Lantlôs – Wildhund

I’ve been a huge fan of Lantlôs ever since their 2014 album Melting Sun led me to a paradigm shift in the way I thought about heaviness as a guitar player. This year’s Wildhund saw a huge transformation in the way Herbst approached songwriting. These are, at their core, hook-laden pop songs, but they’re delivered with the same wall of sound guitars, massive riffs, and crushing drums that informed even their more aggressive black metal works. Another successful reinvention by the self-proclaimed Chameleons of Post-Black Metal.

Deafheaven – Infinite Granite

Speaking of chameleons…much has been said about the reinvention the blackgaze demigods underwent on Infinite Granite. But outside of the near absence of screamed vocals and lack of blast beats, this is what Deafheaven has sounded like the whole time. Many have said it sounds like the work of a different group, but it’s helped me to think of it as an unplugged album, drawing the focus to their songwriting more than the game of juxtaposing delicacy and harshness.

Thrice – Horizons/East

Ever since the sonic sea change brought by Vhiessu and The Alchemy Index, Thrice has often been called “the Radiohead of Punk Music.” Thrice is my second favorite band of all time, and I loved the last two records, but even I have to admit that they’ve settled in a bit in the last decade or so. Horizons/East, however, is the first major left turn they’ve taken since those two projects. Electronic textures and sludgier guitar work create a lush atmosphere that creates the freshest album they’ve made since Beggars. 

Mogwai – As the Love Continues

In almost thirty years, the post rock godfathers have achieved much. They’ve remade the genre in their own image, reinvented themselves several times, and have managed to sound fresh and consistent while recording what could be dismissed (incorrectly) as variations of the same album. But on As The Love Continues, they achieved something that had eluded their grasp: a top charting record. Largely led by a grassroots campaign by fans (including one Elijah Wood), it reached the number one spot on the British charts. But if ever there was a Mogwai album to deserve that honor, it would be this one. It’s an arbitrary honor, after all, but this might actually be their best.

Manchester Orchestra – The Million Masks of God

Much has been written about my late discovery of Manchester Orchestra. It might be my lack of experience talking, but I think The Million Masks of God really might be their best album. The production is as immense as ever without sounding too polished, the performances are top notch, and the songwriting is as evocative and engaging as anything I’ve heard from them. This was probably the record I put on the most this year.

Gojira – Fortitude

Every so often, I’ll hear a riff that will twist my face into an involuntary grimace, often aided by an in-time bobbing of my head. This record is a nonstop parade of those riffs. The first time I listened to it, I had to keep excusing myself in conversation with my wife because I would become fully possessed by the grooves that the French metal masters put to tape.

Bloodmoon – Bloodmoon: 1

Some collaborations are easy to predict. The common ground of their sound is a fertile ground, filled with low hanging fruit that is just as sweet as you’d picture it (see: Emma Ruth Rundle & Thou, Volcano Choir, etc). But when I heard the announcement of the supergroup Bloodmoon, featuring goth rocker Chelsea Wolfe (and her eternal collaborator Ben Chisholm), Cave In’s Stephen Brodsky, and the entirety of mathcore legends Converge, I was at a loss as to what to expect. The result is a doomy, fiery record that feels earned. There’s no low-hanging fruit here (how could there be?). Instead, it feels as if the supergroup plowed the ground with their own hands and carefully cultivated this record.

Bossk – Migration

As much as post metal and trip hop both traffic in dark, moody atmospheres, I’m not aware of much crossover between the two. This disc from the British instru-metal  outfit crosses the divide. Many points in this record sound like Massive Attack with a massive array of guitars behind them. There’s also guest vocals from Cult of Luna’s Johannes Persson, so you know their post metal cred is real.

Five Iron Frenzy – Until This Shakes Apart

Usually, when a band you got into at your church’s youth group in the early 2000s makes a political album, it’s not something you’d want to hear. But Five Iron Frenzy has always been critical of the so-called Moral Majority, disguising those criticisms in bouncing ska punk and operas about pants. But on Until This All Shakes Apart, they drop all pretense. Sure, there are some fun songs about refusing to grow up, but it’s hard to take them at their word when they spend the rest of the album offering sharp missives to hypocrisy in the Church, the cruelties of capitalism, gentrification, and conservative politics (the NRA, KKK, and RNC are all mentioned by name). This is all set to a more sophisticated palette, branching into indie rock, dub reggae, and even some electronica.

Slow Crush – Hush

The Belgian shoegaze revivalist’s Aurora blew me away when I first heard it, and it remains in constant play. Hush retains the swirling guitars and crushing fuzz (achieved through a specially commissioned fuzz pedal that they’ve since released for purchase), but the songwriting is more refined. The songs are more patient and lived in, giving Slow Crush a much more definite voice than most of their peers, many of whom are busy trying to perfect Slowdive’s dialect.

Amenra – De Doorn

This is a testimony of the odd intersectionality of media I consumed this year. De Doorn was a massive sludge metal meditation on grief, commissioned by their Belgian village in honor of the 100th anniversary of World War I, created in collaboration with an interactive public art project and performed on the site of a battle. I discovered it because the professional wrestler Malakai Black uses the first track in his entrance. But despite my low-brow entry to the album, it remains a powerful statement on grief and loss that left a massive impact on me that was too crushing for frequent listens.

Zao – The Crimson Corridor

Between Five Iron Frenzy and Zao, this was a big year for bands I listened to in 7th grade. Their 1997 masterpiece Where Blood and Fire Bring Rest was one of the albums that got me into music in the first place, demonstrating to me just what music can do to a person. The Crimson Corridor hits me in much the same way, but it achieves that by showing some restraint. Tempos are slow and clean vocals are far more common than most Zao records. The result is a crushing record that hits with the power Zao always had on me paired with a post metal sensibility like newer favorites ISIS and Cult of Luna. And for my personal tastes, that’s good news.

Big Brave – Vital

Big Brave had me at slow, sludgy post metal. But this record also explores the intersection of racism and sexism with surgical precision. One track is literally an excerpt from an essay on the prejudice against darker-skinned people in all cultures sung over guitars on the verge of feedback and glacial drums. It’s a short record, but a powerful one.

Shy, Low – The Snake Behind the Sun

Most post rock plays with an abundance of patience: songs start small, often repeating a melodic motif and building on it until the track becomes a wash of cathartic noise. Most tracks on The Snake Behind the Sun start at the loud part and build from there. It never sounds cheap or impatient though. Instead, it treks sonic soundscapes that many post rock bands dare to merely glance at.

MØL – Diorama

This is a more recent discovery for me, and it took some time to grow on me. But even before I was convinced of it, I couldn’t escape its grasp. Diorama explores the fertile ground of blackgaze conventions, but it doesn’t shy away from trve black metal the way Alcest or Deafheaven might. It tempers this abrasiveness with alternative rock riffs and a deep devotion to 80s British Heavy Metal like Iron Maiden and Mötörhead.

Least – Folding My Hands, Admitting Defeat*

I almost didn’t include this because it’s an EP, but I was not able to get away from these four tracks putting the emotional turmoil of gender dysphoria and the transition process to absolutely infectious emo tunes. The vinyl edition also came with a handful of non-album singles that are just as catchy.

Honorable mentions

Like I said, I bought way more music this year than ever before. Here’s everything I purchased, most on vinyl, some on cassette.

Älägator – Unen Syvyydessä (atmospheric slowcore)*
All Hallowed – I/II (two peace bass&drums garage punk)*
The Armed – Ultrapop (maximalist post-hardcore)
Binding Spell – English Basement (post-punk)
Blankenberge – Everything (shoegaze/post rock)
Charlotte is Mine – Someday in the Breakfast (math rock/Midwest emo)*
Cold Cave – Seven Separate Lessons (cold wave/New Order worship)
Fiddlehead – Between the Richness (post hardcore/emo)
Fotoform – Horizons (retro shoegaze/post punk)
Gates – Here and Now (post rock/indie rock)
Gypsum – Gypsum (all female shoegaze/post rock/indie rock)
Idle Threat – Blurred Visions (post-hardcore)
Morfar – Singles Collected (indie rock/emo)*
Nadja – Luminous Rot (doomgaze/industrial)
NTVTY – Quietly (my solo record! shoegaze/post-folk)*
Piroshka – Love Drips and Gathers (shoegaze/dream pop)
Powerviolet – We Won’t Sing For You (instrumental shoegaze/post rock/electronica)*
Salt Creek – Out of the Sky (post-hardcore/indie rock)
Sammy Melman – That Bird (jazz pop)*
The Silver – Ward of Roses (avant-garde metal)
Sometime in February – Here Goes (instrumental prog metal)*
Storefront Church – As We Pass (alternative/indie)
Sugar Horse – The Live Long After (doomgaze/metalcore)
Turnstile – Glow On (hardcore that grabs a ton of other influences)
Turquoise – Fermented Fruit (instrumental math rock/post rock)*
Unwed Sailor – Truth or Consequences (instrumental post rock that sounds like The Cure with no vocals)
Violet Cold – Empire of Love (blackgaze about LGBTQ rights from a country where homosexuality is against the law)
You Could Be a Cop/Amid the Old Wounds – Split (Midwest emo/acoustic emo)*

* denotes a Friend Club Records release, which you should really be paying attention to.