As usual, I was all over the map with the music I listened to last year. Surprise surprise! I know. Enjoy the odd selection.
1) Glassing - Twin Dream (Brutal Panda)
This post-everything band from Austin TX deftly weaves elements of post-hardcore, black metal, noise rock, ambient, shoegaze, and doom together in a way that seems effortless. It’s enthralling, immersive, brutal, and beautiful.
2) Kowloon Walled City - Piecework (Neurot/Gilead)
KWC continues to leave more and more space within their music, creating an austere backdrop for their twisted vision of slow-motion sludge. Don’t despair; this record fully embraces the power of the riff and when they leave the moody slowcore behind and lean into massive, lumbering claustrophobia, they truly are kingpins.
3) The Body + Big Brave - Leaving None But Small Birds (Thrill Jockey)
First off, this collaboration doesn’t really sound like the music of either of the participating ensembles. Both bands are known for simplicity, repetition, and atmosphere but here they present us with some sort of twisted Appalachian ambient-doom. The atmosphere is nearly suffocating with relief provided only by acoustic instruments like fiddle and banjo. Big Brave’s Robin Wattie provides all the vocals here and her little-girl voice takes this songs into frightening murder-ballad territory. Sleeper of the year!
4) Zach Barocas New Freedom Sound - Four Freedoms (self-released)
Jawbox drummer and friends (including J Robbins) drop a stunning collection of jazzy post-rock in the vein of Tortoise or Tied + Tickled Trio. It’s lush, beautiful, cathartic, confusing, and mind-blowing. Lots of percussion (natch) but also loads of horns, strings, and wordless vocal layering.
5) Low - Hey What (Sub Pop)
Slowcore legends Low continue the journey they began on 2018’s Double Negative. The production that was so polarizing among fans is ratcheted up even more here. The songs are like living in a rain cloud with angelic voices poking through just when you’ve given up hope. For every sweet vocal harmony, there is an equal and opposite bit of ugliness that threatens to overwhelm. It never does, of course, and the results are nothing less than stunning.
6) Ellende -Triebe (AOP)
This Austrian post-black metal band tugs at my heartstrings in ways I can’t comprehend. I mean there’s blast beats and screeching vocals, but there are also sublime melodies and heart-stopping post-metal riffage. This is the kind of music that deserves lighters held high, not that arena-rock bullshit.
7) Olhava - Frozen Bloom (Avantgarde)
There’s something going on in St. Petersburg Russian – in addition to Olhava, Trna and Somn are also putting out absolutely stellar post-black metal material. Olhava is decidedly on team gaze in the blackgaze movement even though the blast beats and tremolo picking rarely let up. The chord changes are more implied and felt than heard or registered. Frozen Bloom is, in fact, the perfect name for this record, perfectly capturing the aesthetic of watching your breath freeze on a sub-zero morning.
8) So Hideous - None But A Pure Heart Can Sing (Silent Pendulum)
This New York band isn’t the first or only band to incorporate strings, horns, and orchestral arrangements into blackened screamy hardcore but they certainly are masters at it. The ebb and flow of this beguiling record speaks to the punk kid in me who dabbled in prog-rock in my youth and I’m all in.
9) Grandeur - Aurea Aetas (Erech Leleth)
More Austrian black metal! Grandeur is a bit more traditional in their approach but the tremelodies(tm) are on point and the vocals tend toward the gruffer side. Nothing really new here, per se, but absolutely engrossing.
10) Year of No Light - Consolamentum (Pelagic)
The French masters of instrumental post-metal are back with another incredible record. They never fail to disappoint and here they expand their crescendo-core with burbling electronics to go along with the thundering drums and soaring guitars. It’s massive and all-encompassing and makes me want to spit in God’s eye.
11) Sugar Horse - The Live Long After (Small Pond)
Bristol’s Sugar Horse take a similar approach to that of Glassing (#1 above), throwing all manner of influences into a noisy blender and guiding us on a nightmarish journey. Post-hardcore, noise-rock, doom, and ambient are all given their due. There’s some seriously catchy stuff down in the muck though and we’re all better for it.
12) Amenra - De Doorn (Relapse)
These Belgian avant-doom masters are still taking no prisoners. The bludgeoning riffs and vocal shrieks are still here but they stray into ambient territory a wee bit too much for my taste. But when they take a piledriver to my head, I’m all in.
13) Big Brave - Vital (Southern Lord)
Montreal doom-drone behemoth, Big Brave (stylized BIG|BRAVE) are back with their most atmospheric release to date. Like the Amenra record, I do wish they had focused more on the heavy riffs, but that’s just a quibble. Their simple repetitive tone-bending slabs of chaos have more than a little in common with a band like Facs. The drums are sparser and the gloom more unrelenting than previous records but when it hits you, it transports you.
14) BirdHands - Machiniste (self-released)
Allen Epley of Shiner and Ian Prince of Houston are BirdHands. So yeah, pedigree. The instrumental songs are bass lead but there are plenty of atmospheric guitars and synths slathered over the proceedings. Prince’s mind-boggling drums push this material into trance-like motorik territory at times reminiscent of Turning Machine. I’ll take it!
15) Facs - Present Tense (Trouble In Mind)
Fugue State* darlings, Facs’ (stylized FACS) fourth album gets a bit more abstract than their previous work. Here they tend to rely on spacey psych swirls more than the almighty groove but, in general, they’re able to harness the chaos in service of some mind-bending tunes.
16) My Fictions - Time Immemorial (self-released)
The Boston hardcore band had been at it for ten years now and continues their journey into the depths of hardcore’s aftermath. They are endlessly inventive and know when to let off the gas to let the music breathe. These songs make you want to go out and kick a cat, sure, but they also leave you feeling a bit melancholy and introspective after mistreating that poor kitty.
17) Hope Drone - Husk (self-released)
Deliberately murky and chaotic, the fourth album from this Australian blackened sludge outfit is hard to get a handle on. Eventually the brooding gloom lifts and reveals a mantra-like single-mindedness that pummels you like a carcass on a meat hook.
18) Cowboy Amazing - There’s Nothing More American Than Wearing Something Else’s Skin (self-released)
The mathy mosh is still there, but this Madison metalcore band has managed to hybridize a number of adjacent genres. I’m hearing echoes of post-hardcore bands like Gallows or Modern Life Is War as well as whispers of black metal and post-metal. This is the sound of a band coming into its own and pushing some boundaries.
19) Mick Harris - HedNod 5-8 (self-released)
Mick Harris is best known as the drummer in Napalm Death and later under is Scorn moniker making dark electronic dub. This series of releases is very similar to his work as Scorn though the focus on the beats and less about the atmospheres. It’s chilling, mesmerizing stuff.
20) Interesting Times Gang - Beats, No Rhymes, No Life (Pax Aeternum)
Kowloon Walled City bassist Ian Miller drops a collection of instrumental hip hop beats. It’s wildly varied and sometimes overly-ecelectic but it’s unfathomably groovy and addictive.
There are Bandcamp links in all the entries above, but if you prefer Spotify, hear’s a Best of 2021 Playlist.
andulkaphoto
gummygunk
stormborns
amandla
romaincrisis
theartofmadeline
gracieabrams