…And then we came to the end. I won’t waste much column space talking about the struggles of coming up with a best-of albums list for the year, as Chris and I spent enough oxygen on that concept already. I will say only this – I like this list. A lot. It is not as strong as many of the lists that I’ve made in recent years. (What makes this sting all the more is that I started this list last year with a diatribe about how I hoped music was on the upswing!)
It’s also worth noting that there’s been an accommodation to the circumstances in the rules this year. Those who have followed this column over the past decade or so no that there are only a few boundaries here, but they are as follows – must be original studio material; no greatest hits, no live albums, no compilations. For this year, I had to stretch the definition a little, as many of these albums contain tracks that were previously released during the pandemic as EPs, sometimes as much as a year in advance. So, still original material by the artists, but some of it is re-purposed. That’s probably a clerical note more than anything, but wanted to mention it in the interest of full disclosure.
To begin -
Honorable Mention – Spill Your Guts – The Wrath it Takes
Honorable Mention – Alestorm – Seventh Rum of a Seventh Rum
Honorable Mention – Denzel Curry – Melt My Eyez See Your Future
Three albums in the Honorable Mention category this year for three different reasons. Spill Your Guts for making me have faith that down and dirty metal was still alive and well. Alestorm for writing their most complete album to date while still maintaining their gloriously immature attitude about it all, and Denzel Curry, who didn’t match the powerful entries he made with “Zuu” and especially “Unlocked,” but still reminded us that wordcraft in rap isn’t dead.
Without further ado, the best 11 albums of 2022:
11 - Vittra – Blasphemy Blues
Similar to Vaelmyst a year ago, Vittra is a death metal band that manages to incorporate a clean, almost virtuoso-style guitar tone into their proceedings, and that combination is fresh enough and used uniquely enough here, through the lens of some old-school rock soloing, that it proves there’s still space to be explored in the death metal sphere. It’s hard not to look at “Blasphemy Blues” and hear some shade of what Power Trip might have evolved into, which is a bittersweet sentiment to be sure. Nevertheless, it always seems there’s one album that makes my year-end list based solely on its pure, adulterated power, and this one is it this year.
10 - Feuerschwanz - Memento Mori
If you read the year-end conversation between myself and Chris, you’ll know that we briefly discussed what the time parameters on our list should be. This album was the reason why, as it was technically released December 30th of 2021, thus much too late for a standard year-end best of list for 2021, but also not literally released in 2022. Nevertheless, as Chris reminded me, in not so many words, don’t take yourself too seriously, and thus “Memento Mori” makes the cut. Each year there seems to be a folky/intensely loud/singalong album that scratches its way into my top eleven list (Fear of Domination’s “Metanoia” being perhaps the most memorable one, and Turmion Kätilöt’s “Global Warning” being the most recent) and here we are again. I am apparently a sucker for this very type of record, as “Memento Mori” is nothing if not an upbeat, bounce-along ride. There is always a part of me that raises an eyebrow at including an album by what is really a lighthearted, jokey band, but here we are. As we said, don’t take yourself so seriously.
9 - Ghost – Impera
One of the things that always feels dirty in a down year for music is the inevitable feeling that a couple albums get added by default, because of the name at the top of the record. “Impera” feels a little like that. Not because it’s not a good album, but because I’ve been a staunch supporter of Ghost for a while now, and I hate to even give the impression of automatic inclusion simply because Ghost released another album. “Impera” is a good album, with some very listenable parts that really strike a resonant chord, in that catchy, bright-but-dark rock style that Ghost has become so good at. Make no mistake, it’s not easy to write songs that a wide collection of people will like. And the manufactured controversy of whether or not Ghost is metal or not is both a) stupid and b) immaterial to the purposes of this list. But it lacks consistency, has some dead spots, and frankly tries some things that don’t work. Greater sins have been committed, Ghost’s two previous albums cast a long shadow as well, and all those factors combined mean Ghost has released a good, but not excellent album. In a better musical year overall, this might not have made the cut. But according to my wife’s Spotify 2022 recap, “Spillways” was her most played song this year, and she readily hates about 70% of the music I listen to, so that has to count for something.
8 - The Warning – Error
This is the most I’ve enjoyed a female-fronted album since Blues Pills’ “Holy Moly!” in 2020 and the most I’ve enjoyed a female-fronted album that even hinted at being metal since Life Of Agony’s “The Sound of Scars” in 2019. So that makes me happy, because diversity in music is a great thing. And let’s not pretend otherwise – “Error” is a fantastic, catchy, highly listenable record, enough to easily earn its place on this list, especially in, as we’ve discussed, a down year for music as a whole. Still, half of these songs we heard before on the band’s 2021 EP, and there’s also (and this is purely a personal issue,) a certain knee-jerk reaction to including an album that has garnered enough mainstream success that I heard “CHOKE” coming out of the radio in a Quebecois pizza shop. But those are my hang-ups, and I won’t pin them unfairly on The Warning, who out-Halestormed Halestorm this year (which opening for them on tour!) and stands to stick around for a couple decades to come.
7 - BRKN Love – Black Box
Maybe rock isn’t dead? Earlier in the year, Chris and I had a conversation about how for all its ownership of pomposity and heaviness and rhythm, metal often isn’t the king of the best, groovy riffs. Wolfmother planted their flag in that argument more than fifteen years ago, and now the baton is being passed to another generation, of whom BRKN Love stands in the vanguard (and ohbytheway, do does The Warning, above.) The Canadians continue to pump out memorable grooves that have just enough fuzz to not sound too antiseptic. It’s an excellent combination that separates them from their contemporaries and makes their future bright.
6 - Destrage – SO MUCH. too much.
Much as with Ghost, this is an imperfect album by a band that has truly transcendent albums in their history. It’s nearly impossible to judge “SO MUCH. too much” in a vacuum because it lives in the shadow of the three albums that have come before, two of which are sublime masterpieces and the third (and most recent, “The Chosen One,”) which is also very good. This new album suffers for that, but it is in many ways still the most creative and exploratory music experience that we saw this year. Destrage lives way, way out on the edge, so far past the margins as to not even be on the page, and listening to them wend their way through unknown territory is in itself an educational joy. Their dedication to the unspoken credo of expanding musical borders simply through force of will and talent speaks volumes about what this band brings to the table.
5 - Arch Enemy – Deceivers
Arch Enemy has been routinely raked over the coals for leaning more and more into a style of death metal that is more accessible to listeners. Some have gone so far as to call it ‘poppy,’ but that feels like a misnomer any time we’re talking about something as visceral as death metal. At any rate, this feels like as good a time as any to reiterate that Chris and I are on board with this move – there’s certainly a place for making niche music for a very narrow audience, but on balance, more music for more people isn’t a bad thing. Arch Enemy is hardly going to be appearing on CHR lists, anyway. Maybe they’ll be a gateway drug for more death metal bands? Oh yeah, and in the meantime, “Deceivers” is an excellent album and well worth a listen for all but the most stubborn and recalcitrant of fans.
4 - 8 Kalacas – Fronteras
You know what I appreciate? Things that are different. In just about all facets of my life, but especially in music, where tunes that are purely different is a harder and harder quality to uncover. 8 Kalacas? Hardcore-metal-ska fusion? In Spanish? And done well? Sign me up.
3 - Dampf – The Arrival
This feels almost dirty. This album shouldn’t be this good. It certainly shouldn’t be the third best album of the year, when it’s a metal album written essentially on a dare by an electronic dance artist. There’s a whole subsection there we won’t get into about ‘how hard can it be to write good metal songs when this guy wrote a killer record on a whim?’ Nevertheless, the layering of instruments and the harmonies here are so good that it can’t be ignored. And if the album can be faulted a little for having a preponderance of similar-sounding songs, that minor defect is more than compensated for with the album’s closer “From the E-Ternity,” which well and truly is the best single song I heard this year.
2 - Cancer Bats – Psychic Jailbreak
For their second album out on their own in a label-free environment, Cancer Bats again delivers the goods. It’s hard to picture a hardcore band that’s been more consistent in quality over a ten-year period (and yes, I recognize that their career is longer than ten years, but the band really hits their stride with 2012’s “Dead Set on Living.”) Especially as the band undergoes a significant change in membership with the departure of longtime guitarist Scott Middleton. Similar to Clutch, though in a decidedly different execution, Cancer Bats make a lot of hay with storytelling. Their surprisingly insightful for any stripe of aggressive music, finding a way to tell general stories while including specific details that seem relatable to fans who have been through a similar experience. Which is doubly weird, because I read an essay earlier this year detailing that Taylor Swift was good at that exact same thing. I don’t know anything about anything anymore.
1- Rxptrs – Living Without Death’s Permission
So, if you combine the lyrical gravity of last year’s Dead Poet Society album with the raucous, rollicking musical stylings of this year’s Cancer Bats album, what do you get? Conventional wisdom, and indeed media editorial criteria rarely dictate that combining two albums that were #2 in their respective years (DPS last year on my list, Cancer Bats this year,) would come out with a number 1 record, but here we are! (Warning, nerdy literary reference to follow: “freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two equals four.”) The short of it is this: You got Cancer Bats in my Dead Poet Society! You got Dead Poet Society in my Cancer Bats! Now, while this is one the few albums I really feel confident about standing behind this year, it is not a perfect record (few are.) It’s heavy-handed with thematic melodrama, to the point where it seems overly insistent. Think less “Dirt” and more an accentuated “The Black Parade.” So, we are dangerously close to the full-on emo border here. Some of that is just where aggressive music is right now, so that’s completely fine, but it’s something prospective fans should know going in. That said, all sins are forgiven by the pure, chaotic, antithetical joy of “The Death Rattle,” which if “From the E-ternity” is the best song of the year, “The Death Rattle” is easily the most enjoyable.
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