It truly has been quite the year, hasn’t it?
Last year, I supplied a list of 15 albums after I decided that I wanted to be more critical about the music I was listening to, removing metal-adjacent albums from the lists. For this year, I also decided to change the list structure. After all, lists are subjective, and I am allowed to see if something works for me.
You can’t know what will stick to the wall if you don’t decide to experiment for a bit.
Welcome to the inner workings of sleep deprivation EOY list season!
Here’s the drill: we are back to 20 albums for this year’s list. EPs and metal-adjacent albums are not listed, which means the Candles Burn EP and Ulver’s Liminal Animals will not be appearing. Structurally, the list is split into three sections:
- The Pit: Album placement is fluid. They might be at the bottom of the list, but there is a set of stairs they can use to leave at any time. There are no numbered placements in this section.
- The Ascent: Album placement is more solidified, but can still be moved around. These could also be considered the staple nine albums at the top of the list. These are numbered starting in descending order from 10 to 2.
- The Apex: Album of the Year.
Without further ado, here we go!
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Part I: The Pit
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I am sorry Leprous that you are the first album on this list, but there were some Pitfalls here. Given how high I was on their previous record, this album feels like a significant step down.
Back when I wrote about Aphelion in my 2021 EOY list, I stated the album had an emotional density that borders on cathartic, making you want to sing along while playing it at high volume. However, Melodies of Atonement does not follow up on what Aphelion had promised, and that bummed me out when I finally had the time to listen and catch up. If anything, Melodies of Atonement feels more like the remnants from Einar’s solo album, 16, that were transformed into Leprous songs. At times, the music feels like an amalgamation of ideas from 16, creating this incoherency I haven’t heard from Leprous in the short time I have gotten to know them. There are also moments where it feels like I am listening to Einar and a backing band, which is not what Leprous is supposed to be. If I wanted to listen to just Einar, the album already exists. There are some standouts that follow Aphelion’s lead, like “Atonement” and “Like a Sunken Ship”, which contain that beautiful, cathartic feeling that I enjoy. It’s unfortunate that Melodies of Atonement and I didn’t click the way I clicked with Aphelion, but I am hopeful for Leprous anyway.
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I usually have a cutoff period for EOY lists – the third week of November, usually – so imagine my surprise at how quickly The Old Dead Tree managed to get on this list.
Back in early December, I wrote a review for Second Thoughts, an album that seemed to combine elements of death-doom with a straightforward prog styling that made for a great record. Since then, Second Thoughts has slowly become part of my listening rotation throughout the month, especially with songs like “Unpredictable” and “OK” scratching the itch for something fast, catchy, and intense. The more time I spent with the album, the more I found sonic comparisons to Daniel Lioneye’s Vol. III, an album that emphasized its heavy nature, but whose production left a lot to be desired. There are moments where the production on this album sounds a lot like they took a page out of Daniel Lioneye’s book, but it serves the thematic aspects of the album. After all, if the music sounds dated, it’s because it sounds like the music was composed prior to the band’s reformation. Personally, I am having a great time with this record, and have a feeling I will come back to songs rather than the full album itself.
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When I first heard of Srd back in 2020/2021, I didn’t think I was going to enjoy them as much as I did. However, they did manage to make it past the Honorable Mentions list, so who’s the real winner here?
Though I have slowly moved away from black metal over the past few years, there’s always something about it that pulls me back. Cue Vragvmesiton, an album that blitzes through everything without wandering off the beaten path. Sure, there might be some experimentation on this record, and most of the tracks are past the five-minute mark, but they keep it within the 45-minute runtime that many seem to favor. Even though I loved their previous record, Ognja prerok, I think Vragvmesiton is an entirely different entity. Here, Srd have more to work with – they improved their instrumentation and incorporated more influences into their blend of black’n’roll. After months of not listening to this album, coming back to it feels like talking to an old friend, and the music continues to be just as good as when I first heard the album. However, as previously mentioned in a review I wrote for the album, the main highlight continues to be Goran Slekovec’s vocals, because they are just that good. I need to revisit this album again throughout the new year.
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Surprise, surprise – Pelagic Records makes an appearance! Trust me, it’s not the last time you will see a Pelagic Records release on this list. That’s a threat and a promise.
Back when I first heard Metaphysicize, the latest from Bipolar Architecture back in February, I thought nothing much of it. Sure, it had catchy hooks and a powerful death metal background, but I didn’t think much of it. After all, Pelagic is known for having bands that push boundaries within their own blend of post-metal. However, long after I stopped listening to Metaphysicize, I continued to think about it. Something about the album toggled at my brain, and it might have been because this album was not your grandmother’s post-metal. From the first time you listen to it, Metaphysicize showcases a powerful combination of sludge and death metal that sears you from the inside. This album also has a lot of emotional baggage that weighs heavily on the listener, as if there is another layer underneath Metaphysicize’s main themes. While I am not entirely sure about what this album is about, there’s a lot of funerary themes surrounding it, particularly on fourth track, “Kaygı”. Personally, I need to spend more time listening to this record, and I hope to give it more attention throughout the new year.
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I haven’t this much sludge in my metal since my brief infatuation with Spacelug, and with this being the second “sludgy” record on this list, I see a pattern forming.
Another album I reviewed for the site, From The Other Side of the Mirror by Glassing is one of those albums that hits you straight in the face with a sledgehammer with how intense it can be. While there are a lot of quieter, softer moments on the record, don’t let your guard down. Tracks like “Defacer” and “Ritualist” will melt your face right off, causing you to headbang in the most unexpected of places. There are also elements of post-hardcore here, so you know this album is going to make at least one person get up and move around in the middle of their office. From The Other Side of the Mirror is immense and intense, and the fact that it’s only three different instruments creating these sounds is enough to marvel at just how dynamic it is. The music hits like a freight train, and there’s nothing you can do except to let it pass through you. This album is entropy incarnate, and its catharsis towards the end is a sight to behold.
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I may have defended this album back in our recording for August’s AOTM, but I am going to be honest: I haven’t gone back to GREIF since that discussion.
I have no idea what caused me to just put this album on the backburner, but I didn’t come back to this album as much as I have with the other albums Zeal & Ardor have put out in the past. I spent a lot of time thinking about why GREIF wasn’t such a powerhouse for me. Maybe this is truly a highlight reel for the current entity Zeal & Ardor has become; maybe this album is just the next foundational step for more experimentation and evolution in their music. Hell, maybe, some of Manuel Gagneux’s other projects bled into this release, adding more to their avant-garde nature. Whatever the reason is for diminishing returns, I still find GREIF to be a great record that succeeds in showcasing what the band is thinking of at this moment in time. They are doing a lot of experimentation and testing here, and they also have callbacks to previous sonic influences they utilized on previous albums, such as Stranger Fruit, and this might steer them into another musical direction. This may be seen as a bad album by other fans, especially after what we got on Zeal & Ardor, but I still think the album is good. I might have to go back to GREIF eventually and see if I still feel the same about it in the new year.
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Despite your thoughts about Fleshgod Apocalypse’s past releases, imagine a world where we didn’t get another Fleshgod release. Imagine how close we were to not getting another album from this band.
Five years after the release of Veleno, Fleshgod returned with their newest album, Opera. If you didn’t know any better, you would think that this album was about the concept and mystery of opera. However, you would be wrong to assume that’s the case. This is a concept album inspired by vocalist/bassist Francesco Paoli’s mountain climbing accident and the harrowing ordeal of recovery. He tells the story through the metaphor of a lyrical opera, where he centers himself as the main character visited by other entities (Death, Hope, Morphine) while he falls in and out of consciousness. Musically, this album is filled with symphonic elements and a poppier sound than its predecessors, being more of a nuanced album than simply another King. Veronica Bordacchini’s vocals also take center stage on this record, as we see more of her range, especially on “I Can Never Die”. These contrasts also add to the overall themes of the album, signifying the emotional turmoil one experiences when recovering from an accident. From hopeful to apologizing to your mom in case you died at the hospital, Opera is frenetic, emotional, and punchy, a feast for the ears and one that makes you happy to be alive to experience this. There are many reasons to come back to symphonic death metal, and Opera is one of them.
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Faroese death-doom? On my list? It’s more likely than you think – and this is a pick that no one should be surprised about, because I love this record.
When I first listened to Men Guðs hond er sterk, I had just finished playing a second playthrough of Alan Wake 2, which uses a lot of water and rain imagery as part of its main story themes. The Dark Place is always rainy; there’s a town that the main character visits called Watery; and there’s a guy who may or may not an actual sea god who keeps showing up in the unlikeliest of places. In my mind, I couldn’t help but connect Men Guðs hond er sterk to the game, especially when things seem to linger long after they are gone. Men Guðs hond er sterk is an album about tragedy, about mourning the dead, and about listening to warnings. However, this album is also a hymn to the dangers of the sea, to the melancholy of memory, and to being alive to tell the tale. I spent most of the review I wrote for this album discussing the technical aspects of its music, the way its melancholy and imagery conveyed the horror of the whaling tragedy that shook Sandvik in 1915. However, listening to the album, I can’t help but of the emotional ties to your homeland, to the telling of stories that gets passed down from generation to generation. Men Guðs hond er sterk is an emotional behemoth, and I may or may not have cried while listening to this record. Hamferð was one of the big returns this year, and I am so glad we got a new album from them.
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If you release four out of the nine tracks of your album as singles, there’s a high chance that I will listen to your album, but I won’t be as enthusiastic as I was back in 2021.
I have enjoyed VOLA’s music a lot, culminating with placing them high on my 2021 EOY list. When I heard that VOLA was releasing a new album in 2024, I was ecstatic. Now, I don’t understand where the fall came in, but by the time we got Friend of a Phantom (FoaP) about a month ago, I was already fatigued by the release of four singles that I made the mistake of listening to prior to this album’s release. Tracks like “Paper Wolf” lit me on fire, but the remaining singles released prior to the album’s release date seemed off, like they were experimenting, but it wasn’t yielding the results they wanted. I figured that their general placement within FoaP would resolve some of those issues (which they do), but, as singles, the only two that stood out to me were “Paper Wolf” and “Cannibal”, their song with Anders Friden. They do have other great songs on the album, such as “Bleed Out” and “We Will Not Disband”, but I do find myself coming back to this album less and less. That is not a bad thing – everyone is allowed to have one album that just doesn’t do it for some of the fans – but I am hoping that VOLA’s next record stands out to the standards and caliber of Witness and Applause of a Distant Crowd.
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You must give it to the Dutch – their ability to make weird, intense black metal that gets stranger by the second is enough to get me to come back to the genre.
I reviewed The Mother back in late March, and I found this album easier to digest and enjoy than Verwoed’s previous album, De Val. Now, don’t misunderstand me: I genuinely believe De Val is a fantastic record, but The Mother is just an overall improvement for the band’s musical prowess. There’s something about its psychedelic black metal tendencies and atmosphere that just makes this album so compelling to me. I genuinely enjoyed this record when I first heard it, and I didn’t seem to have that barrier to entry problem that a lot of this type of black metal has. Its tension and dissonance add to its overall musical palette, and it sticks with you long after it’s over. Listening to it now while writing this list makes me sad, because The Mother deserves the praise it got for being such a cool album, especially when it’s only one person handling everything. The Mother is another album that deserves to be revisited again in the new year, especially if you like weird music that makes you smile like you have a secret. If it wasn’t for all the other albums on the second part of this list, then I would have placed The Mother higher. If you haven’t heard of Verwoed yet, give this album a spin – it’s excellent.
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Part II: The Ascent
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File all these albums under “albums Hera will never shut up about”.
Someone told Mikael Stanne that he could do anything, so he made two albums in one year – and became a crooner in one of them.
When the single “Violent Storm” was released back in April, I put this single on repeat and didn’t think twice about putting Nordic Gothic on my list to later check out when it was finally released. Well, I got to the album, and I can tell you that this is gothic metal at its finest. While gothic metal brings the image of Tristania and Lullacry to the forefront, Cemetery Skyline has a more stripped-back approach that focuses more on the emotion and the nuance behind the music. Sure, there are still a good abundance of keys and somewhat fatalistic lyrics, but this is not the kind of music you listen to when you are a moody teenager, angst dripping from every pore on your face. If anything, Cemetery Skyline is the kind of music you listen to when you are finally have developed the entirety of your frontal lobe and you just want something fun and slightly moody to listen to. I had a great time putting this album on repeat when it first came out and it has grown on me extensively, especially when I spent most of October being on my lonesome. What I also find hilarious is that, while listening to the record, I recognized the keys immediately when “Behind the Lie” started playing and I knew that Santeri Kallio of Amorphis was behind them. It made me smile every time that song came up. Sometimes, a record is just fun and you want to include it on your list.
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If I can pinpoint what caused me to truly love Pelagic Records, there are two events that happened in 2021 that come to mind: the Pelagic Presents showcase at Roadburn Redux, and the release of Hippotraktor’s debut, Meridian.
When I heard that a new Hippotraktor album was coming out in 2024, I was ecstatic. I had spent the better part of 2021 talking about how great Meridian was, to the point where it managed to rank highly on my 2021 EOY list. I was so ecstatic about it that I ended up writing a review for Stasis, and that opinion has not changed from that point six months ago. Sure, there are moments that this sounds like Psychonaut – they do share the same vocalist – but Hippotraktor is a separate entity that aims to obliterate your sense of self and your frontal cortex. Stasis is not a static album by any means, as it moves at a frenetic pace that leaves you breathless. Everything about this album is a mean, lean machine; no notes are left to spare, no fluff to be found. Stasis builds upon its predecessor, letting its influences bleed onto the music. From the prog death sound on “Echoes” to the slight The Ocean melody cues on “The Reckoning”, Stasis beats with experimentation and purpose, letting itself play out with intent. This is the perfect blend of post-progressive metal, and I will always come back to this album the same way I have always come back to Meridian.
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Devin Townsend has always had a special place in my heart when it comes to progressive metal, and you all knew that I was going to listen to this album when it came out.
There have been many facets to Devin’s career as an artist and musician. From his time in Strapping Young Lad to the end of the Devin Townsend Project, Devin has always been reinventing himself. Each new album has always been a delight and something worth exploring from this creative mind this man has. With PowerNerd, I think Devin wanted to conceive an album that not only echoes the ghosts of projects past, but also provides a look into what he wants to do in the future. While I think many people might see PowerNerd as a copy of a copy, an album that just falls back on Devin’s vast discography, I don’t think that’s the case. For me, PowerNerd is an album that shows a more personal side to Devin the man, someone who wanted to create the rock music from his youth and he wanted to do it justice. This is generally more stripped down than Lightwork and Empath, but some of his grander ideas bleed into songs like “Ubelia” and “Glacier”. However, at its core, PowerNerd is an album teeming with nostalgia and humor, and I have cried too many times to this album while being out and about. After all, only Devin can pull off being emotional and then have a song that speaks to the dire addiction of drinking coffee.
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You know what I was not expecting in 2024? New Myrath. Also, if I hear about how this album sucks because it doesn’t sound like Tales of the Sands, I am coming straight for your kneecaps.
Karma is one of those albums that is incredibly orchestrated, each song constructed and structurally placed in a manner that makes sense as you listen to the album. The orchestrations and the various influences that Myrath has added to their music here give Karma character, as if they learned from Zaher’s time singing on two symphonic metal records in the past. The songwriting is also incredibly top-notch, and the melodies utilized here are just perfect. What you get is a catchy album that is fast-paced, energetic, and just around fun. However, Myrath does have a glaring sequencing issue – placing “Child of Prophecy” next to “The Empire” muddles the album a bit, as they sound incredibly similar – which could have been resolved by the removal of a song, keeping the album above a 40-minute runtime. It’s somewhat unfortunate that Karma landed in this spot – quite the drop from the last time they were on a list – but it’s because I didn’t spend as much time with it as I should. Regardless, it didn’t stop me from having fun with everything I heard from Karma, and the album makes me want to go dancing.
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2024 seems to be the year for band comebacks, with many returning after almost five or six years since their last full-length release. One such band is, of course, Sear Bliss.
I have been into Sear Bliss for a long time, so I jumped at the opportunity to review them when it was announced that they were releasing a new album this year. To me, Heavenly Down feels like the antithesis to both The Mother and Vragvmesiton, as this album is gentler than those two records. Granted, there are moments where Heavenly Down gets heavy, especially on tracks like “The Upper World” and “The Winding Path”, but, for the most part, Sear Bliss remains incredibly atmospheric and experimental. They are not afraid to get weird and fully use their brass line to illicit a sense of dread without it becoming creepy. I also love how Sear Bliss can incorporate this spiritual nuance into their music, as if they spent so much time giving Heavenly Down an expansive tone. What you get in the end is this very catchy record that you can listen to whenever you like, always finding something on every subsequent listen. I did not lie when I said that this is the sort of black metal that provides a breath of fresh air. There is nothing that sounds like Sear Bliss, and this is the sort of black metal that keeps pulling back to a genre I have since moved from.
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This is the third sludge/sludge-adjacent post-metal album on this list, which should tell you exactly what I have been somewhat interested in pursuing in depth next year.
After months of thinking and writing about Norna the band and Norna the album, I knew that I had to place it high on the list. There’s something about it that keeps calling back to, despite how vitriolic, slow, and acidic it is. This is not an easy album to listen to, much less grapple with, and it doesn’t help that, to borrow Chris’s comment on our August AOTM, it feels like drowning in molasses. However, the reason I keep coming back to albums like this is because there’s something incredibly joyous about an album that sounds the way Norna does. Its inherent apocalyptic vibe takes a while to take hold when you first listen, but after you get past “For Fear of Coming”, the music opens to you. Past the sounds of the eviscerated wasteland lies the celebration of resilience; you have made it past the barrier to entry and you now have permission to enjoy the rest of the album. It’s an incredibly introspective album that shines with a glossy coat of sludge that stays on your clothes. Norna does not give any fucks about how heavy and intense it is, and it will overwhelm you with its sonic chaos – and you happen to be along for the ride.
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When I first started writing here, one of my first articles was talking about Sinistro’s newest release at the time, Sangue Cassia. It’s somewhat something of a full circle moment that we get new Sinistro after the better part of six years.
A lot has happened in six years, and yet Sinistro continues onward. When I heard that the band was releasing a new album, but had since replaced vocalist Patricia Andrade with newcomer Priscila Da Costa, I was a little concerned that we were going to get a different Sinistro than from Sangue Cassia. However, I worried for nothing, as while Da Costa’s vocals are of dramatic variety, she exudes this bright light that adds to the band’s doomy post-metal. While Sinistro may not be the most well-known band to most people, you cannot die that there’s some incredible on this record. Vértice is thrilling and seductive, pulling the listener into this world that feels emotional, ethereal, and striking. Da Costa’s vocals also add depth to the music’s already textured soundscape, giving the music this immersive, lush touch that is just so poignant. This album feels like the soundtrack to a dream, and you can’t help but be enamored by it. Unlike Sangue Cassia’s moodier and fatalistic sound, Vértice has bright spots, such as the melodies on “Elegia” and the bombastic “Amargura”, and it utilizes them to give the music a moment of brevity. This album is all about the emotional peaks that come with melancholy, and you can tell that there’s more to the album that meets the eye. I just found myself gravitating towards this album in October, and, just like Norna, I never stopped thinking about it. Vértice is a triumph for Sinistro, and I hope to see more from them in the future.
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The Hungarian Depression Pit joke started because I had made a playlist whose tagline was “Sometimes, what keeps you going is a bunch of Hungarian bands”. One of those bands, outside of Thy Catafalque and Sear Bliss, is AWS (pronounced “ah-vi-esh”).
When your main vocalist dies, how do the rest of the band members cope? This has been a poignant question that has been answered in a manner of different ways. Like The Black Dahlia Murder before them, post-hardcore band AWS opted to continue in memory of Örs Siklósi by having an old friend of the band, Tamás Stefán, become the new vocalist. Cue Innen szép nyerni, an album that pays homage to Örs while also allowing themselves to just create music. While I did listen to the band’s previous effort, Fekete részem, various times in the intervening years, Innen szép nyerni feels like a triumph for a band who has been at this for a long time. Innen szép nyerni is their strongest effort to date, complete with catchy hooks, impressive vocal lines, and increased experimentation that makes me want to get up and shout along to the lyrics. You can feel every single emotion on this record, even with the language barrier. There’s a reason why AWS ended up being one of my most listened bands this year, and it has to do with taken I was with this album. Innen szép nyerni is one of those albums that you play because it’s energetic and triumphant, and you can’t help but sucked into its energy. This album is a delight, and it makes you hopeful for what AWS will do next.
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There aren’t enough quips for me to describe how much I love Thy Catafalque and their music, but they have simply released a new album in 2024, and back down the rabbit hole I go.
When non-album single “Babylon”, Thy Catafalque’s cover of the 1987 song by the Hungarian rock band Omega, was released earlier in the year, I had a feeling that the band was going to release a new album – just not sure when in the year. After all, given the band’s output, I wouldn’t put it past them to release something in 2024. Then, XII: A gyönyörü álmok ezután jönnek (Ezután Jönnek) came out halfway through November, and it quickly blitzed through my list, especially at a time I was sure my first three spots were set. For me, Ezután Jönnek is an ode to home, to the memory that ties us to it, and, in a way, parallels Thy Catafalque’s own musical journey over the past 25 years. From ties to earlier albums, such as Tünö Idö Tarlat and Róka Hasa Rádió, to the more overt influences from the most recent albums, Thy Catafalque continues to wonder about the beautiful dreams that are yet to come. To me, this is the most energetic and black metal-ish album the band has put out, a testament to their legacy and to the way they continue to make beautiful, weird music. There are not enough words to describe how much this band and their music mean to me, and I am forever grateful to them. I love you, Thy Catafalque – never change.
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Part III: The Apex (Album of the Year)
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I am known to have some wild picks from time to time, something so damn odd that those in the hallowed halls of Nine Circles expect it to show up every year. If AWS or Sinistro are not the wild card picks for this year, then I have the album for you!
Delta is one of those albums that just ended up taking so much space in my brain throughout the year. I haven’t stopped talking about it since its release back in early May, even after I wrote a review about it. This album singlehandedly obliterated my EOY list and stayed at the top, even beating out Ezután Jönnek, which felt like choosing between my favorite child. However, because Ezután Jönnek came out so late in the year, there could only be one winner, and that was Delta. For me, this album is euphoria in a bottle: the music moves in a speed that I cannot conceive, either fully joyous or fully cemented into its melancholy. This adds to its cinematic feel, another soundtrack to the inherent witching hour that doesn’t allow us to sleep from time to time. However, Delta also has this space-like theme to it, especially in how atmospheric their sound can become. Unlike the previous albums on this list, where the atmosphere feels like the space the music can take up, Delta’s atmosphere is expansive and bleeds into every corner the music allows itself to take up. Therefore, the music seems to swallow you whole, and then it has you in its grip. Many times throughout the year, I have found myself screaming along to the lyrics, especially on tracks like “Euphrate” and “Supercluster”, in moments of sheer catharsis, especially after long work days. This album makes me feel like I can take on the world and win, and that’s enough to place it here.
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… That was a lot of words (5,527 to be exact), and I am not going to apologize for them.
2024 was a lot, and I am sure I have missed plenty of albums (looking at you, Alcest!) because there’s only so much time I can dedicate to music nowadays. However, 2025 is already interesting for me, so I can only hope that things don’t escalate to where I am scrambling towards the finish line.
Please stay safe out there and I will see you all in the coming year!
Hasta la proxima!
–Hera
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