In his memoir, Sid Meier, one of the true titans of video game design, goes to length to explain that, in his view, to steal someone’s idea and clone it is plagiarism. He also says though, that to steal someone’s idea and add to it is the very soul of progress and advancement.
We talk a great deal around these pages about how musical artists, particularly in rock and all its various splinters, are faced with a decision - either do something new, or do something familiar really well.
The Warning, the upstart trio of Mexican sisters who have been clawing their way up into the public consciousness since they were literal children, have found that rarest of all paths - they achieve both.
If you want to lay down as fact that The Warning are a band with a lot of polish and a refinement in their production that belies their age and status in the pantheon of rock, you’ll get little argument here. Those who thirst for the dingy edges and grimy ethos of the rock pits may well turn their noses as this new effort, Everything’s Falling, positively shines with high fidelity audio and pitch-perfect recording.
The loss is theirs. To dig into this new record is to discover a collection of songs that are, yes, sent through a glossy filter, but all have their roots in the messy experimentation of their forebears. The title track of this record may deceive through the prism of Dani’s airy vocals, but make no mistake - it’s a Soundgarden riff lurking under the melody, “Burden In My Hand” for the new millennium, juxtaposed against a bigger chorus and a (slightly) less fuzzy thump.
The album moves seamlessly to “Why Do You Like It When I Cry?” and now we’ve blended The Warning’s traditional tone with the playful rock romp of Canada’s BRKN Love. There’s a little melodrama here, to be sure, but that has more to do with The Warning and their idiom than it does with the style they’re weaving in.
And then the band takes us to “Bite My Tongue.” The Warning famously had a collaboration with Boston’s Dead Poet Society, a re-edit of the latter band’s “HURT” with the assorted vocalists trading spots. The two bands have also worked together on the festival circuit, and that connection bears fruit here for this single. “Bite My Tongue” is in many ways a DPS song, but again, filtered through the kind of melody and well-structured chorused that The Warning have become known for.
For all that, there are still two spots on the record where The Warning are inimitably their own - the requisite song “Ego” sung in the band’s native Spanish, thus continuing and long and successful succession of such songs. It does merit mention; the last couple tunes in their native tongue have the same rough cadence and tone. While catchy and listenable, it would be nice to see them blend this style and the playfulness of previous efforts like “Narcisista” into something new.
And at the end, the single “Kerosene.” Some Foo Fighters in there. A dose of Queens of the Stone Age. But all The Warning, especially the quasi-playground R&B chant in the song’s final third. This is the most successful blend of elements The Warning demonstrate on Everything’s Falling, and we haven’t even discussed the band’s penchant for groovy rhythms.
What we have here is a record that both synthesizes the success of the other members of rock’s current vanguard, and also displays what we’ve come to know from The Warning. Their ability to layer their own style over the…borrowed…concepts creates something new and advances the cause of the band as a whole. It’s well-crafted and original, even as the echoes of other artists ring in the background. It also proves that rock may not be dead after all.
As the years go by and I've been doing this list for some, oh, I don't know, decade and a half or whatever, it seems to me that each list may be increasingly influenced by where I am in my life - which is to say more accurately, what do I feel like hearing? Which is to say, this comes with an admission: the list that follows may simply be my personal best albums list. Okay, let me not insult you - it's obvious that this is my list, my name is on the damn thing. What I mean is that this may be MY list - it may not be the best albums if we're judging on technical prowess or compositional acuity. It may be simply a list of albums that I enjoyed the most this year. And so be it.
Okay, a brief review of the rules: - Must be an original studio composition in 2024 - No re-releases - No Greatest Hits or compilations of any kind - No live albums
Without further preamble -
HONORABLE MENTION – While She Sleeps – Self Hell
I, for one, wasn’t sure rap metal would ever make a comeback. Nor was I really sure that it should. And maybe it still hasn’t. But there’s a couple artists this year that tried to put a toe back in that formerly pristine but now dirtied and forgotten pool. While She Sleeps was one of them. (Quick shout-out to Ihsahn’s self-titled album for narrowly missing out here.)
EP OF THE YEAR: Alestorm – Voyage of the Dead Marauder EP
You know how some people are ‘small doses’ people? I think Alestorm is a ‘small doses’ band for me. And this was the perfect dose. As ever with Alestorm, the comedy is acerbic and not for the faint of heart, but that does nothing to reduce its hilarity. And the title track? As legit a song as you can imagine.
11 – Reliqa – Secrets of the Future
Not all that dissimilar from While She Sleeps in concept, but this is the better execution. The band is tight and in control and they know the sound they’re going for, even as it crosses several aesthetic and sonic boundaries.
10 – Black Note Graffiti – Resist the Divide
Not a single song over 3:45, and punctuated by short, minimalist riffs. There’s something about the mechanics of this album that’s kind of hypnotic. Think Static-X, but dial way back on the gain and slow the tempo down to half speed. But it’s similar in that the constructions are sparse, and I mean that as a compliment. You can hear every part being played clearly, and no song overstays its welcome. A better comparison – like a slightly less-screamy, more deliberate Hellfreaks.
9 – Dungeon Crawl – Maze Controller
I kinda hate how much I like this album, because it is so unapologetically nerdy and based around late nights mainlining caffeine while you watch your graph-paper hero lose hit points because of a bad luck dice roll. (And yes, I hate it because I’ve been there.) When you strip that way, thought, there’s a really good, authentic thrash album underneath, and as I look back, I seem to have a place for that on my list every year (last year was Hellevate’s “The Purpose Is Cruelty” EP.) The guitar work here is fun, the lyrics are appropriately absurd, the whole thing just feels right.
8 – Sundrifter – An Earlier Time
After Sundrifter released the very good “Visitations” back in whatever-the-hell year it was, I remember thinking to myself “damn, if those guys could just focus this a little and keep it within the margins, they’d really make something great.” Well, now we have “An Earlier Time,” and it’s exactly the apex of Sundrifter could and should be. It’s all the same cosmic wanderings of a wayward probe, but it’s snappier, more confident, and all around more listenable, while losing none of the signature fuzzy guitar tone.
7 – Dampf – No Angels Alive
Third year in a row. Third year in a row that some electronic artist cracks my year end album list, by crossing over and blurring the line into metal. Now, I’m giving myself a little grace here, because this is the second time that the artist has been Dampf, which means this is more than just a coincidence. Dampf may not write the most technically challenging metal, but there is no question that there’s an understanding of what goes into composing a catchy hit. There’s something about these songs that hooks you immediately.
6 – Powerwolf – Wake Up the Wicked
Color me a little surprised. I’ve long been a Powerwolf partisan, but I freely admit that the band had a long run of making a great album followed by a mediocre one. So imagine my shock when this album comes out comparatively on the heels of last year's “Interludium,” and still bangs with a new bunch of massive songs that only Powerwolf could have written.
5 – Powerman 5000 – Abandon Ship
Am I the only person in the world who has this as a top five album from 2024? Probably. And is some of that no doubt because of my personal nostalgia? Possibly. But this is my list, so tough rocks. I’m just going to come out and say it – PM5K will never again be the band that wrote “Tonight the Stars Revolt!” That age has passed. But they also don’t have to be that band again. After however many years wandering in the desert, the comeback that seemingly began with “Builders of the Future” some ten years ago is real and tangible and authentic. And this album is a ton of fun.
4 – Dead Poet Society – Fission
One of the most unique bands going. Minimalist beats, heavy rhythms, guitar tone not heard since Soundgarden’s “4th of July”…this is a heady mix of styles and colors, and it takes a steady hand to be able to balance all of those into music that’s even listenable, let alone good. Extra props for “Hurt,” which is probably my Song of the Year…as someone who is also in a non-traditional career (yes, I have a job, and no, it’s not writing about music,) that tune hits close to home sometimes.
**It merits mention, there’s a gap here. These albums are all great, but the next three were on a level all their own in 2024.**
3 – Transit Method – Othervoid
The sensibilities of Rush, but paired with the beats and rhythms of a punk band? Hell yeah, sign me up for all of that. It’s not every year that a band new to me crosses my (virtual) desk and absolutely pins my attention to the wall until I’ve heard the whole thing. Can’t even remember who the last one would have been. The Hawkins? Red Eleven? Doesn’t matter. That’s how I felt listening to Transit Method. And I hope you do, too.
2 – The Warning – Keep Me Fed
Ugh, I went back and forth on this a hundred and fifty times. I even complained to my compatriot Chris about it. I haven’t had this much trouble deciding between two albums for #1 since 2014, when I battled internally for a week over Red Eleven’s “Round II” and Destrage’s “Are You Kidding Me? No.” (I picked Red Eleven then, and I stand by it…about half the time.) I can’t understand why the Warning haven’t conquered the world yet. The talent, the songs, the aesthetic…this band has everything you want in a world-wide hero rock group. It must only be the fallow period for rock fandom that we find ourselves in that prevents them from ascending. Although, every time I see them, it’s in a slightly larger venue…In the meantime, this is certainly the album I spent the most time with this year, but it did ultimately fall short to…
1 – Combichrist – CMBCRST
Some years ago, Combichrist took flak from their fans for gradually moving away from a pure industrial style, incorporating more and more metal elements. I personally think it’s the best decision the band ever made, as every album since that point (perhaps beginning with the DmC soundtrack?) has been better than the previous, culminating in this masterpiece of doom, gloom and as KMFDM coined the term, the ‘ultra-heavy beat.’ Some of the best riffs of the year were recorded for this album. What puts it ahead of The Warning at #2? The Warning, for all their greatness, worked with more professional songwriters. And as Chris has so passionately explained on our very pages, there’s no sin in that, none at all. But when you’re deciding between masterpieces, that extra little degree of authenticity for Combichrist matters.
It’s hard to imagine the pressure of being an artist trying to follow up on a breakthrough. One pictures a dim room, band members sitting under a single bare light bulb, saying to each other “Okay, we made a statement. What do we do now to follow up?” Fans are rarely content – we are conditioned to believe that the apex could always be ahead. The central thesis of the soft science of marketing impresses upon us that what’s next is always better than what we have.
That’s probably an over-dramatization, but that’s the moment The Warning finds themselves in. They began to turn heads with “Queen of the Murder Scene” two albums back, but that was ripples in a cow pond relative to the floodgates of “Error.” Suddenly the band was a hot commodity – sold out shows across the country, appearances on whatever remains of the corpse of MTV, attention from major publications, all of it.
Under that weight, how would the band respond?
The short answer is, with measured but confident evolutionary strides, folding more and more influences into the music of their new album “Keep Me Fed,” and sounding contemporary while still incorporating all the rock and roll standbys that helped the band come to prominence in the first place.
First notable moment first – at the end of “Error” was “Martardio,” the album’s only song in the band’s native Spanish. Overlooked among all the bombastic singles, the song was quietly one of the album’s best songs. For “Keep Me Fed,” the band plays “Que Mas Quieres,” and drops into the clean up spot on the record (that’s the fourth song, for non-baseball fans,) front and center in the record where it can’t be missed. Again, it’s one of the stronger songs on the album, this time in the place it deserves.
From this point forward is where the album starts to unfold in new directions. “MORE” channels a touch of the guitar thump and dire tones of contemporaries Dead Poet Society, and “Escapism” is a bouncy, funky little tune that hits right with a singalong chorus, but then pounds a crusher of a breakdown at the end.
As the album goes along, there are hallmarks of other familiar names that shade across the speakers, notably the double set of “Hell You Call A Dream” and “Consume,” which calls to mind two different phases of Lacuna Coil’s career.
Let’s not get ahead of ourselves – this is still The Warning. It would have been easy for the band to double down into their laurels and make “Error” again, or worse yet, stumble backward into a rock and roll album about partying and public drunkenness. This power trio refuses to do that, instead writing a pained anthem like “Satisfied,” which maintains accessibility and a choral vocal, while speaking candidly about pain and relationships. This kind of songwriting, coupled with the obvious talent of the three players (and making the correct choices in songwriters to collaborate with,) is makes The Warning stand out from any number of also-ran rock bands in the last twenty years who crashed upon the shore, but receded meekly back into the ocean.
It's been a long time since a band this young caused this level of excitement in the rock and roll scene. “Keep Me Fed” well, keeps the audience fed by showing new sides of a familiar band.
