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

Please lord let Lorna Shore & Brand of Sacrifice do something next year. 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.

Don’t worry, you’ll be able to see the bias come through.

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.

Blood and Teeth is a very close second. Really it depends on which one I listened to more recently

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.

Really they’re perfect for any kind of music. Hearing him in Termina it’s almost unbelievable that he’s the same guy.

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.

I really hope artists stop doing this. I want to get some new music with my album release.

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.

They also released The Reclamation of I and the very end of the year which is so good, but I couldn’t allow myself to add it. Both because it released so close to the end of the year, and Imminence already has an album on the list. It’s basically a perfect rerecording, and I especially love how A Sense Of Doubt came out. Imminence is godlike.

Disembodied Tyrant & Synestia - The Poetic Edda⌗

[Unintelligible]

  • Literally the whole EP

I really did try to find a cool line, but I genuinely can’t understand anything except a few words here & there. It just feels really cool to listen to.

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,