Unimaginatively titled second solo album from the Slipknot screamer. Unlike the first CMF (where he steered away from any material that sounded like either slipknot or, his other act, Stone Sour) there is a lot here that is reminiscent of the type of stuff he does in his day job. He feels much more confident in his solo pursuits and therefore much more able to provide a fittingly varied smorgasbord of delicacies. 

There is a real mix of ferment aggression and fragile vulnerability. Now that he has established himself as a solo performer, he seems much more comfortable in both showing us the real him and also in going into Slipknot territory. A highly eclectic record that shows again what an incredibly talented and versatile performer Corey is. 

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Badly done traditional metal is an irksome and irritating beast. On the other hand, well done traditional metal is life-affirming and a veritable chicken soup for the soul. This is very much the latter. 

There is something wonderfully heartening about the way Tailgunner have balanced reverence with revolution. They are exquisitely aware that they are meddling in a style that has been done to death. They don’t try to reinvent but instead, they breathe new life into this potentially quite tired musical form. 

They bring an exuberance and self-awareness that many purveyors overlook. Good metal works when the perpetrators are fully aware of the absurdities and stupidities of the genre. This is a veritable love letter to every landmark trad metal release. It is aware of the frailties and inadequacies of the genre but also is steadfastly aware of the reasons why we love it. A bombastic masterclass in how you do reinvention.

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I pride myself that this list is always full of bemusing entries that are designed to raise your collective musical eyebrows. This is very much one of those curveball entries. Those with a long memory will recall that pre-matrix Keanu Reeves played with being a would be rockstar in the early 90s. His band, Dogstar, are probably most infamous for getting pelted with fruit at Glastonbury 1999 because they were, if I’m honest, pretty shit. 

Plagued by musical indifference and a shared realisation that they weren’t very good at this thing, Dogstar split in 2002. And that should be it. But this is Keanu Reeves, a man who has had more reinventions than the iPhone. During the early days of the pandemic, the three erstwhile members of Dogstar found themselves quarantining in close proximity. To pass the time they started jamming together and “Somewhere Between the Power Lines and Palm Trees” was born. 

This is the best U2 album that U2 never made and it is blindingly obvious that somewhere in the last two decades Keanu, Robert Mailhouse and Bret Domrose have all managed to find the time to become pretty decent musicians. There is an uplifting introspection to the album, and I found myself really enjoying its laid-back anthemic qualities. Conclusive proof that it might take time but there is nothing that Keanu Reeves can’t do well.

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The ninth album from the madcap Swedish melodic death metallers. It continues their fine run of form and manages to capture their inflated level of kinetic energy quite convincingly. There is an obvious continued slide towards commerciality but that doesn’t stop them from writing some pretty frantic metal tracks. 

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I was an early adopter when it comes to Prong. It was a schoolmate Greg Jackson (hello Greg if you’re reading this, or if you know a Greg Jackson who went to Wimbledon College and then Westminster High School in the late 80s/early 90s pass on my regards) who implored me to purchase the raw majesty of the debut record, Force Fed. We saw them at the late lamented Harlesden Mean Fiddler, and they were a feeding frenzy of unconnected notes, a million miles away from the house-trained metal that I was used to.

I’ve kept a watching brief over their subsequent career, every now and again diving into their rapidly evolving sound. “State of Emergency” is album number 13, and they have long since become a project of main man Tommy Victor and whoever he can get to surround him this week. I was pleasantly surprised by the musical depth at play within this album. Its tempo is distinctively thrash orientated but actually it has a lot more weight to it than that. 

Alongside the driving riffs, there is a groove to the delivery that feels almost primal. The songwriting comes across as measured and, to some degrees, experimental as if they are not content with simply staying in one Musical Lane. Overall, I found my interest and imagination much more engaged than it has been with any Prong album for the last 20 years.

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Interestingly our third proper death metal album on the list comes from yet another vintage crew still making incredibly vibrant and vitriolic records. Autopsy was at the heart of death metal's initial surge into the public consciousness in the late 80s. Like their peers, they made ugly music full of short razor-sharp riffs and gore-filled lyrics. 

Interestingly 35 years later nothing has changed. “Ashes, Organs, Blood and Crypts” majors on repulsion. The vocals are still guttural and obsessed with mutilation. The guitars still have a buzzsaw mentality and the drums still blast away with a warped military tempo. Three-quarters of the band remain from the classic line-up and it is obvious that they have quite happily grown up disgracefully. 

Time has not mellowed Autopsy, all this is done is make them slightly better musicians. They still revel in being unpleasant and in making unpleasant music. “Ashes, Organs, Blood and Crypts” is a joy because of its simplicity. It understands that the wonder of death metal was its organic minimalism and therefore it doesn’t change a thing. A wonderfully deranged album fuelled by utter intensity. 

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I usually hate this stuff. I balk at anything released this century that has the audacity to call this alternative rock. It’s usually a catchall for self-reflective indie nonsense that is a little too shouty to use the i word but is far too pristine or self-absorbed to go anywhere near metal. 

However, and there is a massive however in play here for this album to get this far up my countdown, I found this record to be deeply affecting. There is a fragility and honesty at play here that I was not expecting. Yes, it’s still got that earnest shoutiness that makes you feel like you’re being hit on the head with a rolled-up Guardian, but it is done with such emotive power that you find yourself really being drawn into the storylines within the songs.

I cared about the tales I was being told. I cared about their protagonists, and I cared about the situations that they were in. “Recovery” is not pretty but it has a raw emotionality that speaks from the heart. It is painfully genuine and that is beauty. There is truth being told here that very few records have the emotional intelligence to go anywhere near. Probably one of my biggest surprises of the year.

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The shortest album on this year’s list by a country mile. At 16 minutes it’s probably the shortest album to ever feature in one of my lists. There are other entries that are still in the early throes of their first track in the time it takes for this record to dispense with all 10 of its constituent parts. There are plenty of EPs released this year double or even triple the length that I refused to give entry to because “the list is for full-length records only”.  

I love this record though because it reminds me of why I love punk. It felt cleansing to listen to a band play proper in your face, narcissistic, corrosive punk. It reminded me of discovering Fugazi all those years ago. It reminded me of why punk is such a life force and such a necessary disruptive influence.

“Only Constant” reclaims punk from all those poses and Fairweather types who believe that Green Day, Offspring and Blink blooming 182 are in any way punk. It drags it back from ill fitting stadiums to its spiritual home of dingy New York clubs.

As you would expect from its fleeting duration this is an incredibly minimal album that only uses the scant resources necessary to put across his message. Short, sharp and straight to the point it is taking me longer to write about it than it took to listen to.

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I’ve described their previous album as being Andrew Eldritch from the sisters fronting The Cult. Nothing much has changed and this similia is still completely valid. As they say if it isn’t broke don’t fix it, as this mega alt 80s mash-up works brilliantly. This is Goth as I wanted it to sound in my teenager head. It’s big, epic and utterly bombastic. Yes, there isn’t anything particularly revolutionary going on but when you’ve got anthems this anthemic and choruses this colossal it doesn’t really matter.

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I have become distinctly disconnected with Animal Collective as of late. 2009’s “Merriweather Post Pavilion” was an extraordinary record that married ambitious prog with twee indie. Sadly they never managed to effectively follow-up on that promise everything released hence just felt a little, anticlimactic. That is up until now.

 I was expecting this to be given no more than a cursory listen and then to bail around the fourth track. However I found myself smitten as they have re-found their ability to create slight hypnotic ditties that borrow into your head. “Isn’t It Now?” has a wonderfully restrained lo-fi minimalism to it. Its delivery is almost shy and reserved and you have to coax out its treasures. 

At the heart of it are luscious harmonies and it feels like a modern reinterpretation of the Beach boys. For once they are not trying to be experimental for experimental sake and instead this is beautifully rendered subtle and low-key indie that shimmers in a reserved manner.

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Psychedelic doom from Australia. Essentially this is what Piper at the Gates of Dawn would have sounded like it had been recorded by Black Sabbath. There is a swagger to this album, the doom feels warm and immersive. The free form jazz influences ensure that there is plenty of light to be found within and the usual pensive claustrophobia is conspicuous by its absence. I would almost go as far as calling this optimistic doom.

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Yet another distinctly solo project. Tamás Kátai has been producing distinctly avant-garde interpretations of various iterations of metal for nearly 20 years. This is a heavy but also distinctly odd record. I say odd because there are dozens of moments where it feels like a communal garden death metal album and then inexplicably and with very little warning it wanders off in distinctly odd directions. 

It’s as if Tamas is suffering from some form of attention deficit disorder and he can only do the aggressive metal stuff for short bursts of time before his head gets turned and he wanders off into strange little cul-de-sacs or plinky plonk weirdness. Even though it is distinctly head-scratching in places I really did warm to its spontaneity and latent desire to experiment. In my book there is nowt wrong with being odd.

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This is an album that just accelerates in its velocity. It is a beautiful meld of precision perfect technical death metal and deliciously bombastic progressive rock. There are echoes of early Opeth but played at double speed. It just brims with creative energy, like the band had so many ideas when they were recording this record that they had to play so fast just to fit them all in. 

It is very much one of those albums that I’m finding new things in every time I listen to it. Simultaneously inventive and incendiary it is brimming with an innate desire to create and to challenge. A vibrant kaleidoscope of a thousand ideas crashing together on the shores of invention.

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There is an understated beauty to be found in this record. It is an album of self-aware introspection. It does rock and it is not overtly maudlin, but it has a restrained mannerism to it that means everything is measured and distinctly self-reflective. 

There is an emotional warmth to the songs that I usually find absent in modern post-hardcore. Usually it’s proponents are trying so hard to be genuine and in touch with their metrosexual feelings that it all gets lost on me and just washes over me in a tsunami of male angst. But “The Noble Art of Self Destruction” is a rare beast in the fact that it’s passion and pain doesn’t feel overengineered, instead there is a humility and reserved nature to its vulnerability, like they are sharing only what they feel confident to do so. 

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I’m sure this is at least the sixth or even seventh remarkable return form for Sylosis. I have given up trying to recall how many times they have been written off and relegated to the where are they now files. 

“A Sign Of Things To Come” signals yet another bold change in direction for the rapidly becoming veteran Reading four piece. We have now arrived firmly in the territory of Slipknot in their Imperial phase of the early noughties when they could do no wrong. This sounds like the album that should have followed Iowa, it’s bold, brash and chocker full of remarkably commercial violent bankers. 

Sylosis have always known how to craft a tune but here they have excelled themselves and every song on the album feels like it is an anthem genetically designed to come at the  culmination of a headline set. I do really wish they would pick a musical direction and stay with it, on the strength of this album they may well have finally found their calling.

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Tuomas Saukkonen is very much a regular on these lists. He has had entries with Black Sun Aeon, Dawn of Solace and numerous appearances with his Viking obsessed outfit Wolfheart. In an attempt gain the record for most entries with different bands he is now reformed his much venerated melodic death to outfit Before The Dawn and recorded their first album in 11 years.

His multiple appearances should tell you one thing, Tuomas knows how to make good metal and this is very good metal indeed. It is slick, well produced melodic death metal full of gargantuan choruses and bombastic soloing. It’s very polished but still manages to have its own distinct personality because of the strength of the songwriting. After all these years and all these outfits Tuomas instinctively knows how to create riffs and bridges that inspire the imagination.

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We love a bit of genre-splicing in metal. “Ohhh lets take the vocal characteristics from here and then let surgically attach it elsewhere”. In a nutshell “Across the Aeons” is power metal with gruff growled death metal vocals. It’s musical contours are epic and distinctly cinematic but instead of the usual velveteen tones serenading about swooping dragons and rambling hobbits, it is topped with harsh caustic vocals that are plucked from the very depths of hell. 

The juxtaposition works incredibly well and what can usually be a rather safe and pedestrian genre is given an additional nuance of danger and depravity. It grounds the album and provides a real textured feeling. I’m sure someone has thought of this combination before but I’ve never come across it executed so well.

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Believe the hype. This is the best thing the Stones have done, to be honest probably in my lifetime. This is the sound of a band totally at one with who they are. They’re not trying to reinvent themselves and they are not trying to keep up with any of the popular beat combos young enough to be their great-grandchildren. 

Instead this is the Stones being the Stones. It is a fabulous blues album made by the best (and undoubtedly the biggest) blues bar band in the world. The Rolling Stones are under no obligation or expectation to create new music. They have, possibly, the most well-known back catalogue in the world and it doesn’t need adding to. Therefore there is no pressure at all and this album is very much created in that atmosphere and environment. 

There is really no financial gain for any of them to make a new album so they’ve done it for fun and that’s why it sounds so invigorating because it is a bunch of mates who know each other inside out making music for the sake of making music. 

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Believe The Hype(ish) pt. 2. This was very much one of the most trumpeted metal releases of the year. The hyperbole that circulated around this record was unreal. The truth is it is not quite the Messiah but it is still a very very good and inventive heavy metal album.

It finds an interesting new direction to take black metal, marrying it with the musical traditions of America’s indigenous population. There is raw organic feel to the use of native American flute and other traditional instrumentation, that intersects well with the intensity of the well oiled black metal. A confident and Incitive release that is not afraid to take chances.

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