50-31 | 30-11 | 10-1

10. Alora Crucible – Oak Lace Apparition

[Bandcamp] // [Spotify]

Let me be honest: it’s actually very hard to describe this album in words. Oak Lace Apparition often feels more like a journey through time and space than it feels like music — and with regard to atmospheric quality, this album stands almost second to none. I could come up with a million different metaphors or similes in a poor attempt at describing the tapestry that Oak Lace Apparition weaves, but it would not do Toby Driver and Alora Crucible justice. I don’t have a better option, though (sorry, Toby, I’ll try to be as poetic as possible about this), so here goes:

Oak Lace Apparition ranges from being as spacious as the universe to being as naught as gossamer passing over your fingertips. The sonic textures are so rich you can practically feel them — like the sharpness of Oregon air when you live in Los Angeles or the softness of fine velvet. At times it is as desolate as being stuck inside on an icy winter morning, and other times it is as stunning as the view of the city from that one secret spot that only you know about. If you can think of a concept with how to describe music — whether that be melancholy, beautiful, isolated or magnificent — all of it can be found on this album.

This isn’t a point of technicality, instrumental mastery or even originality (although there is no shortage of any); this is a point of capturing the essence of why music is food for the soul. Sure, Oak Lace Apparition might get lost a little bit in its own depth, but that’s the point. As an artist or musician, how far can you go? How keenly can you cause the sort of impact on a listener that will evoke beauty and loneliness and isolation and joy? Oak Lace Apparition accomplishes just that. It is an album that does not hesitate to take you to places that you want to go, or maybe that you don’t want to go. It is an album that can be as thought-provoking as it can be utterly peaceful — and to be frank, the words that I’ve written down to describe this album don’t do a good enough job at painting the picture of what Oak Lace Apparition manages to do. Without a doubt, this album was one of the most engaging and fascinating albums I got the opportunity to listen to in 2024. –Manatea

9. Chelsea Wolfe – She Reaches Out to She Reaches Out to She

[Bandcamp] // [Spotify]

Isn’t it funny how Chelsea Wolfe embracing her claustrophobic doom-infused industrial tendencies once more is one of the most comforting things to come out of 2024? She Reaches Out to She… feels like an eerie blanket of sorts, able to mould itself to the shape of whatever’s underneath. As such, the infinite implications of the album title reflect its music perfectly: there is no real start or end to this record. It is neither an album’s album nor a collection of playlist-ready songs. Instead, Chelsea Wolfe’s latest project is one that was in the background of the forefront all throughout this year. It is unassuming, it is intense, it is beautiful: it is, against all odds, comfortable. –JesperL

8. Ulcerate – Cutting the Throat of God

[Bandcamp] // [Spotify]

Is it even possible for Ulcerate to miss at this point? Ever since they unleashed their landmark sophomore effort Everything Is Fire, the New Zealand outfit have been finding inventive new ways to expand upon their core tech/disso-death sound — all while evoking a vibe that’s equal parts suffocating and apocalyptic. And, perhaps barring their formative debut album Of Fracture and Failure, each release has earned them overwhelming praise and cemented their status as the disso-death bands to listen to.

All of the above remains true when talking about Ulcerate’s newest offering, Cutting the Throat of God, but a few new tricks are employed this time around. In fact, you’ll find the first of these in opener “To Flow Through Ashen Hearts”, as the band have opted for a more moody and contemplative introductory statement than on prior albums. Oh, sure, the rapid-fire blast beats and weird guitar phrasings are still there, but they’ve been balanced out with several mellow, plaintive passages that lull unsuspecting listeners into a false sense of security. But remember: this is still an Ulcerate record, so don’t get too comfortable. After all, the majority of Cutting the Throat of God is still just as wild and chaotic as its predecessors. Whether it’s in the strange waltz-like rhythm that opens “The Dawn Is Hollow”, the tremolo-fueled black metal flirtations of “To See Death Just Once”, or longtime drummer Jamie Saint Merat’s incredibly dynamic and varied performances throughout, there’s plenty to sink your teeth into if you’re an Ulcerate fan.

However, there’s a lot to appreciate if you’re a newcomer as well. Cutting the Throat of God is arguably the band’s most accessible record to date, as there’s a greater emphasis on those mellow, atmospheric passages I alluded to earlier. Still, that doesn’t mean their sound has been watered down in the slightest; rather, it’s simply been expanded to allow for even more sonic and stylistic variation. And when you get down to it, it’s a testament to Ulcerate’s relentless creativity and drive that they’re still not content with resting on their laurels — even 24 years into their career. –Koris

7. Geordie Greep – The New Sound

[Bandcamp] // [Spotify]

Masculinity is in crisis and, more specifically, Sputnik’s preferred brand of sexually polluted hero-artist lies in an ever-growing pile of tatters. Not a week goes by without this or that reminder of how few lessons some of us have learnt from the Warped generation, and our own Staff team has been publicly and deservingly dragged for defending certain reprehensible figures attempting to reframe their own controversies as a thinly-veiled promise of art. Don’t worry though, our best men are on it. We’re busy revising our idols and delivering polemics on the distinctions between art and artist and, by the fucking way, did ya hear about Cormac McCarthy? If you’re trying to manifest a pinprick of light at the end of this tunnel, turn your attention toward the photons emanating from an unlikely source: it could well be that Geordie Greep is the messiah we need right now, a brand new bet that we should probably hedge. He was born in 1999, which puts him roughly five years ahead of Jesus when he started his ministry, but at the rate he’s honing his sermons, we’ll have him dead and resurrected long before he hits his 30s.

Not only does he apparently get ‘it’ — whatever ‘it’ may be for a sexually dissatisfied, sexually dissatisfying gent beyond his prime, who has long since had his better judgement ruined by his ego and his moral values ransacked by his bank account — but he tears it to shreds as ruthlessly and proficiently as your boss’s boss’s favourite off-book surgeon. The man is both delightful in his cruelty (“Victims of drought and famine, and fetuses abandoned / Are waiting here to be admired” [hot keyboard lick]) and oddly compassionate in his depiction of these characters’ wretched solipsism (“You gave me nothing but an incurable disease / For which I’m so glad / You’ll always be with me”). Artists have been lampooning acolytes of the manosphere for an entire era now, but Greep’s forays into first person feel like a new battlefront, one that offers deeper exploration of the whys and hows of Men that are Cunts, allowing for slithers of sympathy – or at least credibly pathetic role-play – to enter the fray, while never failing to inflict righteous judgment upon its subjects.

His truths may be hard to bear: “Blues” demands we turn all four of our cheeks as he eviscerates the self-conscious ineptiman, while the cartoonishly awful baboon of “Holy Holy” ultimately has so much in common with the lonesome sad sack of “As If Waltz” that, by the end of both songs, with both men laid bare to the most piteous, lonely dregs of their lust, we are forced to extend some of our sympathy for the latter to the former — could anyone feel otherwise, hearing his simple desire for an intimate hand on his knee exhibited upon such a velvety cushion of merry backing vocals? Naturally, you’ll then need to account for the transparent pathology that follows as the chord progression lurches downward to accompany his next degrading request: “I want you to look at me as if you’re lost / How much will that cost?” Those sympathetic twinges don’t come cheap.

The New Sound‘s considered bouts of cleverness belie entire chakra networks of duality and hypocrisy, each transcendent moment of inspired songwriting contrasted by a musical fart joke, each line of pure poetry (“Like a talented pestilence / She unzips the air”) matched by a spectacular chortle-splutter (“I bet your pussy is holy too”). Greep, in his infinite knowledge of all things Art (this account, real or not, presents a convincing simulacra of his ilk), understands that his album is both worse and better for its flaws. They are easily identifiable clangers that create a sense of endearing mischief to tame the carnage, encouraging listeners to return to a work that can be both thematically and musically exhausting. They also keep the listener on edge, forcing them to mistrust the narrator as well as the narration — and so it is that the innocuous onset of humming over a harpsichord, delivered with an old-world showman’s genteel, becomes the most genuinely disturbing moment on an already provocative album, that the blasé combustion of that goddamned V-Max engine ends up a comparatively tame development set alongside the record’s more insidious fare.

Similarly brilliant in tempering The New Sound‘s intimidation factor is its surprise implementation of various elements of tropicalia, whose innate appeal runs as deep as its experimental offshoots, and whose paisley-plastered confines are spacious enough to endure the obscene amount of chords that some of these tracks contain. The whole banana is gloriously and inappropriately jaunty, inviting you to splutter along to Greep’s vocalisations as best you can, providing that the windows in your car are rolled all the way up when you find yourself yelling, “Have you ever had sex with the dead?” with the Mephistophelian smirk simply demanded by his delivery.

The sheer fun of this album is capable of putting these and worse phrases in your mouth, goading you into participating, and endearing you to Greep’s character all the while. Let’s be honest here: Black Midi were always more of an engine of potential than they were a refined outfit, and Greep’s good sport was key to what made them such a pleasure to hate. Here, he is no longer content to slick by with his tongue in his cheek: he has dusted off the ashes of his old outfit, and taken a form more thoughtful, more humane, and much, much funnier. We lend ourselves to his hospitality, laugh at his jokes, baulk at his boldness, come away enriched by his company, and are broadly inspired by his growth. Hats off to the lad — he may make better men of us all. –JohnnyoftheWell x MiloRuggles

6. Chat Pile – Cool World

[Bandcamp] // [Spotify]

Despite its well-established subject matter, Chat Pile’s Cool World somehow feels prescient as 2024 draws to a close. The Oklahoma City quartet of sludge goblins sank even deeper into the murk on their more macro sophomore release, their bellies full of righteous anger at the constraints of traditional gender roles, the military industrial complex, and the cruel myth of social mobility. Perhaps most incredulously, tracks like the surprisingly melodic “Shame” rail against the systematic and continued erasure of the people of Gaza, a genocide being funded by the band’s own government. The cold and abrasive machinations of stellar compositions like “Funny Man”, “No Way Out”, and the gutting “Masc” corner the listener into their place on the unforgiving assembly line to be offered up at the gory altar of state-sanctioned violence. Vocalist Raygun Busch and the industrial cacophony that lay beneath him stare hopelessly into a gaping void, coming to the conclusion that it does not matter whether you are shipped off to die in a war, crushed under the weight of poverty, or forbidden from ever living in a way that is true to yourself. You will be dragged into obedience, kicking and screaming, and there will be no mercy for you. It’s a violent, exhausting onslaught of musical ferocity, but it’s nothing compared to what’s waiting outside. –YoYoMancuso

5. Foxing – Foxing

[Bandcamp] // [Spotify]

“Greyhound” was a brave choice for a single. With its track length of 8 minutes and slow burn progression of atmosphere and emotion, it’s an ambitious choice to promote Foxing’s self-titled effort. But I can’t think of a better song to set the tone. On their fifth full-length release, the band displays some of their most aggressive, emotional, chaotic, and beautiful moments in a cathartic showcase. There is so much to digest, yet it’s all perfectly executed. From the muddled aggression of opener “Secret History” to the hazy conclusion of “Cry Baby”, Foxing establishes itself as one of the most ambitious and outstanding albums of the year.

There really is just something powerful about the raw intensity of the record. It feels like the band brought their emotional aggression of the first half of the career and blended it perfectly with the more progressive, poppier-driven style of the latter half. Though it can feel a little disjointed or incohesive at times, that is what I think makes it so impactful. The contrast between the ambient atmospheres of tracks like “Cleaning” and the chaotic soundmesh of songs along the lines of “Hell 99” gives a striking comparison of beauty and anger. Foxing is the perfect representation of who Foxing is, and it’s the best they have to offer.

(Please go read Sowing’s sign-off review, a wonderful description of this album.) –tyman128

4. Nala Sinephro – Endlessness

[Bandcamp] // [Spotify]

I have no idea how to describe Endlessness: it really truly just is. Nala Sinephro has perfect sonic and structural instincts from the get and marshals them to generate some kind of impossible cosmic balance between the forces of forward motion and of digression, equal levels propulsion and dispersion. Saxophones curlicue into infinity, drums somehow remain mannered and adventurous simultaneously, and all synths are pitched at a level of prettiness and introspection that confirms Endlessness as the Platonic form not of any specific genre of music like new wave or jazz or progressive electronic but of the unseen artistic or emotional impulses that served to birth these genres before we had names for them, before we knew what they were. Endlessness captures the listener at that magical moment before they know what it is they’re listening to, before the spectre of names and concepts approacheth, and extends that experience to an awe-inspiring 45 minutes. Sinephro’s ambitions toward infinity and beyond aren’t so impressive as is the fact that her artistic means more than match those ambitions, and that the album leaves one with the faith that she might just do it again too. –robertsona

3. The Cure – Songs of a Lost World

[Official Site] // [Spotify]

I’ve been listening to The Cure’s Disintegration a lot recently. It’s an album I’ve been vaguely familiar with for a long time, given its near-inevitable spot on your typical “best-of” lists, but until the last few months, I’d not listened to it regularly enough to fully digest. While The Cure’s music has a strong tendency to be quite grim, what I think makes Disintegration so compelling is the little rays of slanting light which manage to make their way into their shadowy cathedral.

Songs of a Lost World feels like a successor piece to its distant ancestor, or is at the very least in a conversation with it — sharing a preference for an ornately melancholic approach to songcraft. In contrast with its predecessor, though, things are pitch-black this time around: no illumination is getting in, and, (gulp) maybe never will again. This unyielding sense of gloom marks both the album’s (only?) weakness, given its occasional flirtations with cornball sappiness (basically all of “And Nothing Is Forever”, etc.) and its strength — reading as an elegant and grand contemplation of old age, past regrets, and the inevitability of death.

Context can’t be set aside from any analysis of this album — fifteen years removed from The Cure’s last LP, and forty-plus trips around the sun from their first emergence as a band, this record simply shouldn’t be this good. Plenty of artists release solid records at this stage in their career, but those attempts are almost always increasingly weak simulacrums of ever-more-distant triumphs — releases this vital, let alone tour-de-forces which would serve as compelling codas to sprawling careers, just don’t come along all that often. I’m not quite at the point of heralding Songs of a Lost World as the next Blackstar, given the utterly transcendent artistic brilliance of the latter achievement, but anything in that ballpark has to be lauded. Whether the incredible “Endsong” truly marks the last stop or not, this album is a bitter potion worth savoring. –Sunnyvale

2. State Faults – Children of the Moon

[Bandcamp] // [Spotify]

I can’t tell you about it. If you can’t see it, then you’ll never know…

It’s difficult to express precisely how powerful Children of the Moon is by reducing the album down to its core components and interrogating the material piece by piece. The album’s introductory and concluding excerpts, lifted from research into the effects of LSD on the average person (conducted by Dr. Sidney Cohen in the 1950s), perhaps best express the reason why. This is a body of work that NEEDS to be experienced firsthand. Every aspect is so beautifully composed and finely-crafted it’s a well-intentioned disservice, both on my part and any other reviewer’s, to attempt to translate the impact of this incredible album. Primarily, though, it is a record that needs to be experienced firsthand because it concerns you.

At its core, this is an album about the human condition. The snippets that bookend the release display a human in their most unguarded, freethinking moments; they are the ecstasy to the rest of the record’s agony. This is not to suggest that the bulk of the album’s content is overwhelmingly negative, but it exhibits an unrelenting psychological struggle; an inward shining light that illuminates a persistent wrestling with the self in relation both to itself, and to the world around it. At the heart of Children of the Moon is this unrest – a quintessentially human struggle – expressed beautifully through the serenity and volatility of the natural world. The usage of the aforementioned recording at the opening and ending of the work is intriguing, as one is interrupted by the epiphanic onset of the music, and the other seemingly acts as a final revelation. Or maybe in bridging the first and last song, the implication is that the inner turmoil is cyclical, and thus neverending? Did I mention trying to express the wonder of this album was a waste of time? Ugh.

A far more expansive follow-up to 2019’s Clairvoyant, itself an album of astonishing emotional power, Children of the Moon‘s compositional interplay of poignancy and abrasiveness is here balanced knife-edge atop perpendicular knife-edge. The harshness of the vocal style scythes its way through the distorted yet intricately melodic riffs like a voice calling out from the abyssal depths of your own psyche — yearning, pleading, ascendant. Multi-movement epics and mouths-agape anthems chaotically built to crescendo all serve the broader focus of the record, straddling the intersection between purposeful dissonance and impactful definition. It is moment after moment of emotional resonance, with gorgeous, evocative lyrical content that demands engagement with the LP beyond its searing surface aesthetic. Its depths are startling, and those that accept and embrace the release are sure to find it a profoundly affecting, personal experience.

To one degree or another, we are all dreamers. We aspire and pine, the rudiments of encouragement we receive throughout our lives propelling us forward whilst our own insecurities and internal battles grasp for purchase on our souls to pull us back. Children of the Moon is the soundtrack to that struggle. It is a place where stars that we once were told to reach for still burn brightly in the periphery; a delicate but monumentally powerful dive into a sea of celestial wonder that is bewitching to behold, and fearful to traverse. A graceful, colourful, impassioned supernova of an album that finds an impossibly nuanced equilibrium between ferocious emotionality and captivating melody, the collection triumphs by displaying the heartfelt intensity of the lyrical content in every single second of music. –PumpBoffBag

1. Charli XCX – brat

[Bandcamp] // [Spotify]

To some, Brat is privilege masquerading as an underdog story, basic-yet-pretentious taste hiding behind the veil of identity, or even neoliberalism’s spiraling failure to sufficiently differentiate itself from fascism. To others, it’s just another overrated pop album. To me, and to many of us staff here, this is not only a great pop album, but the album of the year. I think that’s fair, and not just because “PC Music’s mainstream moment as written and organized by one of the best popstars of all time” seems like it was built for nerds like me to adore (Hudson Mohawke getting a repeated shoutout basically guaranteed that I would love this two singles in). You can hate pop and synthesizers and womanhood and everything Brat represents, and I’ve been here long enough to know that plenty of people reading this do, but even they still have to admit this was the album of the year. Nothing else even comes close to the level of anywhere and everywhere that this achieved.

For many who have been following her for long, Charli succeeding at this level seemed simultaneously inevitable and impossible, the natural result of over a decade of being ahead of the curve to a fault. Her occasional missteps just read like various scenes along act two of her hero’s journey, which has made her all the more compelling, as does the rare error in Brat. I don’t really think “Apple”‘s sparkling stroll fits very well on the tracklist, but it’s still good enough that even as I see it as a clear flaw, it has ended up leading to me appreciating “B2B”‘s obvious Gesaffelstein signature all the more. Similarly, I wish “365” finished up with something more like its ringtone-style intro rather than just a frantic EDM explosion like “anthems” before it, but that makes it all the more addicting to loop it and hear the comparatively calm “360” and its absolute earworm of a melody. Soon you’re bobbing your head to “Club Classics”‘ fluid bassline, flashing back to Ed Banger dominance with “Von Dutch”, letting the “Mean Girls” piano boost your confidence, and before you know it, you’ve heard the whole album again and again and again and fallen in love somewhere along the way.

Most fans won’t agree with my picks for the low points on Brat (they’re each popular high points for a lot of her base), and while there’s certainly a cliche point to be made along those lines about differing favorites, universal quality, and broad appeal, I’d rather prioritize that the album and the artist succeed not in spite of the imperfections I see, or the imperfections anyone else might see, but because of them. Charli managed to skyrocket from her niche status to achieving a bizarre year of relevance because of Brat, to the extent that unless she carries on with this path forever, it seems like she’ll have to reckon with a much larger shadow than “I Love It”/”Fancy”/”Boom Clap” ever cast. As a longtime fan, I’ve spent years learning exactly how much her failures to recapture this early 2010s popularity on her own terms haunted (and financed) her into creating several masterpieces, so I’m not sure if it’s just hindsight’s classic eagle eye or if I really should have seen this coming. Either way, I think a significant part of why Brat hooks listeners as well as it does is because so much of her charisma has always come from her issues, her humanity, which are the things she focuses on and completely owns here. As we all (particularly women) grow frustrated with our mistakes being forced increasingly into constant risk of display and judgement, it’s been a relief to be able to celebrate in music’s parade on a float that not only already has a missing dancer, scratched bumper, and flat tire, but relishes in and exists because of these issues. Since I’m on the verge of somehow making it sound like I think this album is anything but endlessly fun, characteristically fantastic, and personally freeing, I’ll just say this: I’m confident that Brat will age quickly (the consequence of being the album of 2024), but I’m much more confident that will just make it even better in 2025. –granitenotebook

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List of participating writers (alphabetical order): AsleepInTheBack, dedex, Dewinged, garas, Gnocchi, granitenotebook, insomniac15, JesperL, JohnnyoftheWell, Jom, Koris, Manatea, MiloRuggles, neekafat, Odal, PumpBoffBag, robertsona, Sowing, Sunnyvale, tyman128, Voivod, Willie, YoYoMancuso