We’re all familiar with the axiomatic mixing of ingredients into some greater whole. The most common refrain used to illustrate this concept is “you got peanut butter in my chocolate! You got chocolate in my peanut butter!”
Now, take that as a basic principle, and add in rainbow sprinkles and a cherry, and you get something musically akin to Krystal System’s new LP Da Punch.
Like a musically self-aware Voltron, the French electro-metal duo (which hardly seems like enough of an epithet to encapsulate what the band displays, but that’s what they call themselves) folds in pieces of a veritable panoply of genres to make something new. Pop punk, old-school industrial, electronic, rock, and even a taste of those big, atmospheric Fear Factory ballads all blend into a sugary album of ear candy that’s hard not to smile at. And, oh by the way, half the songs are in French.
Certain constants of music remain immutable. One of them is the intrinsic appeal of the descending scale. Every band and every genre has played with it, from the haunting tones of Led Zeppelin’s “Dazed and Confused,” to the thumping bravado of DMX’s “X Gon’ Give It To Ya.” Right from the beginning of “Someday,” Krystal System dives into that same pool, filtering it through distortion and airier vocals than either of those other two examples, creating a song that buzzes with venom, particularly as it moves into the thunderous pre-chorus and ultimately into the catharsis of the chorus. Never mind the hints of alternative that color the margins.
Not to be outdone for versatility, Da Punch then moves into “Eclats Rouges” (“red flashes,” for the uninitiated,) which, with apologies to the band for saying so, is a pop punk song with a singalong chorus that just happens to have some electronic overtones.
Step by step, Krystal System moves from form to form, and without warning, the next two songs take us through a loving tour of KMFDM records from the early ‘90s. We’re taken on a journey of both the pure industrial drive of “Iryna’s song” (think “Rip the System,”) and then the proto-industrial metal of “Neon Cage” (akin to the entire Nihil album,) right down to the machine-gun drum machine sample.
One last highlight - “Soleil Noir”...well, it’s gonna sound odd, but the best descriptor of this song is that it sounds like the Pixies covered the boss battle music from the old Raiden video game series. In French. Yeah, that makes no sense. But trust us, for all that your instincts are saying that can’t work, this song is, as the kids say, a bop.
There are several bands who have been lauded on these pages for their ability to stretch the definitions of genre or outright exceed them by reaching for disparate elements and flexing their adaptability. Where Krystal System and Da Punch differ from those bands is that they reach outside those boundaries, but rather than adapt to the form, they make the form adapt to them, cramming and mangling other styles into their own existing idiom until the machine hums with life.
It should be noted that even on an album such as this, creativity in this mold can only be stretched so far - and while Krystal System accomplishes a hell of a lot on this record, the songs we didn’t discuss here are fine, but are permutations of the twists and turns already mentioned. Which is in no way a knock, more of a note for accuracy’s sake.
Da Punch is one of the finest albums to come out this year, hands down. It is energetic, explosive, exploratory, expansive, and a bunch of other adjectives that don’t start with the letter ‘e.’ It’s hard not to get caught up in the infectiousness of the beats and the groove.
Lingering guilt. That’s what this review is about.
Way back in 2012, an editorial was written on the forerunner of this website, detailing the ten best albums of that year. That editorial listed Admiral Sir Cloudesley Shovell’s album Don’t Hear it…Fear It! as the best album of the year. On a list that included some all-time luminary albums such as The Sword’s Apocryphon, Cancer Bats’ Dead Set on Living and Graveyard’s Lights Out.
And there was nothing wrong with Don’t Hear It…Fear it!...but there is no way on this blue earth that it was the album of the year over some of the heavyweights listed above. The mistake was immediate and irreparable.
So, each time The Shovell decides to release new music, the same guilty party that made that mistake devotes time and energy to the new record, to see if something can be gleaned from The Shovell’s progression that makes the guilt sting just a little less.
And so the exercise repeats, as the band stands to release their fifth full length album, “The Trouble with the Shovell.”
It’s…fine. It’s an enjoyable record. There are some great moments at the end, like “Blue Mountain Dust,” which evokes memories of the band’s best song, “Don’t Hear it…Fear It!” (not to be confused with the album of the same name,) and “Another Greasy Spoon,” which as the title suggests, is classic blues sleaze rock in its best and final form.
Really, the whole record is a dirty, grimy rock experience, which fits well into what the idiom of The Shovell has always been, lo, these eighteen years. Just pop on album opener “Laughing Gravy,” and be reminded of the same kind of mood that allowed Black Sabbath to open Master of Reality with “Sweet Leaf.”
The difference is, Master of Reality is so much more than that opening track, evolving into “Children of the Grave”and ultimately into the enduring classic “Into the Void.” By contrast The Trouble With the Shovell never really moves past “Laughing Gravy” to become something more. So, if you like the first track, you’ll like most of what follows. And if you don’t, well…
There is the brief moment of “Kind Boy” which bops along with something almost akin to the upbeat tempos of classic southern rock, and that’s a fun interlude as The Shovell channels their inner Golden Earring. As far as versatility goes, that’s about all that’s on offer, though.
It takes a minute. Do that thing that’s so hard to do in our modern society of up-to-the-minute shitposting and instant gratification and new, uniquely unfulfilling content around every rhythmic click of the second hand.
Be patient.
That’s how you’ll get the most out of Portland’s Hoaxed and their new album Death Knocks. Don’t look for the big bang, the rumbling earthquake, the thundering catharsis. There’s a certain kneejerk desire to compare Hoaxed to, say, Royal Thunder, and while there are similarities, that comparison is a misstep. Hoaxed wins by playing the long game. This is, if it can be said, low-fi dark rock beats for the discerning ear.
Instead, listen for the quiet, defeated desperation of Kat Keo’s vocals, the slow burn, the simmering boil that the album employs again and again. Be patient. It’ll come. Give the record two complete listens. Three. Six. Close your eyes, ignore the distractions. Put your phone away and get lost in the swirling sea of the record as it takes the first three songs to build to the crescendo of the fourth, “The Fallen.” You read that right - it takes more than ten minutes and three songs of clever layering, brooding harmony and slowly building might to get to the album’s first release point.
There’s an interlude called “Looking Glass” (sadly, not a cover of the sublimely excellent song of the same name by Cave of Swimmers, which I bring up only because I would ADORE it if Hoaxed sank their fangs into it and came up with their version,) and even that interlude is crafted and thoughtful and an inexorable piece of the whole. It’s haunting and cinematic and tangentially reminiscent of the work Goblin did for Dario Argento in the late ‘70s (watch Suspiria. Thank me later.)
All that, all that just to get to the album’s best song, “Dead Ringer.” The cut rolls out with an Iommi-ian riff, and then bridges into something dark and staccato and threatening, until the chorus erupts into a strained, chaotic singalong. It’s one of the few choruses on the album that does so, which makes it stand out all the more. If you’ll pardon the vernacular, it’s so damn cool. Hoaxed shows us a glimpse of their power in a way that would make last year’s darling Year of the Cobra look at each other and say “maybe we need a guitarist.”
There are no bad songs on Death Knocks. No wasted space. If there is a criticism that’s fair to levy at all, it’s what we discussed in the opening part of this piece - the listener must be patient with Death Knocks. It’s not going to explode out of the speakers at you. That’s not how it’s designed, not what the band is going for, and not what Keo’s vocals are meant for. There are calculated moments of power, like “Dead Ringer,” “Kill Switch,” or the outro of “Where the Seas Fall Silent,” but Hoaxed purposefully doesn’t show that hand all the time. If you’re looking for an adrenaline fix in your rock, best move along.
If you have the patience and the right ear for it, though, Death Knocks is a deeply rewarding album that should have something novel and enjoyable to offer for fans of all the bands we’ve already mentioned, plus Blood Ceremony, Type O Negative, Ghost, Nim Vind, and you get the idea.
But be patient. Close your eyes. Breathe in your nose, out through your mouth, and wait for the music to come to you. It will.
It’s hard to know exactly what to make of Nine Treasures, and that comes with the additional recognition that the quandary is not of the band’s own making.
Most folks’ first exposure to Nine Treasures came in the 2015 Mongol Metal compilation album, alongside Ego Fall and genre standout (and brief media darling) Tengger Cavalry. Listening to that record at the time, Nine Treasures was clearly a band not like the other two - softer, with more emphasis on rock sensibilities and less reliance on metal beats and the juxtaposition of traditional throat singing against heavy guitar.
And then along came The Hu, who subsequently drew attention away from all the bands who had come previously, and became the pacecar for all metal from the Far East. Well, Nine Treasures is a little more in line with The Hu’s sense of rhythm and accessibility, but Nine Treasures isn’t like The Hu, either.
Nor do they have to be. What they’ve shown in their career, and continue to show with this new full-length album Seeking the Absolute, is that Nine Treasures has a different idiom than the other three bands we’ve mentioned entirely. Yes, they still have solid rock thump (look no further than “The Ultimate Evolution,”) but the band is also willing to explore the space in a style bordering on prog. Nine Treasures is, and always has been, more Rush than Motörhead, or heaven forfend, Metallica.
That doesn’t stop the band from blending those lines and writing a few savory rock cuts that are easy to bop along to. It’s hard to listen to “Just Like You” and not find yourself rolling your shoulders along just a little. It’s groovy and catchy, neither of which are terms often applied to many of the Mongol metal bands who have come before (with some apologies to The Hu.) Either way, it’s eminently accessible.
“Steel Falcon” does the same thing, albeit it a little heavier. Oddly enough, these aren’t the compositions where Nine Treasures feel at their best. Which leaves us in an odd place, because the basic structure of “Lonely Old Horse” is awesome, but begs for a little more overdrive to slam the point home. So, Seeking the Absolute is an exercise in paradoxes to some degree - it could punch harder in some moments, but the punch it does utilize doesn’t always equal the accomplishment of the more exploratory tracks.
That doesn’t even get into the largest complication of all, which is that Nine Treasures will invariably be judged against stalwarts like The Hu and Tengger Cavalry because of their associated heritage, but that’s hardly a fair comparison, either. Nine Treasures is their own band with their own goals and skills, and to lump them with their countrymen is lazy at best. To wit, to associate The Ramones and The Doors together because they’re both American is a fool’s errand.
Seeking the Absolute is an album with many strong points, and as noted, a few weaknesses. The critical takeaway here is that the album must be judged by the listener on its own merit, and not compared against a preconceived notion of what a rock/metal album from a Mongolian band should be.
To begin by treading some old ground - what has always separated John 5 from the crowded field of talented and accomplished guitar virtuosos is that John 5 is not up there simply to record himself playing a bunch of fancy scales as fast as he can, or offer an elaborate technical demonstration. John 5 composes songs (fine, pieces, if you want to follow the to-the-letter definition of which has lyrics and which doesn’t,) that are capable of telling stories through their movements and the pace and emotion of his playing.
His new album, Ghost just so happens to be his most accomplished in that space since the achievement that was Season of the Witch.
Worth noting: this is the first of John’s solo albums since Careful With That Axe to be listed as “John 5” and NOT “John 5 & The Creatures.” One wonders what changed, but in any event, the difference is largely cosmetic - as talented as The Creatures were (and bass player Ian Ross in particular,) the focal point is really John 5 himself, and always has been.
Anyway, to get back to the main point, please submit into evidence “A Hollywood Story.” It’s hard to know without speaking to the man what his actual intent with this piece was, but it’s abundantly clear that he’s telling a different, softer, more tender story than he is with “Fiend.” The former is a pleasant hum on a summer’s afternoon stroll, the second is a comic book come to aural life, complete with a smirking guitar tone ripped straight from the halcyon days of Judas Priest.
The title track is the closest John 5 gets on Ghost to a true exhibition piece, and the opening sequence is enough to make one think he’s going to try and top Van Halen’s Eruption. Ultimately, the piece breaks into something less solo-specific, but the same hallmarks of talent and expression are there.
Moving chronologically, the next two cuts are where John 5 shows his versatility, with the lounge-act reminiscent “Moon Glow,” and the requisite country/rockabilly swing of “You Me and the Devil Makes Three.” For as much as John 5 is known worldwide as a metal guitarist, these are passion pieces for him, and longtime fans have come to expect John to show this side of himself on his solo records as well. Frankly, Ghost could have used a little more of that.
Which is to say, the first three real cuts on the album (the opening track is an introduction and nothing more,) aren’t particularly remarkable in any tangible way. There’s nothing wrong with them, but given the spirit, fire and variety that comes later, “Deviant,” “Strung Out” and “La Express” don’t land with any real impact in the same way.
However, the best is saved for last, both for editorial purposes here, and on the album. “Executioner” might be the best song released so far this year (amidst a field of capable contenders.) It takes a lot to say ‘wow, I haven’t heard that before,’ and that’s what “Executioner” is. John 5 has never before packed so much drama into three-and-a-half minutes, and done it with such an incredible sense of tension and flow. His individual, intricate guitar part features very little variance, but it’s the pieces around it which make the song build into something great.
John 5 demonstrates once again that he has a unique understanding of the necessary balance between composition and virtuosity. If you’ve always been on board with John 5’s solo career, nothing changes here except that you’ve another album to add to your shelf and enjoy. If his previous effort, Sinner left you feeling unfulfilled, come back around and try Ghost. You won’t be disappointed.
Ughhhh, Chris is gonna be so mad at me about this.
Halestorm is a band I respect a lot. They’re the top of my list when it comes to ‘bands I saw live back when they were nobody.’ I first saw them in 2009 with a couple hundred other people. I wasn’t even there for them - I was there because a music promoter wanted me to check out The Veer Union, one of the opening bands. I stuck around to see what the headliner was all about, and I’ve been following Halestorm ever since.
I haven’t loved everything they’ve done, I’ll be honest. And that’s okay, they’re not writing albums for me, nor should they.
“Everest” is the first time though, when I’m wondering where this album is coming from, and what’s driving it.
It starts off promising enough - the lead cut, “Fallen Star” is, to my sensibilities, the best on the record and offers the best glimpse of Halestorm in their truest form. Lizzy Hale, rightfully so, gets the lion’s share of attention that comes Halestorm’s way, but there are three other very talented musicians making music on all their records, and this lead track is the one that best showcases the balance of all of them.
Skipping down a couple cuts, I want to address “Like a Woman Can.” Lzzy has always been willing to be more literal than most mainstream vocalists in her sexual allegory, which is to say there is rarely any allegory at all, and “Like a Woman Can” is no different. The song is strikingly seductive and sexually charged, which is refreshing as opposed to the clumsy, juvenile metaphors about cars or playing cards or whatever else that dumb, sweaty men tend to write. It is, in many ways, one of the album’s jewels.
But I’m a long-time media member, and that makes me cynical. It makes me constantly wonder about the ‘why’ and ‘how’ of a thing. Lzzy is publicly bisexual, so it’s not like the song is contrived or made up - it comes from a place of absolute authenticity. But here’s what I don’t want to happen. A thing can be manipulated to two purposes, and this song would no doubt be an easy sell to a horny, middle-aged, male-dominated rock audience. I am certain this song will be pushed, possibly by the label more than by Halestorm themselves, and what is meant to be an empowering female anthem could well be perverted to commercial or other nefarious ends. And that makes me cringe just a little as I listen to it.
And then we come to “Rain Your Blood On Me” and now I’m confused. In the middle there’s this whole thrash-y, big chorus, kinda Overkill-y section that’s cool and definitely grabs attention the first time you hear it, but some of that attention grabbing is because Halestorm has never really done THAT before. And there’s nothing wrong with the central riff that the song already had - it’s punchy and strong of its own volition, so the section in the middle feels air-dropped in, and out of place.
Then we come to a series of hair metal ballads, and they’re all, to me, indistinguishable from each other, except that they all remind me of that part in the “November Rain” video where Slash is playing guitar out in the desert and being filmed from a helicopter. Halestorm has always had this side to them, with varying degrees of success. All of these lean heavily into Lzzy’s vocal prowess, which is a safe bet as she remains one of the most impressively vibrant voices in modern rock, but this crop of ballads in particular feels very much like a throwback to an era that Halestorm was never a part of.
When I first saw the album track list, I was immediately nervous about “K-I-L-L-I-N-G.” I needn’t have been. This is an old school Halestorm thumper, something that would have felt perfectly at home on their first two albums, along with “Fallen Star.” It’s a stark reminder that the interplay of the band members, and the arrangement of the music, is of prominent importance in everything Halestorm does. Is it the highest form of Halestorm's art? Nah. But it's simple and fun.
The album closes with “How Will You Remember Me”...okay, let me reference what Chris said first. It’s well executed, and Lzzy shines on it. I agree with all that. On the other hand, the motif of ‘hey, remember when we were carefree and young and hung out drinkin’,’ has spent more time in the oven than a twice-baked potato, and makes a lazy appeal to the basest of sentimentality. There’s nothing wrong with being nostalgic for better days in and of itself, but I’m surprised that a band as lyrically provocative and accustomed to taking on complex issues as Halestorm couldn’t find a more creative or articulate way to say it.
“Everest” has a fair amount of likeable material, but there’s also some questionable decision-making. The band is allowed to experiment with whatever sounds and hallmarks they want, but in particular the reliance on the big rock ballad on the album’s second half feels a little forced and not like Halestorm at their best. Tread with caution.
This one takes a little while to get the hang of, but the payoff is worth it. BRKN LOVE’s “The Program” is an exercise in reality versus expectation, but if the latter can be suspended, the former will provide reward.
It is easy, and often wise, to take pre-album press statements from an artist with an enormous hunk of salt. Words like ‘darker,’ ‘heavier’ and ‘emotional’ could be safely slotted onto a sardonic bingo card and marked with casual consistency. Justin Benlolo (who, no matter how many people BRKN LOVE puts in a band photo, IS BRKN LOVE, for all intents and purposes,) made a statement in the run-up to this record along the lines of expanding the parameters of the band, pushing the boundaries, and the usual tired cliches that every genre is rife with to the point of nausea.
The difference here, is that Justin, as it turns out, actually meant it. Written across a couple of months on an impromptu trip to South Carolina, Justin guides BRKN LOVE and “The Program” through some territory that will feel unfamiliar from the Canadian, even as it rings close enough to be recognizable.
And this is where expectation comes into play. When one thinks of BRKN LOVE, it’s nearly impossible to separate the mental image of the band from two distinct sounds - the chunky, gloriously over-distorted fuzz of “Shot Down,” and the biting hook of “Like a Drug.” BRKN LOVE, at their best to this point, has been defined by tone and by the inspiration of Benolo’s instantly catchy riffs.
“The Program” takes a few full listens to grasp, because some of that has gone by the wayside. Not entirely, of course. The guitar tone is still syrupy thick, albeit not as thick as on the band’s eponymous debut, and not even quite as gooey as the follow-up “Black Box.” The focus on this album is less about single, memorable moments and more about a long, uninterrupted ride of music. To that end, “The Program” seems more focused on melody and accessibility than on punishing moments of rock ferocity.
To call an album ‘poppy’ is a cardinal sin in some circles, but take the epithet for what it is - BRKN LOVE has composed an album that, in a different era of popular music, would have found a home in consistent radio play, more so than either of its predecessors. It’s hard to imagine a song like “Pulling Leeches,” with a central riff that has vague overtones of INXS, could dodge radio exposure, or have felt at home on either BRKN LOVE album to this point. Same goes for the bright beat of “Callous” and the proto-ballad “Cruel,” at least as far as the latter point is concerned.
The key to the entire experience is “Unholy,” which is in the middle of the record, and is the first song that really bridges the gap between expectation and production. Yes, it’s a little muted relative to the fury of “Bad Blood,” but the riff feels right, and Justin’s borderline indifferent, moderated vocal line helps sell the melody. “Unholy” in turn, serves as the Rosetta Stone for the rest of “The Program.” Once the listener understands that this album is focused on flow and melody and accessible pacing, the album opens up and the skill starts to shine through.
There is a fair criticism to be levied here that in alignment with this compositional shift, BRKN LOVE have put themselves in the nebulous middle ground of rock, somewhere between the jagged edges of Dead Poet Society, and the high-gloss perfection of The Warning. And so long as we’re here, outside of “Unholy,” there are many very good songs on “The Program,” an album’s worth as a matter of fact, but it’s hard to point a prospective listener to a “holy shit” moment, as opposed to the revelation of some of BRKN LOVE’s past singles.
In either case though, those criticisms are immaterial and don’t really matter unless the listener allows them to. It’s been discussed many times on this site, in many ways, that there are two pathways to success in music, especially rock music - either do something no one has heard before, or do something familiar really well. BRKN LOVE, specifically on this new record, falls into the second camp, and that’s totally fine, especially in light of how Benlolo stays true to most of his band’s hallmarks. Good music is good music, and however simple that comes across, that’s what really matters.
It seems like every year in music, we’re forced to grapple with the same question - is something new still good even if it’s a copy of something that has come before?
Not an easy subject to tackle, certainly - especially when digital recording technology effectively ceases the aging process of music - audio recorded digitally from thirty years ago sounds, within reason, just as vibrant now as it did then. On the off chance it doesn’t, well, time to run it through a re-mix, repackage it, and sell it again as ‘digitally remastered,’ which, coincidentally, just about every rock band from the ol’ analog days has done to gin up some royalties.
Attentive readers can probably already tell where this discussion is headed…yeah. there’s a new Spiders album.
Spiders has been worthy of keeping on the radar ever since their single “Mad Dog” more than ten years ago. The song was a glimpse of a Swedish rock band on the come up, and every successive album gives these little tastes of the band that Spiders could be. Cynically, it remains true that they have yet to display the kind of consistency that makes for a transcendent act, but there’s always one or two songs that stand out.
“Sharp Objects,” the band’s newest effort, ends up emerging from much the same mold. The album begins with great promise with “Rock n Roll Band” (not a cover of the Boston song “Rock & Roll Band,”) with an edgy chorus and bitten verses set against some honest-to-goodness rock riffs.
That promise comes back toward the end, with “Love Yourself to Death,” which is the best song on the record, and frustratingly exemplifies all the talent and knack that Spiders can bring to bear when the stars align. These two songs are everything that Spiders can be - high energy riffs, easy choruses, fun themes and lyrics, and good pacing.
Frustrating though, because most everything else on the record sounds like something else, and not in a complimentary way. “Fun in the Sun” sounds like a Rolling Stones song, “Valentines” wants to be Bob Seger, and “What’s Your Game (Miss Insane)” borrows heavily from the early days of the Clash and the Kinks.
And they’re all fine for what they are - they’re not flawed in any way, except that they don’t exceed the memory of the acts they borrow from. A Rolling Stones fan might enjoy the bulk of “Sharp Objects” for a while, but before too long, they’re just going to go back to their Rolling Stones vinyl and move on, because those songs are either more familiar, better, or both.
Which loops us back to the question we discussed at the beginning - is something new still good even if it sounds like an imitation of what has come before. The answer, in the case of “Sharp Objects” is yes, it can be good…but not compelling.
All credit in the world to Spiders for trying their best to keep this particular brand of lighthearted, two-beat rock alive. There’s a billion bands out there who mistakenly think the world needs another Quiet Riot clone, so it’s refreshing in its own way to hear rock and roll taken, if not all the way back to Elvis and Chuck Berry, at least to its most celebrated form. Since those celebrated albums still resonate, though, and with bands like countrymen Graveyard advancing the genre…it’s hard to see where Spiders and “Sharp Objects” will have a lasting impact.
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.
Have you ever seen “My Blue Heaven?” It’s a Steve Martin/Rick Moranis comedy where Steve Martin plays a New York gangster who turns state’s evidence and gets dropped off in the placid sunshine of the fictional San Diego suburb of Freiburg, California. Parenthetically, the movie is (very) loosely based on the life of Henry Hill, so some have suggested that “My Blue Heaven” is technically a sequel to “Goodfellas.”
Anyway, there’s a scene where Todd Wilkinson AKA Vincent Antonelli (Martin,) is out to dinner with a bunch of other wiseguys who are in witness protection in the same geographic area, and one of them picks up a roll from the table and declares “what the frig is this?” When he’s informed it’s a popover, he breaks it open and proclaims “there’s nothing in it!” From an Italian cuisine standpoint, it’s clear that he expects a knotted piece of bread to be stuffed with something.
“Starcatcher,” the third studio album from Upper Midwest retro trendsetters (how can you be both?) Greta Van Fleet, is the popover in this anecdote. There’s nothing in it.
Not to mince words: this album is awful. The ten tracks contained on the album all sound like rough demo cuts from the planning phase of a record that’s a year or more away. The one cut that has any real potential at all is “Runway Blues,” and it’s the most demo-reminiscent of the bunch, as it not only spans all of a minute and change, but ends on a fade-out, so the song feels incomplete even in its final form.
The trouble begins early and never lets up. “Fate of the Faithful” is a directionless mess of a song that starts with a buildup that never goes anywhere. It sets a terrible precedent for everything on the record that follows, which is that it tries to lean into Josh Kiszka’s vocal prowess to carry the overbearing weight of ponderously tiresome rhythms.
There’s a lot of harsh death metal out there, and much of it possesses more intelligible lyrics than “Starcatcher.” Kiszka seems content to settle into a paroxysm of strangled caterwauling, or in the case of the closing moments of “The Indigo Streak” and “Meeting the Master,” repetitive cooing that is in no way compelling. It’s like playing a 78 LP of Ella Fitzgerald’s revolutionary scat singing on 33 and 1/3 and living with the consequences.
Whatever you may believe about Greta Van Fleet, and there are approximately half again as many opinions about them as there are people on planet Earth, there is no denying that their most famous songs had an infectious accessibility to them, the kind of spark that ignited the imaginations of the fans and music media alike, riveting crowds and drawing praise from around the globe.
“Starcatcher” completely misses that mark. Nine of the ten cuts are perfectly happy to amble about in a laconic miasma of simple hooks, unchanging melodies and Kiszka’s strained wailing. This is a hard rock band that made an easy-listening record, and failed on that latter point in that there’s no emotional appeal in any particular direction. None of these songs seem to be about anything, made worse by the indecipherable wall of mangled words. There’s no connection here, just a pile of jumbled rhythms and occasional but inconsistent harmonies that seem to believe that their simply being is enough.
What the hell happened here? Why does “Starcatcher” boast none of the bravado of Greta Van Fleet’s previous endeavors? Why do none of these songs have any punch at all? Difficult to determine what the cause may be, but this is a clear warning sign that this train may be out of stream already. “Starcatcher” is a popover – looks nice sitting on the plate, but it has no guts, and is staunchly unfulfilling.
The last time we heard from Canada’s Blood Ceremony was 2016, seemingly in a different lifetime, for the sublime and timeless “Lord of Misrule.” That album was a lustrous black pearl of occult rock; soaked in warm, amplified fuzz and full of leering eeriness and dread. It was an album a reality apart, the kind of record that took the listener to a frightening, curious and exciting world, akin to the great works of Shirley Jackson, Guillermo del Toro and Mike Mignola.
Some seven years later, the band returns to a wearier Earth with “The Old Ways Remain,” a prophetic title, but one that also belies the album’s true nature.
This new record maintains the Old Ways of Blood Ceremony in that the bones of this lich remain true; songs that swarm with the aural locusts of yesteryear, born from fantasy and imagination and psychedelic rock. What’s new is that this album leans heavily into the psych rock of the late ‘60s and early ‘70s, the kind of motif that we last saw the band dabble in for the positively bopping single “Flower Phantoms.”
In contrast to the catalog we’ve come to the know from the band over their seventeen years, “The Old Ways Remain” removes much of the existential dread that Blood Ceremony trades in so well. That might be a misstatement, let’s be more precise – the crises of a haunting past and an uncertain present still ring true in the themes of the songs, but there is a sense of immediacy that’s been stripped away. No longer does an uneasy and likely grisly fate lurk just around the corner with ragged claws and fangs that glint in the full moon.
The real takeaway though, is that even for the stylistic shift, “The Old Ways Remain” is a damn good listen. In music, the best accomplishments often fall into one of two categories: the thing we’ve never heard before, and the thing we love done exceptionally well. “The Old Ways Remain” falls firmly into the later camp. The guitar tone has the perfect temperature for an album that aspires to channel the great fantasy/occult/folk rock of old. The album feels familiar, even as the listener hears it for the first time.
And for all the focus on the flute that’s made Blood Ceremony so distinct on all their records, the overlooked hero of all their albums, including this new one, is the flawless timing of the guitar of Sean Kennedy. Go no farther than “Ipsissimus” to hear Kennedy tail the song with a solo that fits perfectly into the pocket of the rhythm and melody, accentuating the previous three minutes and adding some snap to the outro.
“The Old Ways Remain” then moves in a few experimental directions, starting with “Eugenie” which sounds like a flute-heavy soundtrack piece, the kind of funky walking song that would be right at home during the opening scene set of an exploitation movie, following the main character as he walks through town and we see his life through his own eyes. It is atmospheric in all the right ways, even if these are ways we’ve never heard from Blood Ceremony previously.
“The Bonfires of Belloc Coombe,” incorporates some accenting violin throughout which adds dimension and depth to the piece, while the highly enjoyable “Hecate” lives at the strangest of all intersections; that of ‘60s progressive folk rock jam and ‘80s sitcom opening theme. These are all new facets of the diamond of Blood Ceremony, all unleashed at once in a single album.
If there is a place where the album could have used a little of the old menace, it would be for “Powers of Darkness.” There’s nothing wrong with the song on its face, except that the lyrical theme is the kind of thing that Blood Ceremony did with such accomplishment and aplomb for so long. To hear a song that in theory would be right up their alley consciously eschew that style is off-putting, and fans will miss the blackened edges of the band’s bread-and-butter.
That’s only one song on the album though, which is otherwise an unqualified success. It’s rare for a band to be able to recognize and utilize their old roots while simultaneously showing new elements and patterns in their music not just for one song, but for an entire record. Blood Ceremony should be lauded not only for the attempt, but for the success of their versatility. And all this is without even taking the time to address the steadying hand of Alia O’Brien’s vocal performance, which provides the anchor point between the band’s past and present. “The Old Ways Remain” is an enjoyable album for long time fans of Blood Ceremony and a good jumping-on point for those willing to dive in.
