TOP 30 ALBUMS 2024: Part IV (#05-#01)
Ta-daaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!
The top 5 is here finally! To see everything that led to this, please visit the first three parts of the list:
Also check out Andy’s Picks (Andy Cairns’ favourite music of 2024) to complete the entire lowdown of 2024 weird music.
We hope you enjoyed this yearly retrospective voyage once again. Let us know in the comments as usual. And look out for the EP list soon too!
05.
Human Impact
Gone Dark
(Ipecac Recordings)
Human Impact were one of many artists given a raw deal when the whole world went to shit(tier) shortly after the release of their self-titled debut album in 2020. Unable to properly develop those fantastic tunes the way they should have been, on stage, and with people’s attention spans and capability for digesting deeper than usual stuff being all scattered, that album was left with the bitter feeling of profound under-appreciation, that not even the weight of the names in the lineup - at the time, Chris from Unsane, Jim from Cop Shoot Cop, plus the Puleo/Pravdica Swans rhythm section - could help carry for long. Luckily, the core of the band, absolute noise rock luminaries Chris and Jim, now joined by an equally awesome duo for the lows and beats, in the form of Eric Cooper (Made Out Of Babies) and Jon Syverson (Daughters), doubled down and made a post-plague record that’s even better, so now there’s no excuse to dismiss Human Impact anymore. Not that anyone could. These songs hit like a blunt sledgehammer to the face. The grim dose of reality in the themes they cover is a part of it, of course, but the forceful way these martial, razor-sharp compositions just become undeniable sure does amplify the darkness of the message even more. It’s like watching the news on the day after election night while someone repeatedly punches you in the stomach while whistling a really catchy tune. Which is essentially what noise rock is, or should be, about, isn’t it? There’s definitely no chill in this genre, it’s always been an urban, bleak, joyless trawl through the worst the world has to offer, and the sort of misplaced, defiant euphoria that it simultaneously offers when it’s really good, like this is, has always been somehow empowering, in a way. In fact, this is more than good - I’d as far as to say Human Impact are the most relevant, most updated example of noise rock there is today, and we are in an age where The Jesus Lizard are a band again, so that’s saying something.
04.
Geneviève Beaulieu
Augury
(Union Finale)
It’s funny that this comes right after Human Impact, as the two records couldn’t be more different sonically and in terms of approach, one coming from the ugly gutters of any big city and the other from a shadowy walk in the ominously quiet woods, but some of the feelings you’re left with after the music is over are eerily similar. Like Geneviève herself told us when we went through ‘Augury’ in detail a few months ago, “I felt a lot of grief and anger about human stupidity and evil, and I felt the need to ‘sing’ this grief for the natural world, to address it more directly this time,” so this is also music born out of a need to rebel, to protest, even to deny the state of the world as it is. Human Impact do it by grabbing a molotov cocktail and throwing it in the face of the nearest cop, Geneviève does it by retreating to the nature that we haven’t ruined yet, and it’s in the company of the trees and the animals that these otherworldly tunes are born. Using almost exclusively the “first love” that was the acoustic guitar to accompany her majestically ethereal voice and unique vocal delivery style, Geneviève comes across like a warning from beyond, a sort of a twisted angel version of a female Leonard Cohen, someone from another time leaving a potent reminder that all of this beauty is fleeting and bound for destruction if we don’t do something radical about it, and soon. Less fiery and less obviously apocalyptic than Menace Ruine, this solo work does nevertheless resonate with the same emotional intensity, and shows another essential side of one of the great unsung artists of our time. She has mentioned the possibility of a second part of ‘Augury’, and I can’t tell you how excited I am for that. Do it, Gen. The world needs it.
03.
Spectral Wound
Songs Of Blood And Mire
(Profound Lore Records)
You know the usual moaning, don’t you - oh, there’s no good black metal anymore, and all them hipsters and shit. Well, I, for one, even if my extreme metal origins were very much informed by the genesis of old-school “trve” black metal way back when I was a kid and a lot of you reading this weren’t even born, love some of the newer bands that are supposedly “ruining” the genre and not adhering to some imaginary set of fucking gatekeeping rules all those tired old men made up for the genre. At the same time, I do like a frequent blast of orthodox BM, because once you have that in your blood, it’s not leaving you, except unlike all the dinosaurs who’ve stopped exploring the underground and still wish it was 1991 or whatever, I do think the genre is well and more alive than ever, even for the more orthodox circles. Spectral Wound are, and have been for a while, the most obvious proof of this. ‘Songs Of Blood And Mire’ is the perfect, exact example of what it means to be a great black metal band in 2024. Unmistakably raw, hateful and frenetic in its relentless aggression, able to pass all the checkpoints of the anti-false police, while at the same time delivering a distinct personality with their groove-laden sound, a blatant refusal to recreate what’s been done, and a knack to find an actual song in the middle of the blazing inferno that they create with each track. Tunes, man. I dare you to come up with a better black metal song this year (or, you know, decade) than ‘Aristocratic Suicidal Black Metal’. Go on, I’ll wait. But yeah, with each consecutively more amazing record (and this is already the fourth on a constantly pushing upwards line), Spectral Wound have become what we kind of wished Watain would have, when ‘Casus Luciferi’ and ‘Sworn To The Dark’ threatened to take the genre into the next stage, while at the same time still channeling early Bathory and prime Celtic Frost and maintaining an image and lyrical agility and intelligence that is all their own. Being black metal people, we will naturally bicker and contradict and fight each other forever, but hey, let’s also recognise that we are now in a position where we have the rarest of treasures in our reach - a unanimous band that can make us all proud of the problematic genre we have embraced, and one we can all rally around. All hail Spectral Wound.
02.
Ihsahn
Ihsahn
(Candlelight Records)
During most of the year, it was obvious that Ihsahn’s monumentally ambitious album - or albums, depending how you consider it - would be the pick of the year, or at least the pick of the year within metal, which is ironic as a lot of it isn’t metal at all. And though it was released very early in 2024 - our podcast episode with the great man was actually published still at the end of 2023 -, that prediction held up without much of a challenge, apart from the late arrival of the anomaly that robbed it of first place in this list. As immense a cinematic landscape as this record is, especially considering the two versions - there is a “metal” version and an “orchestral” version of the album, making it a double, if you haven’t investigated much about it yet -, it’s refreshingly easy to explain why it’s so essential and why it’s so ahead of everything else released this year. Ihsahn is like the wide-screen version of every other choice metal songwriter, he is one of us, he comes from the same scene as us, but his sights are much more global and far-reaching than any of us. If any doubts remained that he is one of the greatest envelope-pushing visionary ever to crawl out of our metal primordial ooze, these 48:41 minutes (x2) will quickly remove them for good. There is a reason why after four full-length albums with Emperor, eight under his own stage name, not to mention smaller releases and many other projects and collaborations, the man decided to make this a self-titled release. It’s a kind of summation of everything that we have admired him for over the last three decades. Progressive, agressive, elegant, delicately thoughtful and deep but also spontaneous and wildly unpredictable, not just crossing boundaries but vibrantly ignoring they even exist, ‘Ihsahn’ is as Emperor as it is John Williams, as Devin Townsend as it is Mahavishnu Orchestra, as Voivod as it is King Crimson, as Opeth as it is John Carpenter, just to thrown some of the various vibes I got and actually bothered to write down during my many, many listens of it - listens which came naturally, as every time you press play on it, it feels like the beginning of a long journey full of exciting discoveries ahead, even if you’ve gone down that road many times before. It is a road I plan to continue traveling on many times over in the future, and I know I will be seeing many of you along the way too.
01.
The Cure
Songs Of A Lost World
(Fiction/ Lost/Polydor/Universal/Capitol)
It wasn’t a decision as such, more of a realisation, but yeah - it really dawned on me that this was going to be my album of the year around halfway through my first listen of the first single, ‘Alone’. Like, shortly after Robert Smith’s vocals kicks in. I’ll be honest with you, I usually don’t really do singles or advance songs, I’m stubbornly old and conservative in that sense, that I don’t appreciate hearing songs outside of the greater context that is the albums they are from. Sometimes I have to, to be able to have early opinions on things that I need to write about for work, and sometimes I really just can’t resist. This was one of those cases. With ‘4:13 Dream’ already dating from a whopping sixteen years ago, and not having attended any of the more recent concerts where they played some material off this new album, as soon as ‘Alone’ was revealed I immediately clicked on it, more out of morbid curiosity to see what they could possibly sound like today than anything else. I have no shame telling you that I was quietly weeping by the end of that first listen to the song. The way that it unfolded effortlessly, the quiet, unforceful melancholy of it, the absolutely natural flow of things to the point that you only realise Robert isn’t singing until he actually does at 3:23 into it (!), as gloriously as ever has with a line so potentially corny (“this is the end of every song that we sing”) if it was sung by anyone else but him… it was like finally lying down under a warm blanket after a very bad day. Knowing that nothing is or will be okay, but at least it’s over and you’re lying quietly in the dark. I could have rationalised it negatively, as is my tendency, and imagined that there could possibly be no other song with this much emotional weight on the album, that this would be that one fantastic highlight on an otherwise just okay collection of songs. I mean, these people are in their 60s, they’ve been a band for almost 50 years, they’ve done fourteen albums, how much fuel could there possibly still be in their creative tank, right? But somehow I knew that wouldn’t be the case, and listening to the full album just confirmed that unexplainable certainty.
Although it sounds relaxed in compositional terms, with several songs, not just ‘Alone’, building a mood patiently before Robert’s voice even appears, on the other hand every second on ‘Songs Of A Lost World’ feels essential, every minute has an air of sombre poignancy to it, a slightly euphoric resignation, a relief at finally letting go and realising the only things that actually matter in the end (“I know, I know / That my world has grown old / And nothing is forever / I know, I know / That my world has grown old / But it really doesn't matter / If you say we'll be together / If you promise you'll be with me in the end”). Sure, The Cure have never been exactly a happy party band. ‘Disintegration’ probably did more for my lifelong appreciation of miserably sad music than any desperately grim funeral doom band. But now, when you hear these lines sung by a 65 year old man (who nevertheless still retains everything that has ever made his voice totally unique), there is a much more touching, palpable reality to them, which reflects in the way the music frames them too. The tone is absolutely not woe-is-me bombastic sad, it’s just life and getting on with it while we still can. It’s walking what’s left of our path with the weight of all our sorrows and regrets and losses on our backs, yes, but still walking because we’ve gotten used to the weight and that’s all we can do. The finish line is in sight, and there is no song better for a final epilogue than ‘Endsong’. Robert Smith has revealed in recent interviews there’s still a ton of unreleased songs and openly talked about next releases, so this surprising burst of inspiration mean this probably won’t be the very last album as it seemed like it was going to, for some time back there. Still, if it was, there would be no better way to close out a peerless career like theirs with this song. That’s how affecting it is.
I’ll stop short of saying this is the best The Cure album because of the gargantuan importance of some of those earlier records, but none of them have made me feel things the way this has.
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Thanks, great list! A lot of this flew under my radar. Again. 🤘
👏🏻👏🏻 bravo! Great finale!