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The 2022 Music Thread


METALMAN

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I haven't broken things down to a top list or anything, but I've been keeping a spreadsheet of new releases and highlighting the ones that I thought were good, great, or worth revisiting later. I think I've been a little harsher with the good/greats than last year, and I haven't made it through the majority of the September releases yet, and there look to be some potentially great ones here, but here's some stuff that instantly stood out to me:

1. Tanya Tagaq - "Tongues"
2. Boris - "W"
3. Earthless - "Night Parade Of One Hundred Demons"
4. Cult Of Luna - "The Long Road North"
5. Madrugada - "Chimes At Midnight"
6. Alice Glass - "Prey//IV"
7. El Ten Eleven - "New Year's Eve"
8. Orville Peck - "Bronco"
9. Drug Church - "Hygiene"
10. King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard - "Omnium Gatherum"
11. Otoboke Beaver - "Super Champion"
12. Black Midi - "Hellfire"
13. Boris - "Heavy Rocks"
14. Sigh - "Shiki"
15. The Mountain Goats - "Bleed Out"
16. Hot Chip - "Freak Out/Release"
17. Kae Tempest - "The Line Is A Curve"
18. Animals As Leaders - "Parhesia"
19. Daniel Johns - "FutureNever"
20. Willie Nelson - "A Beautiful Time"

 

There's been some fun stuff from Half Man Half Biscuit, Drive-By Truckers, Primus, Sun's Signature, Father John Misty, Agathodaimon, Band Of Horses, Guided By Voices and Oh Hiroshima that all feel like they warrant another listen, and then the big stuff like Beyonce and Kendrick Lamar that I haven't liked as much as previous albums, but will go back to at some point. I need to give the new Mars Volta another chance, and haven't listened to the new Clutch, Behemoth, Bjork or No Age, all of which I'm looking forward to.

There's a lot on your list I don't know at all, too, so will have to give them a listen!

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On 04/10/2022 at 18:22, VerbalPuke said:

Bob Vylan has a new one this year, really good one too. If you like hip and hop punk blended it might be for you.

definitely seconding this, it's fantastic, don't know how I missed it from my list!

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I feel like my top album will be one of the following albums: 

  1. Black Midi - Hellfire. This is the front runner for me. I think what is so magnificent and special is that it is unlike any other album out there. The first word I would use to describe it is unrelenting. The album never stops. There are quiet moments, but you know they will be a brief break from the chaos and ambition that will eek out of every track. Welcome To Hell is the best example - it amps up, slows down, amps right back up again. It is also exceptional in how layered it is, especially in terms of lyrics. You may have to listen to this album 10 times to really piece together each line spoken. The layering is great as well, because each instrument, each style, each change in direction layers on the audience so much. The last time I felt this way listening to a rock album was Blackstar by David Bowie. 
  2. Beyonce - Renaissance: I wrote a whole post about how exceptional this album and it holds up. It is the best Beyonce album ever released, mostly because of how different the song writing is on each track. So much of Beyonce's music is about herself. On Renaissance, she looks outside to the other. Even the tracks that are about herself are often channeled or viewed through the lens of the other. The song Heated is a masterclass in songwriting - Beyonce seems to be in this inner dialogue with herself and the other. Beyonce sings confidently about having Chanel and Tiffany's. But underneath this song there is a more muted Beyonce singing about going to jail, stealing Chanel and about her uncle Johnny making her dress. But it is not about Beyonce stealing Chanel or her uncle Johnny making her dress - it is about the experience of queer POC in the 80s, at the height of ballroom culture and of the AIDs crisis. Throughout, Beyonce channels the experiences of others to explore who she is. It coudl come across as using HIV, queerness or ballroom as a prop, but Beyonce sings with such authenticity that it carries the whole album. 
  3. Alvvays - Blue Rev: This album is just in my brain right now and I do not have deep pensive thoughts yet, but it is the most beautiful album released this year. The hooks and melodies are so gorgeous and rich. It is pop music, but pop music that is made with fuzzy guitars and other bombastic sounds originating from very un-pop places. 
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King Gizzard now have three albums in my top 11 for this year. :ph34r::lol:

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Jerry Only of the Misfits has a solo album coming out next week.

They announced it last month, and have said absolutely nothing since then.

The feeling around it is that it's likely to be a follow up to the Misfits' Devil's Rain, which I'm totally cool with. I liked that album more than a lot of people did, but agree that Jerry should have given up the Misfits branding on the work. So it's cool to see him doing that.

That said, the only reason he wouldn't be releasing this under the Misfits name is due to his agreement with Danzig. To play shows as "The Original Misfits", Glenn demanded that Jerry didn't tour as the Misfits for a certain period of time before and after. Since they've been going fairly regularly, it would make sense that if Jerry wants to put out new tunes and tour, that he'd do it under a different name.

There's also a rumor that it could have something to do with them talking about a new OG Misfits album, though I don't know how likely that is. I really can't see Glenn, Jerry and Doyle all sitting down and cohesively writing anything together. They all have such vastly different ideas of what they want to do.

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The Soft Pink Truth's album Is It Going To Get Any Deeper Than This is stunning. TSPT is the solo project of Drew Daniels, one half of Matmos. Matmos is an experimental / ambient / IDM act where they make concept albums. Albums where they sample sounds from surgical wards, only items that are plastic, rat cages, etc. to make a concept album. TSPT uses more conventional sounds but keeps the concept album - what if we covered a bunch of black metal or hardcore songs but turned them into weirdo dance songs. On the new album, the central question is the album title. How does one go deeper, especially on tracks that have minimal vocals and often times vocals that are not completely understandable? The answer is impeccable arrangements that border between the excitement of experimental music and the euphoria of modern house music. Even at it's euphoric heights, bizarre and unexpected sounds hit you in a way that interest you. It all weaves together for an extraordinary album. Great for dance floors and an evening at home. 

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Have bought precisely two albums this year that released this year (Zeit by Rammstein & Opvs Contra Natvram by Behemoth), so I can't rank them formally. Behemoth's flows better from song to song, though Rammstein's features one of my favorite jarring shifts in an album, going from Angst to Dicke Titten. From a song that's absolutely not at all about 2020 America to a song about boobs.

However, this leads down a side path because of the CD's I've got loaded in my car:

  1. Songs of Love and Death by Me and that Man
  2. Opvs Contra Natvram by Behemoth (mostly because same dude on lead vocals as the bulk of CD1, which is his side project)
  3. Zeit by Rammstein
  4. The Coheed & Cambria album with Welcome Home on it
  5. Social Distortion's self-title album because Track 5 is their cover of Ring of Fire which is my personal template on how to properly add to a cover of a song
  6. Wildhoney by Tiamat

 

Personal discovery of the year was getting into Roy Hamilton entirely too late after hearing him on SiriusXM's 50's station:

 

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  • 2 weeks later...

I inexplicably found myself watching a bit of the MTV EMAs, and whilst I immediately found myself feeling old as hell (who the fuck is Gayle?), I then saw the nominees for Best Rock. 60 year olds (RHCP, who I had no idea were still around), 50 year olds (Foos and Noel Gallagher), 40 year olds (Killers and Muse), and those Italians what won Eurovision. Is the genre dead as a commercial operation these days?

I don't know whether there's a separate "indie" category or something, but Wet Leg were all over French radio while I was there earlier this year, where are they and the likes of Self Esteem, Europe used to eat up bands like that.

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Yeah, I wish "alternative" would be completely removed from music discussion. Alternative/indie rock can and does obviously still inspire contemporary bands but I just don't think it makes any sense in a world where stadium rock is now purely a nostalgia thing.

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The Comet is Coming has a spacy jazz album called Hyper-Dimensional Expansion Beam. Marries jazz and electronic music with a little hint of hip hop. Great stuff. 

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  • 3 weeks later...
  • 3 weeks later...

Edge of Innocence by D. Tiffany and Roza Terenzi is a real incredible album. I guess it would be chalked up to being a techno album, but it borrows quite liberally from a couple of generations of electronic music. Certain sounds or portions of songs wouldn't feel out of place in an album from the 90s but with modern design choices (house music still has a huge influence) and a certain level of sophistication. It sounds like a track that could be on the Matrix soundtrack, but what if it took into account 20 years of musical history. 

Check out a track called Gravity Bongo for a great example. It falls somewhere between a house and techno song, but you can see the influences of bass, dance punk, electro, hyper pop, etc. It doesn't work like modern electronic tracks fixated on a drop, but rather layering on more and more interesting elements to the track.

Some of the album goes back further than the techno of the 90s. The whole albums use of vocal and samples feels indebted to the raw, sexual nature of house music from the 80s. Random moans, unintelligible words from a sexy sounding male voice, or several random voices singing "Beat on the drums" on Liquorice Skritch. Its truly fantastic stuff.

I would say to listen to the standout songs - Gravity Bongo, Liquorice Skritch, Grains of Sand, Paparazzi  - but the whole album feels essential. 

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