My Favourite Music of 2024

A lot of things happened this year, but one of the things I like the most is the music. This year wasn’t super stacked with releases unfortunately but there were still a lot of releases that I really loved. Just because some big players didn’t drop anything

I’m not gonna be ranking them because that’s a bit too much effort for me - they’ll just be in order of release.

Albums & EPs⌗

Enterprise Earth - Death: An Anthology⌗

Death isn’t coming for me

I’ve bled him dry

• Curse of Flesh

This was one of the first new releases I listened to this year, and it really set a good standard. I hadn’t listened to (much) Enterprise Earth before this, so I essentially went into it blind.

It was glorious.

My first listen in a McDonald’s with one earphone in got me immediately hooked. Travis Worland’s vocal range in this album is such a sight to behold and is way more intelligible than most people tend to be when doing these kinds of screams. The instrumentation is also superb - Accelerated Demise is a really nice instrumental break before the end of the album & King of Ruination is really good at being Meshuggah.

If I had to pick a favourite track, though, I’d probably go with Casket of Rust. I absolutely love the vocals there and the instrumentation works unbelievably well with it.

Makari - Wave Machine⌗

Because when I’m with you

All the sadness tends to fall away, it just falls away

• Contigo

Believe it or not, I don’t just listen to metal! This is an absolutely ethereal listen from start to finish. Every song Just Works™ and Andy Cizek’s vocals are perfect for this king of music.

I didn’t quite go into this one blind - when they released Eternity Leave as a single It got a lot of play from me (as did the others) - but that didn’t harm the experience at all like it can for other albums. My Spotify wrapped has them as my no. 1 artist for very good reason, and Wave Machine is my most listened album by a pretty large margin - also for good reason. It’s just an album that makes you feel good.

Contigo is my favourite track, but And Now We Sleep In Endless Ocean is such an ethereal closing track that I would hate myself a little if I didn’t mention it. Go listen to Wave Machine if you haven’t already.

Imminence - The Black⌗

For better or for worse

Come what may

• Come What May

For once there’s an album on here that wasn’t my first exposure to the band! Imminence is super cool because of one very specific trait they have - the violin. and they’re really good at using it. I’m honestly kinda jealous of Eddie Berg being able to sing, scream, play the violin, and look cool all at once. It’s too much power for one man to have.

The Black is really a perfection of the style Imminence has been developing since Turn the Light On, and it’s just amazing what they’ve settled on. Even though they released a good half of the album beforehand as singles, it was still a really good first listen experience.

The 2 instrumental interludes (Le Noir & L'appel du Vide) flow really well with the rest of the album and are just generally beautiful tracks. My favourite has to be Come What May, but the title track is also really good - both of them just use the violin & Eddie’s vocals perfectly in my opinion. You could honestly pick anything as your favourite & I’d believe it though. Everything is good.

Disembodied Tyrant & Synestia - The Poetic Edda⌗

[Unintelligible]

• Literally the whole EP

I don’t think words can properly describe how it feels to hear this EP for the first time. Somehow combining deathcore with classical music creates one of the most powerful sounds I’ve heard maybe ever - it really hits your ears like a truck and just doesn’t let up.

It’s glorious.

I can’t really pick a favourite track from this one as they’re all so close to each other, but if forced I’d probably say Winter or Death Empress. Just listen to the whole EP.

Like Moths To Flames - The Cycles Of Trying To Cope⌗

I felt my body detach from my soul

Distorted visions of a place I’ve been afraid to go

• To Know is to Die

Another album that introduced me to the band, this one actually took a while for me to warm up to. But once it did, man did it hit hard. The whole album uses Chris Roetter’s vocals perfectly & there’s so many really good moments throughout that just made me fall in love with it completely.

It was a real struggle picking the featured lyric from this one because there’re just so many good lines I could’ve used. Just about every song has a line you can get hooked on easily, and at least half of that is down to Roetter’s delivery throughout the album. The other half is the unbelievably amazing instrumentation. Every single chorus is ethereal. Every line is perfectly punctuated. The guitar work especially is really good here, but everything else more than pulls its own weight too. The whole band just performs really well.

As for a favourite track, I think it’s Over the Garden Wall for me. The chorus is just absolutely perfect. I might’ve said Soul Exchange, but they removed it from the album proper unfortunately. I do completely understand it though, it does feel a little disconnected from the rest of the album even if it is really good.

Knocked Loose - You Won’t Go Before You’re Supposed To⌗

When your arms are too weak to reach for God

Don’t reach for me

• Don’t Reach For Me

My first exposure to Knocked Loose was Bryan Garris’s feature in Slaughterhouse, and my immediate thought was that his voice couldn’t possibly work as the primary vocals for an album. It was just too high. It almost genuinely hurt to listen to at times, so there’s no way it could work, right?

Then Upon Loss Singles released, and I fell in love.

There’s no way in hell Garris’s voice should work, but somehow it just does. Somehow beneath the piercing Mickey Mouse screech is a sound that just works perfectly for this band in particular and just amplifies the energy of their sound without making your ears bleed.

As for favourites, Moss Covers All into Take Me Home is very cool, and Suffocate has received more than enough accolades for being a phenomenal track. But I really like The Calm That Keeps You Awake & Don't Reach For Me, they get stuck in my head the most out of anything here.

MORTAL REMINDER⌗

You said you need to let me go

But the whispers in the wind speak of pain you could never know

• GLASS HEART

This band came out of absolutely nowhere last year & immediately hooked me. Their sound is so unrelentingly forceful and emotionally intense that their first singles alone made this one of my most anticipated albums of the year.

The atmosphere they create here (to me) feels similar to Ashen (Humanity’s Last Breath) from last year, in that its powerfully foreboding to an almost overwhelming degree, except here its more emotional than a feeling of “the world is ending”.

Liam Geary’s vocals are so good here. To me they feel like a mix between Zelli (of Paleface) & Alex Teyen (of Black Tongue) and it’s really cool. He gets all of Teyen’s power & dirtiness with all of Zelli’s emotional weight at the same time and he really manages to strike a good balance between fury & intelligibility.

I really love every track on the album, but I’d probably say SUFFER TO LOVE takes it. This very much depends on which one I listened to last, though.

Bring Me The Horizon - POST HUMAN: NeX GEn⌗

Cause you got a taste now, drank the Kool-Aid by the jug

So suffer your fate, oh, come here and give me a hug

• Kool-Aid

Bring Me The Horizon has been one of my favourite bands for a very long time now, so it’s not at all surprising that the album they’ve been teasing for years now made it here.

I’m not going to lie & say that I don’t miss their old style,

but NeX GEn is undoubtedly the best iteration of the more pop-adjacent style they’ve been doing for 4 years and… one album.

The heavy songs are of course all really good, especially AmEN! - that one got too much play from me when it released - but the more pop-y ones are nice too. DiE4u was a song that I really didn’t like when it initially dropped as a single, but it works so much better in the context of the rest of the album that I actually quite like it now.

My favourite track though is probably liMOusIne - it has unbelievably cool chugs and Oli’s vocals play really well with AURORA’s. Oli’s vocals are just good in general throughout really, and his voice plays very nicely with the way they use autotune.

Invent Animate - Heavener (Definitive)⌗

Before I fade, you won’t take away

The strength and the meaning behind words I say

• Labyrinthine

Where do I even begin talking about this album. Every single track flows perfectly into the next. Every line is read perfectly. Every riff is immaculate, every drum beat is perfectly placed. Marcus Vik is an absolutely ethereal vocalist to listen to whether he’s screaming or singing, and the band is just absolutely perfect at their style of atmospheric, djent-y metalcore.

The themes in this album also hit really hard. Even if the instrumentation had been lacking, chances are it would’ve made its way here regardless just because of that - their lyricism is immaculate & the theme threads through each track so well you don’t even notice you’re on the next song half the time.

Picking a favourite song from this one is really hard. The title track is just absolutely beautiful, Sleepless Deathbed is super heavy and somehow very hopeful, How We Used to Say Goodbye is a wonderful blend of heaviness & melody, Shade Astray has a perfect chorus, Elysium calls back to earlier in the album in an amazing way, I could really go on & on. Even Without a Whisper - Reimagined is a really beautiful new take on the song & works perfectly as a final closer.

So yeah, I like this album a little bit.

Convictions - The Fear of God⌗

Subject of unholy oppression

Behind the shadow of demonic possession

• Four Horses

Convictions is a band that’s criminally slept on. I was introduced to them with I Won't Survive and stuck around because nobody else really has the same emotionality that they capture in their music. It’s immensely powerful stuff thanks to heavy instrumentation and Michael Felker’s screams & Quinton Dreier’s singing playing off of each other extremely well.

Felker’s screams are also stupidly intense at times here, he reaches an inhuman sound that he never even got close to in I Won't Survive and I like it a lot. Even better is the fact that you can actually understand what he’s saying while he does them, which many a band fails to achieve.

My favourites on this one would have to be the title track for the demonic shriek near the end, and Buried in Thorns & Waking Nightmare for making me emotional.

156/Silence - People Watching⌗

I don’t wanna think of us

I don’t wanna think what we could be

I don’t wanna think of love

I don’t wanna think of how it should be

• Healing Process (Leave of Absence)

In keeping with the overall theme of this list, I didn’t know 156/Silence before this album. When I sat down to listen to it I hadn’t heard a single one of their songs, so I had no idea what to expect.

I was blown away.

Their instrumentation stuck out to me as noticeably distinct from what I’m used to hearing (maybe it’s the guitar?) and I love it. The atmosphere it creates for this album is just perfect for what its trying to be, especially in conjunction with the vocals.

Speaking of vocals, I love Jack Murray’s vocals. His screams are super intense while still feeling extremely human, and his clean singing is unlike anyone I’ve ever heard before. His singing somehow seems just barely off in the perfect possible way for an album like this, in a similar way to Bryan Garris’s screams do.

Healing Process is a super powerful closing track for the album & probably my favourite overall, but I also really enjoy Unreasonable Doubt for its instrumentation in particular and the title track is, of course, very good as well.

Cane Hill - a piece of me i never let you find.⌗

You’re gonna die and be born again tonight

• Eye to Eye (Iris)

Cane Hill did really well with this one. They’ve managed a super nice balance between singing-driven calmness and the usual aggression you’d expect from something on this list. Elijah Witt is a very good singer here and I think that’s really what pushed this over the edge into being one of my standouts for the year.

The lyrics are also really beautiful here too, so it’s nice that Witt is still intelligible even when screaming (like on Midnight Sun or Eye to Eye (Iris)) - I Always Knew We Were Doomed & How Could You Lose particularly got to me in this regard, with the former being probably my favourite on the album overall. Saying this, it’s not like the instrumentation is lacking either. Finding Euphoria especially has instrumentation so good that I think it even carries the vocals a bit.

Overall, this album is very much here for its lyrical content, so please do pay attention when you listen. It’s only 35 minutes, you can manage that much.

Tyler, The Creator - CHROMAKOPIA⌗

Never tell them niggas (or those women ☝️🤓) where you breathe at

• Rah Tah Tah

This is pretty handily rap album of the year for me. Maybe that doesn’t mean much coming from someone who definitely doesn’t listen to much rap, but basically everyone else seems to agree with me so I can’t be that wrong.

Every track on the album is a banger and I honestly wouldn’t be able to argue against anyone’s pick for a favourite of them, but I am going to give my own. Rah Tah Tah, and especially Balloon & Sticky are really fun listens, Judge Judy has a premise that I really enjoy with the pun title & it delivers on it well, I could honestly go on forever.

Fit For An Autopsy - The Nothing That is⌗

There’ll be no offering of peace

Only fuel for the fires that never cease

Fucking thieves

• Spoils of the Horde

Fit For An Autopsy is another band that I’ve never been able to properly get into until now. It’s a similar situation as with Knocked Loose where Joe Badolato’s vocals have never really worked for me - they’re just so dry & scratchy that they’ve put me off until now.

Thankfully, Hostage starts with a really beefy chug section that got me hooked immediately. The instrumentation all throughout this album is really just impeccable, and the guitar kind of feels like it has the same dryness as Badolato’s vocals to me.

I do really like how intelligible Badolato’s screams are in this, it really helps sell the message of tracks like Red Horizon (the best one) & Lurch really well. It’s a generally slower album than most, and I think that helps it hit much harder than otherwise. I also think that more chugs-driven deathcore is much heavier, but that’s just me.

Poppy - Negative Spaces⌗

Tomorrow doesn’t wait for me

For me

But it’s not just for me anymore

• tomorrow

This album really surprised me - and a lot of other people too. Poppy had already been on my radar as a “pretty neat” artist, but I never would’ve expected her to make a metalcore album this good.

Her screams in this album aren’t particularly complicated, but she’s really good at using her singing voice to amplify their impact just by the fact that they’re more aggressive than the singing. Her singing is very good here, which is to be expected since she comes from more singing-heavy music, and it definitely carries this album vocally.

Somehow, my favourite from this one might just be tomorrow - the interlude - just for the message of it. If I had to pick an actual song though, I really like nothing, the center's falling out, & vital. the center's falling out is shockingly heavy and a really nice change of pace from the rest of the album, and vital has some of my favourite singing on the album.

Linkin Park - From Zero⌗

Let you cut me open just to watch me bleed

Gave up who I am for who you wanted me to be

• The Emptiness Machine

Linkin Park was always going to be here. They’ve been my all-time favourite band for basically my entire life, so the moment I knew they were coming back this instantly became my most anticipated album of the year. Of course, I was definitely still sceptical of whether they’d be able to match how good they were with Chester, but I was holding out hope that their new direction would be good - even if it could never quite be the same.

Their new drummer, Colin Brittain, plays flawlessly here but he was never the new member anyone was really worried about - it’s much easier to hide a new drummer than, say, a new vocalist. But I think that Emily Armstrong does quite well here too.

Emily’s vocals are thankfully not a copy of Chester’s. They’re of course very clearly influenced by them, but she does well to differentiate herself enough that you’re not just thinking about how good Chester was while you’re listening. Two Faced was the single that fully got me on board with her vocals. It has (in my opinion) the best interplay between her & Mike’s vocals out of any of the tracks and it’s just an enjoyable song in general. Casualty is a close second in this regard, Good Things Go is a really nice use of her singing voice that I quite enjoy, and IGYEIH is a very nice “angry” track for the album.

I love the album to bits just based on what it represents, and I’m so glad that I can still love Linkin Park.

The Plot In You - Vol 1/2/3⌗

Spare me now

I’ve seen everything

I’ve seen all I needed to see

• Spare Me

This series of EPs has been keeping The Plot In You busy for a while now, and I’ve been immensely grateful that it’s been a consistent source of bangers throughout the year. Each volume follows basically the same structure: a sadboi track, a ’normal’ metalcore track, and a heavy one.

The sadboi tracks Left Behind, Closure, & Pretend all show off excellent instrumentation & Landon Tewers’s wonderful clean singing, while the angry ones Spare Me, Don't Look Away, & especially Forgotten show off some of the most visceral human-sounding screams I’ve ever heard. It really feels like he just lost the plot…

…and just started yelling into the mic. The emotion in these screams is absolutely otherworldly. The other ones are much harder to find a connecting thread between since they’re basically wildcard songs, but they do all have very catchy choruses.

Overall, though, I have to go with Spare Me as the best of the 9. The riff & screams are of course immaculate, but the real standout part is the chorus. Tewers’s quiet-singing over an unrelentingly violent blast beat is just genius and the breakdown makes it somehow even more powerful. I just love this track so much & I pray that they release a combined version of all these EPs so I don’t have to struggle with Spotify’s garbage queue system to listen to them in series.

Counterparts - Heaven Let Them Die⌗

Sorrowed are the eyes deprived of light

Sealed shut, yet certain of descent

• With Loving Arms Disfigured

This album is fucking angry.

I hadn’t listened to Counterparts before this, so when it was shadowdropped & I saw people all over Twitter raving about how it was EP of the year, I was a little sceptical but went into it with an open mind.

They were right.

The EP is short but incredibly sweet, with Brendan Murphy’s vocals being sufficiently pissed off and the guitar work standing out to me as pretty unique compared to a lot of modern metal seeing as it isn’t tuned to the depths of hell.

Praise No Artery Intact is the one that re-enters my mind the most thanks to its riff & chorus but A Martyr Left Alive & No Lamb Was Lost are also quite memorable. If you’re not already a fan of Counterparts then either this EP will make you one, or you never could be.

Kendrick Lamar - GNX⌗

Son, you do well, but your heart is closed

I can tell residue that linger from your past creates a cell

• Reincarnated

Kendrick deserved a victory lap after winning the beef, and boy is this one hell of a victory lap. The hype from this surprise release initially made me think this beat out CHROMAKOPIA for rap album of the year but after many, many listens, it hasn’t. This is still a very good album, but it’s not quite enough for me to say it’s better than CHROMAKOPIA.

This album flows really nicely, and every track here has at least something cool to latch on to. Everyone has already said enough about tv off & luther, but reincarnated is psychologically powerful to biblical proportions and touched my spirit more than any rap song has before. heart pt. 6 is of course wonderful & very nicely gives us a real song by that title, and gloria is just beautiful. There’s nothing else to really say about it - it’s just beautiful.

Unfortunately, I have to say that the title track is the weakest on the album. It’s not bad, but it’s nowhere near as enjoyable nor powerful as the others which I think is honestly quite a shame. At least I still have squabble up to lift my spirits.

Singles⌗

Believe it or not, I do also listen to singles! It’ll just be a list this time since I’ve rambled enough and I can’t really stretch out talking about the singles the same way I can an album or EP. I’ll also be excluding singles which became part of an album this year, but ones for future albums are fair game.

• Fit For A King - Keeping Secrets
• Spiritbox - Soft Spine
• Paleface - My Blood On Your Hands
• Paleface - Love Burns
• Silent Planet - Mindframe
• Thornhill - nerv
• Bury Tomorrow - What If I Burn
• blessthefall - Drag Me Under
• Termina - Lie To Me
• Kendrick Lamar - 6:16 in LA
• Kendrick Lamar - Euphoria
• Kendrick Lamar - Meet The Grahams
• The Weeknd & Playboi Carti - Timeless
• Signs of the Swarm - IWONTLETYOUDIE

What I’m Looking Forward to Next Year⌗

2025 has a decent amount of confirmed big releases, but I wanted to start off with a couple unconfirmed hopes that I think are reasonably likely.

First off, Fit For A King is probably going to do a couple more “experimentation” singles before they start working on an album. They’ve hinted at a lot more than what we got, so I would be surprised if we didn’t get one or two of those over the next year. I’m looking at the deathcore one & the super long one in particular, those have a lot of potential for me to like them.

I also think its pretty likely that we get something from Brand of Sacrifice, Lorna Shore, & Sleep Token next year. Brand signed to a new label at the end of last year & have thus far done jack shit with it, so they’re overdue to at least put out a couple singles (or even an album?) in the coming year. Lorna Shore & Sleep Token are both a decent way off from their last massively successful albums, with Sleep Token being perfectly on schedule to release their next one in 2025 if the historical wait times are any indication.

Unprocessed has been releasing singles too, so hopefully we get more of those or an EP/album next year cause I really loved ...And Everything In Between.

There have also been singles from AngelMaker, Bleed From Within, Signs of the Swarm, Silent Planet, & Thy Art Is Murder that will surely lead to something next year. If not an album, then at least a couple more singles or an EP?

blessthefall has been edging us with their comeback for almost 2 years now too, so surely their return album will be next year, right? Woe, Is Me has been doing the same thing for a while so one of them has to drop an album. Or at least an EP. Pretty please?

Maybe Playboi Carti will drop I AM MUSIC next year too.

Now, for a list of albums that have been confirmed that I’m looking forward to (in no particular order):

• Paleface - Cursed
• Spiritbox - Tsunami Sea
• LANDMVRKS - The Darkest Place I’ve Ever Been
• Bury Tomorrow - Will You Haunt Me, With That Same Patience
• Whitechapel - Hymns In Dissonance
• Infant Annihilator
• CABAL - Everything Rots
• Carcosa

Let’s see how many of those make it onto 2025’s version of this list.