There is no other band on this earth like Bossk. They are not just unique, they are unreplicable. Fiercely independent, they produce music because they want to as opposed to because they have to. This is not their day jobs and this is not their primary source of income. This has given them the freedom to be beholden purely to their creative urges and reject all the trappings of the corporate machine. This creative freedom has given them the ability to build astonishing sonic cathedrals that provide the soundtrack to the contemplation of life’s big questions.

This entry does ignore our usual rule of no compilations as this is just that, a compilation. It collects rare recordings that have not found their way onto streaming sites. In many ways I should have rejected it straight off. It however has wheedled its way in to the list because of two very specific reasons. Firstly, you are not going to find these songs anywhere else. It can ostensibly be described as a new album as for many of us these songs are new. Secondly and probably most importantly it is bloody brilliant, and it would be quite simply cutting my nose off to spite my face if I said I couldn’t feature it.

Soft Play was once called Slaves but they then realised the connotations that came with that name, so they decided to rename with the innocuous Soft Play. What has not changed is their level of righteous, searing obnoxious indifference with the world. This is not an angry album. They have gone past anger. In fact, the crap that they sight and single out doesn’t even deserve the luxury of anger. This is an indignant album that looks at the world and laughs in despair. It is funny, persuasive,  pernickety and amuses itself at the general stupidity of everything and everyone else.

This album is pure undistilled heavy metal. It illustrates in its finery why I love this genre so much. It is big and bombastic and full of sumptuous grandeur. It doesn’t lose itself in its pomposity. Instead there is a blatant level of self-awareness and also an emotional literacy. Inside of the looming cathedrals of majestic sound, there is a real soul and understanding of human temperament. This is music that sweeps you away with its dramatic heft but still manages to speak to your emotional heart. It is an extraordinarily visioned album that has so much going on, but still manages to feel focused and driven.

Sonic Youth changed my life in so many ways. When I discovered them in the late 80’s, they opened up to me a world that existed in parallel to my beloved metal and contained different and more earthly treasures. This was a world of scuzzy guitars, distorted time signatures and fiercely independent aesthetics.

Sonic Youth were the stoic rulers of this alt-rock otherworld and Kim Gordon and Thurston Moore were its king and queen. Sonic Youth never once compromised in their 30-year career, managing to become a name band whilst pushing musical boundaries and fiercely nonconforming. It all fell apart in 2011 when Kim and Thurston separated due to the latter’s infidelity. They were the beating heart of Sonic Youth and with relations still to this day acrimonious and bitter, that is therefore it for one of greatest musical provocateurs that we have ever seen.

Whilst Thurston, now residing in Stoke Newington, has released a brace of solo albums it is Kim who seemingly has picked up the baton of continuing Sonic Youth’s legacy of being distinctly forward-thinking in their nonconformity. “The Collective” is her second outing under her own name and it is a wonderfully austere cacophony of experimental rock. She may be in her early 70’s but this is still a fiercely unconventional album that baths in its unconventional eccentricity.

There is a distinct air of wanting to rebel against convention and expectation. She disdainfully plays with numerous musical forms never really committing to any, but liberally stealing where she sees any virtue. What it results in is a truly undefinable album that still challenges after many many listens. This is the sound of a true auteur and musical visionary flexing her muscles of dissent.

One of the most eagerly anticipated albums of the year. Their 2021 release “Etemen Ænka” was one of the many word-of-mouth successes of the Covid era. It slowly filtered through the post-metal masses and by the end of that year, it was having rapturous overtures heaped on it from all sides.

It’s taken them three years to concoct a follow-up. “Voidkind” doesn’t let the side down and shows that the time has been well spent. Like its predecessor, this is still sludgy metal using progressive tendencies and post-rock’s penchant for variances in tempo. What has changed though is the level of urgency. This is a much more immediate record. “Etemen Ænka” tended to wander, this doesn’t. It feels much more together and collected in his thoughts. It is still an avalanche of sound with layers and layers of sonic textures, but it just feels more coordinated and orchestrated. Still utterly wonderful.

Let’s stay with grand cathedrals of sound. Alcest are an utterly unique quality. They long ago drifted away from their black metal roots, to reside in a corner of the metal universe that is utterly their own. What they do is distinctly beautiful. It purges all the hate and darkness from our music and rebirths it as something tender, delicate, and utterly uplifting.

“Les Chants de l'Aurore” (translates as The Songs of Dawn) has a heavenly and healing feel to it. It is certainly the most positive and celebratory record that they have produced. It is euphoric and life-affirming in the way it builds in spiritual and celestial waves. It is beautiful and sumptuous, tumbling forward in waves of rapture and bliss. Sunshine bottled.

Nile are a mainstay of American Death Metal. As their name attests they have a serious obsession with Egyptian mythology. This is album number ten and is easily their finest piece of work in two decades. “The Underworld Awaits Us All”, is big, brash and bold. Each track is highly animated, full of crashing guitars and immaculately sculpted hooks.

It is heavy and brutal, but also finely polished and astonishingly well-produced. You can hear every note and every shift in tempo. At this point in a 30-year career is fantastic to see so much care being put into record. Ambitious and well-oiled it shows how astonishingly opulent well-made death metal can be.

It may seem counterintuitive, but The Jesus and Mary Chain have made a nostalgic self-referential album. For decades they have fiercely resisted the urge to look backwards. During the first iteration of the career, they produced a flurry of four albums that consistently shifted in style and tone, never once taking a cursory look over their shoulder to where they had been before. But now as the second stage of the career overtakes the first for longevity, they have become reflective and introspective.

Marking their 40th anniversary, “Glasgow Eyes” is a retrospective of the various places they’ve been before. It has all the hallmarks of previous records in the shape of fuzzy guitars, dark Electronica, and slurred soliloquies. The process of reviewing their past exploits seems to have revitalised them and this is a vital and sizzling record full of energy and swagger. It acknowledges their legacy by finding new ways to build upon it and shows that even though they are talking about their past they still have new things to say.

Those of you who are long-time subscribers will recall a decidedly odd album from last year by Dødheimsgard entitled "Black Medium Current”. It did very strange things with black metal, introverting and recalibrating the entire genre into very bizarre and convoluted shapes. Well Doedsmaghird is a side project of two of the members of Dødheimsgard. They take the off-kilter eccentricity of their day job and just accelerate. This is a fabulously off-the-wall psychedelic mix mash of an album.

It is highly unconventional and plays fast and loose with anything that can be seen as musical dogmas or templates. Every note, every passage and every refrain feels bent out of shape. Anything that can be defined as music is warped and manipulated until it operates in a juxtaposition to its usual calibration. The vocals fluctuate in an unsettling manner and the instruments sound like they’re being stretched and shredded.

What you can’t do though, is stop listening. It is a fascinating record because it just seems so different to anything else. It loops around itself continually changing in shape and direction. There are no discernible patterns and it’s hard to assess where anything begins or ends. It is the lack of structure, and the refusal to cohere to any form of process that entices you as a listener. An utter oddity that somehow manages to take your breath away with the magnificence of its strangeness.

These London-based stalwarts bring us firmly back to earth. Orange Goblin play meat and potato metal. There is nothing odd about what they do and there is nothing strange about what they do. It essentially picks up the ball from the late lamented Motorhead and runs with it. There is utter brilliance in the simplicity of this record. It is nine immaculately crafted pieces of gold standard metal. Every track is a magnificent collision of thumping drums, chugging guitar and hearty vocals. It just is wonderful to listen to and rendorses your faith in big choruses and life-affirming songs. No gimmicks, no fruitless wonders into other genres, this is just metal at its very very best.

Talking about metal at its very best, Heriot are on the verge of something very special indeed. This is metal but stretched in an inventive direction. It’s brutal and jagged but they play with that aesthetic giving it real light and shade. Usually, all-consuming heaviness can be rather one-dimensional. But not here. What Heriot does is give their jarring intensity real depth and breadth. For something so colossally monolithic there is a lot of subtlety and subversiveness going on. Electronic sounds and even moments of fertility appear just on the edge of hearing. An incredibly clever and rewarding album that is metal but also unashamedly plays with conventions.

For the last decade, France has led the way when it comes to interesting connotations of metal. But Kill The Thrill has been around much longer that, in fact, they’ve been concocting a Francophile twist on industrial metal since the late eighties. They have never been particularly prolific,  this is only album number five and their first in 20 years.

Self-styled as aggressively hypnotic, this is a mournful soundscape replete with desolation and despair. There is a morose grandeur to the way that the album unfurls in waves of haunting majesty. Each of its nine tracks is wrapped in a funeral shroud of repentant sadness. It is bold and confident but also austere and withered. It is the type of record that buries into your soul. Magnificent in its melancholy.

Earlier I described Nails as being the last word in nihilistic noise. Well, I lied. Concrete Winds take that blueprint of a cacophony battering sound and push it further into the unlistenable. Their self-titled third album is an extraordinary treaty on where the dividing line is between music and noise. It is a wall of pure corrosive sound.

Impenetrable, but still just about discernible as something with a melodic structure. In its granular nastiness, there is actually great power. It is a whirlwind of pure kinetic energy. Across a short 25-minute and 1-second duration it drags the unsuspecting listener through a kaleidoscope of extremities. It is aggressive and unrelenting, but in the end, it is a rush you feel compelled to repeat.

their fifth album, they are cultivating their very own iteration of post-punk. “Tangik” takes the genuine nature and “realness” of their earlier releases and pushes it in a more emotive direction. This is a vulnerable album that sees the facade of impenetrability removed.

This is no longer a rallying call for smashing the system, instead, it is an honest appraisal of life and all its inevitable heartache and disappointment. “Tangk” soundtracks the point where the dreams of rebellion fade and the sludge of everyday existence kicks in.

Wow. This is one of several albums this year that just blew me away on first listen. Their forthright strident style, laced with great strands of melody reminds me of early REM and my utterly beloved Fugazi. Jeremy Bolan’s caustic vocal style juxtaposes well with the downbeat and subtle music accompanying it. It is melodically moody, heavy in places but also restrained and slight. It has connotations of punk but in many places happily strays into the territory of Americana.

As I’m sure is becoming evident I love records that exhibit raw passionate emotion. This is an album that is absolutely shot through with regret. The tales being told are heartfelt and haunting. It may outwardly be rather musically accessible, but it never lets the listener become comfortable.  As another critic has prescribed, this is “arena hardcore”, big songs laced with an ingrained emotional literacy.

If there were any justice in this world, Earthtone9 would be huge. They always exhibited the ability and the fortitude to be arena botherers and festival headliners. But for numerous reasons both obvious and also completely unexplainable they have never quite made it. Instead, they have been channelled down a different road, the one entitled “highly revered cult entities”.

This is album number five, their first in 11 years and only their second since they returned from hiatus in 2010. It enlists a massive widescreen sound and is unashamedly commercial, easily the most accessible thing they have ever produced. It is replete with fantastically crafted songs. Every track is a belter, and every track is a room-shaking anthem in waiting. They perfectly marry heaviness and oppressive passages with gobsmacking harmony and perfect doses of melody.

We are probably straying too far now for Earthtone9 to ever become the big deal that they should have been, “In Resonance Nexus” proves that they are still delivering the goods and are a band that still very much matters.

As I go through these records it is becoming increasingly obvious to me that this is a rather eclectic and also off-kilter mix of records. There is not much that I would call communal garden metal. There is an awful lot of albums that are happily challenging and distorting stereotypes and templates, but very few that are happily serving up gut-wrenchingly stunningly opulent metal. So, praise be to the Eternal for stepping in to save the day.

Hailing from Melbourne, Australia, The Eternal take their cue from European luminaries such as Katatonia, Paradise Lost, and Amorphis. This is a gorgeously expansive record, melancholy and miserable but also beautifully produced. In its down-heartened despondently it sounds glorious.

Mark Kelson’s vocals are fantastic, he marches ably between gothy fragility and colossal room-filling verbosity. They are offset by a musical soundscape that is sumptuous and continually stunning. A brilliant record that shows the utter wonderfulness of Route 101 metal.

Yet another entry that has wandered in from outside of metal’s closely guarded borders. I have adored Grandaddy for decades, first discovering them at the turn of the millennia when they released the utterly wonderful “The Software Slump”. Whilst they managed to release several other records (including the equally stunning “Sumday”) the wheels ended up coming off the wagon in 2006. They reformed again six years later but the death of lynchpin member Kevin Garcia seemed to spell an even more permanent exit as they headed once more into hiatus.

So the appearance of “Blu Wav” earlier on this year took us all by surprise. Grandaddy have essentially become the work of Jason Lytle alone, and there is now a real blur between his solo material and what can be designated as Grandaddy. It is certainly the most overtly melancholy album they have ever released under the Grandaddy Moniker. It is massively understated and stunningly restrained in minimalism. Musically it is almost not there, everything is in soft focus and operates at a blisteringly low frequency.

The electro-anthemic nature of past releases has been massively dialled down. Instead, we get a slow and seductive meander through Jason’s current state of mind. It feels rustic and improvised like he’s turned on the tape and is just seeing what happens. Unobtrusive and musically discreet it proves that quiet is indeed the new loud.

I start compiling this list as soon as the year starts. This means that releases that hurtle fourth early doors will initially be highly placed as frankly there is very little else to compete with. In the main, they tumble down the placings as the quantity of albums that I consider reaches triple figures. This album (with its January 26th birthdate) has bucked the trend. Every time I reassessed it, it heartily proved that it deserved its place in the top 50.

This is epic power prog with a lashing of grunge. Rush if they had been influenced by Pearl Jam. It is an instrumental concept album (the second instalment of an ongoing tale) but don’t let that put you off. This is a very modern reinterpretation of prog. The riffs have a granular raw dimension to them. They are sweeping and sumptuous, but they are beholden with a jagged edge and a scuzzy nature. Instead of feeling polished and smooth, this is a coarse and corrosive take on prog. Awe-inspiring and exquisite but tethered with a down-to-earth sensibility.

It has been often wondered how long Zeal & Ardor could run with their particular concept. For three albums they toiled with their grand idea of combining black metal with Afro-American spirituals. They have so far managed to avoid their unique style becoming gimmicky but there was always a distinct concern they were beginning to leave themselves nowhere musically to go.

“Greif” is the moment where they break out of the cycle and try something really rather different. Grief sees them pointedly trying to re-invent their sound in the mould of avant-garde pop. In the main, they succeed. ‘Fend You Off’ and ‘Clawing Out’ are both incredibly inventive tracks that see the band make fantastic strides into fresh and diverse pastures.

In fact, the album places highly because of some absolutely astonishing moments that show that Zeal & Ardor are by no means a one-trick pony. But (and it still feels weird to say but with an album that gets to 41 out of over 600) it is not a cohesive piece of work.

The previous three albums flowed astonishingly well, each track feeling that it was ceremoniously welded in place as part of a strong commanding narrative. “Greif” lacks that consistency and interconnection. I want to love it, and in numerous places, I do love it but in the end, it tries too hard to distance itself from where it’s been before. Still far above everything else it doesn’t quite pull off the grand exit from their previous incarnation that they would have wanted.