brutalist clock-out, swinging skronk-enabled splatters and ache-addled vituperation around every faded line and pothole in its death metal architecture. Though Pyrrhon uses simpler blocks, their construction here defies convention at every step. One fine commenter summed up Exhaust in the most succinct manner in that regard: “Death Metal, Hardcore, Noise Rock, Technical Death Metal. It’s just mathcore.” Except they took away the wrong message from that distillation. The verdict, in fact, is fuck you.

Honorable Mentions:

• • Inner Strength // Daydreaming in Moonlight – Another way you know you’re getting old is that you love an album that sounds like it should have released in 1995. Alas, here we are.
  • Dysrhythmia // Coffin of Conviction – Instrumental progressive music should be as exciting as Dysrhythmia. Comes for the Martyr riffs. Stay for the Metheny floating.
  • Beaten to Death // Sunrise Over Rigor Mortis – Beaten to Death is still the best grindcore band on the planet. They probably won’t ever release a better album than D​ø​dsfest!, but that’s OK. Their discography is now about two hours total. Go listen to it if you haven’t.
  • Stygian Crown // Funeral for a King – Doom should always have a guitar tone that feels equally powered by swords and beer alongside vocals that feel soft like bar-stained leather stools.
  • Kollapse // AR – I didn’t know KEN mode had a Danish doppelgänger with a frightening, large pink face. But they do, and boy does Kollapse know how to yell and riff.
  • Sleepytime Gorilla Museum // of the Last Human Being – Had I infinitely more listening time, I may have been able to parse better this deeply cinematic and wacky slab of no wave emboldened prog. Most don’t actually earn the avant-garde tag the way SGT does.
  • Defying // Wadera – Hour-long albums based on old Polish werewolf stories and horror movies shouldn’t be this easy to repeat, but I find myself often falling into Wadera’s unbreakable spell.
  • Arthouse Fatso // Sycophantic Seizures: A Double Feature – I didn’t have radically-minded industrial deathgrind about the frustrated escapades of a fictional Orson Welles life on my 2024 bingo, but here I am telling you to listen to it anyway.
  • Concrete Winds // Concrete Winds – Just this. And shitloads of riffs.

Disappointments o’ the Year:

• Myrath // Karma – I love Shehili so much. My love for power metal isn’t what it used to be, but Myrath’s exuberance while staying rooted in both the trickier waters of prog and the anthemic cries of power metal gave me hope both that I’d continue to latch on to the kind of playful love it can offer. But the arrangements on Karma, despite Myrath’s still life-affirming messages, do absolutely nothing to bolster that same joy for me. Karma sinks my listening brain. And that hurts.
• Pallbearer // Mind Burns Alive – The continued non-success of Pallbearer and their sleepy-toned take on creaky prog rock hurts the Dolph who fell in love with their weepy doom classic (and still controversial to true doomsters) Heartless. And yet the general blogging population seems to praise them for trying to reinvent sadboi roots rock with worse lyrics. And, for my money, Pallbearer is sounding increasingly thin live. If a return to glory is in store for Pallbearer, it will begin with them finally playing a riff again.
• Polterguts // Nobody Likes You – Okay, this EP actually rips because Polterguts rips. Hard. But, Polterguts, if you’re reading this, please put it on Bandcamp so I can link the shit out of it and give you money. I am disappointed that I have no way to contribute currency to your cause. “Ricky Has a Knife2” is worth the price of admission alone.

Songs o’ the Year:

Why give you one when I can give you twenty-seven? Why twenty-seven? That’s my secret. Now, I’ve talked enough, go out there and enjoy some music, friends. And enjoy this photo of my dogs.

Coconut (left), Kiwi (right) in a stylish Adidog sweater.

Ferox

I worked way too much in 2024. I can’t complain; it was meaningful work that I chose to take on, and it got me that much closer to not having to work at all if I don’t want to. Still, that’s what I’ll think of when I think of 2024: lots and lots of work. That had a knock-on effect, especially when it comes to hobbies like lifting, getting out to national parks, and writing here. I did very little of any of that. I kept up with metal as best I could, and embarked on a big end-of-year listening push to have an accurate picture of what came out in 2024. I’m grateful that I got to do a list at all this year, so I took the responsibility seriously… but I’d be lying if I said I was buried in the scene all year.

One of the highlights of my 2024 was meeting a whole slew of staffers in person. I traveled a bunch this year, both for work and for my daughter’s ballet pursuits, and with that came the chance to hang with some of the people who make this place go. My body count of staffers met this year: Steel Druhm, Madam X, Cherd, Twelve, Dr. Wyrm, Thus Spoke, El Cuervo, Doom et al, and Holdeneye. It was a veritable orgy of almost entirely chaste fellowship, and only one (1) bad hang among the lot!6

I’m grateful to Steel Druhm and Angry Metal Guy for indulging my schedule, and for the real leadership they provide at my fake job. I found this unique community because it had the best music writing on the internet, and that remains true today thanks to the talented people who contribute their time and enthusiasm to keeping the machinery humming. I’m lucky to be a small part of it, and hopeful that 2025 will give me more time to spend in the Hall.

#ish. Mother of Graves // The Periapt of Absence – My “-ish” spot typically goes to an album that might have listed if I just had more time with it. That holds true of the sophomore effort from Indianapolis’s Mother of Graves, which landed on my radar by way of Carcharadon‘s excellent TYHMHM piece. This slab of classic sadboi death doom transcends any tribcore concerns through sheer quality of execution. From opener “Gallows” through final track “Like Darkness to a Dying Flame,” The Periapt of Absence guides the listener through the stages of grief with varied compositions that maintain a consistent mood throughout. Classic death doom is alive and well.

#10. Wormed // Omegon – Maddog‘s compelling rave for Omegon is my personal Review o’ the Year; fortunately, the prose was well spent on this efficient and brutal riff delivery system. Wormed has been creating slam-adjacent otherworldly death metal for a good while now, and Omegon is a distillation of everything the band has learned over the past two decades. 2024 is the year I realized I’ve been a brutal death metal guy all along. With songs like “Pareidolia Robotica” and “Virtual Teratogenesis,” Wormed took me by the hand and guided me through this journey of self-discovery… all while the people in the offices around me called in noise complaints.

#9. Ripped to Shreds // Sanshi – The already impressive Ripped to Shreds leveled up with Sanshi, a blast of aggressive but technically adept death metal that never left my rotation after its release. The guitar hero shredding plays like a release valve to the vicious and punky energy that Andrew Lee injects into his compositions. This cycle of tension and release makes for an addictive listen that feels like it ends mere moments after you hit play. The thrash elements of the R2S sounds are more prevalent on Sanshi, meaning the band now scratches the same itch for me that Horrendous did with their last killer slab.

#8. Scumbag // Homicide Cult – Scumbag! SCUUUMMMMBAGGGG. This nasty bit of business, with its deathgrind touches and morbid sense of humor (“Pure Adrenaline Hard-On,” “The Meating”), was tailor-made for the Ferox sensibility. Herein lie twenty-eight minutes of death metal that never slams but still walks the same line that Wormhole managed to last year: brutal but somehow cheerful, and stoopid without being remotely dumb. Dylan Cruz, of this band and Noxis, came out of nowhere to occupy a huge chunk of my limited listening time this year.

#7. Black Curse // Burning in Celestial Poison – With Burning in Celestial Poison, Black Curse stages a forty-five-minute takeover of your central nervous system. Eldritch Elitist captured the elemental power of these five compositions better than I ever could, but this album gave me exactly what I needed in a 2024 that was characterized by an extreme lack of work-life balance. Metal can provide a safe outlet for less-than-savory feelings, and Black Curse expressed a lot of things for me that I couldn’t express myself and stay employed. Lose yourself in these five tracks and emerge scoured but smarter.

#6. Spectral Wound // Songs of Blood and Mire – The hot streak continues; Songs of Blood and Mire, Spectral Wound’s fourth album, is their best effort yet. Carcharadon capably cataloged crisp new cross-currents in the band’s sound, but the song quality remains the same. Tracks like “At Wine-Dark Midnight in the Mouldering Halls” and Song o’ the Year “Aristocratic Suicidal Black Metal” showcase the band’s gift for coupling aggression with sweeping melody. In this way, Spectral Wound recalls Watain without so much distracting ooga-booga. Songs of Blood and Mire finds them continuing to refine their sound and grow in confidence.

#5. Endonomos // Endonomos II – Enlightenment – Endonomos carried the torch for doom in 2024. Enlightenment is a stately procession, its six long tracks blending influences from all across the doom spectrum. This is music that soars as it plods. Steel Druhm noted similarities to both Khemmis and Fvneral Fvkk. Those comps are perfect; not since Carnal Confessions has a doom album so effectively cut through the clutter of genre tropes to evoke genuine emotion.

#4. Pyrrhon // Exhaust – I hate it when the promotional push for an album ties a record too strongly to the narrative of its creation. It’s like the record company is trying to force a reaction that the album itself might or might not evoke. So when Exhaust arrived with heavy-handed descriptions of process and what Pyrrhon went through trying to make the album happen, I bristled and stopped reading. Fortunately, the music on Exhaust speaks for itself. This is a bitter and blistering record that finds the band raging against their rage’s inability to change even a single thing. I’ve always appreciated Pyrrhon, but I’ve never connected with their music as immediately as I did on Exhaust.

#3. Defeated Sanity // Chronicles of Lunacy – Defeated Sanity has had quite the AMG journey. They’ve gone from being brushed aside by a n00b named Potato Jim to being on the receiving end of a double-4.0 fellating from the tenured likes of Dolphin Whisperer and Maddog. Chronicles of Lunacy finds Defeated Sanity extending the Colin Marston-enabled peak that they hit on 2020’s The Sanguinary Impetus. It takes extreme skill to weaponize the base and the stoopid this effectively. Defeated Sanity is more than up for the job.

#2. Inter Arma // New Heaven – Here’s another band that could be wrestling with The Law of Diminishing Recordings by now, but instead persists with quality release after quality release. Inter Arma never repeats themselves, but each of their albums could only come from them. Hot take: Sky Funeral has remained my favorite Inter Arma album even as they’ve racked up an epic run of excellence. New Heaven makes a run at unseating it. This is a slab that rewards the many repeated listens I gave it in 2024; it sat in my top slot for much of the year until a late-breaking favorite pushed it aside.

#1. Noxis // Violence Inherent in the System – This is my third time publishing a list at AMG; each previous year, I had clear Album o’the Year winners in Immolation’s Acts of God and Afterbirth’s In But Not Of. 2024 marked the first Listurnalia that began with an opening for my top slot. But as I weeded through my favorite music of the year, I realized: Noxis drew me in with the bass flourish at the beginning of album opener “Skullcrushing Defilement,” and they still haven’t let go. The Pittsburgher in me hates to credit anything from Cleveland, but Noxis weeded out that deeply rooted prejudice with their inventive and fresh take on death metal. Every track on Violence Inherent in the System is a wild ride that alternately crushes, challenges, and tickles. The only break from the madcap pace comes on mid-album interlude “Excursion,” but that just prepares you for the utter barking lunacy of “Horns Echo Over Chorazim.” That song incorporates strange arrangements that include various woodwind instruments, and somehow they do it with zero pretension and abundant commitment to brutality. Listurnalia may have begun with a blank space atop my list, but it ended with Noxis firmly entrenched as the winner of 2024.

Honorable Mentions:

• • • Stenched // Purulence Gushing from the Coffin – This one-man outfit captured that elusive filthy magic and spewed out the annum’s premiere filthy wallow.
    • Aborted // Vault of Horrors – These Belgian veterans, long under-appreciated in the Hall, finally found their champion in Grier. They hooked themselves up to the juvenation machine by leaning into the melodeath that has been creeping into their sound, and cranked out their best set in years.
    • Vitriol // Suffer and Become – Here’s a mean and heavy slab that seemed to fade from the general consciousness as the year wore on, but remains worthy of note.

Disappointment o’the Year:

Ferox! I just didn’t have time to make a meaningful contribution here this year. It has been a pleasure to watch other members of my n00b class like Dolph and Maddog and Thus become AMG institutions, even as I mostly watch from the sidelines and come out to play when I can.

Song o’the Year:

Imagine being asked to name your favorite song of the year, and responding with a twenty-seven song playlist!7

#2024 #AFrameOfMind #Aborted #AR #ArthouseFatso #BeatenToDeath #BlackCurse #BurningInCelestialPoison #ChroniclesOfLunacy #CoffinOfConviction #ConcreteWinds #Dawnwalker #DaydreamingInMoonlight #DefeatedSanity #Defying #Dissimulator #Dysrhythmia #Endonomos #EndonomosIIEnlightenment #Exhaust #FuneralForAKing #GodsOverBrokenPeople #HomicideCult #Horrendous #IngurgitatingOblivion #InnerStrength #InterArma #JulieChristmas #Kalandra #Khemmis #Kollapse #Lists #Listurnalia #Listurnalia2024 #Lizzard #LowerFormResistance #Mamaleek #Mesh #MotherOfGraves #Myrath #NewHeaven #NobodyLikesYou #Noxis #OfTheLastHumanBeing #Omegon #OntologyOfNought #Orgone #OU #Pallbearer #Pleroma #Polterguts #PurulenceGushingFromTheCoffin #Pyrrhon #RidiculousAndFullOfBlood #RippedToShreds #Sanshi #SaveThisUtility #Scumbag #SleepytimeGorillaMuseum #SongsOfBloodAndMire #SpectralWound #Stenched #StygianCrown #SufferAndBecome #SunriseOverRigorMortis #SycophanticSeizuresADoubleFeature #ThePeriaptOfAbsence #TheUnknowing #VaultOfHorrors #VidaBlue #ViolenceInherentInTheSystem #Vitriol #Wadera #Watain #Wormed #蘇醒IIFrailty

Dolphin Whisperer’s and Ferox’s Top Ten(ish) of 2024

By Dolphin Whisperer

Dolphin Whisperer

Every year, its end becomes more shocking and swift. Once, some guy told me, simply, “it only gets worse.” Not life though—attributing a better or worse or any sort of constant determination of our passage leaves a lot of room for falling into a void of enjoyment—life is, after all, a constant until its not. But time, or our sense of being in its too ever-present stream, flows at a rate that changes in ways to which we never quite catch up.

As such, there’s a comfort in knowing how much time an album, particularly one you enjoy will take. For the ten-to-twenty minutes it takes for grindcore proper to slap me silly or the forty-to-eighty minutes that it takes for my deepest progressive loves to wring out a moaning confession, I know where my attention lies, even if it’s only half there and half on a task at hand. Time and tasks, day to night, play to stop, music makes my world a better place. And entering my now third year at Angry Metal Guy, an institution that has been a fixture of my musical journey for even longer, I continue to hold a profound gratitude and excitement for another year of discovery.

2024 has had its challenges professionally and personally. 2025 will be no doubt the same, even if some trials we can see forming in the distance. But you want to know about the music, right? On that end, 2024 has yielded a heaping trove of great albums. Heck, even a Rodeö pick scratched at the rungs of an honorable mention. The below list barely scratches the surface of the breadth that the year has offered. Further down you will see Ferox‘s list, which captures a different collection equally rooted in joy. He might be more right than I am. But that matters little. Celebrate with us, your favorite collective of writers on the world wide web! Come hang with some of us on Discord too if you’d like. Most of the people there are certified flea-free. And don’t be too upset if 2025 doesn’t hit you the same at first. It’s just another year, and it’ll be over before you know it.

#ish. Kalandra // A Frame of Mind – At my core, I consider myself a Norwegian sad girl. Usually, this manifests in some sort of weepy, melancholy prog, the likes of Age of Silence or Madder Mortem.1 But Kalandra’s enfolkened an impassioned take on an artsy, progressive collection of empowering tunes hit me square in my aching heart from the moment I heard it. Most importantly, though, Kalandra knows that suffering is just a step on the path of growth and happiness, which is a message that inspires me every day.

#10. Dawnwalker // The Unknowing – The power to dream and envision a world driven by mysticism has an allure that’s hard to ignore. And while we know that more determinable laws guide the happenings of our daily lives, a glimpse of the unknown will always find its way into sequence. Dawnwalker putting this esoteric but ever-present concept into an atmospheric, genre-warped, playfully progressive package hardly surprises me, though. The British troupe has had my number since their unsung classic In Rooms,2 so I’m doing my last in continuing to love them despite Twelve‘s best efforts to underrate them.3

#9. Lizzard // Mesh – Lizzard’s 2021 opus Eroded is my favorite album of this decade so far. The French trio’s ability to warp deep, rhythm-tricky layers into driving and emotional rock songs his me at the core of my musical desire for cathartic hope expressed in an unassuming and lush framework. Mesh doesn’t present any differently in that regard. But its wrinkles on Lizzard’s timeless yet ’90s alternative-rooted oeuvre fuel Mesh’s inherent melancholy with a hope that’s jubilant, like a cracked smile on an overcast day.

#8. Dissimulator // Lower Form Resistance – [INCOMING TRANSMISSION.] “My name is Clyde, and I arrive from beyond with wonderful news. My good friend Ferox has survived this timeline after all, having learned to navigate the Lower Form Resistance assault of fast-twitch rhythms and slow-twitch death metal punctuation. His head, fully intact, sways wildly in its hairless glory—big dives for big skanking breaks, snappy rolls for whiplash accelerations. He may not be as rhythmically gifted in pit-galloping cadence as the virtuoso drum and bass duo that provides life to Dissimulator’s effortless strides, but Ferox is my everything nonetheless.” [END TRANSMISSION.]

#7. Mamaleek // Vida Blue – I couldn’t begin to tell you what has never landed about Mamaleek’s works before with a weird precision. As an act dedicated to sounding only like Mamaleek, their singular expression of tortured black(ish) metal warped by jazzy and slogging attitudes has manifested quite the take-it-or-leave-it musical experience. And while you, dear reader, may assume this is firmly up my alley, it has not been. At least not until Vida Blue served a bottom of the ninth heart-shaker as an ode to a departed friend.4 With a soulful swing, a tortured connection, and an exit velocity powered by equal parts loss and love, Mamaleek has clinched a campaign for my attention.

#6. Defeated Sanity // Chronicles of Lunacy – As an apex predator in the brutal death metal world, Defeated Sanity’s appearance arouses not questions of competency but rather calculations of the carnage wrought. Chronicles of Lunacy does not mark a turning point or novel twist in the Defeated Sanity timeline—its finely tuned lashings hit as inescapable all the same. When neither a beast’s reach, nor mass, nor attack speed goes contested, an exhibition of its might will flash with morbid glee. As such, Defeated Sanity need not surprise to strike mortal wound. Chronicles’ fangs glisten with an aged-imbrued tarnish, tearing at my flesh in every way I would expect. And I want more.

#5. Orgone // Pleroma – Meticulous and constructed as a master-work, Pleroma’s opening notes signal a trance. Acoustic twang and chamber instrument-fueled swoon build an atmosphere of wonder against a fervent and languished march of post-genre swells and death-fueled crescendos. Cycling through its many shades feels less like a fever dream and more of a trial-filled journey. Wielding a demure grandeur, Pleroma’s effortless realization of Orgone’s peerless vision never feels like the epic journey its runtime suggests. Were my time truly infinite, Pleroma would be even harder to rip away from the queue.

#4. Julie Christmas // Ridiculous and Full of Blood – A lady screaming bloody murder shouldn’t go down this smooth, but that’s always been the promise and success of Julie Christmas. Few vocalists leave me slack-jawed and ear-shaken in the wake of piercing cries, raw-throated shrieks, and impassioned lyrical slather. Yet, Ridiculous and Full of Blood cuts track after track out of sonic patterns that do exactly that, all while empowering a full band expression of alternative-laced grooves, post-informed climbs, and punk-tied sneer. The Christmas season sums a flurry of inspired performances under the banner of a madwoman. And I stand at the ready to fray my vocal cords in attempt to crack with the same battle-tested precision that Ms. Christmas has earned from a life hard-worn.

#3. Ingurgitating Oblivion // Ontology of Nought – Though born of minds unrelated, Ontology of Nought exists as an esoteric companion to the Pleroma embodiment. Orgone is the twin that went to conservatory, graduated with honors, and holds an honorable performing chair, all while remembering its young love for death metal. Ingurgitating Oblivion, on the other hand, dropped out, spiraled into entheogenic dissociation, earns a living gigging at jazz clubs—also maintains its youthful lust for the clamoring riff and hammering blast. Maximalism oozes a frothing wonder in the hiss of distorted chatter and rhythmic mastery. An imperfect and breathing construction rises and falls in ethereal inhales and vision-spinning mantras. Ontology of Nought deserves each of its over-budget minutes. Invest time in the freedom that it promises… “and cease to be.”

#2. OU // 蘇醒 II: Frailty – The casualness of OU’s inception belies its profound leap into my necessary rotation. No incumbent love ever has a defined position in the halls of end-of-year accolades,5 and even more so when the act’s very presence rang suspicious in its finely-tuned invasion to my critical wiles. But, as I noted when I first blew my love for 蘇醒 II: Frailty over the pages of Angry Metal Guy, it’s OU’s “idiosyncratic atmosphere” that pulls from a “polyrhythmic hypnosis” and masterful “energetic flow” that continues to chart them deservedly high in the annals of ’20s progressive music. And while this collision of classically-minded, synth-addicted madness slowly expands its universe one OU release at a time, I’m content to sit here and yell their praises at anyone who will listen.

#1. Pyrrhon // Exhaust – You know you’re getting old when an album about modern burnout and the pains of traffic resonates with you all the way from frozen shoulder to radiating lower back to cold-groaning knee. But when Pyrrhon stealth-bombed my aging metalhead mind with a tech-dial riff barrage of noisy and shouting proportions, I had no choice but to surrender. Exhaust demands attention from its initial irony-laced lift-off to its closing brutalist clock-out, swinging skronk-enabled splatters and ache-addled vituperation around every faded line and pothole in its death metal architecture. Though Pyrrhon uses simpler blocks, their construction here defies convention at every step. One fine commenter summed up Exhaust in the most succinct manner in that regard: “Death Metal, Hardcore, Noise Rock, Technical Death Metal. It’s just mathcore.” Except they took away the wrong message from that distillation. The verdict, in fact, is fuck you.

Honorable Mentions:

• • Inner Strength // Daydreaming in Moonlight – Another way you know you’re getting old is that you love an album that sounds like it should have released in 1995. Alas, here we are.
  • Dysrhythmia // Coffin of Conviction – Instrumental progressive music should be as exciting as Dysrhythmia. Comes for the Martyr riffs. Stay for the Metheny floating.
  • Beaten to Death // Sunrise Over Rigor Mortis – Beaten to Death is still the best grindcore band on the planet. They probably won’t ever release a better album than D​ø​dsfest!, but that’s OK. Their discography is now about two hours total. Go listen to it if you haven’t.
  • Stygian Crown // Funeral for a King – Doom should always have a guitar tone that feels equally powered by swords and beer alongside vocals that feel soft like bar-stained leather stools.
  • Kollapse // AR – I didn’t know KEN mode had a Danish doppelgänger with a frightening, large pink face. But they do, and boy does Kollapse know how to yell and riff.
  • Sleepytime Gorilla Museum // of the Last Human Being – Had I infinitely more listening time, I may have been able to parse better this deeply cinematic and wacky slab of no wave emboldened prog. Most don’t actually earn the avant-garde tag the way SGT does.
  • Defying // Wadera – Hour-long albums based on old Polish werewolf stories and horror movies shouldn’t be this easy to repeat, but I find myself often falling into Wadera’s unbreakable spell.
  • Arthouse Fatso // Sycophantic Seizures: A Double Feature – I didn’t have radically-minded industrial deathgrind about the frustrated escapades of a fictional Orson Welles life on my 2024 bingo, but here I am telling you to listen to it anyway.
  • Concrete Winds // Concrete Winds – Just this. And shitloads of riffs.

Disappointments o’ the Year:

• Myrath // Karma – I love Shehili so much. My love for power metal isn’t what it used to be, but Myrath’s exuberance while staying rooted in both the trickier waters of prog and the anthemic cries of power metal gave me hope both that I’d continue to latch on to the kind of playful love it can offer. But the arrangements on Karma, despite Myrath’s still life-affirming messages, do absolutely nothing to bolster that same joy for me. Karma sinks my listening brain. And that hurts.
• Pallbearer // Mind Burns Alive – The continued non-success of Pallbearer and their sleepy-toned take on creaky prog rock hurts the Dolph who fell in love with their weepy doom classic (and still controversial to true doomsters) Heartless. And yet the general blogging population seems to praise them for trying to reinvent sadboi roots rock with worse lyrics. And, for my money, Pallbearer is sounding increasingly thin live. If a return to glory is in store for Pallbearer, it will begin with them finally playing a riff again.
• Polterguts // Nobody Likes You – Okay, this EP actually rips because Polterguts rips. Hard. But, Polterguts, if you’re reading this, please put it on Bandcamp so I can link the shit out of it and give you money. I am disappointed that I have no way to contribute currency to your cause. “Ricky Has a Knife2” is worth the price of admission alone.

Songs o’ the Year:

Why give you one when I can give you twenty-seven? Why twenty-seven? That’s my secret. Now, I’ve talked enough, go out there and enjoy some music, friends. And enjoy this photo of my dogs.

Coconut (left), Kiwi (right) in a stylish Adidog sweater.

Ferox

I worked way too much in 2024. I can’t complain; it was meaningful work that I chose to take on, and it got me that much closer to not having to work at all if I don’t want to. Still, that’s what I’ll think of when I think of 2024: lots and lots of work. That had a knock-on effect, especially when it comes to hobbies like lifting, getting out to national parks, and writing here. I did very little of any of that. I kept up with metal as best I could, and embarked on a big end-of-year listening push to have an accurate picture of what came out in 2024. I’m grateful that I got to do a list at all this year, so I took the responsibility seriously… but I’d be lying if I said I was buried in the scene all year.

One of the highlights of my 2024 was meeting a whole slew of staffers in person. I traveled a bunch this year, both for work and for my daughter’s ballet pursuits, and with that came the chance to hang with some of the people who make this place go. My body count of staffers met this year: Steel Druhm, Madam X, Cherd, Twelve, Dr. Wyrm, Thus Spoke, El Cuervo, Doom et al, and Holdeneye. It was a veritable orgy of almost entirely chaste fellowship, and only one (1) bad hang among the lot!6

I’m grateful to Steel Druhm and Angry Metal Guy for indulging my schedule, and for the real leadership they provide at my fake job. I found this unique community because it had the best music writing on the internet, and that remains true today thanks to the talented people who contribute their time and enthusiasm to keeping the machinery humming. I’m lucky to be a small part of it, and hopeful that 2025 will give me more time to spend in the Hall.

#ish. Mother of Graves // The Periapt of Absence – My “-ish” spot typically goes to an album that might have listed if I just had more time with it. That holds true of the sophomore effort from Indianapolis’s Mother of Graves, which landed on my radar by way of Carcharadon‘s excellent TYHMHM piece. This slab of classic sadboi death doom transcends any tribcore concerns through sheer quality of execution. From opener “Gallows” through final track “Like Darkness to a Dying Flame,” The Periapt of Absence guides the listener through the stages of grief with varied compositions that maintain a consistent mood throughout. Classic death doom is alive and well.

#10. Wormed // Omegon – Maddog‘s compelling rave for Omegon is my personal Review o’ the Year; fortunately, the prose was well spent on this efficient and brutal riff delivery system. Wormed has been creating slam-adjacent otherworldly death metal for a good while now, and Omegon is a distillation of everything the band has learned over the past two decades. 2024 is the year I realized I’ve been a brutal death metal guy all along. With songs like “Pareidolia Robotica” and “Virtual Teratogenesis,” Wormed took me by the hand and guided me through this journey of self-discovery… all while the people in the offices around me called in noise complaints.

#9. Ripped to Shreds // Sanshi – The already impressive Ripped to Shreds leveled up with Sanshi, a blast of aggressive but technically adept death metal that never left my rotation after its release. The guitar hero shredding plays like a release valve to the vicious and punky energy that Andrew Lee injects into his compositions. This cycle of tension and release makes for an addictive listen that feels like it ends mere moments after you hit play. The thrash elements of the R2S sounds are more prevalent on Sanshi, meaning the band now scratches the same itch for me that Horrendous did with their last killer slab.

#8. Scumbag // Homicide Cult – Scumbag! SCUUUMMMMBAGGGG. This nasty bit of business, with its deathgrind touches and morbid sense of humor (“Pure Adrenaline Hard-On,” “The Meating”), was tailor-made for the Ferox sensibility. Herein lie twenty-eight minutes of death metal that never slams but still walks the same line that Wormhole managed to last year: brutal but somehow cheerful, and stoopid without being remotely dumb. Dylan Cruz, of this band and Noxis, came out of nowhere to occupy a huge chunk of my limited listening time this year.

#7. Black Curse // Burning in Celestial Poison – With Burning in Celestial Poison, Black Curse stages a forty-five-minute takeover of your central nervous system. Eldritch Elitist captured the elemental power of these five compositions better than I ever could, but this album gave me exactly what I needed in a 2024 that was characterized by an extreme lack of work-life balance. Metal can provide a safe outlet for less-than-savory feelings, and Black Curse expressed a lot of things for me that I couldn’t express myself and stay employed. Lose yourself in these five tracks and emerge scoured but smarter.

#6. Spectral Wound // Songs of Blood and Mire – The hot streak continues; Songs of Blood and Mire, Spectral Wound’s fourth album, is their best effort yet. Carcharadon capably cataloged crisp new cross-currents in the band’s sound, but the song quality remains the same. Tracks like “At Wine-Dark Midnight in the Mouldering Halls” and Song o’ the Year “Aristocratic Suicidal Black Metal” showcase the band’s gift for coupling aggression with sweeping melody. In this way, Spectral Wound recalls Watain without so much distracting ooga-booga. Songs of Blood and Mire finds them continuing to refine their sound and grow in confidence.

#5. Endonomos // Endonomos II – Enlightenment – Endonomos carried the torch for doom in 2024. Enlightenment is a stately procession, its six long tracks blending influences from all across the doom spectrum. This is music that soars as it plods. Steel Druhm noted similarities to both Khemmis and Fvneral Fvkk. Those comps are perfect; not since Carnal Confessions has a doom album so effectively cut through the clutter of genre tropes to evoke genuine emotion.

#4. Pyrrhon // Exhaust – I hate it when the promotional push for an album ties a record too strongly to the narrative of its creation. It’s like the record company is trying to force a reaction that the album itself might or might not evoke. So when Exhaust arrived with heavy-handed descriptions of process and what Pyrrhon went through trying to make the album happen, I bristled and stopped reading. Fortunately, the music on Exhaust speaks for itself. This is a bitter and blistering record that finds the band raging against their rage’s inability to change even a single thing. I’ve always appreciated Pyrrhon, but I’ve never connected with their music as immediately as I did on Exhaust.

#3. Defeated Sanity // Chronicles of Lunacy – Defeated Sanity has had quite the AMG journey. They’ve gone from being brushed aside by a n00b named Potato Jim to being on the receiving end of a double-4.0 fellating from the tenured likes of Dolphin Whisperer and Maddog. Chronicles of Lunacy finds Defeated Sanity extending the Colin Marston-enabled peak that they hit on 2020’s The Sanguinary Impetus. It takes extreme skill to weaponize the base and the stoopid this effectively. Defeated Sanity is more than up for the job.

#2. Inter Arma // New Heaven – Here’s another band that could be wrestling with The Law of Diminishing Recordings by now, but instead persists with quality release after quality release. Inter Arma never repeats themselves, but each of their albums could only come from them. Hot take: Sky Funeral has remained my favorite Inter Arma album even as they’ve racked up an epic run of excellence. New Heaven makes a run at unseating it. This is a slab that rewards the many repeated listens I gave it in 2024; it sat in my top slot for much of the year until a late-breaking favorite pushed it aside.

#1. Noxis // Violence Inherent in the System – This is my third time publishing a list at AMG; each previous year, I had clear Album o’the Year winners in Immolation’s Acts of God and Afterbirth’s In But Not Of. 2024 marked the first Listurnalia that began with an opening for my top slot. But as I weeded through my favorite music of the year, I realized: Noxis drew me in with the bass flourish at the beginning of album opener “Skullcrushing Defilement,” and they still haven’t let go. The Pittsburgher in me hates to credit anything from Cleveland, but Noxis weeded out that deeply rooted prejudice with their inventive and fresh take on death metal. Every track on Violence Inherent in the System is a wild ride that alternately crushes, challenges, and tickles. The only break from the madcap pace comes on mid-album interlude “Excursion,” but that just prepares you for the utter barking lunacy of “Horns Echo Over Chorazim.” That song incorporates strange arrangements that include various woodwind instruments, and somehow they do it with zero pretension and abundant commitment to brutality. Listurnalia may have begun with a blank space atop my list, but it ended with Noxis firmly entrenched as the winner of 2024.

Honorable Mentions:

• • • Stenched // Purulence Gushing from the Coffin – This one-man outfit captured that elusive filthy magic and spewed out the annum’s premiere filthy wallow.
    • Aborted // Vault of Horrors – These Belgian veterans, long under-appreciated in the Hall, finally found their champion in Grier. They hooked themselves up to the juvenation machine by leaning into the melodeath that has been creeping into their sound, and cranked out their best set in years.
    • Vitriol // Suffer and Become – Here’s a mean and heavy slab that seemed to fade from the general consciousness as the year wore on, but remains worthy of note.

Disappointment o’the Year:

Ferox! I just didn’t have time to make a meaningful contribution here this year. It has been a pleasure to watch other members of my n00b class like Dolph and Maddog and Thus become AMG institutions, even as I mostly watch from the sidelines and come out to play when I can.

Song o’the Year:

Imagine being asked to name your favorite song of the year, and responding with a twenty-seven song playlist!7

#2024 #AFrameOfMind #Aborted #AR #ArthouseFatso #BeatenToDeath #BlackCurse #BurningInCelestialPoison #ChroniclesOfLunacy #CoffinOfConviction #ConcreteWinds #Dawnwalker #DaydreamingInMoonlight #DefeatedSanity #Defying #Dissimulator #Dysrhythmia #Endonomos #EndonomosIIEnlightenment #Exhaust #FuneralForAKing #GodsOverBrokenPeople #HomicideCult #Horrendous #IngurgitatingOblivion #InnerStrength #InterArma #JulieChristmas #Kalandra #Khemmis #Kollapse #Lists #Listurnalia #Listurnalia2024 #Lizzard #LowerFormResistance #Mamaleek #Mesh #MotherOfGraves #Myrath #NewHeaven #NobodyLikesYou #Noxis #OfTheLastHumanBeing #Omegon #OntologyOfNought #Orgone #OU #Pallbearer #Pleroma #Polterguts #PurulenceGushingFromTheCoffin #Pyrrhon #RidiculousAndFullOfBlood #RippedToShreds #Sanshi #SaveThisUtility #Scumbag #SleepytimeGorillaMuseum #SongsOfBloodAndMire #SpectralWound #Stenched #StygianCrown #SufferAndBecome #SunriseOverRigorMortis #SycophanticSeizuresADoubleFeature #ThePeriaptOfAbsence #TheUnknowing #VaultOfHorrors #VidaBlue #ViolenceInherentInTheSystem #Vitriol #Wadera #Watain #Wormed #蘇醒IIFrailty

Operation Manatee Music Prize: Top 5 Albums of 2024

This has been a year! As always, the amount of excellent new music being released is just overwhelming. I'm lucky to spend a lot of time with headphones on, sifting through every release that comes along. Sure, there's plenty of mediocre (or just bad) drivel, as well, but I'm willing to put in that work to find the gems. And they're always there.

#bestof2024 #bestalbum #newmusic #music #communityradio #mustafa #caribou #galliano #devonwelsh #juliechristmas

https://operationmanateecjtr.wordpress.com/2024/12/23/operation-manatee-music-prize-top-5-albums-of-2024/

So here I am, having done my AOTY top 10, then I decided to listen to Julie Christmas again.

Shouldn't have done that.

I, should not, have done, that!

🎵 Supernatural
💿 Ridiculous And Full Of Blood, 2024
▶️ https://song.link/y/Cg8-qS1Kzkk

#TomsMusic #NowPlaying #JulieChristmas

If I could musician, this is how I would want to musician.

https://youtu.be/8y_Rj-wnP7g

#JulieChristmas #Hellfest2024

I'm not really paying attention to new music this year, but so far looks like my top 5 AOTY list (in chronological order) is gonna be:

#Hulder - Verses in Oath
#KimGordon - The Collective
#BigBrave - A Chaos of Flowers
#BethGibbons - Lives Outgrown
#JulieChristmas - Ridiculous and Full of Blood

Also just saw that there's also a new #MoorMother, so list might be updated real soon...

Happy #JulieChristmas release day, to all who celebrate! The full album doesn't seem to be up on Bandcamp yet (is up on Apple Music), but should be soon.

https://juliechristmas.bandcamp.com/album/ridiculous-and-full-of-blood

#TheMetalDogArticleList
#MetalInjection
The Weekly Injection: New Releases From FU MANCHU, JULIE CHRISTMAS, & More Out Today 6/14
Plus releases from Ulcerate, 96 Bitter Beings, Crypt Sermon, and Squid Pisser.

https://metalinjection.net/upcoming-releases/heavy-new-releases/the-weekly-injection-new-releases-from-fu-manchu-julie-christmas-more-out-today-6-14

#FuManchu #JulieChristmas #CryptSermon #SquidPisser #Ulcerate #CKY

It's 2am and I started to listen to Julie Christmas/Battle of Mice again. Her vocals are so on point.

#metal #battleofmice #juliechristmas #postmetal #postrock

AMG Turns 15: Janitorial Staff Speaks

By Carcharodon

15 years ago, on May 19, 2009, Angry Metal Guy spoke. For the very first time as AMG. And he had opinions: Very Important Opinions™. The post attracted relatively little attention at the time, but times change and, over the decade and a half since then, AMG Industries has grown into the blog you know today. Now with a staff of around 25 overrating overwriters (and an entirely non-suspicious graveyard for writers on permanent, all-expenses-paid sabbaticals), we have written more than 9,100 posts, comprising over seven million words. Over the site’s lifetime, we’ve had more than 107 million visits and now achieve well over a million hits each and every month. Through this, we’ve built up a fantastic community of readers drawn from every corner of the globe, whom we have (mostly) loved getting to know in the more than 360,000 comments posted on the site.

We have done this under the careful (if sternly authoritarian) stewardship of our eponymous leader Angry Metal Guy and his iron enforcer, Steel Druhm, while adhering to strict editorial policies and principles. We have done this by simply offering honest (and occasionally brutal) takes, and without running a single advert or taking a single cent from anyone. Ever. Mistakes have undoubtedly been made and we may be a laughing laughing stock in the eyes of music intellectuals, socialites and critics everywhere but we are incredibly proud of what AMG Industries represents. In fact, we believe it may be the best metal blog, with the best community of readers, on the internet.

Now join us as the people responsible for making AMG a reality reflect on what the site means to them and why they would willingly work for a blog that pays in the currency of deadlines, abuse, and hobo wine. Welcome to the 15th Birthdaynalia.

Thou Shalt Have No Other Blogs!

Thus Spoke

AMG and me

I probably have one of the least legit backstories of anyone writing here. Unlike many of you—readers and writers—I was not a long-time fan of the blog, discovering it only around a year or two before applying to join the staff. I was 20 before I really got into trve metal and completely abandoned metalcore. But now, I can hardly imagine a time when reviewing albums for AMG wasn’t a key part of my weekly routine (nor can I imagine a life without extreme metal, for that matter; funny how things can change so dramatically). As corny as it sounds, it’s the community I’ve found amongst this bunch of wrong’uns—all loveable misfits, nerds, and actually-big-softies-despite-seeming-tough the lot of us—that has made the biggest impact. I said as much in my year-end post, but I feel blessed to have such a great bunch of comrades to talk music, vent about life, and just share memes with. The excitement of being in what feels like a special little club of small repute in the metalsphere still hasn’t worn off, even if, when wearing my AMG Inc Staff Stash out and about, I know no-one will get the reference. They probably think, if anything, “Why is she wearing a t-shirt that says Angry Metal Guy? That’s dumb.” Oh, and yeah, I know I need to get a new avatar. Anyone wanna design one for me?

AMG gave to me …

Vorga // Striving Toward Oblivion – I’m so lucky I was reading AMG,1 because this one was weirdly under-mentioned elsewhere. I absolutely love Vorga—as Kenstrosity himself is well aware—but I probably wouldn’t really know who they were, were it not for his review of this album. It’s just fantastic. “Taken” remains an immovable feature on any cardio playlist I’ve made since its release. And the rest—”Starless Sky,” “Comet,” “Fool’s Paradise”—absolutely bops. Already knowing I loved black metal, finding a band in the genre whose music I quickly became obsessed with, and eagerly anticipated future releases from, was extra exciting, especially when paired with the opportunity to get early access to Beyond the Palest Star this year.

Déluge // Ægo Templo – When this dropped, Dear Hollow panned it as “a wearisome and exhausting listen.” Fortunately, my curiosity was piqued enough that I listened for myself, and I have to say, I thoroughly disagree with my fine, antlered friend. Ægo Templo is far from perfect, but my goodness did it resonate with me. Just after I had gone through a whole phase of discovering my appreciation for (coincidentally) exclusively French black and post-black artists (Alcest, Regarde les Hommes Tomber, Vous Autres, Celeste …) Ægo Templo found its way to me via a review on a site I had only just started visiting. While the band’s debut, Æther, is perhaps better conceived, this one somehow completely consumed me in a way the debut never has. The washing sounds of ocean waves, glorious, uplifting themes, and dour, scream-rent brutality hit me in all the right places. I revisit it regularly and I, for one, am very excited to see what comes next from the Frenchmen.

Amenra // Mass VI – I know I said I wasn’t reading the blog until a couple of years before my tenancy here, but I still came across the odd review here and there whilst browsing for new bands to listen to. Somewhere, I saw the name Amenra mentioned, and, taking to the internet, I was led to Dr Grier‘s TYMHM post on Mass VI. Thoroughly intrigued, I vividly remember pressing play on the embedded “Diaken” and how everything shifted as its eleven-minute runtime passed by. I had never heard vocals like that. Yes, I’d heard harsh vocals—barks, growls, gurgles, shrieks, you name it—but Colin van Eeckhout’s crippling, devastating screams of pure pain were something else. The album, endlessly bleak and incredibly beautiful, utterly tore me to pieces in a way few others have. And it led me to devour not only Amenra’s full series of Masses and other creations, but the rest of the Church of Ra Collective’s several discographies. “A Solitary Reign” is now one of my favorite songs. Ever. No matter what else they put out, Mass VI will probably always be my favorite Amenra album.

I wish I had written …

Ulcerate – Shrines of Paralysis Review. As my favorite album from one of my favorite bands, reviewing Shrines of Paralysis would have been a dream. However, since it dropped about five years before my n00b tenancy began, it could never have been. Luckily for me, I will not have to contend with Kronos for reviewing rights, because the writing here, as with all his articles, is stellar. Unconsciously or not, I find myself emulating its subtle poeticism and easy flow. When Cutting the Throat of God comes, I hope my words can do an Ulcerate album as much justice as this review did.

Maddog

AMG and me

By chance, AMG’s first year was also the year that my enjoyment of metal hit escape velocity. After stumbling upon a sketchy webpage with an embed of Morbid Angel’s “Where the Slime Live,” I fell incorrigibly in love. After a few months following my nose, I found myself in the metal blogosphere, where I’ve lived ever since.

But AMG wasn’t where I landed. My first chaperones were Heavy Blog is Heavy and No Clean Singing. Without them, I would never have found Gorod, The Ocean, The Odious, Theory in Practice, or Enshine; and what would I have then? I discovered AMG a few years later, and the thrill of communally excavating new music shaped my life.

Over time, my musical community has expanded and become less faceless. Part of the reason is AMG, which has provided a firehose of new releases and a community of lovable idiots. Part of it is luck, such as my co-workers who swear by Blood Incantation. Much of it amounts to small acts of musical kindness. Engaging with friends on music warms my heart; getting dragged to a sketchy London punk venue and bonding with an indie friend over Reverend Kristin Michael Hayter were highlights of my year. Every stranger who’s welcomed me at a show has made my world less desolate.

Music is amazing in isolation, but it’s even better as a bridge between hearts. I’m thankful for everyone who’s held my hand on my musical voyages, including every writer and commenter here. I hope I can return the favor.

AMG gave to me …

Trees of Eternity // Hour of the Nightingale – Steel’s 3.0 review of Hour of the Nightingale was heartfelt, eloquent, and dead wrong.2 All ten tracks brim with beauty and flawless songwriting. Trees of Eternity’s mammoth riffs and piercing bass contrast with elegiac strings and acoustic guitars, and both pack an emotional punch. Aleah Stanbridge’s vocal melodies complement both styles, with a rich timbre that tugs at my heartstrings. Hour of the Nightingale’s supple dance between extremity and somber beauty makes “My Requiem” and “Gallows Bird” all-time-great bookends. Hour of the Nightingale’s lyrics are the best I’ve ever heard, painting technicolor images of the prisons we cage ourselves in, and the powers and perils of human connection. Variously depicting a plea for emotional openness (“Condemned to Silence”), the paralyzing fear of alienating loved ones (“A Million Tears”), the isolating trials of self-image (“Broken Mirror”),3 and an uplifting reminder that darkness is transient (title track), like a best friend, this album has wallowed with me, encouraged me, and offered me concrete guidance. Without it, I’d have zero interest in doom metal. I wouldn’t express myself freely or hug my loved ones as often.4 But perhaps most importantly, I wouldn’t have Hour of the Nightingale.

Cult of Luna & Julie Christmas // Mariner – Sure, I’d heard of Cult of Luna; I just paid them no attention.5 After one too many misfires with ISIS, I’d given up on post-metal altogether.6 Old man Huck’s review of Mariner convinced me to give the genre another shot. Lulling listeners with pulsating drum beats and meditative melodies, Mariner features the most explosive climaxes of Cult of Luna’s career. Julie Christmas unleashes my favorite extreme vocal performance ever, with blood-curdling screams from the terrifying depths of her heart. Christmas’ rhythmic vocals and Cult of Luna’s style elevate each other to make Mariner a true collaboration. Their lethal combination culminates in the emotional behemoth “Cygnus,” where a ferocious musical buildup colludes with four vocal tracks to deliver one of the greatest album endings ever. Mariner reeled me in and never let go. I’ve been a post-metal convert and a follower of the cult of Cult of Luna ever since. More broadly, I’ve grown to appreciate any album that whisks me into another universe, even if its melodies aren’t ground-breaking. I’ve grown to love hearing a vocalist bare their heart, whether it sounds lovely or grating. None of this was true for me a decade ago. It all started with Mariner.

Obsequiae // Aria of Vernal Tombs – Aria of Vernal Tombs’ marriage of medieval harmonies and black metal riffs heralded a new direction for the genre and for me. Obsequiae’s soaring guitar leads and solos carry me away with their beauty. Tanner Anderson’s distinctive guitar lines bounce off each other playfully and join forces for miraculous climaxes. Armed with these harmonies, Obsequiae’s mysterious ability to transport me to an Arthurian countryside recalls Wishbone Ash’s classic Argus. Still, Aria doesn’t skimp on extremity. Black metal and evocative melodies coexist in strange harmony, while banging bass lines put the genre to shame. Obsequiae feels like America’s answer to Moonsorrow, adding an original twist to black metal without depriving it of its power. Aria helped me see black metal through a new lens and develop a soft spot for bands whose use of melody echoes Obsequiae (see Noltem and Inexorum), and artists who add a unique folk spin to black metal (see Véhémence). Obsequiae personnel overlaps also led me to Nechochwen, Ironflame, and Majesties. But there is only one Obsequiae. Aria is their peak.

I wish I had written …

LiveWire – Under Attack! [Things You Might Have Missed 2022]. Two years on, the thrill of Under Attack! has somehow heightened further. The killer tracks remain exhilarating, while my least favorite songs (“Conqueror” and “Lockjaw Deathroll”) have proved just as memorable as the others. The bonus tracks, which I’d previously thought deserved “only” a 4.5, now rank among my favorites, right through the First Fragment “Gula”-esque ending of “Demon’s Grip.” Kenstrosity‘s excellent write-up did justice to LiveWire; I’m merely jealous. Under Attack! is one of the greatest metal records ever, a Thundersteel for our generation (but somehow better). I wish it’d been my White Wizzard.

Itchymenace

AMG and me

I’ve always loved reading about music. At an early age, I’d pore over the liner notes to my parent’s Beatles records. As a teen, I collected Hit Parader, Metal Maniacs and Guitar World magazines. I hung on every word that Glenn Tipton, James Hetfield or Ozzy would say, and dreamed of being the one to someday write their stories. Reviews were a critical feature of these publications but magazines didn’t come with embeds. If the latest Dio or Scorpions record got a good write-up, you’d roll the dice, spend your money, and buy the album. On a good day, you’d coax your buddy into buying it and get a dubbed copy on cassette. Good reviews went a long way. For me, the opportunity to write for AMG was a chance to be a part of the medium that has brought me so much joy and steered me to so much good music over the years. Little did I know the hornet nest of opinions I was walking into.

AMG gave to me …

Iron Maiden // Seventh Son of a Seventh Son – For me, it’s not a single album review that means the most to me, it’s the complete Iron Maiden discography ranking. What a ride! Up until then, I had always held Number of the Beast as one of the greatest metal records of all time. Putting Seventh Son of a Seventh Son as number one challenged everything I believed in. But you know, after some tortuous soul-searching, I agreed. The argument was too good. This was the level of deep musical analysis that was missing from all the other metal blogs. And it was the most fun I had reading anything that year.

Rotpit // Let There Be Rot – Steel Druhm is a great writer. He sets the bar for all of us. I mean his opening line here goes for the scrotum and the funny bone all in one fell swoop. What follows is a deliciously amusing review that’s every bit as entertaining as the album it’s covering. I’m not huge death metal fan but Rotpit quickly ascended to the top of my favorites last year. It reminded me how fun music can be and how greatness transcends genre. It became an unwelcome running joke in our house that whenever someone suggested putting music on, I’d scream RooooooottttPiiiittttttt! Strangely, it never got picked. Their loss.

I wish I had written …

Cruentus – Fossilized Review. I remember reading this review at work and doing everything I could to not laugh out loud or draw the confused glares of my co-workers. It took a good five minutes to settle and I’m still not sure my pancreas has fully recovered. This was also an “aha” moment for an impressionable Itchymenace trying to figure out the secret sauce in the AMG whopper. Here, Doc Grier both honors and expands upon the AMG mythology as only he can. He’s immensely talented and funny. If only he had good taste.

I wish I could do over …

Virgin Steele – The Passion of Dionysus Review. I took so much shit for giving this album a 3.5. So, I’m here to say I was wrong. It should have been a 4.0. That’s right fuckers. Suck it hard. This is a great record with plenty of heart despite some production setbacks. Go ahead and come at me in the Slack channel or wherever you find me. My Virgin Steele is ready to taste blood.7

I wish more people had read …

Danava – Nothing but Nothing Review. The opening paragraph of this review is my best work. I love how well it flows and how metal it is. Plus, this album kicked ass and more people should listen to it. Hit that link, fanboy!

Iceberg

AMG and me

Truth be told, I don’t remember the first time I laid eyes on www.angrymetalguy.com. One of the first reviews I remember was GardensTale’s evisceration of Jordan Rudess’ solo album, an assessment I begrudgingly agreed with, regardless of my then full-on Dream Theater fanboy status. What I do recall is searching the internet of the early 2010s for any source of intelligent, measured criticism of music that didn’t reek of ad-revenue inflated cronyism. I imagine many of you, dear readers, have a similar story. My infatuation with—and eventual reliance on—AMG unfolded in anachronistic fits and starts: a Fleshgod review here (King), an Allegeaon pan there (Proponents of Sentience). Before I knew it, AMG had maneuvered itself into my daily routine. What used to feel like perusing a record store for new discoveries, became more like dropping in on old friends and asking how they were doing, albeit in a classically chatroom-lurker manner. I aligned with certain writers, certain commenters, and eagerly awaited TYMHM season to load me up with the year’s uncovered gems. Having spent so much of my life absorbing popular music due to my upbringing, and classical music due to my training, metal was a creative outlet I desperately needed, yet lacked the community with which to share it. I’d never have imagined being inducted into this hallowed crew of passionate curmudgeons, nor the long-sought camaraderie I’d find within.

AMG gave to me …

Brothers of Metal // Emblas Saga – Sometimes an album hits you just the right way, at just the right time to cement itself in the story of your life. Little did I know when I first fell in love with this baker’s dozen of Viking tomfoolery that a worldwide pandemic and a months-long lockdown with my in-laws was just around the corner. But Emblas Saga—so enthusiastically introduced to me by an effusive Holdeneye—became the soundtrack of my imprisonment. Power metal with mead and axes, the riffs stomped around, the big guy told stories, and Ylva Eriksson stole the show with so many ear-worm choruses that I was delirious halfway through the record. There isn’t a bad track throughout, and the opening salvo of “Powersnake”-“Hel”-“Chainbreaker” remains the undisputed champ for curtain-raising. Fun fact: my proudest moment of the Year of our Plague 2020 was getting my very devout Southern Baptist mother-in-law to refer to her vacuum-in-the-wall system as “the powersnake.” She still calls it that to this day. Praise be to Wotan!

Slow // VI – Dantalion – It’s 2019 and New York City’s cold was gnawing at my sanity. A lengthy commute and perpetual train delays had me at the mercy of a labyrinthine bus schedule. It’s 2 am and I’m staring down the barrel of a 90-minute journey. Armed only with a lackluster knowledge of funeral doom and the words of Muppet, I pressed play on VI – Dantalion. How unprepared I was for the tsunami that awaited me: the half-time and half-again destruction of the drums, the brash, hypnotic droning of the guitars, and the vocal roars unbound by something as useless as time. As both drummer and composer, I was mesmerized at tempo brandished so recklessly, how the performers worshiped at the altar of between-the-beat silence. But it was the climactic crescendo of “Incendiare,” the step-by-step tempo increase, the anguished strings building to a cathartic, racing release, that sold me on the beauty and agony of Dantalion. When I think of perfect funeral doom, this is the album I recall; Bell Witch be damned.

Mistur // In Memoriam – As much love as I have for the staffers here at AMG, I’m deeply grateful for the gems revealed to me by the commentariat. Doc Grier’s TYMHM for Mistur’s magnum opus predated my awareness of the blog; indeed, I was led to In Memoriam by a forgotten comment in an unrelated article many years later. I’m forever indebted to you, nameless commenter, because you led me to one of my favorite metal albums of all time: full stop, don’t pass go, don’t collect your filthy hand out money. Mistur’s brand of melo-black wields so many different sounds and styles it should end up like “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice.” But the glorious seven minutes of opener “Downfall” instantly prove that these Norwegians are much wiser than a mouse in a fancy hat. Harsh/clean vocal interplay, RIFFS, tasteful synths, RIFFS, a spiraling maelstrom of an ending, and RIFFS showcase a band operating at their most sublime. This band had no issue beating me in the skull with their magnificence. From open to close, this album reigns supreme; I will hold vigil until they return.

I wish I had written …

White Ward – Love Exchange Failure Review. This particular review—and it’s sequel—require little introduction. Interpreting White Ward’s slinky, cinematic record as a screenplay, and featuring an AMG cast of characters was a heartbreaking work of Kenstrositous genius. Not only did the Sponge slip a rule-flaunting format through the jaws of the editorial team, he did it with wordsmithery worthy of the ethos of Love Exchange Failure. Finding a way to spruce up the routine of this gig is tricky; finding a way to blow it up is masterful. When I think of my biggest shit-eating grin moments here, this review is foremost amongst them.

Mystikus Hugebeard

AMG and me

Writing for AMG feels like the validation of an identity I’ve been working towards all my life. I’ve been passionate about metal ever since my brother showed me that fateful anime music video for “10th Man Down” by Nightwish when I was 12. Over the last few years, as I’ve been navigating adulthood and life in the tumultuous American reality, that passion withered, and I’ve put some thought into why. I often think back to when I was the leader of the St. Olaf College Heavy Metal Club, and how happy I was. I’ve realized that my time there was so important to me because, well, it gave my passion a sense of purpose beyond just myself. Maybe all I was doing was trying to introduce people to bands that they would end up not listening to anyway, but that social aspect means so much to me.

Although I know that it’s incredibly cool and special to write for such a great music website like Angry Metal Guy, what matters most in my heart is that it’s allowed me to reclaim the part of myself that just loves sharing my music with like-minded people, and it’s given back to me the community that I’d taken for granted before. So, to the AMG leaders who let me in, to my peers who somehow stomach my ramblings about Subsignal, and to every one of you who reads my silly reviews and leaves a comment: from the bottom of my heart, thank you!

AMG gave to me …

Archspire // Bleed The Future – We all know how much this album rules, but it also holds some significance for me from the early days of my AMG journey. Kronos’ review of this album dropped three days before I received the email asking if I’d like to further embarrass myself in the n00b program. I was already planning on getting it at some point based on the excellent review and 4.5 score, but after the news, buying the album felt like a great way to celebrate. I vividly remember walking down a sunny Chicago street on my way to an auto repair shop while listening to this album, feeling like hands-down the coolest motherfucker alive. I was walking past people thinking, “they have no idea they’re walking past the soon-to-be AMG writer hotshot.” Honestly, I probably looked a little like Tobey Maguire from that one scene in Spider Man 3. You know the one. But I just couldn’t help it, I was excited! I couldn’t wait to get my grubby little hands on my first promo and show them what I could do, to inspire other people to buy an album like Kronos inspired me.

Altars of Grief // Iris – My favorite method of musical discovery has always been blindly stumbling around Bandcamp until I bonk my head on something special. It creates a unique relationship with the music where I feel “this is my album,” and this emotional attachment gives it a powerful longevity. I recall reading Ferrous Beuller’s review of Iris and essentially thinking “huh, cool” before ignoring it like an idiot. Fast forward several months to when I came across Iris on one of my Bandcamp walks, long after forgetting about Beuller’s review, and was blown away. A nagging voice in my head said “where have I heard this before,” whereupon I remembered the review and felt quite foolish. Iris is a sublime record of unparalleled emotional depth, and a prime example of why I should just listen to the goddamn tunes already when someone on AMG gives it a 4.5. I’m glad I could find Iris on my own and develop that unique connection to it, but I regret that my pigheadedness kept me from experiencing it for so long. To this day, it’s one of my favorite black metal records.

Fires In The Distance // Air Not Meant For Us – If you held a gun to my beard and forced me to choose my favorite band, I’d say Insomnium. Hearing Air Not Meant For Us for the first time made me feel that same melancholic bliss I felt the first time I ever listened to Insomnium. Several of my AMG peers recommended this one to me while I was trying to fill out last year’s Listurnalia. Thus Spoke did a fantastic job as always in her review of the album, but something Kenstrosity said to me really stood out: “It’s almost as if this album was tailor-made specifically for me.” Well, I feel it was tailor-made for me. It sounds like an extension of my soul. I think I’ve listened to, and sung to myself, the “I’ll never see daylight / But I’ve seen enough” stanza of “Harbingers” to the point of obsession. The staccato keyboards that strike with percussive force, the achingly beautiful guitar melodies, the sorrow-tinged hope buried deep in the album as a whole; Air Not Meant For Us takes a soul-wrenching longing that I might forever struggle to put into words and transforms it into music.

I wish I had written …

Sermon of Flames – I have seen the Light, and it was Repulsive Review. I love this review. It dropped while I was working on my casting call submission, and I was floored. Sure, It’s extremely well written and demonstrates an encyclopedic knowledge of how the band’s sound relates to other subgenres and artists. But most importantly to me, it’s a very human review in that it acknowledges and appreciates how the album’s flaws create a unique work of art. All of my colleagues are phenomenal writers, but, to this day, I use this review as an example of the quality that I hope to achieve with my own writing. Excellent work, my Dearest Hollow!

I wish I could do over …

Sgàile – Traverse the Bealach Review. Truthfully, I adore Traverse the Bealach, and because of that I can’t help but feel so frustrated by its flaws. After all, you want the things you love to be perfect. A 3.5 isn’t a low score by any means, but I knew in my heart it deserved higher and I’m ashamed to say I got way too hung up on the few sections I didn’t like. And honestly, with time and distance, I’ve realized that the bad parts aren’t even all that bad, which only further salts my wounds. Just call me Mystikus Contritebeard, because I underrated this one.

I wish more people had read …

Subsignal – A Poetry of Rain [Things You Might Have Missed 2023]. We all have that one band that we simply cannot shut the fuck up about. I’m already quite pleased with the positive reception Subsignal got in the comments but, at time of writing, the metrics tell me that this is my second-least-read piece, which is unacceptable! The degree to which I want people to enjoy this band the way I do borders on the unhinged, but it’s not my fault they’re just that good.

#2024 #AltarsOfGrief #Amenra #AMGTurns15 #Archspire #BlogPost #BlogPosts #BrothersOfMetal #Cruentus #CultOfLuna #Danava #Deluge #FiresInTheDistance #IronMaiden #JulieChristmas #LiveWire #Mistur #Obsequiae #Rotpit #SermonOfFlames #Sgaile #Slow #Subsignal #TreesOfEternity #Ulcerate #VirginSteele #Vorga #WhiteWard

AMG Turns 15: Janitorial Staff Speaks

By Carcharodon

15 years ago, on May 19, 2009, Angry Metal Guy spoke. For the very first time as AMG. And he had opinions: Very Important Opinions™. The post attracted relatively little attention at the time, but times change and, over the decade and a half since then, AMG Industries has grown into the blog you know today. Now with a staff of around 25 overrating overwriters (and an entirely non-suspicious graveyard for writers on permanent, all-expenses-paid sabbaticals), we have written more than 9,100 posts, comprising over seven million words. Over the site’s lifetime, we’ve had more than 107 million visits and now achieve well over a million hits each and every month. Through this, we’ve built up a fantastic community of readers drawn from every corner of the globe, whom we have (mostly) loved getting to know in the more than 360,000 comments posted on the site.

We have done this under the careful (if sternly authoritarian) stewardship of our eponymous leader Angry Metal Guy and his iron enforcer, Steel Druhm, while adhering to strict editorial policies and principles. We have done this by simply offering honest (and occasionally brutal) takes, and without running a single advert or taking a single cent from anyone. Ever. Mistakes have undoubtedly been made and we may be a laughing laughing stock in the eyes of music intellectuals, socialites and critics everywhere but we are incredibly proud of what AMG Industries represents. In fact, we believe it may be the best metal blog, with the best community of readers, on the internet.

Now join us as the people responsible for making AMG a reality reflect on what the site means to them and why they would willingly work for a blog that pays in the currency of deadlines, abuse, and hobo wine. Welcome to the 15th Birthdaynalia.

Thou Shalt Have No Other Blogs!

Thus Spoke

AMG and me

I probably have one of the least legit backstories of anyone writing here. Unlike many of you—readers and writers—I was not a long-time fan of the blog, discovering it only around a year or two before applying to join the staff. I was 20 before I really got into trve metal and completely abandoned metalcore. But now, I can hardly imagine a time when reviewing albums for AMG wasn’t a key part of my weekly routine (nor can I imagine a life without extreme metal, for that matter; funny how things can change so dramatically). As corny as it sounds, it’s the community I’ve found amongst this bunch of wrong’uns—all loveable misfits, nerds, and actually-big-softies-despite-seeming-tough the lot of us—that has made the biggest impact. I said as much in my year-end post, but I feel blessed to have such a great bunch of comrades to talk music, vent about life, and just share memes with. The excitement of being in what feels like a special little club of small repute in the metalsphere still hasn’t worn off, even if, when wearing my AMG Inc Staff Stash out and about, I know no-one will get the reference. They probably think, if anything, “Why is she wearing a t-shirt that says Angry Metal Guy? That’s dumb.” Oh, and yeah, I know I need to get a new avatar. Anyone wanna design one for me?

AMG gave to me …

Vorga // Striving Toward Oblivion – I’m so lucky I was reading AMG,1 because this one was weirdly under-mentioned elsewhere. I absolutely love Vorga—as Kenstrosity himself is well aware—but I probably wouldn’t really know who they were, were it not for his review of this album. It’s just fantastic. “Taken” remains an immovable feature on any cardio playlist I’ve made since its release. And the rest—”Starless Sky,” “Comet,” “Fool’s Paradise”—absolutely bops. Already knowing I loved black metal, finding a band in the genre whose music I quickly became obsessed with, and eagerly anticipated future releases from, was extra exciting, especially when paired with the opportunity to get early access to Beyond the Palest Star this year.

Déluge // Ægo Templo – When this dropped, Dear Hollow panned it as “a wearisome and exhausting listen.” Fortunately, my curiosity was piqued enough that I listened for myself, and I have to say, I thoroughly disagree with my fine, antlered friend. Ægo Templo is far from perfect, but my goodness did it resonate with me. Just after I had gone through a whole phase of discovering my appreciation for (coincidentally) exclusively French black and post-black artists (Alcest, Regarde les Hommes Tomber, Vous Autres, Celeste …) Ægo Templo found its way to me via a review on a site I had only just started visiting. While the band’s debut, Æther, is perhaps better conceived, this one somehow completely consumed me in a way the debut never has. The washing sounds of ocean waves, glorious, uplifting themes, and dour, scream-rent brutality hit me in all the right places. I revisit it regularly and I, for one, am very excited to see what comes next from the Frenchmen.

Amenra // Mass VI – I know I said I wasn’t reading the blog until a couple of years before my tenancy here, but I still came across the odd review here and there whilst browsing for new bands to listen to. Somewhere, I saw the name Amenra mentioned, and, taking to the internet, I was led to Dr Grier‘s TYMHM post on Mass VI. Thoroughly intrigued, I vividly remember pressing play on the embedded “Diaken” and how everything shifted as its eleven-minute runtime passed by. I had never heard vocals like that. Yes, I’d heard harsh vocals—barks, growls, gurgles, shrieks, you name it—but Colin van Eeckhout’s crippling, devastating screams of pure pain were something else. The album, endlessly bleak and incredibly beautiful, utterly tore me to pieces in a way few others have. And it led me to devour not only Amenra’s full series of Masses and other creations, but the rest of the Church of Ra Collective’s several discographies. “A Solitary Reign” is now one of my favorite songs. Ever. No matter what else they put out, Mass VI will probably always be my favorite Amenra album.

I wish I had written …

Ulcerate – Shrines of Paralysis Review. As my favorite album from one of my favorite bands, reviewing Shrines of Paralysis would have been a dream. However, since it dropped about five years before my n00b tenancy began, it could never have been. Luckily for me, I will not have to contend with Kronos for reviewing rights, because the writing here, as with all his articles, is stellar. Unconsciously or not, I find myself emulating its subtle poeticism and easy flow. When Cutting the Throat of God comes, I hope my words can do an Ulcerate album as much justice as this review did.

Maddog

AMG and me

By chance, AMG’s first year was also the year that my enjoyment of metal hit escape velocity. After stumbling upon a sketchy webpage with an embed of Morbid Angel’s “Where the Slime Live,” I fell incorrigibly in love. After a few months following my nose, I found myself in the metal blogosphere, where I’ve lived ever since.

But AMG wasn’t where I landed. My first chaperones were Heavy Blog is Heavy and No Clean Singing. Without them, I would never have found Gorod, The Ocean, The Odious, Theory in Practice, or Enshine; and what would I have then? I discovered AMG a few years later, and the thrill of communally excavating new music shaped my life.

Over time, my musical community has expanded and become less faceless. Part of the reason is AMG, which has provided a firehose of new releases and a community of lovable idiots. Part of it is luck, such as my co-workers who swear by Blood Incantation. Much of it amounts to small acts of musical kindness. Engaging with friends on music warms my heart; getting dragged to a sketchy London punk venue and bonding with an indie friend over Reverend Kristin Michael Hayter were highlights of my year. Every stranger who’s welcomed me at a show has made my world less desolate.

Music is amazing in isolation, but it’s even better as a bridge between hearts. I’m thankful for everyone who’s held my hand on my musical voyages, including every writer and commenter here. I hope I can return the favor.

AMG gave to me …

Trees of Eternity // Hour of the Nightingale – Steel’s 3.0 review of Hour of the Nightingale was heartfelt, eloquent, and dead wrong.2 All ten tracks brim with beauty and flawless songwriting. Trees of Eternity’s mammoth riffs and piercing bass contrast with elegiac strings and acoustic guitars, and both pack an emotional punch. Aleah Stanbridge’s vocal melodies complement both styles, with a rich timbre that tugs at my heartstrings. Hour of the Nightingale’s supple dance between extremity and somber beauty makes “My Requiem” and “Gallows Bird” all-time-great bookends. Hour of the Nightingale’s lyrics are the best I’ve ever heard, painting technicolor images of the prisons we cage ourselves in, and the powers and perils of human connection. Variously depicting a plea for emotional openness (“Condemned to Silence”), the paralyzing fear of alienating loved ones (“A Million Tears”), the isolating trials of self-image (“Broken Mirror”),3 and an uplifting reminder that darkness is transient (title track), like a best friend, this album has wallowed with me, encouraged me, and offered me concrete guidance. Without it, I’d have zero interest in doom metal. I wouldn’t express myself freely or hug my loved ones as often.4 But perhaps most importantly, I wouldn’t have Hour of the Nightingale.

Cult of Luna & Julie Christmas // Mariner – Sure, I’d heard of Cult of Luna; I just paid them no attention.5 After one too many misfires with ISIS, I’d given up on post-metal altogether.6 Old man Huck’s review of Mariner convinced me to give the genre another shot. Lulling listeners with pulsating drum beats and meditative melodies, Mariner features the most explosive climaxes of Cult of Luna’s career. Julie Christmas unleashes my favorite extreme vocal performance ever, with blood-curdling screams from the terrifying depths of her heart. Christmas’ rhythmic vocals and Cult of Luna’s style elevate each other to make Mariner a true collaboration. Their lethal combination culminates in the emotional behemoth “Cygnus,” where a ferocious musical buildup colludes with four vocal tracks to deliver one of the greatest album endings ever. Mariner reeled me in and never let go. I’ve been a post-metal convert and a follower of the cult of Cult of Luna ever since. More broadly, I’ve grown to appreciate any album that whisks me into another universe, even if its melodies aren’t ground-breaking. I’ve grown to love hearing a vocalist bare their heart, whether it sounds lovely or grating. None of this was true for me a decade ago. It all started with Mariner.

Obsequiae // Aria of Vernal Tombs – Aria of Vernal Tombs’ marriage of medieval harmonies and black metal riffs heralded a new direction for the genre and for me. Obsequiae’s soaring guitar leads and solos carry me away with their beauty. Tanner Anderson’s distinctive guitar lines bounce off each other playfully and join forces for miraculous climaxes. Armed with these harmonies, Obsequiae’s mysterious ability to transport me to an Arthurian countryside recalls Wishbone Ash’s classic Argus. Still, Aria doesn’t skimp on extremity. Black metal and evocative melodies coexist in strange harmony, while banging bass lines put the genre to shame. Obsequiae feels like America’s answer to Moonsorrow, adding an original twist to black metal without depriving it of its power. Aria helped me see black metal through a new lens and develop a soft spot for bands whose use of melody echoes Obsequiae (see Noltem and Inexorum), and artists who add a unique folk spin to black metal (see Véhémence). Obsequiae personnel overlaps also led me to Nechochwen, Ironflame, and Majesties. But there is only one Obsequiae. Aria is their peak.

I wish I had written …

LiveWire – Under Attack! [Things You Might Have Missed 2022]. Two years on, the thrill of Under Attack! has somehow heightened further. The killer tracks remain exhilarating, while my least favorite songs (“Conqueror” and “Lockjaw Deathroll”) have proved just as memorable as the others. The bonus tracks, which I’d previously thought deserved “only” a 4.5, now rank among my favorites, right through the First Fragment “Gula”-esque ending of “Demon’s Grip.” Kenstrosity‘s excellent write-up did justice to LiveWire; I’m merely jealous. Under Attack! is one of the greatest metal records ever, a Thundersteel for our generation (but somehow better). I wish it’d been my White Wizzard.

Itchymenace

AMG and me

I’ve always loved reading about music. At an early age, I’d pore over the liner notes to my parent’s Beatles records. As a teen, I collected Hit Parader, Metal Maniacs and Guitar World magazines. I hung on every word that Glenn Tipton, James Hetfield or Ozzy would say, and dreamed of being the one to someday write their stories. Reviews were a critical feature of these publications but magazines didn’t come with embeds. If the latest Dio or Scorpions record got a good write-up, you’d roll the dice, spend your money, and buy the album. On a good day, you’d coax your buddy into buying it and get a dubbed copy on cassette. Good reviews went a long way. For me, the opportunity to write for AMG was a chance to be a part of the medium that has brought me so much joy and steered me to so much good music over the years. Little did I know the hornet nest of opinions I was walking into.

AMG gave to me …

Iron Maiden // Seventh Son of a Seventh Son – For me, it’s not a single album review that means the most to me, it’s the complete Iron Maiden discography ranking. What a ride! Up until then, I had always held Number of the Beast as one of the greatest metal records of all time. Putting Seventh Son of a Seventh Son as number one challenged everything I believed in. But you know, after some tortuous soul-searching, I agreed. The argument was too good. This was the level of deep musical analysis that was missing from all the other metal blogs. And it was the most fun I had reading anything that year.

Rotpit // Let There Be Rot – Steel Druhm is a great writer. He sets the bar for all of us. I mean his opening line here goes for the scrotum and the funny bone all in one fell swoop. What follows is a deliciously amusing review that’s every bit as entertaining as the album it’s covering. I’m not huge death metal fan but Rotpit quickly ascended to the top of my favorites last year. It reminded me how fun music can be and how greatness transcends genre. It became an unwelcome running joke in our house that whenever someone suggested putting music on, I’d scream RooooooottttPiiiittttttt! Strangely, it never got picked. Their loss.

I wish I had written …

Cruentus – Fossilized Review. I remember reading this review at work and doing everything I could to not laugh out loud or draw the confused glares of my co-workers. It took a good five minutes to settle and I’m still not sure my pancreas has fully recovered. This was also an “aha” moment for an impressionable Itchymenace trying to figure out the secret sauce in the AMG whopper. Here, Doc Grier both honors and expands upon the AMG mythology as only he can. He’s immensely talented and funny. If only he had good taste.

I wish I could do over …

Virgin Steele – The Passion of Dionysus Review. I took so much shit for giving this album a 3.5. So, I’m here to say I was wrong. It should have been a 4.0. That’s right fuckers. Suck it hard. This is a great record with plenty of heart despite some production setbacks. Go ahead and come at me in the Slack channel or wherever you find me. My Virgin Steele is ready to taste blood.7

I wish more people had read …

Danava – Nothing but Nothing Review. The opening paragraph of this review is my best work. I love how well it flows and how metal it is. Plus, this album kicked ass and more people should listen to it. Hit that link, fanboy!

Iceberg

AMG and me

Truth be told, I don’t remember the first time I laid eyes on www.angrymetalguy.com. One of the first reviews I remember was GardensTale’s evisceration of Jordan Rudess’ solo album, an assessment I begrudgingly agreed with, regardless of my then full-on Dream Theater fanboy status. What I do recall is searching the internet of the early 2010s for any source of intelligent, measured criticism of music that didn’t reek of ad-revenue inflated cronyism. I imagine many of you, dear readers, have a similar story. My infatuation with—and eventual reliance on—AMG unfolded in anachronistic fits and starts: a Fleshgod review here (King), an Allegeaon pan there (Proponents of Sentience). Before I knew it, AMG had maneuvered itself into my daily routine. What used to feel like perusing a record store for new discoveries, became more like dropping in on old friends and asking how they were doing, albeit in a classically chatroom-lurker manner. I aligned with certain writers, certain commenters, and eagerly awaited TYMHM season to load me up with the year’s uncovered gems. Having spent so much of my life absorbing popular music due to my upbringing, and classical music due to my training, metal was a creative outlet I desperately needed, yet lacked the community with which to share it. I’d never have imagined being inducted into this hallowed crew of passionate curmudgeons, nor the long-sought camaraderie I’d find within.

AMG gave to me …

Brothers of Metal // Emblas Saga – Sometimes an album hits you just the right way, at just the right time to cement itself in the story of your life. Little did I know when I first fell in love with this baker’s dozen of Viking tomfoolery that a worldwide pandemic and a months-long lockdown with my in-laws was just around the corner. But Emblas Saga—so enthusiastically introduced to me by an effusive Holdeneye—became the soundtrack of my imprisonment. Power metal with mead and axes, the riffs stomped around, the big guy told stories, and Ylva Eriksson stole the show with so many ear-worm choruses that I was delirious halfway through the record. There isn’t a bad track throughout, and the opening salvo of “Powersnake”-“Hel”-“Chainbreaker” remains the undisputed champ for curtain-raising. Fun fact: my proudest moment of the Year of our Plague 2020 was getting my very devout Southern Baptist mother-in-law to refer to her vacuum-in-the-wall system as “the powersnake.” She still calls it that to this day. Praise be to Wotan!

Slow // VI – Dantalion – It’s 2019 and New York City’s cold was gnawing at my sanity. A lengthy commute and perpetual train delays had me at the mercy of a labyrinthine bus schedule. It’s 2 am and I’m staring down the barrel of a 90-minute journey. Armed only with a lackluster knowledge of funeral doom and the words of Muppet, I pressed play on VI – Dantalion. How unprepared I was for the tsunami that awaited me: the half-time and half-again destruction of the drums, the brash, hypnotic droning of the guitars, and the vocal roars unbound by something as useless as time. As both drummer and composer, I was mesmerized at tempo brandished so recklessly, how the performers worshiped at the altar of between-the-beat silence. But it was the climactic crescendo of “Incendiare,” the step-by-step tempo increase, the anguished strings building to a cathartic, racing release, that sold me on the beauty and agony of Dantalion. When I think of perfect funeral doom, this is the album I recall; Bell Witch be damned.

Mistur // In Memoriam – As much love as I have for the staffers here at AMG, I’m deeply grateful for the gems revealed to me by the commentariat. Doc Grier’s TYMHM for Mistur’s magnum opus predated my awareness of the blog; indeed, I was led to In Memoriam by a forgotten comment in an unrelated article many years later. I’m forever indebted to you, nameless commenter, because you led me to one of my favorite metal albums of all time: full stop, don’t pass go, don’t collect your filthy hand out money. Mistur’s brand of melo-black wields so many different sounds and styles it should end up like “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice.” But the glorious seven minutes of opener “Downfall” instantly prove that these Norwegians are much wiser than a mouse in a fancy hat. Harsh/clean vocal interplay, RIFFS, tasteful synths, RIFFS, a spiraling maelstrom of an ending, and RIFFS showcase a band operating at their most sublime. This band had no issue beating me in the skull with their magnificence. From open to close, this album reigns supreme; I will hold vigil until they return.

I wish I had written …

White Ward – Love Exchange Failure Review. This particular review—and it’s sequel—require little introduction. Interpreting White Ward’s slinky, cinematic record as a screenplay, and featuring an AMG cast of characters was a heartbreaking work of Kenstrositous genius. Not only did the Sponge slip a rule-flaunting format through the jaws of the editorial team, he did it with wordsmithery worthy of the ethos of Love Exchange Failure. Finding a way to spruce up the routine of this gig is tricky; finding a way to blow it up is masterful. When I think of my biggest shit-eating grin moments here, this review is foremost amongst them.

Mystikus Hugebeard

AMG and me

Writing for AMG feels like the validation of an identity I’ve been working towards all my life. I’ve been passionate about metal ever since my brother showed me that fateful anime music video for “10th Man Down” by Nightwish when I was 12. Over the last few years, as I’ve been navigating adulthood and life in the tumultuous American reality, that passion withered, and I’ve put some thought into why. I often think back to when I was the leader of the St. Olaf College Heavy Metal Club, and how happy I was. I’ve realized that my time there was so important to me because, well, it gave my passion a sense of purpose beyond just myself. Maybe all I was doing was trying to introduce people to bands that they would end up not listening to anyway, but that social aspect means so much to me.

Although I know that it’s incredibly cool and special to write for such a great music website like Angry Metal Guy, what matters most in my heart is that it’s allowed me to reclaim the part of myself that just loves sharing my music with like-minded people, and it’s given back to me the community that I’d taken for granted before. So, to the AMG leaders who let me in, to my peers who somehow stomach my ramblings about Subsignal, and to every one of you who reads my silly reviews and leaves a comment: from the bottom of my heart, thank you!

AMG gave to me …

Archspire // Bleed The Future – We all know how much this album rules, but it also holds some significance for me from the early days of my AMG journey. Kronos’ review of this album dropped three days before I received the email asking if I’d like to further embarrass myself in the n00b program. I was already planning on getting it at some point based on the excellent review and 4.5 score, but after the news, buying the album felt like a great way to celebrate. I vividly remember walking down a sunny Chicago street on my way to an auto repair shop while listening to this album, feeling like hands-down the coolest motherfucker alive. I was walking past people thinking, “they have no idea they’re walking past the soon-to-be AMG writer hotshot.” Honestly, I probably looked a little like Tobey Maguire from that one scene in Spider Man 3. You know the one. But I just couldn’t help it, I was excited! I couldn’t wait to get my grubby little hands on my first promo and show them what I could do, to inspire other people to buy an album like Kronos inspired me.

Altars of Grief // Iris – My favorite method of musical discovery has always been blindly stumbling around Bandcamp until I bonk my head on something special. It creates a unique relationship with the music where I feel “this is my album,” and this emotional attachment gives it a powerful longevity. I recall reading Ferrous Beuller’s review of Iris and essentially thinking “huh, cool” before ignoring it like an idiot. Fast forward several months to when I came across Iris on one of my Bandcamp walks, long after forgetting about Beuller’s review, and was blown away. A nagging voice in my head said “where have I heard this before,” whereupon I remembered the review and felt quite foolish. Iris is a sublime record of unparalleled emotional depth, and a prime example of why I should just listen to the goddamn tunes already when someone on AMG gives it a 4.5. I’m glad I could find Iris on my own and develop that unique connection to it, but I regret that my pigheadedness kept me from experiencing it for so long. To this day, it’s one of my favorite black metal records.

Fires In The Distance // Air Not Meant For Us – If you held a gun to my beard and forced me to choose my favorite band, I’d say Insomnium. Hearing Air Not Meant For Us for the first time made me feel that same melancholic bliss I felt the first time I ever listened to Insomnium. Several of my AMG peers recommended this one to me while I was trying to fill out last year’s Listurnalia. Thus Spoke did a fantastic job as always in her review of the album, but something Kenstrosity said to me really stood out: “It’s almost as if this album was tailor-made specifically for me.” Well, I feel it was tailor-made for me. It sounds like an extension of my soul. I think I’ve listened to, and sung to myself, the “I’ll never see daylight / But I’ve seen enough” stanza of “Harbingers” to the point of obsession. The staccato keyboards that strike with percussive force, the achingly beautiful guitar melodies, the sorrow-tinged hope buried deep in the album as a whole; Air Not Meant For Us takes a soul-wrenching longing that I might forever struggle to put into words and transforms it into music.

I wish I had written …

Sermon of Flames – I have seen the Light, and it was Repulsive Review. I love this review. It dropped while I was working on my casting call submission, and I was floored. Sure, It’s extremely well written and demonstrates an encyclopedic knowledge of how the band’s sound relates to other subgenres and artists. But most importantly to me, it’s a very human review in that it acknowledges and appreciates how the album’s flaws create a unique work of art. All of my colleagues are phenomenal writers, but, to this day, I use this review as an example of the quality that I hope to achieve with my own writing. Excellent work, my Dearest Hollow!

I wish I could do over …

Sgàile – Traverse the Bealach Review. Truthfully, I adore Traverse the Bealach, and because of that I can’t help but feel so frustrated by its flaws. After all, you want the things you love to be perfect. A 3.5 isn’t a low score by any means, but I knew in my heart it deserved higher and I’m ashamed to say I got way too hung up on the few sections I didn’t like. And honestly, with time and distance, I’ve realized that the bad parts aren’t even all that bad, which only further salts my wounds. Just call me Mystikus Contritebeard, because I underrated this one.

I wish more people had read …

Subsignal – A Poetry of Rain [Things You Might Have Missed 2023]. We all have that one band that we simply cannot shut the fuck up about. I’m already quite pleased with the positive reception Subsignal got in the comments but, at time of writing, the metrics tell me that this is my second-least-read piece, which is unacceptable! The degree to which I want people to enjoy this band the way I do borders on the unhinged, but it’s not my fault they’re just that good.

#2024 #AltarsOfGrief #Amenra #AMGTurns15 #Archspire #BlogPost #BlogPosts #BrothersOfMetal #Cruentus #CultOfLuna #Danava #Deluge #FiresInTheDistance #IronMaiden #JulieChristmas #LiveWire #Mistur #Obsequiae #Rotpit #SermonOfFlames #Sgaile #Slow #Subsignal #TreesOfEternity #Ulcerate #VirginSteele #Vorga #WhiteWard

AMG Turns 15: Janitorial Staff Speaks

By Carcharodon

15 years ago, on May 19, 2009, Angry Metal Guy spoke. For the very first time as AMG. And he had opinions: Very Important Opinions™. The post attracted relatively little attention at the time, but times change and, over the decade and a half since then, AMG Industries has grown into the blog you know today. Now with a staff of around 25 overrating overwriters (and an entirely non-suspicious graveyard for writers on permanent, all-expenses-paid sabbaticals), we have written more than 9,100 posts, comprising over seven million words. Over the site’s lifetime, we’ve had more than 107 million visits and now achieve well over a million hits each and every month. Through this, we’ve built up a fantastic community of readers drawn from every corner of the globe, whom we have (mostly) loved getting to know in the more than 360,000 comments posted on the site.

We have done this under the careful (if sternly authoritarian) stewardship of our eponymous leader Angry Metal Guy and his iron enforcer, Steel Druhm, while adhering to strict editorial policies and principles. We have done this by simply offering honest (and occasionally brutal) takes, and without running a single advert or taking a single cent from anyone. Ever. Mistakes have undoubtedly been made and we may be a laughing laughing stock in the eyes of music intellectuals, socialites and critics everywhere but we are incredibly proud of what AMG Industries represents. In fact, we believe it may be the best metal blog, with the best community of readers, on the internet.

Now join us as the people responsible for making AMG a reality reflect on what the site means to them and why they would willingly work for a blog that pays in the currency of deadlines, abuse, and hobo wine. Welcome to the 15th Birthdaynalia.

Thou Shalt Have No Other Blogs!

Thus Spoke

AMG and me

I probably have one of the least legit backstories of anyone writing here. Unlike many of you—readers and writers—I was not a long-time fan of the blog, discovering it only around a year or two before applying to join the staff. I was 20 before I really got into trve metal and completely abandoned metalcore. But now, I can hardly imagine a time when reviewing albums for AMG wasn’t a key part of my weekly routine (nor can I imagine a life without extreme metal, for that matter; funny how things can change so dramatically). As corny as it sounds, it’s the community I’ve found amongst this bunch of wrong’uns—all loveable misfits, nerds, and actually-big-softies-despite-seeming-tough the lot of us—that has made the biggest impact. I said as much in my year-end post, but I feel blessed to have such a great bunch of comrades to talk music, vent about life, and just share memes with. The excitement of being in what feels like a special little club of small repute in the metalsphere still hasn’t worn off, even if, when wearing my AMG Inc Staff Stash out and about, I know no-one will get the reference. They probably think, if anything, “Why is she wearing a t-shirt that says Angry Metal Guy? That’s dumb.” Oh, and yeah, I know I need to get a new avatar. Anyone wanna design one for me?

AMG gave to me …

Vorga // Striving Toward Oblivion – I’m so lucky I was reading AMG,1 because this one was weirdly under-mentioned elsewhere. I absolutely love Vorga—as Kenstrosity himself is well aware—but I probably wouldn’t really know who they were, were it not for his review of this album. It’s just fantastic. “Taken” remains an immovable feature on any cardio playlist I’ve made since its release. And the rest—”Starless Sky,” “Comet,” “Fool’s Paradise”—absolutely bops. Already knowing I loved black metal, finding a band in the genre whose music I quickly became obsessed with, and eagerly anticipated future releases from, was extra exciting, especially when paired with the opportunity to get early access to Beyond the Palest Star this year.

Déluge // Ægo Templo – When this dropped, Dear Hollow panned it as “a wearisome and exhausting listen.” Fortunately, my curiosity was piqued enough that I listened for myself, and I have to say, I thoroughly disagree with my fine, antlered friend. Ægo Templo is far from perfect, but my goodness did it resonate with me. Just after I had gone through a whole phase of discovering my appreciation for (coincidentally) exclusively French black and post-black artists (Alcest, Regarde les Hommes Tomber, Vous Autres, Celeste …) Ægo Templo found its way to me via a review on a site I had only just started visiting. While the band’s debut, Æther, is perhaps better conceived, this one somehow completely consumed me in a way the debut never has. The washing sounds of ocean waves, glorious, uplifting themes, and dour, scream-rent brutality hit me in all the right places. I revisit it regularly and I, for one, am very excited to see what comes next from the Frenchmen.

Amenra // Mass VI – I know I said I wasn’t reading the blog until a couple of years before my tenancy here, but I still came across the odd review here and there whilst browsing for new bands to listen to. Somewhere, I saw the name Amenra mentioned, and, taking to the internet, I was led to Dr Grier‘s TYMHM post on Mass VI. Thoroughly intrigued, I vividly remember pressing play on the embedded “Diaken” and how everything shifted as its eleven-minute runtime passed by. I had never heard vocals like that. Yes, I’d heard harsh vocals—barks, growls, gurgles, shrieks, you name it—but Colin van Eeckhout’s crippling, devastating screams of pure pain were something else. The album, endlessly bleak and incredibly beautiful, utterly tore me to pieces in a way few others have. And it led me to devour not only Amenra’s full series of Masses and other creations, but the rest of the Church of Ra Collective’s several discographies. “A Solitary Reign” is now one of my favorite songs. Ever. No matter what else they put out, Mass VI will probably always be my favorite Amenra album.

I wish I had written …

Ulcerate – Shrines of Paralysis Review. As my favorite album from one of my favorite bands, reviewing Shrines of Paralysis would have been a dream. However, since it dropped about five years before my n00b tenancy began, it could never have been. Luckily for me, I will not have to contend with Kronos for reviewing rights, because the writing here, as with all his articles, is stellar. Unconsciously or not, I find myself emulating its subtle poeticism and easy flow. When Cutting the Throat of God comes, I hope my words can do an Ulcerate album as much justice as this review did.

Maddog

AMG and me

By chance, AMG’s first year was also the year that my enjoyment of metal hit escape velocity. After stumbling upon a sketchy webpage with an embed of Morbid Angel’s “Where the Slime Live,” I fell incorrigibly in love. After a few months following my nose, I found myself in the metal blogosphere, where I’ve lived ever since.

But AMG wasn’t where I landed. My first chaperones were Heavy Blog is Heavy and No Clean Singing. Without them, I would never have found Gorod, The Ocean, The Odious, Theory in Practice, or Enshine; and what would I have then? I discovered AMG a few years later, and the thrill of communally excavating new music shaped my life.

Over time, my musical community has expanded and become less faceless. Part of the reason is AMG, which has provided a firehose of new releases and a community of lovable idiots. Part of it is luck, such as my co-workers who swear by Blood Incantation. Much of it amounts to small acts of musical kindness. Engaging with friends on music warms my heart; getting dragged to a sketchy London punk venue and bonding with an indie friend over Reverend Kristin Michael Hayter were highlights of my year. Every stranger who’s welcomed me at a show has made my world less desolate.

Music is amazing in isolation, but it’s even better as a bridge between hearts. I’m thankful for everyone who’s held my hand on my musical voyages, including every writer and commenter here. I hope I can return the favor.

AMG gave to me …

Trees of Eternity // Hour of the Nightingale – Steel’s 3.0 review of Hour of the Nightingale was heartfelt, eloquent, and dead wrong.2 All ten tracks brim with beauty and flawless songwriting. Trees of Eternity’s mammoth riffs and piercing bass contrast with elegiac strings and acoustic guitars, and both pack an emotional punch. Aleah Stanbridge’s vocal melodies complement both styles, with a rich timbre that tugs at my heartstrings. Hour of the Nightingale’s supple dance between extremity and somber beauty makes “My Requiem” and “Gallows Bird” all-time-great bookends. Hour of the Nightingale’s lyrics are the best I’ve ever heard, painting technicolor images of the prisons we cage ourselves in, and the powers and perils of human connection. Variously depicting a plea for emotional openness (“Condemned to Silence”), the paralyzing fear of alienating loved ones (“A Million Tears”), the isolating trials of self-image (“Broken Mirror”),3 and an uplifting reminder that darkness is transient (title track), like a best friend, this album has wallowed with me, encouraged me, and offered me concrete guidance. Without it, I’d have zero interest in doom metal. I wouldn’t express myself freely or hug my loved ones as often.4 But perhaps most importantly, I wouldn’t have Hour of the Nightingale.

Cult of Luna & Julie Christmas // Mariner – Sure, I’d heard of Cult of Luna; I just paid them no attention.5 After one too many misfires with ISIS, I’d given up on post-metal altogether.6 Old man Huck’s review of Mariner convinced me to give the genre another shot. Lulling listeners with pulsating drum beats and meditative melodies, Mariner features the most explosive climaxes of Cult of Luna’s career. Julie Christmas unleashes my favorite extreme vocal performance ever, with blood-curdling screams from the terrifying depths of her heart. Christmas’ rhythmic vocals and Cult of Luna’s style elevate each other to make Mariner a true collaboration. Their lethal combination culminates in the emotional behemoth “Cygnus,” where a ferocious musical buildup colludes with four vocal tracks to deliver one of the greatest album endings ever. Mariner reeled me in and never let go. I’ve been a post-metal convert and a follower of the cult of Cult of Luna ever since. More broadly, I’ve grown to appreciate any album that whisks me into another universe, even if its melodies aren’t ground-breaking. I’ve grown to love hearing a vocalist bare their heart, whether it sounds lovely or grating. None of this was true for me a decade ago. It all started with Mariner.

Obsequiae // Aria of Vernal Tombs – Aria of Vernal Tombs’ marriage of medieval harmonies and black metal riffs heralded a new direction for the genre and for me. Obsequiae’s soaring guitar leads and solos carry me away with their beauty. Tanner Anderson’s distinctive guitar lines bounce off each other playfully and join forces for miraculous climaxes. Armed with these harmonies, Obsequiae’s mysterious ability to transport me to an Arthurian countryside recalls Wishbone Ash’s classic Argus. Still, Aria doesn’t skimp on extremity. Black metal and evocative melodies coexist in strange harmony, while banging bass lines put the genre to shame. Obsequiae feels like America’s answer to Moonsorrow, adding an original twist to black metal without depriving it of its power. Aria helped me see black metal through a new lens and develop a soft spot for bands whose use of melody echoes Obsequiae (see Noltem and Inexorum), and artists who add a unique folk spin to black metal (see Véhémence). Obsequiae personnel overlaps also led me to Nechochwen, Ironflame, and Majesties. But there is only one Obsequiae. Aria is their peak.

I wish I had written …

LiveWire – Under Attack! [Things You Might Have Missed 2022]. Two years on, the thrill of Under Attack! has somehow heightened further. The killer tracks remain exhilarating, while my least favorite songs (“Conqueror” and “Lockjaw Deathroll”) have proved just as memorable as the others. The bonus tracks, which I’d previously thought deserved “only” a 4.5, now rank among my favorites, right through the First Fragment “Gula”-esque ending of “Demon’s Grip.” Kenstrosity‘s excellent write-up did justice to LiveWire; I’m merely jealous. Under Attack! is one of the greatest metal records ever, a Thundersteel for our generation (but somehow better). I wish it’d been my White Wizzard.

Itchymenace

AMG and me

I’ve always loved reading about music. At an early age, I’d pore over the liner notes to my parent’s Beatles records. As a teen, I collected Hit Parader, Metal Maniacs and Guitar World magazines. I hung on every word that Glenn Tipton, James Hetfield or Ozzy would say, and dreamed of being the one to someday write their stories. Reviews were a critical feature of these publications but magazines didn’t come with embeds. If the latest Dio or Scorpions record got a good write-up, you’d roll the dice, spend your money, and buy the album. On a good day, you’d coax your buddy into buying it and get a dubbed copy on cassette. Good reviews went a long way. For me, the opportunity to write for AMG was a chance to be a part of the medium that has brought me so much joy and steered me to so much good music over the years. Little did I know the hornet nest of opinions I was walking into.

AMG gave to me …

Iron Maiden // Seventh Son of a Seventh Son – For me, it’s not a single album review that means the most to me, it’s the complete Iron Maiden discography ranking. What a ride! Up until then, I had always held Number of the Beast as one of the greatest metal records of all time. Putting Seventh Son of a Seventh Son as number one challenged everything I believed in. But you know, after some tortuous soul-searching, I agreed. The argument was too good. This was the level of deep musical analysis that was missing from all the other metal blogs. And it was the most fun I had reading anything that year.

Rotpit // Let There Be Rot – Steel Druhm is a great writer. He sets the bar for all of us. I mean his opening line here goes for the scrotum and the funny bone all in one fell swoop. What follows is a deliciously amusing review that’s every bit as entertaining as the album it’s covering. I’m not huge death metal fan but Rotpit quickly ascended to the top of my favorites last year. It reminded me how fun music can be and how greatness transcends genre. It became an unwelcome running joke in our house that whenever someone suggested putting music on, I’d scream RooooooottttPiiiittttttt! Strangely, it never got picked. Their loss.

I wish I had written …

Cruentus – Fossilized Review. I remember reading this review at work and doing everything I could to not laugh out loud or draw the confused glares of my co-workers. It took a good five minutes to settle and I’m still not sure my pancreas has fully recovered. This was also an “aha” moment for an impressionable Itchymenace trying to figure out the secret sauce in the AMG whopper. Here, Doc Grier both honors and expands upon the AMG mythology as only he can. He’s immensely talented and funny. If only he had good taste.

I wish I could do over …

Virgin Steele – The Passion of Dionysus Review. I took so much shit for giving this album a 3.5. So, I’m here to say I was wrong. It should have been a 4.0. That’s right fuckers. Suck it hard. This is a great record with plenty of heart despite some production setbacks. Go ahead and come at me in the Slack channel or wherever you find me. My Virgin Steele is ready to taste blood.7

I wish more people had read …

Danava – Nothing but Nothing Review. The opening paragraph of this review is my best work. I love how well it flows and how metal it is. Plus, this album kicked ass and more people should listen to it. Hit that link, fanboy!

Iceberg

AMG and me

Truth be told, I don’t remember the first time I laid eyes on www.angrymetalguy.com. One of the first reviews I remember was GardensTale’s evisceration of Jordan Rudess’ solo album, an assessment I begrudgingly agreed with, regardless of my then full-on Dream Theater fanboy status. What I do recall is searching the internet of the early 2010s for any source of intelligent, measured criticism of music that didn’t reek of ad-revenue inflated cronyism. I imagine many of you, dear readers, have a similar story. My infatuation with—and eventual reliance on—AMG unfolded in anachronistic fits and starts: a Fleshgod review here (King), an Allegeaon pan there (Proponents of Sentience). Before I knew it, AMG had maneuvered itself into my daily routine. What used to feel like perusing a record store for new discoveries, became more like dropping in on old friends and asking how they were doing, albeit in a classically chatroom-lurker manner. I aligned with certain writers, certain commenters, and eagerly awaited TYMHM season to load me up with the year’s uncovered gems. Having spent so much of my life absorbing popular music due to my upbringing, and classical music due to my training, metal was a creative outlet I desperately needed, yet lacked the community with which to share it. I’d never have imagined being inducted into this hallowed crew of passionate curmudgeons, nor the long-sought camaraderie I’d find within.

AMG gave to me …

Brothers of Metal // Emblas Saga – Sometimes an album hits you just the right way, at just the right time to cement itself in the story of your life. Little did I know when I first fell in love with this baker’s dozen of Viking tomfoolery that a worldwide pandemic and a months-long lockdown with my in-laws was just around the corner. But Emblas Saga—so enthusiastically introduced to me by an effusive Holdeneye—became the soundtrack of my imprisonment. Power metal with mead and axes, the riffs stomped around, the big guy told stories, and Ylva Eriksson stole the show with so many ear-worm choruses that I was delirious halfway through the record. There isn’t a bad track throughout, and the opening salvo of “Powersnake”-“Hel”-“Chainbreaker” remains the undisputed champ for curtain-raising. Fun fact: my proudest moment of the Year of our Plague 2020 was getting my very devout Southern Baptist mother-in-law to refer to her vacuum-in-the-wall system as “the powersnake.” She still calls it that to this day. Praise be to Wotan!

Slow // VI – Dantalion – It’s 2019 and New York City’s cold was gnawing at my sanity. A lengthy commute and perpetual train delays had me at the mercy of a labyrinthine bus schedule. It’s 2 am and I’m staring down the barrel of a 90-minute journey. Armed only with a lackluster knowledge of funeral doom and the words of Muppet, I pressed play on VI – Dantalion. How unprepared I was for the tsunami that awaited me: the half-time and half-again destruction of the drums, the brash, hypnotic droning of the guitars, and the vocal roars unbound by something as useless as time. As both drummer and composer, I was mesmerized at tempo brandished so recklessly, how the performers worshiped at the altar of between-the-beat silence. But it was the climactic crescendo of “Incendiare,” the step-by-step tempo increase, the anguished strings building to a cathartic, racing release, that sold me on the beauty and agony of Dantalion. When I think of perfect funeral doom, this is the album I recall; Bell Witch be damned.

Mistur // In Memoriam – As much love as I have for the staffers here at AMG, I’m deeply grateful for the gems revealed to me by the commentariat. Doc Grier’s TYMHM for Mistur’s magnum opus predated my awareness of the blog; indeed, I was led to In Memoriam by a forgotten comment in an unrelated article many years later. I’m forever indebted to you, nameless commenter, because you led me to one of my favorite metal albums of all time: full stop, don’t pass go, don’t collect your filthy hand out money. Mistur’s brand of melo-black wields so many different sounds and styles it should end up like “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice.” But the glorious seven minutes of opener “Downfall” instantly prove that these Norwegians are much wiser than a mouse in a fancy hat. Harsh/clean vocal interplay, RIFFS, tasteful synths, RIFFS, a spiraling maelstrom of an ending, and RIFFS showcase a band operating at their most sublime. This band had no issue beating me in the skull with their magnificence. From open to close, this album reigns supreme; I will hold vigil until they return.

I wish I had written …

White Ward – Love Exchange Failure Review. This particular review—and it’s sequel—require little introduction. Interpreting White Ward’s slinky, cinematic record as a screenplay, and featuring an AMG cast of characters was a heartbreaking work of Kenstrositous genius. Not only did the Sponge slip a rule-flaunting format through the jaws of the editorial team, he did it with wordsmithery worthy of the ethos of Love Exchange Failure. Finding a way to spruce up the routine of this gig is tricky; finding a way to blow it up is masterful. When I think of my biggest shit-eating grin moments here, this review is foremost amongst them.

Mystikus Hugebeard

AMG and me

Writing for AMG feels like the validation of an identity I’ve been working towards all my life. I’ve been passionate about metal ever since my brother showed me that fateful anime music video for “10th Man Down” by Nightwish when I was 12. Over the last few years, as I’ve been navigating adulthood and life in the tumultuous American reality, that passion withered, and I’ve put some thought into why. I often think back to when I was the leader of the St. Olaf College Heavy Metal Club, and how happy I was. I’ve realized that my time there was so important to me because, well, it gave my passion a sense of purpose beyond just myself. Maybe all I was doing was trying to introduce people to bands that they would end up not listening to anyway, but that social aspect means so much to me.

Although I know that it’s incredibly cool and special to write for such a great music website like Angry Metal Guy, what matters most in my heart is that it’s allowed me to reclaim the part of myself that just loves sharing my music with like-minded people, and it’s given back to me the community that I’d taken for granted before. So, to the AMG leaders who let me in, to my peers who somehow stomach my ramblings about Subsignal, and to every one of you who reads my silly reviews and leaves a comment: from the bottom of my heart, thank you!

AMG gave to me …

Archspire // Bleed The Future – We all know how much this album rules, but it also holds some significance for me from the early days of my AMG journey. Kronos’ review of this album dropped three days before I received the email asking if I’d like to further embarrass myself in the n00b program. I was already planning on getting it at some point based on the excellent review and 4.5 score, but after the news, buying the album felt like a great way to celebrate. I vividly remember walking down a sunny Chicago street on my way to an auto repair shop while listening to this album, feeling like hands-down the coolest motherfucker alive. I was walking past people thinking, “they have no idea they’re walking past the soon-to-be AMG writer hotshot.” Honestly, I probably looked a little like Tobey Maguire from that one scene in Spider Man 3. You know the one. But I just couldn’t help it, I was excited! I couldn’t wait to get my grubby little hands on my first promo and show them what I could do, to inspire other people to buy an album like Kronos inspired me.

Altars of Grief // Iris – My favorite method of musical discovery has always been blindly stumbling around Bandcamp until I bonk my head on something special. It creates a unique relationship with the music where I feel “this is my album,” and this emotional attachment gives it a powerful longevity. I recall reading Ferrous Beuller’s review of Iris and essentially thinking “huh, cool” before ignoring it like an idiot. Fast forward several months to when I came across Iris on one of my Bandcamp walks, long after forgetting about Beuller’s review, and was blown away. A nagging voice in my head said “where have I heard this before,” whereupon I remembered the review and felt quite foolish. Iris is a sublime record of unparalleled emotional depth, and a prime example of why I should just listen to the goddamn tunes already when someone on AMG gives it a 4.5. I’m glad I could find Iris on my own and develop that unique connection to it, but I regret that my pigheadedness kept me from experiencing it for so long. To this day, it’s one of my favorite black metal records.

Fires In The Distance // Air Not Meant For Us – If you held a gun to my beard and forced me to choose my favorite band, I’d say Insomnium. Hearing Air Not Meant For Us for the first time made me feel that same melancholic bliss I felt the first time I ever listened to Insomnium. Several of my AMG peers recommended this one to me while I was trying to fill out last year’s Listurnalia. Thus Spoke did a fantastic job as always in her review of the album, but something Kenstrosity said to me really stood out: “It’s almost as if this album was tailor-made specifically for me.” Well, I feel it was tailor-made for me. It sounds like an extension of my soul. I think I’ve listened to, and sung to myself, the “I’ll never see daylight / But I’ve seen enough” stanza of “Harbingers” to the point of obsession. The staccato keyboards that strike with percussive force, the achingly beautiful guitar melodies, the sorrow-tinged hope buried deep in the album as a whole; Air Not Meant For Us takes a soul-wrenching longing that I might forever struggle to put into words and transforms it into music.

I wish I had written …

Sermon of Flames – I have seen the Light, and it was Repulsive Review. I love this review. It dropped while I was working on my casting call submission, and I was floored. Sure, It’s extremely well written and demonstrates an encyclopedic knowledge of how the band’s sound relates to other subgenres and artists. But most importantly to me, it’s a very human review in that it acknowledges and appreciates how the album’s flaws create a unique work of art. All of my colleagues are phenomenal writers, but, to this day, I use this review as an example of the quality that I hope to achieve with my own writing. Excellent work, my Dearest Hollow!

I wish I could do over …

Sgàile – Traverse the Bealach Review. Truthfully, I adore Traverse the Bealach, and because of that I can’t help but feel so frustrated by its flaws. After all, you want the things you love to be perfect. A 3.5 isn’t a low score by any means, but I knew in my heart it deserved higher and I’m ashamed to say I got way too hung up on the few sections I didn’t like. And honestly, with time and distance, I’ve realized that the bad parts aren’t even all that bad, which only further salts my wounds. Just call me Mystikus Contritebeard, because I underrated this one.

I wish more people had read …

Subsignal – A Poetry of Rain [Things You Might Have Missed 2023]. We all have that one band that we simply cannot shut the fuck up about. I’m already quite pleased with the positive reception Subsignal got in the comments but, at time of writing, the metrics tell me that this is my second-least-read piece, which is unacceptable! The degree to which I want people to enjoy this band the way I do borders on the unhinged, but it’s not my fault they’re just that good.

#2024 #AltarsOfGrief #Amenra #AMGTurns15 #Archspire #BlogPost #BlogPosts #BrothersOfMetal #Cruentus #CultOfLuna #Danava #Deluge #FiresInTheDistance #IronMaiden #JulieChristmas #LiveWire #Mistur #Obsequiae #Rotpit #SermonOfFlames #Sgaile #Slow #Subsignal #TreesOfEternity #Ulcerate #VirginSteele #Vorga #WhiteWard

We’re still on a break from posting spotlights on albums from our 1001 Other Albums list, but I’m stressed and sad, and therefore I need a little list-making therapy. And so, in honor of the late great Steve Albini who suddenly left us this week, here is a (possibly incomplete) list of the albums from The List that he had a part in, in one way or another:

• Pixies – Surfer Rosa (1988, US) (list number 127)
• The Jesus Lizard – Goat (1991, US) (429)
• Nirvana – In Utero (1993, US) (829)
• Brainiac – Hissing Prigs In Static Couture (1996, US) (434)
• Scrawl – Travel On, Rider (1996, US) (770)
• Neurosis – Times Of Grace (1999, US) (430)
• Screaming Females – Ugly (2012, US) (47)
• Om – Advaitic Songs (2012, US) (39)

And, so we have a nice round number of 10 albums, here are a couple not on The List but probably friggin should be:

• Made Out of Babies – Coward (2006, US)
• Sunn O))) – Life Metal (2019, US)

I think those make a nice little tribute playlist to keep us going for a bit. And, if you want to look up more, here is a (likely very incomplete) list of other bands/artists on The List that Albini worked with, on albums of theirs not on The List: Ben Frost, Cheap Trick, Don Caballero, Esben and the Witch, Fugazi, Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Gogol Bordello, Jim O’Rourke, Jimmy Page, Joanna Newsom, Low, Manic Street Preachers, Mogwai, Nine Inch Nails, Pussy Galore, Richard Youngs, Robert Plant, Songs: Ohia, The Ex, The Stooges, and Yonatan Gat.

Feel free to share your favorite Albini-ed album below (and, if it’s not already in The List, let me know if you want me to add it).

Thanks for the music, Steve.

https://1001otheralbums.com/2024/05/11/steve-albini-rip/

#Brainiac #JulieChristmas #MadeOutOfBabies #Neurosis #Nirvana #Om #Pixies #Scrawl #ScreamingFemales #SteveAlbini

#TheMetalDogArticleList
#MetalInjection
JULIE CHRISTMAS Announces First Solo Record In 14 Years, Streams "Supernatural"
Julie Christmas forever.

https://metalinjection.net/new-music/julie-christmas-announces-first-solo-record-in-14-years-streams-supernatural

#juliechristmas #soloalbum #ridiculousandfullofblood #johannespersson #cultofluna #chrisenriquez #spotlights #andrewschneider #kenmode #unsane

#TheMetalDogArticleList
#MetalInjection
JULIE CHRISTMAS Announces First Solo Record In 14 Years, Streams "Supernatural"
Julie Christmas forever.

https://metalinjection.net/new-music/julie-christmas-announces-first-solo-record-in-14-years-streams-supernatural

#juliechristmas #soloalbum #ridiculousandfullofblood #johannespersson #cultofluna #chrisenriquez #spotlights #andrewschneider #kenmode #unsane

#TheMetalDogArticleList
#MetalInjection
JULIE CHRISTMAS Announces First Solo Record In 14 Years, Streams "Supernatural"
Julie Christmas forever.

https://metalinjection.net/new-music/julie-christmas-announces-first-solo-record-in-14-years-streams-supernatural

#juliechristmas #soloalbum #ridiculousandfullofblood #johannespersson #cultofluna #chrisenriquez #spotlights #andrewschneider #kenmode #unsane

#TheMetalDogArticleList
#MetalInjection
JULIE CHRISTMAS Announces First Solo Record In 14 Years, Streams "Supernatural"
Julie Christmas forever.

https://metalinjection.net/new-music/julie-christmas-announces-first-solo-record-in-14-years-streams-supernatural

#juliechristmas #soloalbum #ridiculousandfullofblood #johannespersson #cultofluna #chrisenriquez #spotlights #andrewschneider #kenmode #unsane

#TheMetalDogArticleList
#MetalInjection
JULIE CHRISTMAS Announces First Solo Record In 14 Years, Streams "Supernatural"
Julie Christmas forever.

https://metalinjection.net/new-music/julie-christmas-announces-first-solo-record-in-14-years-streams-supernatural

#juliechristmas #soloalbum #ridiculousandfullofblood #johannespersson #cultofluna #chrisenriquez #spotlights #andrewschneider #kenmode #unsane

New Julie Christmas album on the way!

#music #μουσική #ERisNowPlaying #newreleases2024 #juliechristmas #alternativemetal #postmetal #experimental
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=baBBqdnaV_c

Julie Christmas (ex-Made Out Of Babies et Battle Of Mice) dévoile un second extrait de son prochain album "Ridiculous And Full Of Blood" (14 juin 2024)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=baBBqdnaV_c

#MadeOutOfBabies #BattleOfMices #PouetRadio #np #MastoRadio #Fediradio #metal #JulieChristmas #CultOfLuna

Now that I have posted their "Part 1" vinyl today, it just seems fitting to toot a song from that album in @loehwe's #MusicWomenWednesday:

i Häxa: Underworld

https://song.link/YFE-i_Haxa-Underworld

The whole haunting video for the EP has been linked.

#NotMetal

FFO #JulieChristmas, #GUHTS, #SHRVL

Julie Christmas (Made Out Of Babies, Battle Of Mices, Cult of Luna) est de retour (après 13 ans) avec un single " Not Enough".

Elle sera aussi au #RoadburnFestival ce week end (qui commence aujourd'hui).

https://juliechristmas.bandcamp.com/track/not-enough

#Metal #PouetRadio #np #MastoRadio #Fediradio
#CultOfLuna #JulieChristmas #MadeOutOfBabies #BattleOfMices

#NowPlaying #TheMetalDogIsNowPlaying
#CultofLuna #JulieChristmas
Mariner
The Wreck of S.S. Needle
https://youtube.com/results?search_query=Cult+of+Luna,+Julie+Christmas+Mariner+The+Wreck+of+S.S.+Needle

Let's start this #MetalMonday with Swedish export Cult of Luna. The whole album Mariner with Julie Christmas on vocals is excellent, but The Wreck of S.S. Needle is the exclamation mark.

Cult of Luna - The Wreck of S.S Needle

https://songwhip.com/cult-of-luna/the-wreck-of-ss-needle

#Metal #JulieChristmas #CultOfLuna

Ah, ça donne envie 🤘

#Roadburn Festival aux Pays-Bas 4 jours, du 20 au 23 avril 2023, à #Tilburg 🇳🇱

https://roadburn.com/

Avec entre autres #JulieChristmas (au chant dans #BattleOfMice et #MadeOutOfBabies et qui a joué avec #CultofLuna), et #Brutus qui viennent de sortir leur nouvel album #UnisonLife

#RoadburnFestival #metal #Netherdlands

@ploum Alors en fait j'ai pas mal de groupes de 3 ou 4 avec une chanteuse qui prend toute la place et une bonne batterie mais c'est dur de trouver une majorité féminine (je pense à #JulieChristmas de #BattleOfMice et #MadeOutOfBabies ).

Ou #Oathbreaker également, mais ce n'est pas vraiment ta demande donc.

Il y a aussi #Monarch! (français... enfin on ne comprend pas de toute façon :p) mais même configuration :
https://youtu.be/4KeqehF6U2g

Cult of Luna a joué avec une chanteuse que j'aime bien (#JulieChristmas de #BattleOfMice et #MadeOutOfBabies ), j'en parlais un peu ici :
https://mastodon.social/@Syluban/100550462433795008