Top 11 Albums of the Year - D.M's List

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.

Album Review: Robots of the Ancient World - "3737"

Let’s be honest with ourselves – it’s easy to be a doom band.  Let’s be honest with ourselves again – it’s easy to be a stoner band.  Ergo, it is easy to be a stoner doom band.  Inboxes of music people across the globe are positively turgid with demos and promotional material concerning a bunch of greasy, long-haired denim-wearers who have fuzzed out their guitars and decided to play blues-based, eight-minute dirges in two-four time.  And all of them have a name that combines some vestiges of fantasy (or the occult,) science fiction, ancient civilization, and a color.  If someone said to you “have you heard the new Chartreuse Parallactic Ziggurat album?” you already know that it’s a stoner doom record.  Parenthetically, it’s also easy to get noticed as one of these also-ran bands.  The mere appellation of “sounds like Black Sabbath” garners attention, since the Sab Four were such innovators and masters within the art form that their name carries great cache, yet to be, and perhaps never to be, diminished by time.

With great patience comes great reward, though.  For those willing to sift through the mire, there are occasional diamonds uncovered within the burgeoning piles of run-of-the-mill muck.  Enter into the fray Robots of the Ancient World (who, yes, are guilty of the naming convention mentioned above, but bear with us,) and their new release “3737.”  

The most difficult part of being a stoner or doom band is not only being interesting in some way, but maintaining whatever it is that’s so interesting throughout the duration of the record.  Truly, absent anything else, that’s the foremost strength of “3737,” and the thing that sets it apart from the nebulous cloud of contemporaries – this album is never boring.  

A number of important executive decisions were made here, not the least of which is that the album keeps to a slim six tracks, so even though they average about seven minutes said and done (the two-and-change interlude of “Apollo” notwithstanding,) it never feels as though “3737” has worn out its welcome, even as it wends through the sloping, ten-minute curves of “Silver Cloud” right at the end.

Not only does Robots of the Ancient World elude the noose of dragging on too long by its simple duration, it makes the most of its time through the use of catchy but varied and creative riffs, and juxtaposes that against the unique-for-the-genre vocals of Caleb Weidenbach.  Caleb bites his words off, not given to the airy groaning or wailing that is so often associated with the genre (even by Ozzy, truth be told,) and the twin guitars of Nico Schmutz (great name,) and Justin Laubscher never give into the temptation of extending a song out merely because the time is available to do no.  Everything snaps, everything has a purpose, and the end effect is kind of like if Misfits-era Danzig sang for “Escape From the Prison Planet”-era Clutch.  

It's through that lens that one must view the album opener “Hindu Kush,” as the Clutch-ian chug, highlighted with just a little accent of The Sword’s distortion, is both the album’s best piece, most anthemic, and sets a perfect table for the mid-throttle selections that come thereafter.

“3737” does have some of the traits more common to an album of this type – it’s easy to get lost in the head-nodding and lose focus on the music for periods at a time, but the band shows great skill in always changing the proceedings at just the right interval to bring attention back again.  It’s worth repeating what was said above – this album is never boring.

To make a comparison to wines, if you prefer your stoner doom to be more full-bodied and rich, then by all means spin this new Robots of the Ancient World record.  Your senses will be rewarded.

Album Review: Blood Ceremony - "Lord of Misrule"

Okay, so whenever someone who’s uninitiated first encounters Blood Ceremony, there’s a general predilection to say ‘oh, it’s Black Sabbath with a flute.’  The brain connects those pathways easily, and then without further inspection, the die is cast and the listener thinks they know Blood Ceremony inside and out.

But lo, we know there’s more to the story, don’t we?  The Canadian doom-y quartet hits all those hallmarks, yes, but they also expand into further and more indirect influences, gathering a throng of musical ideas ranging from devilish to celebratory and stirring them into a cavernous cauldron of rhythm, emotion…and yes, flute.

The band that first impressed with their self-titled debut in 2008 and floored us with the apex of “The Eldritch Dark” in 2013 returns this year with “Lord of Misrule,” an album that promises both more of the same and something inimitably more.

This record takes inspiration from the old Feast of Fools, which up until roughly the Enlightenment was celebrated in England in the saturnine custom of pagans.  The celebration was always roughly concurrent with Christmas and involved, among other revelry, the naming of a Lord of Misrule, who wielded authority during the festival, but was often sacrificed to Saturn at the end of it.  The band has said that there’s no single concept running through this new record, but that the central idea was in their minds during composition.

So what does the album sound like?  Let’s hit the highlights (spoiler, there’s a bunch.)

What one notices first and foremost is that Blood Ceremony is folding in many more aspects of rock and metal than they did even in their most recent works.  To hear “Half Moon Street” is to hear an opening that swaggers like a gunfighter sauntering confidently into an old west saloon…but if the saloon were full of suspicious-looking elves and owned by dryads.  There’s an earthiness that underwrites the entire song, including into the second half when the powder keg explodes and we’re thrust headlong into a shoot-out at the Tolkien corral.  The name Ian Anderson gets dropped a lot (too often) when talking about Blood Ceremony, but Alia O’Brien unleashes the most righteous flute solo (words I didn’t think I’d type today,) since Anderson was in his heyday.  If you hadn’t gathered, “Half Moon Street” is the album’s best cut.

But wait, there’s more!  While the Black Sabbath comparisons in this genre are overused and over-simplified, they’re not always without merit.  While those boys would never have penned the flighty outro to “Loreley,” Iommi and company could have absolutely crafted the rusted, grinding edge of “The Rogue’s Lot,” a slow burning dirge that throws shadows in its wake.

We’re not done!  Tune in a few songs later and you’ll walk unheeding into “Flower Phantoms,” and now we’re hearing….sixties folk pop?  Short a tambourine, that’s exactly where we are, and the riff of Sean Kennedy is the perfect tone to replicate that feeling of go-go gone by, Michael Carrillo’s drum beat a spot-on replica of rolls and fills from nearly fifty years ago.  It’s a song that shouldn’t work but mysteriously does, part of O’Brien’s continued spell on the listener and the capable craftsmanship of the band as a whole.

“The Eldritch Dark” was a top ten album in 2013, and at the risk of making a rash judgment, “Lord of Misrule” might well be better than that record, which tells you its prospects as we forge ahead.  Blood Ceremony has dropped a nearly flawless album of retro-metal and classic rock, and it is not to be missed.

Album Review: With the Dead - "With the Dead"

Time for a tired, clichéd axiom – games are not played on paper.

“With the Dead” is the title of the debut full-length album from the band of the same name, a newly formed consortium born out of the residue of Electric Wizard (Tim Bagshaw, Mark Greening) and the ashes of Cathedral (Lee Dorrian).  With those named collected and performing together, the table was set for a gleefully drudge-laden stew that would bubble and smoke and absorb the listener in its palpable, inky blackness.

The pedigree is perfect; the legacy of these musicians in this style is beyond reproach.  The presentation, with the band pictured as pale-faced zombie priests, is spot-on.  Even the album’s length, six songs with no filler and all roughly between six and eight minutes, is proper.  With the Dead does everything right in the run up to hitting play on their eponymous debut.  On paper, this was set up to be brilliant.

So then, what happened?  This may sound like anathema, particularly to doom metal purists, but the bottom line is that With the Dead didn’t have anything happen in these songs.  There’s melody and rhythm and all those requisite parts of music, but there’s little suspense, no hooks, and no surprises.

The band does do some things very well – the vocal execution of Dorrian is well within his idiom, and he speaks the album’s emotions plainly.  One of the album’s better strengths is in allowing the listener to feel the song’s atmosphere.  “With the Dead” is very much like an Autopsy album in that regard, using plain language and plodding cadences to create a thick feeling of dread and the sensation of being lost, though this band is not to steeped in blood-spattered viscera or literal damnation.

Still, by the time you’ve hacked through “Living With the Dead,” you’re two-thirds of the way through the record and aren’t especially interested in the rest.  There’s a unavoidable feeling like the album contains no more secrets, and the pained wailing of Dorrian with the slow, churning
accompaniment of the duo behind him starts to become a slog.

What makes it more disappointing is that there are good ideas encased in this quagmire of doom.  The riffs of “Crown of Burning Stars” are well-crafted and fit the music’s idiom, but the pace never entices or excites.  It’s the same old down and dirty tar fire that won’t do anything but smolder.

The album is curiously absent of the characteristics of the bands that are Frankensteined together to make up With the Dead.  The drug-induced shambling of Electric Wizard always had a certain silver lining of enjoyable psychedelia infused into the edges and corners, while Cathedral was weaved with an attractive strain of black magic that made the songs pop from the their baseline foundations.  None of that makes it way to this record.

All the musicians involved in With the Dead have done greater things than this, with more spirit and accomplishment that this album shows.  All three are talented in their own right, so there is hope that future endeavors may producer greater results.  With that said, the paper blueprint for this one looked better than the finished product, so stay away for now.