My Top16 of albums of 2024
I saw someone do a Top5 and I just couldn't leave it at 5 + honorable mentions.
I'm a bit out of it rn, with my nerve pain and fatigue (from the shingles I had in mid-to-late Nov / early Dec), but I'm gonna try and say something about each album. Here's my completely biased opinion:
- The best thing that came out this year. Hands down. These dudes are fucking killing it - they did it with MILDRED last year and with VOIDST★R this year. They just make the most fuckin perfect combination of hiphop and metal, it's like they're making music especially FOR ME. LOVE 🖤 10/10.
2. Borknagar - Fall
- A lyrical masterpiece. I can't remember the last time I was this deeply focused and inspired by a metal album. The post I wrote about this album was probably my favorite post to write this year and the one I'm the most proud of. Such an amazing piece of work.
3. Stoneside. - the isolationist (EP)
- I maybe ranked this a bit high, but I'm just been loving Stoneside. lately. All of their songs. Such familiar sounds, in a way, yet unique at the same time. Like, there are bands that kinda sound like them, but no one sounds EXACTLY like them...
4. Wheel - Charismatic Leaders
- I bow before the sheer talent. Plus it's prog metal, I just... I'm sold.
5. Knox Hill - Chaos Theory 2
- A solid album. Could be more cohesive, but on the other hand... I'm glad it's not. I'm glad each song sounds like it's own thing. I guess that's the "chaos" in Chaos Theory? Haha.
Solid songs, there was only, like, one that I didn't like. Bad Guy is such a banger, The Vibe for sure.
6. REAGAN - FUCK REAGAN (EP)
- The best pop album I heard this year. Even though it's an EP and not a full album, but... She's amazing, UNDERRATED AS FUCK. She just needs one solid hit song to blow up and I'm here for it.
7. DAMAG3 - 3AT TH3 RICH (EP)
- I prefer her full lenght albums, but this is still great. I like how she's starting to verge into other topics besides being trans. It's an important topic, I mean, I JUST wrote a post about why it's so important, but... Don't want to become a one-trick pony, you know? There becomes a point when everything's been said and done already, and where do you take your art then? So I'm glad she has started to feel content enough with her transness to focus on other topics for a change.
8. Mimi Barks - THIS IS DOOM TRAP
- She's got something very interesting going on, but it's very alternative... What I mean is that I think she's onto something - she's not there yet, but she's going somewhere with her art and where she's going is something quite different and interesting. But that she is SO different that I don't think she'll ever see mainstream success. And I love that she isn't trying to, either. She's just doing her own thing and that thing is very interesting to me.
9. Eminem - The Death of Slim Shady
- I get what he was going for. I've followed his career and personal life from a distance, hearing a hit song here and there, but not full albums in like 20 years. I've seen him grow as a person - i.e. being homophobic in the past but now being close friends with Elton John, a gay man - and I figured he must have made an album like this already? But he hasn't?? The timeline is off for me. Why didn't he make this album 5-15 years ago?
10. Unlike Pluto - Ghost Gardens
- Solid album. Pluto is so chill and his music is so... calming and simple, in a good way. Second best pop album to come out this year, that I listened to.
11. Banshee - SIRENCORE
- I liked her previous album BIRTH OF VENUS more, this is a bit soft. I joke in my head that "she got a boyfriend and got soft". :D Although it's probably unrelated. But you know how men sometimes talk about their male friends, like "he used to be so cool and 'a real man' but he's gone so soft now that he has a girlfriend"? It's like that, but I'm just kidding. She just used to be so badass.
12. Don Johnson Big Band - Midnight Movement
- There are some VERY good songs on this album, but it is a bit odd. They are a bit odd. I prefer their older albums, when they were less alt and weird and more jazzy and hiphop. Tommy Lindgren is still one of my favorite rappers of all time.
13. Ihsahn - Ihsahn
- from what I remember, it was a bit heavy for my personal taste?
14. Scene Queen - Hot Singles In Your Area
- Bit of a disappointment. Bimbocore Vol. 1 & 2 were absolute fire, this was... a thing. It does deserve a deeper deep dive into the lyricism, but... Yeah. So far, not her best work. A bit too chaotic and weird for it's intended purpose.
15. Bad Omens - Concrete Jungle [THE OST]
- Because it's an "experimental expansion" to their 2022 masterpiece A DEATH OF PIECE OF MIND. The peak of modern metal. The modernest metal band to ever modern. And they slap a few new tracks on an existing album and release that?? Instead of giving it another year or so and making a full new album? I hope they do that this year, regardless. They will be #1 on every single list again, for sure.
16. Moonspell - Anno Satanæ - 1993 Remaster
- Interesting concept. Taking a classic 90s "underground" style metal album, one of their most iconic pieces of work, and remastering it? I thought they'd go full out, taking the old songs but making them sound like Bad Omens or Lorna Shore, you know, Top Notch Production Quality Metal (TM), and then that'd piss a lot of people off because it's so mainstream and "a pop sellout", but excite others, including myself, but instead they just... re-released it? I don't hear any difference between the original and the remaster. Maybe my headphones are just cheap and crappy, idk? But it's such an iconic album and some of the songs still sounded good, and for that timeless piece of art, they deserve a spot on this list.
On top of these, I heard maybe three albums that didn't make the cut. Some random metal bands I thought I'd like but then didn't, that turned out to be kinda meh.
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