Top 25: 2020
I don't know if anyone else has noticed but it's been a bit of a strange year... a few things happened, a lot of things didn't happen, and the music world has faced challenges that were unimaginable this time last year.
Without live shows and tours many artists have been hitting the studio to create new music or finishing off records that may not have seen the light of day this year had we not had to battle a global pandemic. As such it feels like there has been so many more records to listen to this year, and so many more new bands to discover. With this year being the first I've spent as a reviewer/critic, I have at times been overwhelmed by the amount of incredible heavy music appearing. It has also felt like the last few months particularly have seen a flurry of amazing albums, so whittling down this list to just 25 records took some restraint. After much deliberation, though, I managed to do it.
Click the names of each for Bandcamp or Spotify links.
I have also created a Spotify playlist of tracks from (almost) all of the albums, which you can check out here.
25. Gnarl - The Great Blackness (read my full review here)
My review of this one was a bit abstract, but it suited the atmospheric drones that Scottish musician Gnarl creates on this album. It's not for the faint hearted, drone metal rarely is, but this record is absolutely terrifying in it's cacophonous bleakness. It's hugely inspiring though, and the best drone album I've heard all year.
24. Xibalba - Años En Infierno
Xibalba's best album to date, a perfect blend of their older beatdown deathcore material and their more recent doomy death metal material. It's the kind of record which can really elevate a band like this to the next level and has seemed to finally endear Xibalba to a metal audience.
A massive return to form for Sacramento's best hardcore band who had lost a bit of their spark with recent albums. There was a good few years in the early 2010s when I adored this band and my upside-down peace sign shirt was almost worn out. Squalor sees Trash Talk collaborate with producer Kenny Beats and it seems to have reignited the flame that makes them such a special hardcore band.
22. Farer - Monad (read my full review here)
Dutch trio Farer produced one of the more unique albums from a new band this year, sounding like a cross between Bell Witch and Sumac. Farer's set up of two bassists instead of a guitarist gives a natural heaviness to their sound, which combined with the vividly emotional vocals and progressive composition style into a very intriguing debut album.
21. Temple Of Void - The World That Was
I tend to be more a fan of the slower side of death metal, and Temple Of Void have undoubtedly been at the forefront of the recent death-doom resurgence. The World That Was is their most consistent record yet, taking every element of their sound and refining it into a truly sublime feast of death-doom that doesn't feel like it's trying too hard to impress (an unfortunate trait I've seen in quite a few of the more celebrated death metal albums of this year).
20. Zeal & Ardor - Wake Of A Nation EP
Metal needed a record like this, and there was no better artist to create it than Zeal & Ardor. As much as this year has been defined by the pandemic, it has also been defined by the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement in the wake of increased coverage of the almost constant racially discriminatory institutional killings that have been taking place for years in the US and beyond. The incredible emotion in Manuel Gagneux's voice in the opening track as he pleads for his and his brother's lives is both heart wrenching and spirit raising in one, and the frantic heaviness of some of the other tracks makes for a stunning and vital EP.
19. Bogwife - Halls Of Rebirth (read my full review here)
One of the grooviest and catchiest stoner doom records I heard all year, and I heard a lot of stoner doom records this year! In a genre that is becoming increasingly saturated by very generic bands, Bogwife stood out as a band with a genuine songwriting talent that made Halls Of Rebirth one of the best stoner records of the year.
18. Svalbard - When I Die Will I Get Better?
I feel like Svalbard finally realised their potential on this album. I'd always enjoyed their sound, but this album was the first time their dynamic and emotive style of post-hardcore really shone. The lines between post-hardcore and blackgaze are becoming increasingly blurred, and the sounds coming out of this, such as this album, are pushing both styles to new heights.
17. Bosphorus - Slow Burn (read my full review here)
Bosphorus produced a fantastic album of progressive sludge that integrated keyboard and synthesiser leads in a way I have never heard done this well before. It feels distinctively heavy, the riffs and melodies revolve and flow into each other so wonderfully, and it's a totally addictive record that I hope will see Bosphorus soon become one the most talked about names in UK heavy music.
16. Ceremony - In The Spirit World Now (Synthetic Remixes) (read my full review here)
Talking of synthesisers! Ceremony are one of my favourite punk/hardcore bands of all time and one I do believe are severely underrated. Last year's In The Spirit World Now saw a return to form after the divisive The L-Shaped Man, and was also their most synth heavy record yet. So the decision to re-make the album entirely with synths was a genius move, and it made for one of the most joyous and fun records of the year.
15. Napalm Death - Throes Of Joy In The Jaws Of Defeatism
I don't think Napalm Death have made a bad album since The Code Is Red...Long Live The Code, but this album still managed to stand out as their best in a while; it felt energised, brutal and direct. I also really enjoyed the somewhat divisive elements of post-punk that the band integrated more openly and it shows a fearlessness that you don't often see in bands of this calibre.
14. Kilometer 94 - MMXIX (read my full review here)
This is undoubtedly one of the heaviest and most brutally nihilistic records I've heard all year. It's absolutely punishing yet simultaneously atmospheric and disturbing. The sound is certainly raw but it works in the band's favour, and for a debut album it is absolutely remarkable.
I don't think that Underneath is as good as either I Am King or Forever, Code Orange's previous two albums, but I can't deny it - Underneath is one of my most played albums this year. The heavily produced, industrial sound of Underneath feels like a world away from the endearingly chaotic hardcore band I discovered from watching them on hate5six some years ago. In it's own way though, Underneath is a brilliant album that has undoubtedly elevated Code Orange to the next level. I just hope that as they stride on, they don't forget where they came from.
A very different album to 2017's Caustic, as much as heavy and depressing music like this can be all that different. Caustic was 77 minutes of relentlessly slow sludge that pummelled you into submission, but Immersion is much less demanding. Instead of constantly hammering you in the face it slowly grows through you in a suffocating fashion. Immersion doesn't quite have the elongated shock value of Caustic, but instead Primitive Man have created a more nuanced version of their almost peerless heaviness.
I've always loved Sumac's sound, but I haven't always been so taken in by their deliberately difficult free-form way of composing music. May You Be Held really struck me though when I fully threw myself into it. There is a dream-like way in which the songs flow, a stream of consciousness narrative seemingly drifting from one unrelated passage to another but always with the same overarching aural colour, and it leaves a deep impression.
Last year's Love & Evol wasn't Boris's most convincing album, at times it felt a little bit like the band were trying too hard and in turn often losing the character which makes them such a unique entity. On the other hand NO feels like Boris in their most natural and elemental space creating whatever music they want to. Recorded spontaneously during lockdown, NO might not be Boris's best album, but it captures them at their most primal, raw and visceral, and at every step this record sounds uniquely Boris.
9. Black Sadhu - What Is Real? (read my full review here)
A haunting and truly hypnotic doom metal album that combines traditional psychedelic instrumentation into drone and doom better than almost any artist I've heard before. Each song has it's own character yet still fits within the album's musical narrative. The German trio's stunning album was one of the highlights of my year, and a record to truly get lost in amongst the chaos and confusion.
8. Satan - Toutes Ces Horreurs
French blackened grind band Satan produced one of the most memorable albums of the year. Having ended up slightly disappointed by Krallice's Max Cathexis, hearing a band like Satan producing music in a similar vein but with less focus on technicality and more focus on raw passion and energy was an absolute joy. It left me quite stunned, and the more I listened to it the more I just wanted to keep on listening.
The last gig I went to before lockdown hit us in March was to see Turnstile in London. Turnstile were of course incredible, but support band Gag were equally as stunning considering I had never heard their music before. They took things back to a time where hardcore was all about fun, freedom and expressing negative emotions in a way which you could aggressively dance to. Their second album Still Laughing, released a few months after that gig, took all the energy and vibrancy of their live show and distilled it into a brilliant piece of weird and unique hardcore that felt like the perfect catharsis for the year.
Hardly a day has gone by since August when I haven't thought about the insanely catchy riffs and fuzzy guitar tones of BlackLab's Abyss. The Japanese duo crafted a brilliant stoner doom record that amassed many of the genre's tropes and remodelled them in their own unique form. I've heard a substantial amount of generic and uninspiring stoner doom this year, so Abyss was an incredibly refreshing listen. The curious vocals and grungey melodies have given this album a special style which, despite the restrictive nature of being a two piece, BlackLab have managed to maintain across the entire record.
5. Neptunian Maximalism - Eons
This one is hard to surmise in one paragraph, and I didn't even try to review it properly because it's simply too massive a piece of music, and I mean that in every sense. Eons combines drone music, doom metal, free jazz, tribal drums and avant-garde soundscapes into a two hour long album that is psychedelia in the truest sense of the word: it alters the mind. It's still heavy, but it's heavy in a way that transcends metal, which is something to be revered. It's also a record less challenging than you might expect for something of this nature, and that is something which takes real skill and intuition amongst the array of composers that make up this incredible collective.
4. Imperial Triumphant - Alphaville
Imperial Triumphant's fourth album saw them advance the cinematic avant-garde approach they took on Vile Luxury, turning up the weirdness another notch and crafting a completely enveloping musical world. Alphaville feels like a journey through some unimaginable dystopian city; it's constantly thrilling and never fails to surprise even through repeat listens. It's garish, tasteless and quite discomforting in it's brazen disregard for any type of metal formality, but it's for all those reasons that I adored this record.
3. Thou & Emma Ruth Rundle - May Our Chambers Be Full
I was anticipating this record so much, as I know were many others, that I was genuinely worried it wouldn't be able to live up to those expectations; and I was right, it didn't live up to those expectations - it utterly crushed them. All the heaviness and eclecticism of Thou's take on sludge is brought out and made more powerful by Emma Ruth Rundle's remarkable vocals and beautiful guitar layers, and at no point do you feel like either artist has compromised any element of their style. This is a stunning record that doesn't just combine the sounds of both artists but actually elevates them to something even greater.
2. Oranssi Pazuzu - Mestarin Kynsi
My first introduction to the idea of psychedelic black metal was with Nachtmystium, and whilst I have discovered other artists doing something similar it wasn't until Oranssi Pazuzu came along that I found a band that, for me, took this idea to another level completely. They are a genuinely unique band whose way with repetition and deeply intuitive composition is absolutely mesmerising. Mestarin Kynsi is completely transformative, moving the band into territory solely inhabited by themselves, and it's the most musically brilliant album I've heard all year.
Sometimes the best albums aren't the ones which touch your brain but the ones which touch your heart. Kvelertak's brilliant fourth album Splid was released back in February, before many of us were particularly concerned that this pandemic would devastate our lives in such a way. Things took a downturn soon after, and this year has been a difficult one for me personally, as it has for so many people. The emotional bond I formed with Splid never faded though, and in the most difficult times throughout this year, this is the record that has kept me positive.
I've always loved Kvelertak's music from the moment I first heard them over a decade ago, but up until this point Kvelertak had yet to produce a record as consistently amazing as their phenomenal debut album. Splid felt like a re-birth though, and with it they finally created an album that bettered their debut. Returning to work with Kurt Ballou was clearly a good move, and the guest slots from Nate Newton and Troy Sanders are both incredibly fitting. Some fans worried that after losing lead vocalist Erland Hjelvik they wouldn't be the same band, but thankfully the truth is far from it.
When I listen back to Splid now I get genuinely emotional; this album reminds me of all the things I am thankful for in life, and more than any other album this year it reminds me of just how much music means to me. For this, and all the reasons above, Splid is without question my album of the year.
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