In the 2021 introduction, I lamented the fact that it looked like it would be halfway through 2024 before I started listening to music from 2024. Well, here we are in June, and I still have about thirty-five albums from 2019 competing for the last twelve open slots for that year before I start listening to new music. Prophetic indeed.
As always, a quick rules recap:
- A release has to be feature-length to be considered. (I implemented this in the mid-2010s because there are a lot of noise releases that are super-short and awesome, and just like the next rule, I needed to thin the herd before even starting in order to be able to actually listen to a decent chunk of stuff without getting entirely overwhelmed.) “Feature-length”, to me, means “doesn’t fit on a 3″ CD”, or over twenty-one minutes. (Sorry, Nails.)
- I’ve excluded classical music in order to, as I mentioned, thin the herd. Occasionally something avant-garde-but-trad-classical will show up, but again, there’s just so much of it out there–even when you’re only considering original releases–that you could spend an entire year listening to new, first-recording classical releases, never repeat an album, and not have even come close to hearing it all. So I’m sticking to blues and its derivatives and noise, the two things I know best.
- As I alluded to above, things should be original releases rather than re-releases (or re-recordings, sorry Taylor). In general, this eliminates live albums, greatest hits/best of comps, label publicity comps, etc.
- Each band can only be represented in the list once (or, on occasion, once in Honorable Mention and once in the Ten Best list).
And, as is rapidly becoming normal, we have the Jake Gyllenhaal not-really-memorial Bubble Boy award for the album that almost made the cut, getting eliminated in 26th place:
Loscil, Faults, Coasts, Lines (self-released)
And now, in alphabetical order, the openers.
Honorable Mention
Ashtabula, Ants (HNW)
This nasty slab of HNW will really… wait for it… get under your skin.
Bacillus, Anti-Vaxxer (Glassolalia)
It only makes sense that, among the bands who rediscovered their passion for making music during the pandemic, veteran noisemaker Bacillus would be foremost.
Bell Witch/Aerial Ruin, Stygian Bough, vol. 1 (Profound Lore)
Bell Witch and Aerial Ruin are the Jean-Pierre Jeunet and Marc Caro of doom–I’m not the biggest fan of either on their own, but put them together and suddenly they’re world-beaters.
Jeremy Bible, Human Savagery (self-released)
The only reason this one isn’t higher is that with Bible’s multimedia presentations, you really need the full experience, so listening to the album is great, but trust me, pick up the DVD.
Bríi, Entre Tudo Que É Visto E Oculto (Lovers & Lollypops)
Debut from these fast-rising Brazilian maniacs straddles the line between the atmoblack they have since leaned into and a sort of post-hardcore/blackgaze reminiscent of Envy and An Autumn for Crippled Children.
C.O.F.F.I.N., Children of Finland Fighting in Norway (Legless)
Imagine my disappointment when I discovered this absolutely bonkers blues-punk outfit were based in Australia, not Finland.
Jeff Curtis, Summertime Stridulations (Coffee Hut)
The always-experimenting Curtis gives us a full release of banjo compositions of the long, low drone variety (which is pretty much exactly what you’d expect from Jeff Curtis).
Envy, The Fallen Crimson (Sonzai)
The Japanese post-hardcore/screamo masters return after a five-year hiatus with a couple of new members, some clean guest vocals, and a re-energized thirst for taking over the world.
Fawn Limbs, Sleeper Vessels (Sludgelord)
I’m never sure which sub-hardcore genre most of this stuff goes into, I just know it knocks you off your feet, pins you up against the wall, and slaps you around until you enjoy it.
Gomi Boy, Micropolis Users’ Group (HNW)
Gomi Boy’s seventies electronics worship is sure to strike a chord with listeners of a certain age (as I, a listener of a certain age, can attest).
My Heart, an Inverted Flame, Plague Notes, Unnamed, Unknown, a Finger Dragged through Dust (tUMULt)
A delectable mishmash of dark ambient and something that’s not quite funereal doom (maybe we should call it meditative metal?) from former members of I Am Spoonbender and Common Eider King Eider.
Oranssi Pazuzu, Mestarin Kynsi (Nuclear Blast)
Oranssi Pazuzu continue their delving into deeper, darker realms of blackened death, almost heading into ritual territory.
Paimon, Abyss of the Ceremonial Blood (Death Kvlt Productions)
Paimon’s first full-length in their all-too-brief reign of traditional-black-metal terror I still hope will be resumed one day.
Raise a Suilen, Era (Bushiroad)
Taylor Swift really missed an opportunity not taking these kids on the Eras Tour as openers, given the album name (and the electronic-leaning idol-pop would fit right in with Kansas City’s favorite diva).
Johanna Warren, Chaotic Good (Wax Nine/Carpark)
Warren’s string of unbeatably top-notch folk-pop-rock-psychedelia continues unabated; I’m at this point convinced the woman is incapable of releasing a mediocre album, much less a bad one.
And so, with all the wonders of those fifteen albums you absolutely need in your collection behind us, it’s on to the headliners…
The Ten Best Albums of 2020
10. Sarah Hennies, Spectral Malsconcities (New World Recordings)
Whether something fits the definition of “classical” or not can often be an exceptionally tough decision when you spend your life listening to avant-garde music. A lot of folks would probably toss this one in the classical pile, and to be honest I wouldn’t argue with them one bit. But as I was shuffling through the longlist, Bent Duo’s side of this (the other side is performed by Bearthoven) popped up on a few occasions, and it feels a lot more like Z’ev than it does Imani Winds, so I classed the whole thing as av-garde. (That Hennies has also released on much-vaunted noise label No Rent may have also factored into the equation.) Two long soundscapes that never fail to intrigue.
9. Fish, Weltschmerz (Chocolate Frog)
My original thought was that this was Fish’s best album since Vigil in a Wilderness of Mirrors thirty years ago. But this album–still, as of this writing, his most recent, and thus we have to think it may be his last–ditches a lot of the more commercial trappings of the post-Fugazi Marillion years, tossing in prog-cred epics here and there (“Rose of Damascus” is especially old-school-Marillion-like), but after all this time, Fish has finally learned to mesh the prog with the simple. “Garden of Remembrance” is better than anything on Misplaced Childhood, and I say that as one of MC’s biggest fans for forty years. If he’s going out with this one, he’s doing it right; Weltschmerz is Fish’s best work period.
8. Niku Daruma, Light Up the Room (Trashfuck)
Damn, it is SO good to hear brutal, violent powerelectronics that doesn’t have a fucking Nazi problem. Pittsburgh’s loudest, scariest ensemble (and these days, that’s saying something) have exactly one goal: make you hurt. And they are really, really fucking good at it. You can’t go wrong with any of the avalanche of splits, releases, etc. Niku Daruma has put out since their founding in 2018, but you will definitely go right with this one.
7. An Autumn for Crippled Children, All Fell Silent, Everything Went Quiet (Prosthetic)
While All Fell Silent… is part of that period between Eternal and Closure where the band were experimenting with stuff and kind of lost their way, this is the best album from that period; “Water’s Edge” is the kind of song that might actually have commercial appeal if anyone had the guts to play black metal on the radio. While all the pieces wouldn’t snap into place until Closure three years after this, AAfCC were absolutely still a force to be reckoned with in 2020.
6. Emma Ruth Rundle/Thou, May Our Chambers Be Full (Sacred Bones)
2014’s Heathen began a new, more experimental direction for Thou, but “experimental” when you’re already out on the bleeding edge means something entirely different than it would for, say, Ariana Grande. I’m not sure one could ever accuse Thou of having mainstream appeal (though their all-Nirvana covers album should have been way, way bigger than it was), but May Our Chambers Be Full might get them into a bunch of ears they wouldn’t normally find. Rundle’s deep, penetrating acoustic guitar fits nicely into Thou’s frame, and how do these duets work? Yet, somehow, they do.
5. Clara Engel, Hatching Under the Stars (oscarson)
Clara Engel releases two types of albums: albums that are really good, front to back, but with no songs that scream “this is the best thing I’ve ever heard!” and albums like Tender (“How Many Horses Till the End of the World?”, “The Opium Song”) and Visitors Are Allowed One Kiss (“I Love an Evil Queen”) and Their Invisible Hands (“I Drink the Rain”). Which kind is Hatching Under the Stars? “Seven Minutes Past Sunrise” might be the best song Clara Engel has ever recorded. You should be calling your local radio stations–assuming you still listen to the radio–and requesting this every five minutes until the entire world has fallen in love with Clara Engel.
4. Ulcerate, Stare into Death and Be Still (Debemur Morti)
In 2013, at the end of the year, a lot of us found ourselves asking the same question: how the hell are Ulcerate ever going to top releasing the definitive tech-death document, Vermis? And while their subsequent albums were really good, the specter of Vermis was always in the background saying “I can never be topped.” I’m not sure Stare into Death and Be Still actually achieved it, but it is at least Vermis‘ equal. To create an album that perfect once in a band’s life is the goal for pretty much every wannabe musician sitting in their bedrooms writing music. To do it twice? That’s nearly unthinkable. Ulcerate did it.
3. The Vomit Arsonist, None of Us Are Worth Saving (Cloister Recordings)
When Andy Grant releases an album (while this is technically an EP, come on, it’s longer than any album Whitehouse ever put out), you should be sitting up and taking notice. Every single time. Grant is the premier artist combining harsh black noise with powerelectronics, and the man has never released a bad album. (He has actually disagreed with me on this point, but I will not be budged.) He developed his signature sound fifteen years ago or thereabouts, right around Wretch and The Final Page, and he’s been obsessively refining it ever since. He’s dropped a hell of a lot of classic noise releases since, and this one should not be overlooked.
2. Band-Maid, Unseen World (Pony Canyon)
The world’s premier hard rock band keep their streak of high quality albums going for another year. “Why Why Why?”, “Chemical Reaction”, “I Still Seek Revenge”, “No God”, all of these songs are custom-made for screaming along in an arena, and it’s tough to resist the urge to join in. But what makes Band-Maid better than the rest is that they have never once rested on their laurels; they are always finding ways to improve, be it working on their technique, experimenting with power ballads (or transcribing their songs for traditional Japanese instruments), working with other folks outside the band to see what kinds of new sounds they can come up with, etc. They’re still working. That makes all the difference.
and finally, here we are…
Album of the Year, 2020
Zeal and Ardor, Wake of a Nation (Mvka)
This choice was four years in the making.
Wake of a Nation is five minutes shorter than the length limit to qualify for this list. When I realized that in August of 2020, I gave the good old heavy sigh, relegated it to a sidebar where I talked about how great it was while being too short for contention, and naming something else Album of the Year. And I kept that idea in my head the entire time I thought about bringing this series back. Come October 2023, when I put the longlists for 2019-2022 together, I knew Wake of a Nation wasn’t eligible, but I put it on the playlist anyway, because I love listening to it. There’s not a note out of place anywhere on this album; indeed, this is where Gagneux and his band of dreary (wo/)men really figured out how to mesh gospel and black metal, rather than having the two genres simply living side by side on the same album. (Specifically, “Tuskegee” is where is all snaps into place. Without “Tuskegee”, we wouldn’t have gotten “Run”, or any of the other great tracks on the self-titled album that work like that, two years later.) Albums got dropped off the playlist, Wake of a Nation remained.
Then I realized something: I have immersed myself in the music of this decade, almost exclusively, for coming up on an entire year. I’ve listened to damn near nothing else. And it occurred to me that in the four years since Wake of a Nation‘s release (well, three years and 10.5 months, as I write this), no one–Zeal and Ardor themselves included–have put out another release that even comes close to this. It’s easily on track to make Album of the Decade (and Single of the Decade for “Vigil”). And so, two days ago, I decided I was going to break the one rule I hadn’t broken since I first instituted it a decade ago. In my defense, I did it for what might well be the best EP released in my lifetime. (For those unfamiliar with my bio, I was born in 1968.) This is life-changing music. This is world-changing music. This is the best EP you will ever own. How could it not be Album of the Year, even if it’s not technically an album?
Popcorn for Breakfast 