This album is a tectonic collusion of styles. It combines the creeping and corrupted sludge of Thou with the Emma’s majestically restrained gothic vocal delivery. The effect is intoxicating and extraordinary in equal measures.
Read More
celandic musicians excel in ethereal and otherworldly. Whether it be Sólstafir, Björk, Sigur Rós or the honorary Icelander John Grant. This is widescreen windswept Black Metal. Yes, it is still as menacing as a lorry load of mutant clowns, but there is an eerie and wraith-like quality.
Read More
Another album buried by 2020. This was meant to catapult the Mancunian battlers further up Death Metal’s food chain. They were ready for this, they were hungry for this, however they have ended up (like many of us) twiddling their thumbs and watching crap on Netflix.
Read More
February seems a very long time ago. Back in those heady days of live entertainment and drinking long after ten o’clock, Delain had the World in their hands. “Apocalypse and Chill” had been unleashed to universal acclaim and they were in the midst of their most ambitious tour yet, eliciting rave reviews from all and sundry (including me). Then, well we know what happened next.... the rug got pulled well and truly from under their feet.
Read More
A remarkable album, both in how it pivots between styles and in its level of humanity. This is the sound of a soul laid bare. It explores with brutal honesty the contradictions of being seen as a role model to thousands, when you view your own life to be a disaster-zone. The level of self-awareness and self-deprecation here is breath-taking.
Read More
By far, the biggest release of the year. This is comparable with the second coming. Four years ago, AC/DC looked dead and buried. Brian Johnson had to unceremoniously and suddenly bow out of live duties due to chronic hearing loss (and was bizarrely but rather brilliantly replaced by Axl Rose), Cliff Williams had retired, Phil Rudd was battling personnel problems (including an ‘intention to kill’ charge) and Malcolm Young was dead. The biggest bar band in the world was no more.
It was last year that rumours of life after death started to circulate. We all tried not to get too over excited, but leaked photos of the Phil, Brian and Cliff huddled together outside a recording studio seemed to confirm that the old dog (eat dog) was stirring. Confirmation came in October this year and “Power Up” finally dropped last month.
Read More
One of those albums that does its best to defy description. I don’t know were to start, aside from saying that I loved it. It is extreme Metal as there are traits of Black and Death Metal, but it’s also not extreme Metal as it consists of numerous highly melodic and even introspectively ambient sections.
Read More
After a brief foray into bleak folk, Manchester Black Metal heavyweights return to what they do best. From the off this is like stepping into a hurricane. The power they unleash is quite staggering. Most Black Metal has a brittle and jagged feel to it, this however is clean and majestic.
Read More
When is a Death Metal album, not a Death Metal album? Well, when it is drenched in as much jazz, Latin influences and classical inspirations as “Mara” is. It is like they looked up a definition of Death Metal on Wikipedia and then decided to complete ignore what it says.
Read More
Completely mindboggling album. It is essentially Black Metal goblin-esque vocals over a sonic kaleidoscope. The six tracks blur into one elongated piece of music and feel like continuous tempestuous journey through an increasingly twisting and turning tunnel of pure undiluted sound.
Read More
Highly emotive, mournful Doom from Israel. This is a sorrowful and solemn album full of pain and regret. It feels like a cathartic bloodletting for solo band member Yishai Sweartz, as he uses the eight tracks to retell the anguish, disappointments and hardships of is life so far.
Read More
Well, this certainly has been the year of the dense complex swirling cacophony of an album hasn’t it? I’m sure I have already written a dozen paragraphs describing dense layered sonic soundscapes. Well here is another, but before I hit you with descriptive similia, can I just say that this album is gorgeous. Utterly gorgeous.
Read More
It feels like ages since we have had a proper bog-standard Metal album. We have had bands messing around with structures and splicing genres left, right and centre, but very little straight down the line Heavy Metal. Well here come Avatar to right that wrong.
Read More
The second part of a colossal musical endeavour celebrating the Phanerozoic geological period (and you thought that Metal was dumb and obsessed with beer and breasts). This is high concept Prog Metal.
Read More
et more Black Metal and yet another band intent in stretching its boundaries and borders as far as they can push them. I can hear the Nordic purists in the mum’s spare rooms rattling their bullet belts as I write, crying “Not kvlt”. The simple fact is that it has very little to do and in common with the music that the Norwegian founding fathers created in the early nineties.
Read More
We have come across Finnish virtuoso Tuomas Saukkonen before and his Viking obsessed Death Metal outfit Wolfheart, in fact they made number 81 in this very list back in 2018. I think I made comments about sameness and being a poor person’s Amon Amarth.
Read More
This originally was nestling way down in the late hundreds. Listened to it once but could not quite see what the fuss was about. It was only the fact that people whose musical tastes I trust implicitly were pouring plaudits on it (hello to Steve and Sabrina) that made me come back around. I am so glad that I did as this is now my hidden gem of the year.
Read More
First album in 13 years for the cult British Dòom act that share members with Winterfylleth. They have produced a dark, foreboding monolith of a record that captures perfectly the mood of the 2020.
Read More
More doom, but of a softer more emotive variety. Pallbearer make music that feels equally confessional and therapeutic. It is like they have laid the contents of their hearts and inner thoughts in front of you for your delectation. It is fragile and emotionally wrought, pained and crestfallen.
Read More
Mr. Bungle will forever be known as Mike Patton’s other band. It was from there that he was plucked in 1988 to front the mighty Faith No More and it was Mr. Bungle that he used to channel his frustrations of the commercialism of his day job. The more successful and mainstream that Faith No More became, the more experimental and avant-garde went Mr. Bungle.
Read More