Last year I finally broke out of the rut of starting these end of year lists off with stuff that should have been on my primary list, but weren’t for various reasons. That was always utter bullshit – I should have been secure enough to just say, “you know what? I love a lot a music and this is the first part of that celebration of how great music is.” As long as it’s heavy (and there’s a term we can probably spend thousands of words unpacking) it belongs in this space, and whether I have 9, 19, or 69 albums in my combined lists, I guarantee they all have something worth sharing, worth crowing over and luxuriating in.

So once again I want to put the focus on my favorite style of heavy music: that hard, progressive and psychedelic rock some call stoner and some call desert; I call it great and I have a dozen absolute killer albums to celebrate below the jump.

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I’ve written at length about Sergeant Thunderhoof, both as a band and about this very album. But in case it’s not clear, I’ll spell it out: The Ghost of Badon Hill is absolutely near the top my list for best album regardless of genre in 2024. That’s why it’s ignoring both alphabetical order and image size. Massively melodic, almost punishingly heavy, incredibly catchy and anthemic, it sounds like the pinnacle of what I want from this style of music. I was hoping for something along the lines of what the band did in on 2022’s This Sceptered Veil, itself no slouch (it placed 10th on my year-end list), but tracks like “Blood Moon” and “Salvation For The Soul” bring the rock element even further up in the mix, while epics like “The Orb Of Octavia” and “Beyond The Hill” take the conceptual and progressive elements to levels mirroring their classic split with Howling Giant. Anyway you want to slice it, they delivered the best album of their career, and to make it even better, my wife loves the coaster that came with the vinyl – it perfectly matches our Christmas decor in the house.

Now, if THAT’S not a glowing endorsement, I don’t know what is.

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Abrams continues to be the band that gets better and better with each release. The creep closer and closer to being telepathically tuned into exactly what I want to hear and Blue City is the album that turned them from “fun band I love when they crop up in my rotation” to “great band I immediately reach for when I want a fix of that melodic hard and heavy rock”. When you move from streaming to digital purchase to physical purchase you’ve made my shelf of fame, and there Blue City sits thanks to the propulsive punch of tracks like “Fire Waltz” and the Alice in Chains on fuzz attack of “Death Om”. Abrams have always been great at nailing a mood, but here they’ve nailed the songwriting, too. These are top-notch songs that bleed from the speakers to your brain in a way I never want to end. (covered here in the May 2024 catchup)

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Sometimes you want to rock out with some anthemic power, and sometimes you want to zone out, blissed to the nines as guitars echo across the soundstage and alight in some serious bluesy psychedelia. Well let me introduce you to Acid Rooster, whose newest LP Hall of Mirrors does just that. Four tracks of instrumental stoner/psychedelic rock that’s very guitar forward, reverbed to the heavens and the soundtrack to some of my more, um…”enlightened” states. There are shades of Can in the motorik cadence of opener “Automat” and anytime there are similarities to Can I’m in a very happy place. From there the space really opens up with the 14-minute “Chandelier Arp” that pulses with an classic period Tangerine Dream rhythm before the drums take over, allowing the synths to throb and sparkle in multiple dimensions. This is my current drift off to sleep music, except the music is so good I wind up gazing into space and letting the riffs carry me into the universe next door.

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I got into Big Scenic Nowhere, the “supergroup” stoner band featuring members of Fu Manchu and Yawning Man back in 2019 with their participating in Blues Funeral Recordings’ PostWax vinyl series. I’ve been a believer ever since, and new album The Waydown distills their unique blend of stoner desert doom into something really special. The opening title track is suitably epic, with exotic soloing and melodies buried in the sweeping dunes of the desert where desiccated skulls dot the landscape and an all-seeing eye watches you cross into a vast liminal space. At least, that’s what it does for me when it isn’t blowing my mind with the Hall and Oates cover of “Sara Smile.” Listen to how the bass on “Summer Teeth” plumbs the depths of the EQ band and how they come up for air with the 70s relic of closer “100” and you’ll understand what it is that makes this band so very special. (covered here in the Feb 2024 catchup)

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Some bands pray to the sweeping vistas of the sun-bleached desert, and some bands worship at darker altars. Somewhere in their practice space I’m sure Early Moods have a carved idol of Tony Iommi surrounded by blood and feathers and a wooden finger tip. How else to explain the spectral presence of 70s Sabbath that drips from every riff of the stellar A Sinner’s Past? “Last Hour” sounds like it could have come straight off of the earth-shattering Sabotage, while “The Apparition” evokes the same menace that Sabbath’s eponymous track from the debut does. Early Moods captures that sense of danger and excitement Ozzy, Geezer, Tony, and Bill did on those immortal six albums in a way that evokes but never overtly copies. This is massive, heavy metal of the most pure kind and it’s insane more people aren’t crowing over its many, many highlights. Your mission? Change that. (covered here in the Mar 2024 catchup)

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Lest you think this kind of music starts and stops with the US, may I remind you the desert is everywhere (even our hearts), and so is copious quantities of Lysergic acid diethylamide. Free Ride hail from Spain, and Acido y Puto is a fantastic throwback to 70s rock, doom, stoner rock and even a little funk (these guys know how to use a wah pedal). Literati Overlord Corey brought the band to my attention when he premiered the album, and honestly I haven’t stopped listening. Kicking off with the sprawl of “Space Nomad” then moving to the more rocking strut of “Outsider” I knew this was going to a band I shelled out for, but then came “Kosmik Swell” and I was completely hooked. Bonus: this also turned me onto the great little corner of Small Stone Records, and now I have a whole roster of bands with albums in a similar vein to get acquainted with. In fact, there may be one more from there further down this list… (covered here in the Aug 2024 catchup)

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I know the genre most metal fans think of when Norway crops up is black metal – and I get it (but not as much as Colin gets it). But over the years the country has really started shine as the home of some of the best progressive rock and metal out there. I knew nothing about about Full Earth before hearing a quick snippet on a YouTube channel talking about new progressive rock releases back in March, and here we are at year’s end and Cloud Sculptors, the band’s massive 1 hour, 25 minute instrumental debut sits comfortably alongside my favorite records of the year. It’s a LOT to take in: six tracks averaging around between 15-20 minutes each (there are two shorter songs at five and six minutes). You got flutes, lot of keyboards, meditative drums that explode in a frenzy of fills…but most of all you have some of the most luscious guitar this side of paradise. Come on in and sculpt some clouds, my friends…this is one ambitious and auspicious debut.

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Do I sense a theme? Another Norwegian group taking the genre and moving it in all sorts of interesting directions. Kosmodome are a pair of brothers and their take is to inject some jazz and old school prog into an Elder-style stoner rock that sits more squarely in meditative psych that desert rock. But what separates sophomore release Ad Undas from the music of, say, Full Earth are the vocals. Two brothers – Sturle and Severin Sandvik – do everything, and as a duo one of the most remarkable aspects of their songwriting is their use of space on tracks like “Neophobia” and Hyperion. I actually wrote about the band over at Consuming The Tangible so check it out and get read for some serious vibing.

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For an album released all the way back in January, Lucifer still has a firm grip on my blackened heart. Johanna Sadonis, Nicke Andersson and company might have delivered their greatest dose of groovetastic doom psych yet on V. The sound has expanded beyond the typical Sabbath worship to include influences as far and wide as Thin Lizzy (check out the twin leads on “Riding Reaper”) and even Mötley Crüe – listen to the intro of “A Coffin Has No Silver Lining” and tell me that doesn’t bring to mind “Looks That Kill”. But above it all is Sadonis’s beautifully gothic vocals, and I’d be really surprised if “Slow Dance In a Crypt” doesn’t make my list of best songs of the year. (covered here in the Jan 2024 catchup)

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Mammoth Volume were one of my big discoveries back in 2022 when The Cursed Who Perform The Larvagod Rites, the band’s re-emergence after a 20 year absence was the second entry in Blues Funeral Recordings’s PostWax Vol. 2 series, and also made my Honorable Mentions list. Seems that wasn’t a fluke, and the Swedish band are back with Raised Up By Witches a scant two years later, and it’s even more proggy and desert swept than ever. Vocalist Jörgen “Aston” Andersson can seemingly twist his voice any which way he pleases, and I’m currently taken with those twists in the QOTSA-inspired “Black Horse Beach” and how utterly delightful he sounds in the synth-heavy opening to “Serpents in the Deep”. Mammoth Volume give zero fucks about adhering to anything remotely resembling a consistent, and I am so here for their particular brand of weirdness. Easily one of my most played vinyls this year, and I don’t expect that to change any time in the near future. (covered here in the Aug 2024 catchup)

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It wouldn’t be a list of mine if there wasn’t some kind of outlier, and boy howdy does The Neptune Power Federation count as an outlier. Sometimes you just want a break from the seriousness and simply bounce around to some serious F-U-N. And that’s exactly what the Australian outfit brings on album #6 Goodnight My Children. Ostensibly a collection of bedtime stories, I find it difficult to believe any collection of songs with this much cowbell would put a child to sleep. Instead, songs like “Let Us Begin” and “Twas A Lie” are so upbeat they’d cause the children to stay up all night throwing pillows and kissing in closets. The secret weapon of the band is Imperial Priestess Screaming Loz Sutch who has a voice that can screech like a witch and sugar you down like the best 60s doo-wop, often at the same time. Australia has miles and miles of desert, so I’m making this count because 1) I unabashedly love this album and 2) the feedback and screeching that opens “Woe Be Father’s Troubled Mind” kinda counts as psych? (covered here in the Mar 2024 catchup)

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I told you there’d be another entry on this list from Small Stone Records, and frankly I’m amazed I didn’t talk about Sundrifter in the October Month That Was post (it’s probably because even though I discovered them in October, their album was released in February). I discovered them as I was freaking out over Free Ride and An Earlier Time sounds like if Soundgarden decided to follow Pearl Jam and Mudhoney into the desert. There’s a harder, heavier rock edge to the songs, and tracks like “Space Exploration” and “Prehistoric Liftoff” has a terrific gritty fuzz tone that scuzzies everything up and lets vocalist/guitarist Craig Peura really soar in the mix. It’s a point of pride that I own physical releases of every album on this list, my one regret is I grabbed An Earlier Time on CD when this really needs to be on vinyl. I’m sure I’ll be rectifying that in the near future…Sundrifter are so good a double dip is justified.

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As always in the post-script, and to reinforce what I said in the intro: sure, there are two other lists coming from me with the words “Best Of” somewhere in the title. It’s a lot more of what you would think of traditionally as extreme metal (well, of course there will be a few exceptions). But make no mistakes, this – along with copious amounts of actual 70s rock and psych/prog – are what I turned to more than anything else in 2024.

– Chris

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