The problem that 2020 shined a fat glaring light on for so many of us is that people we thought we knew turned out to have very different core values, truth be told. That will be 2020’s lasting legacy for many. I read recently that the phrase, “Blood is thicker than water” is a modern misinterpretation of the original, “Blood of the covenant is thicker than the water of the womb.” Turns out that’s probably not entirely accurate, but I’ll let the etymologists and other word nerds figure that one out. Meanwhile, I really like the idea that bonds forged through shared experience can be stronger than those gifted by kinship. It’s an old idea that feels new and different now and has helped to reshape my notion of relationships going forward, especially how my energy is apportioned among them. It also seems like a role custom built for music and the people who love it.

Of all the stress in 2020, family-related tension weighed the most for me, contributing the most to sleepless nights and angst-ridden days. Again, though, the meaningful struggle focuses on what we can control and one of the most helpful responses I could muster was, as always, to listen to music. So much music. All kinds at all times.

My music-listening experiences in 2020 included new music from beloved bands that had been dormant for years, sometimes decades, mostly in the heavy metal and progressive rock genres. These are huge genres I spend most of my time in, full of so many bands doing so many variations of the basic styles going back 50 years, so part of my great joy was discovering new music and even new bands in arenas I thought I knew so well, especially in subgenres like epic heavy metal and Italian prog rock. I also got to share a lot of it with friends looking for something new.

I also learned to begin to find some love for a lot of music I actually hated for most of my life, most of it created in the 80’s. Bands like The Cure, Tears for Fears, and Roxy Music, and albums like Grace Under Pressure, previously scorned and derided for their simplicity and plasticity, were now met with an open mind and genuine curiosity, leading to a real appreciation of a whole new world of music. A major factor in my willingness to open up was insistent prompting by good pals who want their friends to feel the joy they do when they listen.

During the summer, I got a strange itch to explore modern soul music, specifically what some people call new old soul. Not so much a new interpretation of soul music that pushes that genre forward (that’d be neo soul), but a reinvigoration of the old style of Al Green and The Temptations and Aretha Franklin. A few weeks of exploration yielded wonderful experiences with Son Little and Fantastic Negrito and Durand Jones & The Indications and many more, along with the knowledge that I’d only barely begun to scratch the surface of the tippy top layer, not to mention the countless wonderful artists of nearly a hundred years past. Suddenly I had language for conversations that might have eluded me before. Yet another whole new world.

It’s hard to know just what flipped these various switches, but I like to think that during a time when I needed more light in my life, something within me knew that music would provide it, if I’d only let it in.

Here’s a necessarily incomplete list of the music that shined most brightly for me in 2020:

THERE’S PLENTY OF DARKNESS, SHOULD YOU SEEK IT

20. Atramentus – Stygian

Funeral doom has to get it just right to grab me and Atramentus gets it just right on Stygian. It’s fathoms deep and horizon wide, endlessly empty between landmarks and every bit as heavy as all that implies. But it’s the little bit more painted into all that blackness that makes Stygian great: Faintly silver crescents and halos, interwoven tendrils of gray smoke, amorphous shimmer that looks like the fear you’re struggling to contain.

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19. Elder – Omens

One of the highest accolades I reserve for a band is that they create the kind of music that makes me squeeze my eyes and sway or nod my head as I follow along. I don’t think about it; I just realize after a while that I’ve been doing it, the music grabs hold so hard and so fully. Elder has been making this kind of music for a lot of years now, and Omens shows they’ve got it in them to keep finding new and exciting ways to squeeze those eyelids together.

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18. Molassess – Through the Hollow

Molassess was born following a reunion of The Devil’s Blood members in remembrance of founding member Selim Lemouchi, who took his own life in 2014. Selim’s sister, Frida, is the voice of Molassess, whose music is deep and dark and steeped in the occult, drawing from the counterculture of the late 60’s and early 70’s when music was as much belief as it was signifier. Through the Hollow was a wonderful, all-encompassing escape in 2020.

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17. John Petrucci – Terminal Velocity

I thought I’d heard all the guitar solo albums I’d ever need to hear, especially by members of bands I know very well. When John Petrucci’s Terminal Velocity hit, though, it was just so full of goodness I couldn’t resist it. The man’s talent goes without saying, of course, so it was the feeling that sold it. Pure joy and love for the music.

• Official Website

16. Ripped to Shreds – 亂 (Luan)

亂 (Luan) was my favorite way to release the rage in 2020. Besides just being a fucking relentlessly angry album, there’s a strange comfort in the familiarity of its Swedish death metal roots and colossal heaviness. Ripped to Shreds is mostly the product of one talented and angry man named Andrew Lee who, as it turns out, is also apparently a fine human being invested in social justice who reserves his fury for those particular assholes of the world who deserve it most.

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15. Pharmacist – Medical Renditions of Grinding Decomposition

Super gross death metal isn’t something I belly up to the bar for very often. In fact, it’s so infrequent that I had to be told that Pharmacist’s Medical Renditions of Grinding Decomposition isn’t super gross death metal at all, but goregrind. Well… who fucking cares. All I know is that there were more occasions than usual in 2020 in which I needed a vicarious release of gross feelings I don’t need to be carrying around and this album lightened my load too many times to count.

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14. Enslaved – Utgard

It’s hard to tell whether Enslaved has begun making more accessible music or we’ve simply become accustomed to something the majority of the world would find perplexing at best. Utgard is testament to Enslaved’s greatness in that it makes you really squint to see what’s new and yet, once you see it, you feel it as deeply as you have on any record before it.

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13. Katatonia – City Burials

There’s more than one way to heavy, of course, and Katatonia has long-since mastered the art of “feels heavy even when it doesn’t sound heavy.” City Burials sees the Swedes draw again from an apparently endless well of melancholy to create yet another amazing album that finds its strength in the listener’s willingness to recognize and identify with those fucking feelings.

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12. Mekong Delta – Tales of a Future Past

Tales of a Future Past has all the hallmarks of a great Mekong Delta album, including killer riffs and solos couched within complex song structures inspired by classical composers. But there’s an emphasis this time around on melodies that push things closer to prog metal than past records, an approach that maximizes symbiosis between lead singer Martin LeMar and guitarist Peter Lake. Ralf Hubert has been the core dynamo of Mekong Delta for a long time and Tales of a Future Past is easily among his best.

• Official Website

11. Lord of Light – Morningstar

Sweden’s Lord of Light came seemingly out of nowhere in late 2019 with their self-released Morningstar and then No Remorse Records wisely snatched them up quick for a CD release in March of this year. Morningstar is difficult to label. It’s progressive metal, but it’s power metal, but it’s pretty plainly good old heavy metal with a white hi-top sneaker firmly planted in the 80’s. What’s beyond dispute it is that it’s awesome, full of powerful riffs and solos, strong melodies and compelling hooks. Short of being a perfect album, Morningstar is a magnificent collection of heavy metal songs that bodes well for Lord of Light’s future endeavors, God willing.

• Bandcamp

THERE’S AS MUCH LIGHT AS YOU’RE WILLING TO LET IN

10. Autonoesis – Autonoesis

Autonoesis, the band (or person), is a mystery. Fittingly ironic, given the meaning of the word, which refers to the awareness of oneself in relation to past, present, and future. The music Autonoesis makes is mysterious, too, but in a much friendlier way, blending attributes of progressive and technical death metal so that it makes you forget the particular aspects of both for the all-consuming power of the riffs, not to mention miles of brightly shining leads. Autonoesis may be a bedroom project, but it’s got the soul of a full-fledged and well-travelled collective.

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9. Oranssi Pazuzu – Mestarin Kynsi

It’s hard to communicate the appeal of Oranssi Pazuzu’s music to someone who doesn’t share a fan’s perspective. To me, though, it kind of just makes sense, even when it doesn’t and sometimes especially when it doesn’t. Mestarin Kynsi is like some oily alien entity that exists only as an amalgamation of the darkest and most deeply repressed memories siphoned from beings unfortunate enough to stray within range. Just that, floating around in space. Music that feels like that? That makes the listener feel like that? That’s pretty fucking cool.

• Bandcamp

8. Wytch Hazel – III: Pentecost

Like Valkyrie in the seventh spot, Wytch Hazel’s 2020 offering is golden-hued and imbued with a reserved melancholy. Unlike Fear’s inward focus, III: Pentecost finds strength through spirituality and celebrates that connection with the stately countenance of a thrice blessed Paladin. What makes this album truly special is that it genuinely feels as if the band is singing with you. They’re worshipping, for sure, but they’ve got your hand in theirs. The salvation and glory Wytch Hazel celebrates is every bit as much yours as it is theirs.

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• Bandcamp

7. Valkyrie – Fear

Fear is a heartfelt expression of anxiety, sadness, loneliness, doubt, and regret. Like all of us from time to time, Valkyrie found themselves in emotional space that didn’t quite jibe with a summery vibe and, rather than ignoring or avoiding it, they faced it, embraced it, and turned it into music. Good for them. But you don’t even need to get into all this feelings stuff to enjoy this record. The guitars are so strong and the songwriting so good, the production so robust and lush, that this album stands on its own merits regardless.

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• Bandcamp

6. Psychotic Waltz – The God-Shaped Void

I was so happy to be able to write about a new Psychotic Waltz album in 2020 after a 23 year recording hiatus. From my review: With The God-Shaped Void, Psychotic Waltz has created a bold, contemporary statement of progressive metal relevance and folded into it a beautiful and wonderful paean to their past. They took their time, prioritized their values of integrity and craftsmanship, and created an album full of melodic and emotional hooks that will set slowly but deeply for listeners willing to invest. What a coup for a band who had so many years and apparent reasons to give up, yet stayed true to themselves and their musical vision and, through it all, refused to relent their drive toward the light.

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5. Falconer – From a Dying Ember

If you’d have told me at the beginning of 2020 that my end-of-year list would include a Falconer album in its top five, I’d have told you to lay off the peyote, muchacho. And yet here we are. From a Dying Ember is (mostly) mid-paced power metal, which typically ain’t my bag. It’s not particularly heavy or complex or eclectic or any of the things that usually woo me. It is, however, bright and triumphant and just relentlessly joyous. And it’s delivered with all the unabashed verve of a master thespian, which turned out to be the active ingredient of a prescription I didn’t even know I needed.

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4. Dark Quarterer – Pompei

Dark Quarterer’s great strength is telling epic, sweeping stories through the music, as lyrics and vocals and instruments are braided in the songwriting process so that the weave is both stronger and more aesthetically interesting than the strands individually. The listener’s experience, of course, is the proof of concept. We all know the story of Pompei: there’s a volcano, it erupts, people are killed and buried. Yet the music on Dark Quarterer’s eighth album captures the imagination nonetheless through their immersive and dynamic songwriting approach coupled with passionate playing that touches the listener emotionally.

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3. Hail Spirit Noir – Eden in Reverse

Eden in Reverse is rooted in psychedelic rock and krautrock, pulls tones and textures from 80’s synth aesthetics, dresses up its melodies in the proto-prog style of the late 60’s and layers it all into the modern black metal interpretation and expansion of those musical enclaves. Blackened psychedelia blends into a swirling krautrock that swells and threatens violent dissolution but maintains a weird spiraling integrity. The lingering effect is the disquieting sense that you know what this is even if you don’t quite recognize it.

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2. Fates Warning – Long Day Good Night

Long Day Good Night feels like coming home. A hackneyed sentiment, to be sure, but think a little on it. Just like Fates Warning’s music, the bare face of those words belies a deeper meaning, a duplicity, a recognition that life is rarely so simple and acceptance that we’ve ultimately got very little say in how it transpires outside of our responses to it. Coming home, of course, signals an arrival to a place of comfort, of sanctuary. It also represents the end of a journey and, thus, a bittersweet culmination of emotion, an orange gradient horizon casting a warm, life-giving glow on what might otherwise die in shadow.

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1. Thy Catafalque – Naiv

Tamás Kátai’s Thy Catafalque is one of those projects that’s really difficult to describe but, out of all the many words used to describe what Kátai does, the one that seems to do it best does it simply: Adventure. Rooted in Hungarian traditional and folk melodies and spliced within a black and progressive metal lattice, Thy Catafalque’s truest mystery is how Kátai so fully and naturally shoots it all through the human experience and up into the cosmos. On Naiv, the answer isn’t any clearer, though the listener is surer than ever before that they are more than observer, more than passenger, finally and fully integrated with Thy Catafalque as both conduit and, ultimately, cognizance.

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SOMETIMES A LITTLE BIT’LL DO

1. Lör – Edge of Eternity

I only really spent very much time with one heavy metal EP this year and it was Lör’s Edge of Eternity. The truth is, if this wasn’t categorized as an EP, it would have made my regular list, probably at least near the top ten. Besides being well-written and -executed, it’s just all the things I want a Progressive Heavy Metal album to be: bright, smart, complex, and fiercely unique.

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MOST EVERYTHING FALLS SOMEWHERE IN BETWEEN

20. Jaga Jazzist – Pyramid

What if jazz from the 60’s discovered synthpop in the 80’s through a post-rock portal?

• Bandcamp

19. Long Earth – Once Around the Sun

Beautiful, stretched out and melodic space rock as reverent as it is personal.

• Bandcamp

18. J G Thirlwell & Simon Steensland – Oscillospira

Spooky avant prog reminiscent of early Univers Zero with just enough familiar flavor to be more palatable than disagreeable.

• Bandcamp

17. Magick Brother & Mystic Sister – Magick Brother & Mystic Sister

Spacey, funky psychedelic prog with retro soul so groovy it practically reanimates the best of the 70’s from Pink Floyd to Khan through half of the Canterbury scene.

• Bandcamp

16. Onségen Ensemble – Fear

Dark and ritualistic heavy prog, dashed with jazz and folk, with an ear for the eclectic and an eye for grand vistas.

• Bandcamp

15. Ring Van Möbius – The 3rd Majesty

Straddling the line between Yes and ELP with all the fire and spirit of the scene they invented.

• Bandcamp

14. Airbag – A Day at the Beach

Patient and persistent melancholic soundscapes drawing inspiration from the background music of the 80’s.

• Bandcamp

13. Pat Metheny – From This Place

Pat Metheny is a master of what has become the clear Metheny style of contemporary jazz and fusion, and From This Place sees him executing it to perfection.

• Bandcamp

12. Antony Kalugin – Marshmallow Moondust

Nobody else is doing quite what Antony Kalugin is doing with prog rock. Marshmallow Moondust is such unabashedly uplifting ear candy that it’d be hard to take seriously if it wasn’t so seriously good.

• Bandcamp

11. Lazuli – Le fantastique envol de Dieter Böhm

A wonderful collection of melodic rock and roll songs filtered through the progressive sieve to tell a compelling story. Pretty much the epitome of effective prog rock.

• Official Website

10. Rick Wakeman – The Red Planet

Rick Wakeman’s The Red Planet is as big an idea as he’s ever had (and that’s saying something) and he absolutely nails it, emphasizing all the points that make a prog nerd drool. Maybe even the best solo album he’s ever made.

• Official Website

9. La Maschera di Cera – S.E.I.

Modern Italian prog with an affinity for the ways of the old guard. La Maschera di Cera wraps outstanding RPI style songwriting in pure and polished classic prog sounds of mellotron and flute and amazing vocals.

• Bandcamp

8. Karfagen – Birds of Passage

Antony Kalugin’s Karfagen is the pure product of an artist in love with his craft. Two long passages interpret the poetry of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and William Blake, driven by emotion and held aloft by the joy of musical storytelling. (see Antony’s solo album at #12)

• Bandcamp

7. Tiger Moth Tales – Still Alive

Still Alive by Tiger Moth Tales, Pete Jones’ solo prog project, is essentially a love letter to everybody in his life, including family, friends, fans, and those he’s yet to meet. With the weight of the pandemic bearing down on artists and their circles the world over, Pete embraced us all with these songs, sharing a warm smile to lighten the load just a bit.

• Bandcamp

6. Monophonics – It’s Only Us

Motown and soul music more broadly imbued the 70’s with a warmth that persists today and those of us who remember the radio then can still feel the good vibes (well, so can everyone else, but I like to think it’s special for the dustier among us). Monophonics’ It’s Only Us channels all of it with equal parts confidence and deference.

• Bandcamp

5. Dai Kaht – Dai Kaht II

Dai Kaht is a strange marriage of zeuhl and Rock In Opposition, two very strange offshoots of prog, itself a strange manifestation of rock and roll music. More specifically, on Dai Kaht II, all the wacky eccentricities of zeuhl are crammed headlong through the distorted electric RIO filters to create an aggressively strange and ultimately addictive new, barely familiar monster.

• Bandcamp

4. Wobbler – Dwellers of the Deep

The only thing better than classic prog continuing to scratch its particular itch after all these years is young new bands carrying the torch as confidently and proudly as the vanguard in its day. And Wobbler does it better than just about everybody else, creating an album in Dwellers of the Deep that pushes typical time limits and still leaves the listener wanting more.

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• Bandcamp

3. Mulatu Astatke & Black Jesus Experience – To Know Without Knowing

Mulatu Astatke, known for his Ethio-jazz and as a champion of global jazz collaborations, worked for a second time with Black Jesus Experience to create one of 2020’s most amazing records. To Know Without Knowing is the album I listened to the most in 2020. In a year marked by strife and harsh reminders that people of color have long been and continue to be disproportionately harmed by the status quo, this album of international collaboration and multicultural celebration was a breath of fresh air.

• Bandcamp

2. Lunatic Soul – Through Shaded Woods

Lunatic Soul is the solo project of Riverside’s Mariusz Duda, through which he explores avenues of musical variation not quite suited for his primary band. His 2020 offering, Through Shaded Woods finds him miles ahead of where he’s landed before, celebrating traditional sounds with acoustic guitar and folk melodies with what feels like a genuine love and passion for the music. Duda has never sounded so deeply invested in his music, and that’s saying something.

• Bandcamp

1. LogoS – Sadako e le Mille Gru di Carta

The next time you decide to explore something completely new to you in the world of music, please make it Italian prog rock (aka Rock Progressivo Italiano or RPI) and please begin with Sadako e le Mille Gru di Carta (Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes). (Yes, I’m assuming you aren’t already familiar with RPI. Odds are good, I think). I could write a million words about what make LogoS and this album so great, but you don’t want to read a million words. Instead, I’ll remind you that a great many of the best albums ever find that oh so delicate balance between familiarity and novelty. LogoS recalls all the greats of Italian prog rock, including Banco del Mutuo Soccorso, Premiata Forneria Marconi, and Le Orme, and yet they sound more like LogoS than anything else. Instruments include electric guitars and synthesizers and songs are written in the rock and roll symphony style, all per the prog way and all with that distinctive Italian flair that is as familiar as it is difficult to describe to the uninitiated. Sadako is bold, majestic, exceedingly professional and as reverent as it is brave. As near to perfect an album as can be found in 2020.

• Bandcamp

Thanks for reading my list, for letting me share my experiences with you, in a very small way sharing the heavy burden that is the here and now.

It’s not like any of us has the answers.

There is real strength, though, and hope in the desire to discover the way. Music has an almost impossible power to connect people with shared values and visions and wishes for the world. I really do cherish that connection, real and implied, and hope it brings as much light to your day as it does mine.

The post Best of 2020 – Lone Watie: We Find What We Look For appeared first on Last Rites.

I said “reasons largely unknown,” but that’s disingenuous. This is something tangible within my control, an equation I can solve.

This has been a difficult year, its human tragedy so great that it overawes our comprehension. In this rupture, music has been a balm. It makes us less alone, even (and perhaps especially) as the world’s math becomes fractal rather than algebraic. Whoever you are out there, I love you.

In no particular ranked order, here are some honorable mentions before diving into the formal list:

Aara – En Ergô Einai; Afterbirth – Four-Dimensional Flesh; Ahna – Crimson Dawn; Anaal Nathrakh – Endarkenment; …and Oceans – Cosmic World Mother; Armagedda – Svindeldjup Ättestup; Atramentus – Stygian; Cryptic Shift – Visions from Enceladus; Cytotoxin – Nuklearth; Dark Forest – Oak, Ash & Thorn; Defeated Sanity – The Sanguinary Impetus; Depravity – Grand Malevolence; Devangelic – Ersetu; Fates Warning – Long Day Good Night; Forlesen – Hierophant Violent; Fuck the Facts – Pleine Noirceur; Grafvitnir – Death’s Wings Widespread; John Petrucci – Terminal Velocity; Korgull the Exterminator – Sharpen Your Spikes; Molasses – Through the Hollow; Paradise Lost – Obsidian; Question – Reflections of the Void; Sacred Outcry – Damned for All Time; Seven Spires – Emerald Seas; Shards of Humanity – Cold Logic; Töxik Death – Sepulchral Demons; Ulcerate – Stare into Death and Be Still; Valkyrie – Fear; Wytch Hazel – III: Pentecost.

HANG ON TO EACH OTHER

20. Helion Prime – Question Everything

Now on their third singer in three albums, Helion Prime recovered in a huge way from the misstep of their last album with the impossibly catchy Question Everything. The band’s thoroughly modern (and only slightly prog-leaning) power metal has symphonic and orchestrated touches to spare, muscular rhythmic guitar work, and Mary Zimmer’s rich alto vocals, which give each of these pieces the bulletproof hooks they need to linger. Add to that a lyrical conceit where each song focuses on a different skeptic, scientist, or iconoclast, and the result is a marvelous album from one of American power metal’s leading lights.

• Helion Prime on Facebook

19. Neptunian Maximalism – Éons

Conventional wisdom might hold that, hey, in these attention span-starved times, rolling out a debut recording that runs more than two hours across three discs is a touch… off. The Belgian collective Neptunian Maximalism instead gleefully damns the torpedoes, sets sail for choppy waters, and proceeds with one of the purest demonstrations of late of the meaninglessness of genre designations. Yes, there are free jazz squalls, doom riffs, rumbling sheets of drone, heady skronk workouts, and layers of hallucinatory noise. But more than that, there is music, pursued with headlong abandon and a love above nearly all else of density.

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18. Khthoniik Cerviiks – Æquiizoiikum

My unwavering line of approach to the vowel-abusing barbarians in Khthoniik Cerviiks is “Hey! You got some Voivod in my Katharsis!” On album number three (and their finest to date), their woozy blackened ferocity is as sideways as ever, but with a noted uptick in spindly melodic fragments, as in standout tracks “Δt” and “Kollektiing Koffiin Naiils.” I’ll be honest: a black metal band with an intro called “Welcome to HAL” is always going to catch my attention; Khthoniik Cerviiks brings it home by backing up their noise-smeared clatter with precisely the kind of rightness to underscore its utter wrongness.

• Bandcamp

17. Katavasia – Magnus Venator

Although the Greek black metal scene is stranger and more heterodox than the standard shorthand allows, there’s little denying that “Greek black metal” as a Platonic ideal is one of the more readily identifiable styles in the field. The galloping, the regal mid-tempo, the stately melodicism, the impassioned, theatrically spat vocal cadences: Katavasia’s got it all. What they also have on their second album Magnus Venator is an even more lovingly rendered sense of, well, the brashness of rock and roll. This album lives its bone-deep history while steadfastly refusing to be a museum piece. Call it “Greek yes metal.”

• Bandcamp

16. Enslaved – Utgard

Whatever other superlatives one might lob, so total is their mastery over the shapeshifting triumph of their progressive black metal that Enslaved are, above all else, a band with nothing to prove. And yet, for as unavoidably familiar as the elements of Utgard are, Enslaved still seem intent on finding new ways to till their acreage. The almost subliminal instrumental and rhythmic counterpoint that claws its way up out of the last third of “Sequence”? I haven’t seen Enslaved work that move before. The mark of this peerless band is that they knew it too, and had to find it.

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15. Katatonia – City Burials

The scope of The Fall of Hearts felt so all-encompassing that it was difficult to see exactly where Katatonia might tread next. At first, City Burials seems to have pulled all that range skin-tight, then given it only the space of a deep breath’s width to play within. The result is a less immediate Katatonia album, but one which rewards close listening with fresh, aching detail that one could have sworn wasn’t even there the last time one approached. Jonas Renkse’s vocals are in the finest form of his career, leading the band into resplendent darkness, step by trudging step.

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14. Incantation – Sect of Vile Divinities

Straw person argument alert: You might see people out there bellyaching that Incantation’s latest album suffers from an overly clean production. These people, as a rule, are dour, no-fun-havers with rutabagas for ears. Undeniably, the sound on Sect of Vile Divinities is both less murky and less sharp-edged than usual for this death metal institution, but the result of that added power and clarity is actually to highlight the fact that Incantation’s foundational, epochal, almighty, mucky lurch is baked into the songwriting. As long as McEntee and company put finger to fret, these riffs will flow like an everpuking stream.

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13. Oranssi Pazuzu – Mestarin Kynsi

The counterintuitive downside of being a total innovator in one’s field is that over time, the innovation comes to be taken for granted. If you’re a major tech company, your solution is planned obsolescence; if you’re the Finnish psychonauts in Oranssi Pazuzu, your solution is, “Fuck you, try this.” Early in the course of the pandemic this year, a large contingent of the Last Rites crew watched Pazuzu’s livestream performance of Mestarin Kynti, and I feel like I’m still occasionally clutching at furniture to steady myself from that headlong descent into the miasmic inner abyss. They will take you places.

• Bandcamp

12. Katalepsy – Terra Mortuus Est

The thing about Terra Mortuus Est is, it’s really stupid in exactly all the smartest, dumbest, most perfect ways. If Suffocation is just a touch too cerebral, Katalepsy is here for you, boo. These Russians have struck essentially the perfect balance on their third album between whip-smart technical/brutal riffing and composition and caveman-dumb, thrillingly idiotic tough-guy beatdowns. Imagine all the different genres of people you’d rather not meet in a mosh pit: Terra Mortuus Est is all of them at once, and it is so great. Music to win friends and influence people, if those people are voluntarily lobotomized.

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• Bandcamp

11. Sólstafir – Endless Twilight of Codependent Love

In today’s edition of Damning With Faint Praise, Sólstafir really faltered with the greyed-out tedium of Berdreyminn. On their latest, however, the Icelandic journeymen revitalized themselves hugely, and put together easily their finest album since Svartir Sandar. “Her Fall from Grace” can take a hike, but otherwise this is a brilliant and surprisingly diverse set of songs from a band too easy to write off as one-note, from the shit-kicking fiery explosion of “Dionysus” to the noir lounge of “Or.” “Úlfur” rides an outro riff so engrossing, I picture the band still out there, following that line past the mountains.

• Bandcamp

AND ANY FUCKING THING YOU LOVE

10. MY DYING BRIDE – THE GHOST OF ORION

Feel the Misery, now five years in the rearview, was a shockingly vital resurgence from My Dying Bride. And while this British conglomerate of unshakable despondence remains fish-barrel shootingly open to self-parody (Hello, “Tired of Tears”!), their latest triumph The Ghost of Orion actually underscores in dramatic fashion a truth too easily overlooked: My Dying Bride has nearly always undergone fairly drastic shifts between albums. This latest set of gloomy missives hardly exceeds a simmer throughout, but its open-textured sprawl approaches a heartbreaking calm. A beguiling, forlorn, beautiful, quite nearly ambient, and stunningly restrained outing from this truly peerless act.

• Last Rites Review

9. SWEVEN – THE ETERNAL RESONANCE

Morbus Chron’s second album pointed the way, but The Eternal Resonance follows the map straight off the edges. Cunningly, Sweven’s debut is actually more straightforward in instrumentation than the swan song of Robert Andersson’s former band, but the atmosphere is richer. It has the burnished instrumental sheen of Jester Race-era In Flames and the baroque architecture of early Opeth, yet sounds like neither. If Sweven the album was Pornography, then The Eternal Resonance is halfway to Disintegration. It doesn’t sound like any of that, though; it sounds like death metal dissolving in dark waters, howling that it might echo forever.

• Last Rites Review
• Bandcamp

8. HAVUKRUUNU – UINUOS SYÖMEIN SOTA

Havukruunu have been on an impressive upward trajectory in their still-young career, and album number three is easily their most accomplished outing. The shadow of their countrymen in Moonsorrow certainly still looms large in these songs, but there are complementary echoes of Bathory, Windir, Saor, and many others. More to the point, though, even though the album rarely eases up in its aggressive approach, even the most blisteringly fast passages are animated by a firmament-rending sense of epic melody. Black metal had a somewhat down year in 2020, but nobody else flew the flag of triumph as joyously as Havukruunu.

• Last Rites Review
• Bandcamp

7. SÖLICITÖR – SPECTRAL DEVASTATION

Seattle’s Sölicitör live exactly at that thrilling nexus which makes speed metal such a knotty thing to define: not quite thrash or NWOBHM, and nor are they power or straight-ahead trad. What they are quite definitively on Spectral Devastation, however, is an absolutely killer speed metal wrecking crew, like cyborg biker dirtbags in the best dystopian movie that doesn’t exist. Sounding like they’ve mainlined Motörhead, Satan, Omen, Stained Class, Riot, Cerebus, and all the rest, Sölicitör’s broken-bottle melee thrives especially on Amy Lee Carlson’s snarl and some completely blistering dual-guitar heroics. Why kill ‘em all if they’re clamoring to join?

• Bandcamp

6. PHARMACIST – MEDICAL RENDITIONS OF GRINDING DECOMPOSITION

The party line is clear, and the party line is not wrong: the Japanese gorefiends in Pharmacist love Carcass. In particular, they love Carcass circa Symphonies/Necroticism, which is patently one of the finest possible death metal stakes to lay claim to. Rather than sheer homage or pastiche, however, this staggeringly accomplished debut album succeeds not because of what it reminds the listener of, but by how easily the listener can forget ever wanting to listen to any other death metal. Disgusting tones, fantastically complex and satisfying riffs, and a sneaky sense of delirious melody? Get your… [sigh]… prescription filled.

• Last Rites Review
• Bandcamp

5. THY CATAFALQUE – NAIV

If you’ve encountered Tamás Kátai’s Thy Catafalque even casually – particularly over the last decade or so – it should come as no surprise that the project’s latest album, Naiv, is a peripatetic display of bafflingly juxtaposed genre agnosticism. What Naiv underscores, however, is that no matter how seemingly freeform his musical impulses, Kátai has a singular gift for joining them in such a way that the arc of the whole bends toward revelation. I still don’t know what Kátai is after, but each time I submit to this beautiful, multiform journey, I feel that much closer to some kind of truth.

• Last Rites Review
• Bandcamp

4. WORM – GLOOMLORD

If we’re being honest, a band can go pretty far with a canny combination of cover art, album title, and musical atmosphere. (The kids call that “aesthetic.”) On that meager count alone, Worm’s second album Gloomlord had a leg up from the very start of the year. And yet, the true strength of Gloomlord lies in its songwriting, which serves up hugely satisfying gloops of swampy, decrepit doom/death, but also backs it up with deliciously chewy riffs while making ample space for some frankly stunning guitar solos. A recent signing to 20 Buck Spin bodes well for future decrepitude.

• Last Rites Review
• Bandcamp

3. GRAYCEON – MOTHERS WEAVERS VULTURES

I wrote a whole florid mess of words about why I love Grayceon’s latest album so fervently, so here I’ll be slightly more concise as to why you need to give this band your attention: these songs stick with you. They have a life and independent emotional weight of their own. One of the marks of a truly great, engaging album is that the sounds hover close and the words run deep. Mothers Weaver Vultures gave me a lot to feel about love, anger, and our responsibility to each other, and it did so with heavy riffs and beautiful playing.

• Last Rites Review
• Bandcamp

2. BÜTCHER – 666 GOATS CARRY MY CHARIOT

Do you like Slayer? Bütcher likes Slayer. Do you like Kreator and Bathory and Nifelheim and Mercyful Fate and Aura Noir and Exciter and Celtic Frost? Bütcher does, too. 666 Goats Carry My Chariot is 2020’s undisputed champion of hellish blackened thrashing speed metal, and if you have ever felt allegiance to this beautiful cantankerous thing called heavy metal, you owe it to yourself to hear this record. These Belgian maniacs aren’t afraid to push their songwriting past pure speed, as the title track pulls a few epic Bathory moves. This is a band to watch, to envy, to hail.

• Last Rites Review
• Bandcamp

1. CIRITH UNGOL – FOREVER BLACK

Much ink will be (rightly) spilled to point out the remarkable fact that Cirith Ungol’s Forever Black is the band’s first album in 29 years; more still will be spilled to tell of how it strengthens their legacy and clarifies their lineage; too little will be spilled in grateful celebration of this unalloyed triumph. Like all the very best Ungol, Forever Black is both alien and familiar, classicist and new, fleet and leaden, magical and earthly. Like all the very best heavy metal, it is possessed of a wild-eyed fervor and an abiding love. This is a faith worth keeping.

• Last Rites Review
• Bandcamp

THERE ARE SHORT SOUNDS

10. Lamp Of Murmuur – The Burning Spears of Crimson Agony

A darling of the raw black metal underground for deserved reason, this demo bests the full-length for this particular knucklehead.

• Bandcamp

9. Tzompantli – Tlamanalli

Doom-crawling, muck-treading death metal straight out of Aesop’s famed “slow and painful loses the race; all life is suffering” fable.

• Last Rites Review
• Bandcamp

8. Romasa – Insufferable Cave of Rotting Aspiration

Know how most “sludge” is just regular-ass doom with half the riffs and twice the pedals? Romasa is throat-ripping bile.

• Bandcamp

7. Midnight Dice – Hypnotized

Seriously catchy, bulletproof trad-leaning metal that might be thrilled to be called glam while also busting you in the jaw.

• Last Rites Review
• Bandcamp

6. Kneel – Infinite Worship, Slaves Eternal

Punishingly fast and coruscatingly raw black metal, a bit like if Judas Iscariot did speed and sat on a beehive.

• Bandcamp

5. Moldé Volhal – Into the Cave of Ordeals

A rampaging, one-man Norwegian black metal demo which balances sheer intensity with epic, melodic riffs that recall Forteresse or Belenos.

• Last Rites Review
• Bandcamp

4. Wampyric Rites – Reflections of a Frostbitten Moon

Punishing rawness, frantic blasting, and uncannily melodic riffing collide with acoustic guitars and atmospheric synth excursions. Lamp of What Now?

• Last Rites Review
• Bandcamp

3. Morbific – Pestilent Hordes

Filthy, clattering death metal from Finland with a hefty dose of, well, Finnish death metal. What’re you goddamned waiting for?

• Bandcamp

2. Dauþuz – Grubenfall 1727

Sweeping, grimly determined German black metal with thematic focus on mining and caves. Being a niche of one guarantees preeminence.

• Last Rites Review
• Bandcamp

1. Lör – Edge of Eternity

Just an astonishing range of ideas stuffed into this 31-minute celebration of bright, complex, progressive, joyful heavy music. Don’t miss.

• Last Rites Review
• Bandcamp

THERE ARE MORE SOUNDS

Again, truly a surfeit of wonderful sounds this year. Here are some additional honorable mentions:

Ambrose Akinmusire – On the Tender Spot of Every Callused Moment; Artemis – Artemis; ASC – Isolated Systems; Cloudkicker – Solitude; Collocutor – Continuation; Four Tet – Sixteen Oceans; Jason Isbell & the 400 Unit – Reunions; Joel Ross – Who Are You?; Julianna Barwick – Healing is a Miracle; Leandro Fresco & Rafael Anton Irisarri – Una Presencia en la Brisa; Lorenzo Senni – Scacco Matto; Mala Rodriguez – Mala; Malena Zavala – La Yarará; Moby – All Visible Objects; Nduduzo Makhatini – Modes of Communication: Letters from the Underworlds; Nubya Garcia – The Source; The Orb – Abolition of the Royal Familia; Photay – On Hold; Rob Luft – Life is the Dancer; Sad13 – Haunted Painting; Shabaka & the Ancestors – We Are Sent Here by History; Sibling and Heavenchord – Sounds of Silence; Steve Earle & the Dukes – Ghosts of West Virginia; Sturgill Simpson – Cuttin’ Grass, Vol. 1; The Soft Pink Truth – Shall We Go On Sinning So That Grace May Increase?

30. Dan Rosenboom – Absurd in the Anthropocene

The trumpeter Dan Rosenboom had a prolific year, but Absurd in the Anthropocene stands out for its gleefully messy stylistic sprawl that pulls from jazz, funk, instrumental hip-hop, and the kind of fusion abstractions that mark a lot of Squarepusher’s more outré material. This one snarls, writhes, luxuriates in furrows.

• Bandcamp

29. Khruangbin – Mordechai

Album number three from this Texas trio finds their uniquely laidback psych soul-funk in as fine a form as ever, still driven primarily by the focus on Laura Lee’s bass. Vocals play a much more prominent role here than in the past, but Khruangbin’s effortlessly cool and calming vibe sustains.

• Bandcamp

28. Ben Lukas Boysen – Mirage

Ben Lukas Boysen is an almost preternaturally gifted producer, and on Mirage his meticulous compositions attain such a syncretic whole that it becomes folly to parse the genre or origin of each sound. Like Philip Glass scoring Blade Runner with a happy ending? No, but maybe. Sit with these sounds.

• Bandcamp

27. Squarepusher – Be Up a Hello

Be Up a Hello is an ebullient, life-affirming, playfully anarchic return to form for Tom Jenkinson, and as such it’s tempting to place it alongside Aphex Twin’s Syro. It harkens back to early IDM landmarks like Jenkinson’s own Hard Normal Daddy, but dances with a light heart and lighter touch.

• Bandcamp

26. Wolfgang Muthspiel – Angular Blues

Compared to the other guitar jazz trio album on this list, Angular Blues is knottier, denser, and more full of crosstalk. Brian Blade is one of the greatest jazz drummers at the moment, and his sparing intensity coaxes Muthspiel’s guitar into some fabulous tumbling dialogue. Like a harbor at dusk.

• YouTube

25. Kölsch – Now Here No Where

The Danish producer Kölsch released perhaps the most unabashedly beautiful dance album of the year with Now Here No Where, which fuses bold, tech-leaning rhythms, trance-nodding ebullience, and enough strings and contemporary classical influence to remind the listener of Jon Hopkins or Nils Frahm.

• Bandcamp

24. Bill Frisell – Valentine

Bill Frisell’s Valentine is a beautifully relaxed jazz trio with his guitar alongside Rudy Royston’s drums and Thomas Morgan’s bass. Even in the busier passages, there’s a warmth and openness that sounds like three friends with years at their back sitting around the table, catching up, talking shit, laughing easily.

• Full album stream on YouTube

23. Bruce Springsteen – Letter to You

With apologies to James Brown, Bruce Springsteen has long since made a serious run at the title of hardest working man in show business. Letter to You is another full slate of sprawling E Street Band rock and roll, and very likely Springsteen’s best since The Rising. Riveting, vital rock.

• YouTube

22. Ausklang – Chronos

The German trio Ausklang is a perfect fit for Indianapolis-based label Past in the Present, despite being a slightly more traditional band. Chronos is an assured, tremulously beautiful album of instrumental post-rock that flirts with ambient and contemporary classical, calling to mind Sigur Rós or Eluvium at their most rapturous.

• Bandcamp

21. J Majik – Always Be

Despite a late-year album from ASC, J Majik’s Always Be is the glorious, head-spinning, breezy, nailgun-drumming, classicist drum and bass album of the year. Still, it’s almost certainly premature to hail a jungle revival, both because the style never quite died and because Always Be sounds like a new future.

• Bandcamp

20. North Atlantic Drift – Pillars

Each piece on this quiet, beatific album is a postcard from a friend you thought you’d lost. This duo favors slow, warm drones with washes of treble and pingings in the distance. Picture a ship, adrift at sea. Fog lifts and the sun dapples; this is that kind of church.

• Bandcamp

19. Beatrice Dillon – Workaround

This is a curious and engrossing album of diverse, minimal, abstract percussive grooves. Too smooth for glitch, too propulsive for dub, too slow for footwork, Workaround feels like a set of experiments in walking sideways into chopped beatwork only to find your feet already know the moves. Deep, head-nodding rhythm.

• Bandcamp

18. Wobbler – Dwellers of the Deep

When categorizing the nooks and crannies of progressive rock, literally nobody happens to mentally arrange a spectrum with the ends anchored by “David Gilmour’s guitar tone” and “Rick Wakeman’s cape.” Were anyone to take up such that most hopeless of batons, however, one just might find Wobbler howling their Assent.

• Bandcamp

17. Glåsbird – Norskfjǫrðr

Glåsbird’s Norskfjǫrðr is possibly the most overwhelmingly tactile album on this list. Though ambient in overall effect, the bedrock strings and vanishing drones are speckled with taps, scrapes, birdsong, water. A deeply felt, imaginary found-sound journey along the craggy coastlines and remote cabins of Norway’s fjords. Cozy, immersive, transportive sound.

• Bandcamp

16. Zara McFarlane – Songs of an Unknown Tongue

Neither quite neosoul nor jazz nor Afrofuturism, Zara McFarlane’s fourth album and latest for Gilles Peterson’s Brownswood Recordings is a heady, mellifluous blend of contemporary UK jazz, Jamaican and Afro-Caribbean rhythms, and bass-forward electronic music. McFarlane’s voice lilts atop and around the groove, projecting both strength and vulnerability with ease.

• Bandcamp

15. William Ryan Fritch – The Letdown

Evocative, off-kilter jazz noir is the order of the day from this darkly alluring album. Fritch summons ghostly melodic fragments with an undercurrent of percussive clatter that should appeal to fans of Bohren & der Club of Gore, Tom Wait’s Alice, or the more quietly menacing elements of mid-period Einsturzende Neubauten.

• Bandcamp

14. Field Works – Ultrasonic

Each Field Works album revolves around a central theme, illustrated by the use of Stuart Hyatt’s field recordings. On Ultrasonic, a dream list of diverse artists in the contemporary ambient and electronic music scene take Hyatt’s recordings of the Indiana bat and twist them into gorgeous, diaphanous billows of sky-sound.

• Bandcamp

13. Michael Olatuja – Lagos Pepper Soup

Bassist Michael Olatuja’s Lagos Pepper Soup is the most joyful, danceable illustration of the universality of music you’ll find this year. The album simmers with jazz, funk, soul, fusion, Afrobeat, and orchestral pop. This is a richly immanent experience, where divinity exists purely in the work of these many hands.

• Bandcamp

12. Emma Swift – Blonde on the Tracks

The gorgeous lilt of Emma Swift’s singing (somewhat reminiscent of Jenny Lewis) is utterly magnetic throughout Blonde on the Tracks, a rich, straightforward, Americana-tinged set of Bob Dylan covers. Locating itself in a sympathetic, open-hearted place somewhere between Swift’s Nashville and Dylan’s Greenwich Village, this is a perfectly lovely album.

• Bandcamp

11. Alvaro Rojas – Gran Kasa

Vancouver-based guitarist Alvaro Rojas’s latest, Gran Kasa, is a piquantly vibrant album of buoyant rhythms and overflowing melody. The primary idiom is jazz, but Rojas’s guitar underscores a fondness for progressive rock alongside Latin percussion and grooves, chamber strings, and echoes of everything from early Santana to contemporary UK jazz.

• Bandcamp

10. Tyresta – All We Have

Written in the context of his mother’s death from cancer, Tyresta’s Nick Turner released the most heartbreakingly beautiful album of the year, filled with the kind of wordless grief that spills over into awe, the sharp pain which becomes a deep ache because it’s all love.

• Bandcamp

9. Rïcïnn – Nereïd

Rïcïnn’s second album Nereïd is a strange, beautiful, unpredictably choral piece of work with echoes of Dead Can Dance, Julie Christmas, Lotus Thief, and Bjork’s Medulla, in turns soothing and unsettling as it contrasts Laure Le Prunenec’s tumbling, acrobatic vocals with clattering explosions of sound. An aching, vulnerable, defiant album.

• Bandcamp

8. Matthew Halsall – Salute to the Sun

Matthew Halsall’s spiritual-tinged jazz is at once expansive and restrained. Throughout the album, the bass often anchors a mantra-like pulse while all manner of instrumentation – harp, flute, kalimba, shakers and other hand percussion, Halsall’s own trumpet – explores melodic variations like exhalations of gratitude. This is an album of radiant calm.

• Bandcamp

7. Fiona Apple – Fetch the Bolt Cutters

Finally, a Fiona Apple album where the long-standing directness and pungency of her songwriting is mirrored and thus strengthened by the sound. Fetch the Bolt Cutters is bold, nervy, open, and fuck-your-preconceptions confessional, all the while sounding like you’ve stepped into her piano’s soundboard, into her head, into her world.

• YouTube

6. bvdub – Wrath & Apathy

Brock van Wey released four great albums this year (and may toss out another couple while I’m writing this). His spacious, restorative, warmly glacial ambient evokes nostalgia and longing with equal parts sharp detail and distant pain, and Wrath & Apathy sweetens the deal with some judiciously deployed blissed-out dub textures.

• Bandcamp

5. Pantha du Prince – Conference of Trees

Conference of Trees is a sumptuous slow-burn from Pantha du Prince. Unfolding gradually with chimes, strings, and wooden instruments, it’s not until 20 minutes in that anything like a dance beat emerges. Contemplative, shimmering electronic music that spreads patient roots and slowly reaches for the sky – this is earth trance.

• YouTube

4. Elder – Omens

Although Elder has inhabited a rarefied space for several albums, the feature that has truly marked their ascendence is just how seamlessly they weave together knotty progressive structure, earth-bound weightiness, and psychedelic dreaminess. Omens marks a higher plateau, as the warmth and fuzz sketch out limbs that grasp the sublime.

• Bandcamp

3. Andrea – Ritorno

Andrea’s Ritorno covers a huge range of styles, from breakbeat and IDM to industrial dub and ambient. Most impressive of all is how the album’s vast scope presents a complete journey, like traveling from nocturnal lamplight to lamplight in a city where menace and hope dance just around the corner.

• Bandcamp

2. Autechre – SIGN/PLUS

Every Autechre album is akin to stepping sideways into a parallel universe, where what initially feels inscrutable gradually unspools and resolves, like deciphering an alien grammar or fractal architecture. The latest tandem of SIGN and PLUS are no different; each summons a blizzard of silt, an ocean of mercury. Listen.

• Autechre on Bandcamp

1. 36 & zakè – Stasis Sounds for Long-Distance Space Travel

I can’t think of an album that I listened to more (or needed more badly) this year than this elemental, ambient balm. With its richly suggestive title, it is a blessing to wade physically into the sounds of this album: the hum and the ping, the float and the thrum.

• Bandcamp

Thank you for being here with us, friends. I don’t know how to name the unfathomable loss of so many people this year, from unparalleled musical geniuses to friends and neighbors and strangers throughout the world. I don’t know how to honor that, or what kind of valediction could possibly do anything but ring hollow, but the best I can say is: Do as much good and spread whatever love is within your power. Stay safe out there, because somebody needs you. We all need you.

The post Best Of 2020 – Dan Obstkrieg: Only Kindness Matters appeared first on Last Rites.

Last Rites spent a lot of time as a crew digging deep into the roots, branches and seedlings of prog (metal and rock). We spent time endlessly talking about Rush and mourning the passing of Neil Peart. We spent time listening to Van Halen and mourning the passing of Eddie. Actually, we spent a lot of time mourning the passing of greats this year. But it was the togetherness and the collective exercise of working through that loss that brought us closer to musical truth.

And to put aside the negativity, death (wow did we lose some heroes) and destruction of 2020 for a minute there are plenty of things to be happy about. For starters, I got married. The pandemic afforded me the opportunity to spend more time with my family, get back to the slower lifestyle of country living and generally reflect on just how badly I have messed up more than a few aspects of my life. So another year goes by and we hopefully work on ourselves, improve, be better to both those we love and those we detest and inch closer towards understanding just what it all means.

Below are some albums that sounded super great over many, many listens. There were others of course. Many others even. The year was creepy in that it didn’t appear to be so stockpiled with absolutely jaw-dropping music but, like usual, it was. And that’s not just in metal (of course) but across the board.

Enjoy this list of tunes. Reach out if you have anything to add and as always, stay safe. Stay tuned for a special personal message at the very end of this whole pantomime.

———

Midnight Violence Rock ‘N Roll

20. Defeated Sanity – The Sanguinary Impetus

This album could pretty much end up (almost) anywhere on this list. It’s great. An exploration in brutal death metal that is brief, harrowing and altogether slam-happy. It’s great. Potentially their best. I hate myself for leaving here at number twenty but please don’t take that as meaning it’s the least of the greatest. It’s possible the greatest. Why don’t you be a big adult and decide for yourself?

• Last Rites Review
• Bandcamp

19. The Spirit Cabinet – Bloodlines

Here’s a fun one that my buddy Ryan tipped me off to. In fact, he had to tip himself off to it because without PR this guy almost went completely unnoticed. Thankfully, it did not. This doomy piece of brilliance enjoyed many spins in 2020 and will hopefully continue that treatment through the rest of my life. Look, I didn’t even make a joke about how he sings!

• Last Rites Review
• Bandcamp

18. Molassess – Through the Hollow

Speaking of albums I almost missed here comes Molassess. Were it not for our Great Leader (Captain) I would have never heard this release. Mostly due to my idiocy. Thankfully he wrote a lovely review and I pressed play on the Bandcamp embed and history was made. Eighteen is a very important number for us Jews and it’s no mistake that Through the Hollow occupies the space on this list synonymous with the word “life.”

• Last Rites Review
• Bandcamp

17. Shards of Humanity – Cold Logic

Hello death metal my old friend. You’ve come to ruin me again. Last Rites has gone by “Generally Impressed With Riffs.” We even put it on a sticker! So when an album with this many riffs comes along you know that Jeremy Morse and Co. are going to LOVE it. And I do love it.

• Last Rites Review
• Bandcamp

16. Circle of Ouroborus – Viimeinen Juoksu

“This journey of life is long, my friends. Endlessly long, in fact. We will forever endeavor to propel our bodies towards the horizon of death. We can do nothing else, for progress is our biological imperative. The overall journey, however, is broken up into smaller quests… Some of those quests will be full of color, strong emotions and heartbreaking joy beyond our comprehension… It’s th[e]se quivering quests that Circle of Ouroborus’ latest masterpiece is here to accompany.”

• Last Rites Review
• Bandcamp

15. Devangelic – Ersetu

“Look, you clearly like metal. And you clearly thought the album cover was neat. And you clearly trust me to some extent. And finally, you clearly know that Devangelic is going to enhance your day, month, quarantine, life and certainly your death as you cross the River Hades to the Euphrates Gates of Zion.” Listen now.

• Last Rites Review
• Bandcamp

14. Elder – Omens

Sometimes I find myself questioning where in the world Elder comes from. Then I remember that they come from Massachussetts and therefore all their influences are very, very obvious. But what isn’t obvious at first blush is how great they are. Elder albums can be spun endlessly and without tiring. Omens is another one of those great, timeless, endless loops of awesome music fronted by ethereal vocals.

• Last Rites Review
• Bandcamp

13. Enslaved – Utgard

Hello. Enslaved is probably my favorite heavy metal band. They are also probably one of my favorite bands. Up there with The Band and John Coltrane and Joe Henderson and Dinosaur Jr. Why? Because they are never, ever afraid to take risks, write unconventionally progressive tunes and flat out dominate that style no matter what it is they attempt. Utgard is another jaw-dropping mix of styles, experiments and some of the loveliest human beings on the planet. Live, Laugh, Love and definitely see Enslaved live as many times as you possible can.

• Last Rites Review
• Bandcamp

12. Katalepsy – Terra Mortuus Est

“Katalepsy’s Terra Mortuus Est is ready to stand strong with the bro-power of slam metal alongside any of the contemporary greats. This album is not only proof of that fact, it’s proof positive. A double negative has led to proof positive.” I’ve seen this album ranked as high as number one on some people’s lists and I certainly do not take issue with that ranking. I think Katalepsy and scratch that itch for a lot of people and I very much hope you’re one of them.

• Last Rites Review
• Bandcamp

11. Undergang – Aldrig i livet

I have long loved the sewerfest that is Undergang. In fact, when I married a lovely lady who had access to the EU I suggested moving to Copenhagen just so I could get a job with city works and watch them rehearse in the sewers. While I was never ready to call Misantropologi their best album (I’ll always have a sweet spot in my rectum for Døden Læger Alle Sår) I recognized the slight shift towards the more plodding, melodic take on putrid death metal that Undergang was beginning to spew. And it was very, very good. For Aldrig i livet the band pushed the needle even further in that direction and the results are just marvelous. As Cap said (gee I’m quoting him a lot, eh) this is “DISGUSTING MUSIC FOR DISGUSTING PEOPLE” and it is certainly very much that done very much right. I still don’t have the heart (or cajones or huevos) to call it their best but I wouldn’t begrudge you if you went ahead and did that.

ALSO: Can’t forget to note the subtle nod to some great Totalitär artwork though.

• Last Rites Review
• Bandcamp

Jet Rock ‘N Roll

10. Cardinal Wyrm – Devotionals

If you have not heard this album yet you can go ahead and kick yourself in the face. Mostly because this album is flipping awesome. “Devotionals truly is a work of genre-bending art. A musical performance piece of desperation, hope and collective rallying. The band stated that their wish for this album was to dial it back to DIY roots. The result is an album that is masterful in composition, execution and packaging. The entirety of Devotionals is something to behold. Do as the band commands and remain independent and confident in your own space, and absolutely powerful in community. And, of course, let this album be the soundtrack of your staunch revolution.”

• Last Rites Review
• Bandcamp

9. Pharmacist – Medical Renditions of Grinding Decomposition

I mean, you see the cover and the title. What do you want me to say about this? I could say the spicy thing: the best Carcass album of 2020 was not put out by Carcass. But that would be selling Pharmacist short because they are far more than some Carcass clone. They are a gory, deliciously rotten bowl of steaming hot death metal ready for you to cram into your face. There really isn’t a more fitting cover, sound or collection of tunes for 2020 than Medical Rendition of Grinding Decomposition. So go purchase the cassette or CD or vinyl or digital copy (whatever the hip cats are doing now) and spin it endlessly until your entrails fall out of your nose. You’ve earned it.

• Last Rites Review
• Bandcamp

8. Katatonia – City Burials

“If it’s not clear: Katatonia has delivered us a wonderful gift in 2020. As the band builds in complexity and finds even more confidence in their subtleties, they become a band worthy of more deep-diving adventures. The comparison between City Burials and their earlier work reveals stark differences, and more importantly, some beautiful similarities, allowing the heart of Katatonia to continue beating long after humanity has destroyed this beautiful earth.”

• Last Rites Review
• Bandcamp

7. Malokarpatan – Krupinské ohne

“They’ve switched vocalists! Oh no!” That was actually my reaction kind of when I heard that Tremnohor had left the band (presumably to become a street vendor in the art of cured meats). When I was fortunate enough to stand in the physical (not mental mind you) shadow of Mr. Duvall and see this band LIVE at Brooklyn Bazaar in, well, Brooklyn, you could say that I was a bit enamored with their vocalist. His presence, mustache and sweet shades (along with his HADES shirt) were more than enough to capture the attention of a very young (thirty-seven) me. “But I was so much older than I’m younger than that now.” I’ve gotten over it. Why? Because Krupinské Ohne is totally rad and doesn’t end up sounding like Krolok v2.0 just because they share a vocalist. As I have previously said, Malokarpatan is a traditional heavy metal band masquerading as a black metal band. I mean that as a massive compliment. Their mix of styles and their unique output simply can’t be underrated. Plus, look at that flipping cover art! Seriously though, this album is tremendous and it’s great to see a band prosper after parting ways with what I had previously assumed was their heart and soul.

• Last Rites Review
• Bandcamp

6. Undeath – Lesions of a Different Kind

Simply put, this is the greatest straight up, no frills, old school death metal album of 2020. Without a doubt. Plus – look at the cover! It’s awesome. When people want to know why you like something that involves screaming you show them this. And then kick them right in the testicles. “You will be hard pressed to find a better death metal release in 2020… You will be hard pressed to find a better way to spend a night in. So find your favorite puppy and curl up on the couch with a nice glass of sewage and sip until the wolves howl and the witches cackle. And don’t forget to put the Genesee on ice.” I still stand by that paragraph despite what is below. Undeath rules and represents all that is pure and wonderful about death metal and sweatpants and hi-top sneakers and posing for photographs in graveyards atop the gravestones of people you don’t even know. POSTURE FOR LIFE.

• Last Rites Review
• Bandcamp

5. Eternal Champion – Ravening Iron

Eternal Champion is flat out awesome. So awesome that we spent hours at Last Rites HQ (secretly located way underground near the arctic circle… or is it?) debating which of their two full-length albums is their best. And guess what? I still have no idea. Ravening Iron and Armor of Ire are clearly somewhat different kinds of iron & steel heavy metal. But they are both equally, endlessly awesome. Epic, adventure-focused, sword-happy and fantasy-fueled Ravening Iron saw a more clean version of Eternal Champion turn our desires for battle into desires for headbanging adventures with our best buds, the bed of our El Camino laden with broadswords, beer and chain mail. If you’re fortunate to have friends you should put this album on and explore those adventures just waiting to be embarked upon.

• Last Rites Review
• Bandcamp

4. Fates Warning – Long Day Goodnight

Fates Warning has hinted that the moody, mostly dark Long Day Good Night would be their final album. I prefer to say “hinted” because the reality of that statement is just simply too much to handle. Much like the depth of emotions explored across the more than one-hour and twelve minutes of music contained herein. As Captain pointed out, “[v]eteran Fates Warning fans really don’t need reviews to impact whether or not a new album will be added to an existing collection.” It’s true. We will buy pretty much anything the band puts out. And I agree wholeheartedly with him that Fates Warning has never put out a bad record. And they definitely haven’t put out a bad track with Bobby Jarzombek (aka Bobby Jarz) on the kit; meaning it was a great choice to use him for almost the entire album here. If Long Day Good Night proves to be the final album for Fates Warning it will be some final statement. If it doesn’t, then hooray for falsely reading in between the lines and please sir may we have some more. Fates Warning are the absolute kings of progressive metal and they will remain there regardless of future output. That is, in many ways, thanks to every single element that makes this album absolutely great.

• Last Rites Review
• Bandcamp

3. Gorephilia – In the Eye of Nothing

In the past I’ve felt like I was living on an island in the middle of Jellyfish Lake over in Palau. Back in 2017 I told you that despite losing 50% of its members Gorephilia was slamming ahead in brutally tremendous fashion. And this year it took Cap to let you know that In the Eye of Nothing was a tremendous, tremendous take on the early Finnish death metal scene. And I really can’t say it any better, especially more simply, than Cap did: “Pure and simple: If you love death metal, you’ll need this here record.” It’s funny. When this list started Gorephilia was somewhere below fifteen. And it slowly, but surely climbed up. As each death metal album was pitted against the others Gorephilia continued to stand out with squeals, brutally jagged riffs and pure headsmash enough to bring it all the way up here to the Top 10. And that is the power of suggestion. In this case suggestion through brutal riffs, thundering double bass and throat-obliterating vocals good enough to merit the annoying “vokill” denomination. I’m not even sure that I’m tough enough to listen to this album. I mean, I ride a bicycle now instead of deadlifting. But I still feel PRETTY AWESOME and VERY ALIVE when I spin it. So that counts for something. Right?

• Last Rites Review
• Bandcamp

2. Wytch Hazel – III: Pentecost

If it wasn’t for curtains it would be Venetian blinds for us all. And if it wasn’t for Hällas it would be number one for Wytch Hazel. This album is a bonafide metal classic. As I previously said: “I would like to put this simply and without hyperbole: Wytch Hazel’s III:Pentecost will figure very high in my year-end voting. But what is year-end voting worth? Many of those albums rank highly only to go and fade into distant memories. This album will figure heavily in my life. It is a work of timeless brilliance that is not likely to become irrelevant in theme or composition. This album will not take much time to sink in. It won’t hide out on your shelf, waiting for the right time to be played. It’s more like love at first sight, but instead of love, it’s obsession, and instead of a sexual partner, it’s the warm embrace of heavy metal.”

• Last Rites Review
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1. Hällas – Conundrum

The amount that I adore this album cannot be understated. And to my colleagues that moved it to the non-metal list (which cost it the No. 1 slot on the team list) I say “hooey on you!.” This album remained my number one from the moment I heard it in early January. It’s tremendous. From my review: “[a]t this point, Hällas seems more like they are creating a cult rather than a single album, career or song. They’ve created a universe complete with multi-dimensional planes of existence, afterlife lore and plenty of hypnotizing rhythms and melodies. It’s a single universe experience on the level of Star Wars or Malazan. A universe in which certain creatures, planets and planes exist singularly and exclusively. Conundrum is the best example yet of Hällas creating a complete and compositionally cohesive record. The band seems like something that can never not be there, like something that has just always been part of our souls. And for those that get it, they believe fully in the vision, passion and endless surge for adventure at the core of Hällas’ music.”

• Last Rites Review
• Bandcamp
• Interview

Midnight Blood Pump 

5. Muscipula – Little Chasm of Horrors

“So, musically, let’s take Bolt Thrower and some of the angular, creeping Finnish death metal bands and drop those 45RPM records on down to 33RPM—let those guitars just sliiiiiiiiiiiide into a slimy down-tuned demolition hammer of swampy death. Like an airboat that’s blown an engine, the tunes slowly knife through milky water; vines from overhang slapping the blade as dank water slowly leaks in. This music crawls—about as slowly as your great-grandfather trying to get out of his favorite La-Z-Boy after one too many boxes of Ensure. Sure, compare this band to some of the greats, but they are actually doing something quite their own, thanks to production values centering around a putrid vocal delivery.”

• Last Rites Review
• Bandcamp

4. Engulfed – Vengeance of the Fallen

“Don’t miss out on this EP even if you’re the type of idiot that merely watches social media feeds for the latest band of the day. Engulfed is metal. Engulfed is death metal. And if they put out material on a more frequent basis they just might be the “it” band of January 15 to January 19 of 2021.You know, if Blood Incantation takes a fucking break for a god damn minute! RETHINK YOUR LIFE, idiot.”

• Last Rites Review
• Bandcamp

3. Midnight Dice – Hypnotize

You see that sweet cover and amazing layout? You think an EP that has all that hard work from Lauren Gornik and Annick Giroux (two ladies I have previously praised) isn’t going to bring the fire? Well you bet your ass it does. If you are a fan of the screaming 80s style of heavy metal and you want to be a true metal warrior that headbangs in the face of hurricanes then you sure as shit better spin this EP. And spin it loudly. Midnight Dice is the truth of heavy metal power.

• Last Rites Review
• Bandcamp

2. Septage – Septic Decadence

Yeah. I know. Second time I put a disgusting album cover on this list. You think I’m not upset about it? I’m actually not. Here’s another fun example of “band puts out Carcass EP better than Carcass EP.” But again, that’s selling Septage short. What you get here is the pure weight of it all. The entire mountain of deathy goodness falling upon you and beating you into a banana cream pie of submission. You are the goo, Septage is the acid. Become the acid, you putz.

• Last Rites Review
• Bandcamp

1. Blazon Rite – Dulce Bellum Inexpertis

For fans of Legionnaire, Brocas Helm, that one Lunar Shadow album (Far From Light) and Isen Torr the debut EP from Philadelphia’s Blazon Rite seems tailor made to fit their armor wearing endeavors. From cooking omelettes in the morning to vacuuming up those hard to get at hairs in the corner at night every activity will be enhanced by the heroic riffs and vocals on Dulce Bellum Inexpertis. The point is, your life might be as boring as the rest but it doesn’t have to feel that way. While vacuuming throw a fist up against those dust balls! Reach into your sheath an unleash the power of the spatula while flipping that Boca burger. There is no reason that your Geo Metro (do they still make those?) shouldn’t feel like a glorious steed clad in boiled leather and strapped with a quiver of arrows tipped with poison and meant for the heart of the evil empress. Your life is your life. You choose how to live it. Don’t be lame and not try to at least make it fun. Put on Blazon Rite and ENJOY YOUR LIFE.

• Bandcamp

BEST NON-METAL

Yes… we listen to that as well.

Motorcycle Leather Boy

20. Matthew Halsall – Salute to the Sun

It’s been quite a while since we’ve spoken about Matthew Halsall around here. At least publicly. I can assure you that behind the scenes a few of us (guess who) chat about him frequently. Halsall is everything from a master trumpeter to a record label owner (Gondwana Records) to a DJ. For Salute to the Sun he headed into earthy, primitive territory and made something that speaks to creation more than it does the forward-thinking nature of jazz. Improvisation at its best, this album shows just what can be accomplished when unmatched musicians are allowed to freely explore ideas centered around a theme without repercussion of having the tape stopped.

• Bandcamp

19. Chad Taylor Trio featuring Brian Settles and Neil Podgurski – The Daily Biological

I don’t want to tell you what I thought of when I saw this album title. Suffice it to say that the album far exceeded those expectations. The debut recording from this avant-garde jazz trio uses plenty of polyrhythms and contraindicative melodies to create energetic bursts and explosions of conversation between instruments wielded by old friends. When people tell you that instrumental music isn’t conversational you can point them towards this record for proof that it most certainly is.

• Bandcamp

18. Surrender – Surrender

Anything even somewhat associated with the band Crusades would have to figure on my radar. After about an entire year of releasing singles those three tracks joined others to make a self-titled full length that shows an endless amount of promise for the vocalists switch from hard, raw emo to something of a new wave revival. Get happy. Tap your feet and most importantly fire up the synths.

• Bandcamp

17. 36 & zaké – Stasis Sounds For Long​-​Distance Space Travel

Here is the place where I will admit that 2020 was a rough year in many regards. It required a lot of quiet time and a lot of ambient sounds and calm music to help the body relax and detox from things being said in the media and reported from around the world. When my brain needed to shut off there was nothing I reached for more than this album. Chillax, bro.

• Bandcamp

16. Busta Rhymes – Extinction Level Event 2: The Wrath of God

So he lost early on the show Masked Performer. Just proves that the show is stupid. Busta Rhymes has always been great. But in the past few years (mostly since his verse on A Tribe Called Quests’ “Mobius” (2016) Busta has been on a quest to cement his name firmly in the quest for best all time. Extinction Level Event 2 is another feather in that cap. He’s simply on a different planet. In a year of very sneakily phenomenal hip hop (Benny the Butcher, Roc Marciano, Conway the Machine, Nas, etc.) Busta’s output stands on the shoulders of monuments.

• Video

15. William Ryan Fritch – The Letdown

Did you think I was going to talk about the other awesome album that William Fritch released this year? Because it’s really a toss up and either could be included here. What brings The Letdown to the front of the conversation is its vibe-centric composition. Eschewing the usual pomp that makes this writer so… happy The Letdown focuses largely on mood and the inclusion and interspersing of instruments not often juxtaposed so seamlessly. You will find moments of eerie terror, outrageous joy and some laid back passages. It’s an album for all seasons as long as those seasons are manic and unmedicated.

• Bandcamp

14. Henrik Palm – Poverty Metal

Svart is a label that is often brave when it comes to the artist on their roster. Betting the house on a member of In Solitude probably didn’t factor as brave for them. But what Henrik produced might have shocked even them. It is extreme, particularly when it comes to experimentation. The album can also be stark, jarring and abrasive. But when taken as a whole it’s a work that actually ends up being quite inviting (you know, in that way Shellac was at times). For the more adventurous Poverty Metal should be a perfect fit for your bedtime nightmares and waking terrors.

• Last Rites Review
• Bandcamp

13. Gwenifer Raymond – Strange Lights over Garth Mountain

In this case the album cover gives you a pretty great idea of what to expect from the multi-talented genius of Gwenifer Raymond. Sparse and primitive her music channels the heart of Appalachia via the United Kingdom in a way that only Tompkins Square records could truly understand. Strange Lights twists and turns like a roiling serpent angry at its history and drenched in the blood of its earthly domain. At times haunting and at times mystically emotional, Gwenifer Raymond has outdone her already brilliant self here in 2020.

• Bandcamp

12. Alvaro Rojas – Gran Kasa

When you have true friends like Dan and Captain you and your friends get together and make a spreadsheet of all the great jazz you need to check out over the year. Sometimes that spreadsheet includes some really awesome music that defies the straight jazz label. Alvaro Rojas is essentially a prog-jazz composer and Gran Kasa is one hell of an exploration of world music with plenty of chamber elements. Thanks to the funding from the Canada Council for the Arts (Canada!) for helping fund this beautiful record.

• Bandcamp

11. Molchat Doma – Монумент

These Belarusian beauties got famous in the way most people can only do through plastic surgery – they got famous via memes on Reddit. But they have since become much more than a meme. Their 2020 release Monument is loaded with drum machines, synthesizers, killer vocals and some thoroughly perfect timeless production filters. One view of them live in Ljubljiana and you’ll understand just why they got so huge so quickly. And if that’s not enough for you take a spin through Монумент and try not to wiggle your way into beautiful goth happiness.

• Bandcamp

Wild Beast Vibrator

10. Ambrose Akinmusire – On the Tender Spot of Every Calloused Moment

Being nominated for a Grammy doesn’t instantly mean that you will be included on this list. In fact, it’s usually quite the opposite. But when it comes to Ambrose Akinmusire all bets are off. Featuring a full bouquet of eleven unique new [mostly] instrumental compositions and a bevy of all stars sitting in On the Tender Spot of Every Calloused Moment truly welcomes the world to the universe of Ambrose. While the album might sound unique or jarring to those who haven’t checked in on the jazz universe it might also sound like a refreshing departure from the less accessible, perhaps less thrilling world of jazz they heard ten years ago. Life is different now. Jazz isn’t merely improvisational but it’s also emotional. Harkening back to the more fixed compositional styles of Mingus and Brubeck, Akinmusire composes work that is searing in intensity (often with spoken word) yet joyful in its output. If you’re not yet a fan or initiated please discover that this is a great place to jump in.

• Bandcamp

9. Airbag – A Day at the Beach

Oh look. A bunch of teddy bears hid their heads in the sand. You have to wonder what they did wrong to deserve this self-inflicted punishment. As an adult who still holds onto his childhood stuffed animals I feel a personal responsibility to find the answer. The bad news is that the answer wasn’t in the lyrics on this record. We can only assume that it’s a live picture of music writers who did not realize Airbag was excellent hiding in the sand in shame. That makes the most sense. Also, given the situation in the world in re: pandemic the safest place for your head would actually be under the sand. So maybe it’s a great idea. I’m not really sure. The point here is that Airbag is rad. Just a tremendous prog band led by a man with a beautiful voice. A band not afraid to let the bass guitar shine and not afraid to point out the importance of having a good time with your friends while you smell the salty fresh spray of the ocean. So if you have friends do that. If not, which honestly seems more likely, put this album on and pretend. Either way, if Airbag’s A Day at the Beach is playing you will find some enjoyment in this lifetime.

• Bandcamp

8. Death Bells – New Signs of Life

“A Different Kind of Happy” was among my favorite tracks of the year. A tremendous new wave bounce with tenor vocals and clever lyrics made it an instant standout. In fact, it saved the entire album from a cursory toss aside by me. Which would have been immensely stupid (but not out of character) of me. New Signs of Life, an appropriate name for a first album on a new label, features all the brilliant throwback touches aimed straight at my heart. They’ve got catchy rhythms, saxophone, singable lyrics and an overall sheen of drug-induced happy over the whole thing. Oh, and a singer that does not hide his accent while singing. I really love that and you should too. New signs of life approaching! They might be alien but they are absolutely going to get you shaking those hips and tapping those feetsies.

“Despite the uncertainty of life I wouldn’t give up.” – Death Bells

• Bandcamp

7. Arabs in Aspic – Madness & Magic

Like most people who read end of the year lists you likely scrolled to number one and worked backwards. Thus you already know that Last Rites has been deeply enamored with prog this year. Arabs in Aspic being another one of the flipping GEMS that crawled across our desks as we devoured the Karisma Records catalog. Moody, dark, brilliant and altogether mysteriously magickal this album taught many of us just how much we missed crawling into the underbrush searching for witches and goblins when we were young. As a singer once crooned, “When I was a boy I saw things that no one else could see. Why am I so blind at 22?” Well, Arabs in Aspic helped us find our vision and they certainly helped us find that glorious wonder and the positivity that comes with the spirit of adventure and belief. Anything is possible if you have the right soundtrack. Choose this one.

I vow to thee, my scream.

• Bandcamp

6.

Lugubrum – Plage Chomage

Reviewing this amazing album with Cap was one of the most fun moments I’ve had at Last Rites. Actually, Ask 2 Idiots in general was the most fun I had here. Thus, we will blurb this album in the same style.

Five Words Cosmically Linked To This Album: Gumshoe, Sanitarium, Cathedral, Drips, Carrots

A Sentence: Lugubrum is to carrots as rabbits are to N, N-Dimethyltryptamine. So that’s an analogy and not a sentence. Guess what? The cosmos shame you for your boring accuracy that have robbed you of both your childhood and your good looks. We stole them. And we broadcast them on the 6EQUJ5 signal right back into the everloving center of nowhere (which, coincidentally is just to the left of Sagittarius). Your shoes are untied. But you’re also not wearing shoes. That’s the kind of WOW! that you need to get inside of if you want Lugubrum to ride you like the waves of vomit splashing into Jim Lovell on Apollo 8 more than one hundred thousand miles from earth. If you don’t dig then you don’t. Move on. But if you do then hop on board the spacecraft and zoom off with us. The royal we.

• Last Rites Review
• Bandcamp

5. Dropdead – Dropdead 2020

Why is Dropdead on my non-metal list, you ask? Probably because I separated out the punk because punk is even more serious business than metal. Is that true? I’m not really sure. But what I do know is that Dropdead has figured strongly in my development as a human growing up in New England where squat houses and dank basements hosted more than a few punk shows we didn’t tell the authorities about. And here in 2020 the boys are back spitting the same absolute brilliance that they knew all along. Ahead of their time lyrically, musically and technologically (but in reverse) Dropdead continue to just kick absolute ass, take no prisoners and worry zilch about making money off the whole damn thing. And remember, there’s nothing less punk than trying to define punk so don’t even try. Just accept this music as the truth (maybe my truth) and blow out your fucking storm windows by blasting it.

• Last Rites Review
• Bandcamp

4. Wobbler  – Dwellers of the Deep

Oh sweet 2020 the year of the Church of Prog here at Last Rites. Maybe it was the fact that Lone Watie finally put himself into a position in life where he could spend slightly more time with us and fewer hours healing the world and doing great things. As our resident prog expert he was certainly at the helm for much of it. But it is a mystery how Wobbler because maybe the most spun album of 2020 for a few of us. We went hard on From Somewhere to Silence when word of a new record was revealed and we went even harder on Dwellers of the Deep. Sure it helped that the artwork was remarkable and that the layout in the vinyl featured the source materials. Sure it helped that they released a video that showed just how beautifully weird they are. But what helped mostly was the release of this pristine forty-five minutes of progressive, adventurous, experimental loveliness full of keyboard riffs, jogging bass lines and vocals soaring forth from the pipes of the aptly named Andreas Wettergreen Strømman Prestmo. Wobbler is pretty much perfect (for those of you that love this stuff) and for those of you that don’t Wobbler would be a great intro to the world of having some meaning in your life for once. Would certainly make your parents happier than whatever it is you chose to do for a living.

• Last Rites Review
• Bandcamp

3. Zephaniah Ohora – Listening to the Music

In an older world this album would be called Listenin’ to the Music. But this ain’t those times and this ain’t your momma’s country western. For his first album, This Highway, Zephaniah seemed to conjure his own version of Willy Nelson as he spun emotional tunes about heartbreak and country nights. For Listening to the Music he takes that spirits and blends it with Merle Haggard, a touch of Waylon and plenty of Patsy Cline. Let’s call it pan-country style. The fact that this album isn’t a smash hit in Nashville and pumping out of all the jukeboxes at your local honky tonk is testament to just how far the pop invasion of the country music industry has come. But if you’re looking for some good old down home country music with plenty of twang written by a guy that looks like Adam Driver went method then look no further. This album is for you and your pickup and your dog and probably your beer and also your drugs and your family and the generations that came before you and those that will come after you.

• Bandcamp

2. The Psychedelic Furs – Made to Rain

It’s truly amazing to me that after a decade or whatever as a person who writes about music “seriously” I am putting words to internet paper about The Psychedelic Furs. As a band they put out a criminal amount of music. Seven albums (the first four 10/10 brilliant perfection) and then radio silence (as The Psychedelic Furs) until 2020. (The band, at least Butler, his brother Tim and Richard Fortus of Pale Divine (now of Guns N Roses) and the incomparable Frank Ferrer made [great] music as Love Spit Love.)  So what could we really expect? Well, for starters I don’t think anyone expected the raw emotions evoked by the absolutely brilliant cover art which is legitimate art. I don’t think anyone expected the rawness of the actual emotion contained between those cardboard images either. Made of Rain opens somewhat chaotically for a band normally associated with groove and pop. Tremolo rules as the album rolls into form presenting emotion over hooks and British sarcasm as a substitute for saccharin lyrics about the hazards of love and loss. All in all Made of Rain turns out to be one of the best albums ever put out by The Psychedelic Furs and maybe even the best by the instantly recognizable Richard Lofthouse Butler. More than simply a comeback album, Made of Rain is a brilliant piece of artwork in an of itself. It stands alone, even in 2020 as a testament to the music that made art today what it is. The inspiration has awoken to become a leader once again.

• Bandcamp

1. Choir Boy – Gathering Swans

The most scared I’ve been in 2020 was when I thought that the crew here would vote to put Hällas on the non-metal list making me pit Conundrum against Choir Boy’s Gathering Swans. While I can’t tell you who would have won I can definitely tell you who would have lost. I would have lost. But enough about Hällas, right? Because this is all about Choir Boy. For starters, it’s been a very long time since I heard a singer in this genresphere (a word I made up because dream pop, new wave, dark wave, post punk, etc. need a catchall) with such an ensnaring, love-at-first-hear type voice. Adam Klopp channels the spirit of just about every genre hero across the forty-one minutes of this album evoking emotions even scientists didn’t know humans have. And the band heaps bravery in here by the boat load. You think doo-wop style 1950s bass vocals saying “sweet candy I want a candy uh uh” wouldn’t fit? You’d be wrong and I’d punch you. Because it’s PERFECT. You think that putting a photograph of yourself brushing your teeth as the promo photo wouldn’t entice people to listen? Think again. It works. Every single thing about Choir Boy is, as I said before, Perfect. While it was their Part Time Punks session that introduced me (and Cap) to Choir Boy it’s going to be Gathering Swans that forever ties them to the core of my being. I’m not sure what words I can use to tell you that you absolutely have to listen to this album. Would you like me to speak about the wonderful production? Would you like me to tell you about Jeff Kleinman’s moody synth and saxophone work that keeps the album glued together like a perfect wound? Or would you prefer to hear about Michael Paulson channeling Johnny Marr and Robert Smith in ways that you never knew would so deeply haunt you? Finally, I could tell you that Chaz Costello’s bass bounces, thumps and rhythmically causes your body to move in ways you thought only yogi masters could?

I could ramble endlessly about any of those subjects but the best advice I could give you would be to listen to this album on repeat until your insides melt and your heart melds with your brain. Please. Do it for the sake of the world.

• Bandcamp

———

Refrigerator Zero

And with that, dear reader, my journey at Last Rites ends. As Mayakovsky said, “the love boat smashed up on the dreary routine.” And thus ends my tour of duty. Be well. Enjoy music. Be excellent to each other and always find ways to think, act and live outside the box.

R.I.P.

The post Best Of 2020 – Manny-O-War: Ookami Wakusei appeared first on Last Rites.

Part of the reason was the free time, and another was we Last Rites nerds like to rank just about everything. But the biggest reason was some curiosity that formed way back in May of 2019 after reading Stereogum’s The Black Market, in which Aaron Lariviere described something very interesting about this compressed library digestion:

“…it’s the flattening effect that makes it so interesting — you’re hearing progression and decline across a span of hours rather than years. Played back to back, albums display minor differences in a strange light.”

He had just done the full catalogs of Immolation, Incantation, and Gorguts, and was following it up with Cannibal Corpse. That’s a lot of death metal. That’s a lot of foundational and legendary death metal. That also sounds pretty exhausting.

It made me curious to see how differently I might hear albums I’ve known for ages, and in the spirit of Aaron’s exercise, I didn’t exactly go with small catalogs. Krallice, Pink Floyd, Godflesh, and The Gathering were a few of my choices. Also Autopsy, Nevermore, Katatonia, The Cult, and Dream Theater. Even Ulver, which was kinda bonkers. Every experience was different, and although I didn’t always follow Aaron’s rule of going in order without splitting it up, when I started, I made sure to finish within a day or two.

A few observations from these deep dives:

• • Each experience was wildly different, and not just because of the differences in the music, but because I chose each band for different reasons. Maybe I was curious to revisit a certain album or two but needed context, or maybe I simply wanted to listen to a ton of a particular band and decided to go the long haul.
  • Albums often take on a different nature in such a context. For example, a couple of Krallice’s longer albums used to feel unnecessarily draining to me, but when listening within the whole catalog, they merely felt like part of the greater journey because I really got in the zone.
  • Similarly, albums that I think of as the weaker links didn’t feel as weak when part of the whole. Katatonia’s Dead End Kings, for example, is typically the album I’d list as their worst. But it’s more than perfectly enjoyable and actually seemed less weak compared to other albums when spun in this binge context, surprisingly.
  • Bands like Godflesh and Nevermore really showed what Aaron spoke of above, hearing tiny changes between albums that actually took the bands years to manifest.
  • Related: listening to this much Godflesh at one time was the most exhausting, both because of the music’s repetitive nature, and also because they often felt the need to extend their albums with some 20-minute noise nonsense at the end. And in contrast to the Katatonia point about weaker albums, Us and Them sounded worse in this context.
  • These binges also led to some albums I’ve long owned and enjoyed growing in my mind like never before. Both The Gathering’s and Dream Theater’s debuts fit this.

Anyhoo, these are the types of mad exercises a guy can do when 1. He has a work-from-home desk job during a pandemic that rarely requires him to be on the phone, and 2. He has headphones so his wife doesn’t get annoyed. But man, I enjoyed each and every one of these little adventures, and I find myself looking forward to which band I might choose next.

Thanks for reading, and cheers to you and yours.

LET’S GET VISUAL! VISUAL!

Ye olde Honorable Mention Logo Cloud for numbers 21 to 50, as is tradition:

BEST OF THE HEFTY CALORIC INTAKE

20. Katatonia – City Burials

Whatever R&R the Katatonia boys got on their very short-lived hiatus must have been worth it, because this is yet another stunning and complex record in a long career filled with them. Both a call back to every record they’ve done since they dropped the extreme metal and a fresh look forward.

• Last Rites review
• Homepage

19. Khthoniik Cerviiks – Æequiizoiikum

They contiinue to siimultaneously be one of the nerdiiest and most devastatiing bands in metal. Æequiizoiikum ups the Voiivod and progressiive black/death viibes even more, proviidiing yet another wiild, hyper-aggressiive, and constantly surpriisiing riide. One miinute they’re eviiscerating your face with blasts, the next they’re yelliing about ΔT. II don’t get iit either, but iit rocks.

• Album at Iron Bonehead Productions Bandcamp

18. Demoniac – So It Goes

From my review: “…there’s one huge reason to listen to this record: the leads. So It Goes is absolutely overflowing with soloing and dual leads that fly, soar, shred, blaze, dodge, duck, dive, dip, dodge, and everything in between.” A super fun album from a wacky band.

• Album at Edged Circle Productions Bandcamp

17. Xazraug – Unsympathetic Empyrean

To tell you the truth, I still haven’t totally figured this record out, I just know that every time I spin it I’m blown away by the combination of extremely Second Wave black metal nods and the skullnuttery of Colin Marston’s other projects. Manages to always demand your attention while maintaining a nice escapist quality.

• Last Rites review in Missing Pieces
• Bandcamp

16. Dark Quarterer – Pompei

Other than the debut, I’d never given Dark Quarterer a ton of time in the past, and the quality of Pompei is making me realize that decision was a whole handful of whoopsie daisies. The pomp, the epic drama, the sense that the whole thing could be played on the stage of an old and heavily adorned Italian theater. Plus, it’s loaded with a seriously irresistible sense of storytelling (and great tunes). God, what is it with me and Italian lately?

• Last Rites review
• Bandcamp

15. Worm – Gloomlord

Listen, I love me some lead guitar, and Gloomlord is one of several albums this year that really found favor in part due to its leads. The fact that this is a rather raw, nearly funereal doom/death record only makes those leads that much more valuable. There’s a journey here that most bands of the style never aim for, much less achieve.

• Last Rites review
• Bandcamp

14. Pyrrhon – Abscess Time

I spent much of 2020 going for warmer, welcoming records, so Pyrrhon’s latest often took a bit of a backburner. But these boys are the kings of multifaceted antagonism, and it turns out a guy needs a multifaceted approach to catharsis, so I was inevitably drawn back to what is their most varied and mature record to date. Who else is turning Swans into progressive metal, or Death into noise rock? Who else views The Hudsucker Proxy as a horror movie?

• Last Rites review
• Bandcamp

13. Psychotic Waltz – A God-Shaped Void

My 2019 tech and prog binge finally got me to check out the Psychotic Waltz albums after their classic debut, and I dug them all, right in time for their triumphant return. This record picks right up from their 90s progression, delivering a bunch subtly infectious and just-adventurous-enough tunes. Absolutely smooth, this one.

• Last Rites review
• Homepage

12. …And Oceans – Cosmic World Mother

From my review: “…a blistering slab of extremely blasty, riff-centric symphonic black metal, and a no-brainer for anyone that yearns for a certain era‒it may as well have a 1998 timestamp embedded in it.” Especially welcoming because there just isn’t enough high quality stuff of this style around anymore.

• Bandcamp

11. Lamp of Murmuur – Heir of Ecliptical Romanticism

It’s always interesting and weird to see which albums get the major hype stamp, and Lamp of Murmuur’s first full length got a lot of attention. I never realized so many people enjoyed music this raw, aggressive, and inhuman. Well, good for the dude behind the cloak and corpsepaint, because Heir of Ecliptical Romanticism is definitely a-one black metal, especially during its monster opening duo.

• Last Rites review in Black, Raw & Bleeding
• Bandcamp

BEST OF THE BEST OF THE
HEFTY CALORIC INTAKE

10. DEFEATED SANITY – THE SANGUINARY IMPETUS

Defeated Sanity is the only band that could possibly reduce the overall brutality of their death metal and still remain more devastating than 99 percent of the field. The Sanguinary Impetus is the jazziest and most outright sophisticated material the band has ever done while still maintaining their brutal slamming trudge (so basically, other than Dharmata). All of the insanely sleek playing – Lille Gruber’s deft drumming and twitchy-smooth guitars, Jacob Schmidt’s downright bubbly bass – sometimes belies exactly how much this record wants to do damage (I mean, the title, right?). It’s all widdly meedly tweedly DEEEEEEE and then suddenly one of those three-story-tall Caterpillar dump trucks is driving back and forth over you a hundred times. The degens have invaded high society, and it’s a beautiful thing.

• Last Rites review
• Bandcamp

9. ARMORED SAINT – PUNCHING THE SKY

Do you know how much Armored Saint rules? Do you know how much it rules that they still rule so hard and put out records that rule as hard as Punching the Sky rules in 2020? Do you have any idea how amazing John Bush is in everything he’s ever done? He even made late 90s Anthrax moderately tolerable. Do you know how great of a drummer Gonzo Sandoval is? I mean, damn folks, this band is a force. With instant Saint winners like “End of the Attention Span,” “Missile to Gun,” and closer “Never You Fret,” Punching the Sky is wall-to-wall gems, defying conventional wisdom that a verse-chorus-verse band like this shouldn’t push the length of an album over 50 minutes. If anything, this record is lean, man. A non stop thrill ride. I dare you to resist its charms. I dare you. An instant de-grump-ifier, this one.

• Last Rites review
• Bandcamp

8. MALOKARPATAN – KRUPINSKÉ OHNE

From my review: “Malokarpatan’s obvious reverence for their influences made it necessary to use a lot of band names as adjectives, but they have the skills to pull off anything they choose, and the personality to assure that nothing ever feels like copied. Krupinské ohne is a rather diverse record made whole and thrilling through the band’s songcraft and talents, and one that keeps revealing secrets – of both the enchanting and downright fun varieties – many spins in. At this point, it is clear that Malokarpatan is not a band content on ever sitting still, but like many of their influences, they’re great not just because they keep evolving, but because they can surprise while somehow delivering just what the doctor ordered.”

Couldn’t have said it better myself. Except that I said it myself.

• Album at Invictus Productions Bandcamp

7. FATES WARNING – LONG DAY GOOD NIGHT

Long Day Good Night – which is possibly but hopefully not Fates Warning’s final album – was not as immediate as its predecessor Theories of Flight. Once the newest record sank in, it was clear that this was by design. Long Day is probably the most varied record of their long career, and never have they put so much emphasis on mood. As has been explained by both Captain in his review of the record and Lone in our cover art feature, the art here really gives you a hint at what you’re going to get. There is darkness, and quite a bit of it, but there is always hope, even if it’s the tiniest sliver. More than just the inspired and diverse songs, however, the individuals went all out on the record. Ray Alder somehow sounds as great now as he did over 30 years ago, despite living in the upper registers most of the time, and the soloing of “live” guitarist Mike Abdow is given a ton of room to breathe and stretch out, adding yet another expressive voice to the total. If this is their finale (please no), it’s a glorious way to close a recording career.

• Homepage

6. MY DYING BRIDE – THE GHOST OF ORION

From my review: “The Ghost of Orion also probably isn’t destined to become another late-career classic like its predecessor Feel the Misery, but that’s a-okay. There’s plenty of room in the world for more very good My Dying Bride records. After all, for young Bobby Neverdoomed, out there just dipping his toes into The Pool of Countless Tears, The Ghost of Orion might end up being that Very Special Record that can never quite be replaced in his heart. That this band can still pull that off after three decades is downright incredible.”

In truth, that was a little premature. The Ghost of Orion is simply stunning, and I’ve liked it more and more with each spin as the year has gone on. Maybe a slow burn band needs more time to percolate, or maybe the whole idea of doing snap judgment reviews doesn’t always reveal the most solid of takes (critics bashed John Carpenter’s The Thing when it came out, if you can believe it). Another warm embrace from the lords of grief and sadness.

• Homepage

5. SACRED OUTCRY – DAMNED FOR ALL TIME

From my review: “The nearly 15-minute title track, meanwhile, manages to do it all. It transforms from a soft beginning of acoustic guitars and choirs into a sprawling and epic sound that manages both the Blind Guardian drive and the proggy Long Iron Maiden Song feel, and then just keeps on building. (Also keep an ear out for Apalodimas’ relentless bass during all of this; dude is a beast.) The drop into nothing but violins ‒ and the eventual, inevitable rebuild ‒ feels like the album reflecting back on itself. Once it gets to the kind of nutty, intense theatricality that Iced Earth achieved at their peak (which ironically was about when this material was written), the listener ought to be completely rapt. There’s another (very good) song that follows, but ‘Damned For All Time’ ices it.”

A stunning and holistic album with both dynamic depth and huge thrills. Captain already told you that it’s the best power metal album of 2020. Reward this band for their long-gestating gem so that maybe they’ll make some more.

• Bandcamp

4. ORANSSI PAZUZU – MESTARIN KYNSI

In comparison to 2016’s widely lauded Värähtelijä, Oranssi Pazuzu’s fifth album was a bit of a grower, not a shower. It took far longer to really sink in despite being almost 20 minutes shorter than its predecessor, but it also feels a bit like a reflection of that album. Whereas Värähtelijä expanded the band’s black/prog/kraut/industrial/etc freakouts to longer jams that allowed listeners to get into a groove and get down with the material, Mestarin kynsi allows no such comfort. The album twists, twitches, and turns at every opportunity, tricking the listener into thinking a long, dance-ready groove is coming before delivering something ultra dissonant, really unsettling, or just downright weird. In that way, it calls back a bit to sophomore outing Kosmonument, but Mestarin kynsi is a much more successful and efficient version of Maximum Strange Pazuzu. Because it condenses the oddities and creates a bit of a claustrophobic setting, it’s that much more unnerving. Oranssi Pazuzu continues to operate at another level from almost every other band out there, and the fact that it seems to come so naturally to them is a little bit scary.

• Last Rites review in Missing Pieces
• Bandcamp

3. AUTONOESIS – AUTONOESIS

Earlier this year I kept seeing this unknown band popping up in LR team conversations, and kept looking at its simple but fun cover art of towers and mountains but kind of ignoring it because “black” and “thrash” are both in the genre descriptor at Metal-Archives, and I’m a bit worn on the bigger names of the style (“melodic” and “death” are also there, so I was probably just being a dick about it). But then I listened, and then I heard all the deft, infectious riffage and rickety but kind of endearing programmed drum sound, and decided that the whole thing was worth a good listen.

Then I got to that first solo in “Nightfall.” The person or people behind Autonoesis saw the “Always Be Closing” part of Glengarry Glen Ross and took it to heart. They saw all the times someone says “shit just got real” in an action movie and decided to turn it into a singular moment on a heavy metal album. After that, the rest almost feels like a bonus, but nonetheless delivers oodles of wicked great riffs, melody, and (yes) way more solos. There’s even a prog sensibility to some of the song structures, an ambition seen far too rarely in such a style. Great leads are strewn throughout so many of my favorites of 2020, but nowhere did they play such an important role. I can’t wait for more.

• Last Rites review
• Bandcamp

2. MYSTRAS – CASTLES CONQUERED AND RECLAIMED

From my review: “…The lyrical message, songwriting, impassioned performances, and perfect(ly raw) production combine to make Castles Conquered and Reclaimed a spirited and extremely refreshing black metal record. Mystras celebrates freedom fighters from centuries past while delivering a bit of a timely reminder that current battles are not new battles. It might appear to be a direct subversion of black metal tropes, but it still manages to sound like and be about thee ways ov olde, so feel free to don your tunic.”

Ayloss was one of many Very Busy Workers both before and during the pandemic, and while his insanely ambitious Spectral Lore split/collab with Mare Cognitum seemed to garner more attention than his other works (not without reason; it’s great), his debut as Mystras hit me hardest. Maybe it’s the righteousness behind the lyrics, maybe it’s his always-golden lead work, or maybe it was the comforting rawness of it, but Castles Conquered has grown to be one of my favorite things he’s ever done. Now onto whatever 10 new things he has planned for us in 2021.

• Bandcamp

1. THY CATAFALQUE – NAIV

From my review: “Kátai is simply playing with a loaded deck at this point. In terms of his fearlessness, deft touch for the widely varying material, and his choices in collaborators, he has never been achieving at a higher level. Naiv manages to be incredibly wild and diverse without losing even one iota of flow or cohesion, and Thy Catafalque remains one of the most adventurous, thrilling, and mesmerizing acts in all of music, not to mention a sure-fire path to a good mood.”

That whole “never achieving at a higher level” thing seems truer now than it did upon the record’s release. With respect to his increasingly voluminous number of great records, at this point it’s impossible to view Naiv as anything but Tamás Kátai’s greatest achievement… at least until he undoubtedly tops it. From the time that former MetalReview/Last Rites writer Ian Chainey told us to check out Róka hasa rádió over 10 years ago, Thy Catafalque has been one of my favorite acts in all of metal. Considering how countless promos are dropped in my inbox in any given week, it’s easy to get jaded and lose that youthful sense of looking forward to something new, but each new release from Kátai gives me the excitement that I used to get going to the record store on release day for a favorite’s latest album. The man sits at that glorious crossroads of brilliance and fearlessness, and Naiv is the type of record that manages to sound eternally fresh but also like it’s been part of my life for years. Thy Catafalque is my most trusted travel guide.

• Bandcamp

BEST OF THE SMALL BITES

10. Wretched Inferno – Fester

Considering their youth (the bassist is barely old enough to drive), this band already has an uncanny knack for meat-and-potatoes death metal. Make it riff, make it rude, and make it heavy. These dudes also really get how to construct The Mosh Part, and thankfully go to that well early and often.

• Bandcamp

9. Anubis – Anubis

This LA act swims in the thrasher end of the power metal pool, but their penchant for Big Vocals, Big Leads, and Big Bombast ought to have your fists raised in triumph for the entirety of these 11 and a half minutes. Just the vocal ascents in “Sin for Me” ought to be a guaranteed hook.

• Bandcamp

8. Fleshvessel – Bile of Man Reborn

If this is what it meant to be “symphonic death metal,” I’d be more on board with the style. Largely a churning, demented, slightly techy beast, Bile of Man Reborn also has passages of strings, flute, and piano adding to the overall pomp and theatricality. Dramatic, sophisticated, and way cool.

• Bandcamp

7. Aspirate Coma – Serene Transcendence through Corporal Disfigurement

In a year loaded with great goregrind and Carcass worship, the 9.5 minutes of Aspirate Coma’s debut demo were some of the best. Oddly enough, despite sounding as if it’s being played from behind a foot-thick wall of mucus, this little slab of splattery fun is actually a perfect way to clear your sinuses.

• Bandcamp

6. Molde Volhal – Into the Cave of Ordeals…

Another debut that blew my socks off, probably because this is black metal of the Quebecois, windswept variety… only it’s actually from Norway. Gorgeous, piercing tremolo melodies ride high over a near-constant barrage of blasting, occasionally giving way to some equally gorgeous leads. Pretty stunning throughout.

• Last Rites review in Black, Raw & Bleeding
• Bandcamp

5. Old Nick – Haunted Loom!!

The consensus best of Old Nick’s many 2020 releases (at least according to us), and an unabashedly fun raw ride. A song title like “Banishêd from Thine Chamber Pot” might make this band seem very tongue-in-cheek (they are), but they pair their goofiness with some seriously catchy riffs and keys.

• Last Rites review in Black, Raw & Bleeding
• EP at Grimestone Records Bandcamp

4. Atræ Bilis – Divinihility

From my review: “…a death metal fan’s death metal record, almost leaving easter eggs to discover as you’re busy enjoying all the skronk, snark, technicality, brutality, and infectiousness. It’s also a damn fine and sleek introduction to an obviously very talented band.”

• Bandcamp

3. Septage – Septic Decadence

From my review: “In 12 minutes Septage delivers some of the most intense, revolting, and downright smartly written gory death/grind in recent memory. Not much else to say about it. Buy this EP and gain the displeasure of your neighbors.”

• Bandcamp

2. Lamentari – Missa Pro Defunctis

From my blurb in Missing Pieces: “There’s a true ‘more of everything!’ vibe to the EP, but nothing ever feels frivolous. Missa Pro Defunctis is one of the finest examples of truly grandiose symphonic black metal since Death Cult Armageddon, and it’s a damn debut EP.”

• Bandcamp

1. Lör– Edge of Eternity

It’s easy enough to just describe Edge of Eternity as a masterclass in power/prog/folk metal, but it’s so much more than that. There’s no way to properly convey the amount of fire, emotional depth, vitality, and sheer zest for life exhibited across these 30 minutes. The songwriting and performances are nothing short of impeccable, and the tiny touches of extremity expand the dynamic breadth just so. This EP is so damn great that had the band chosen to call it a full length it would have been in the top five of the big list above. Like a Power Star for the emotional Mario in your brain that lasts a half hour.

• Last Rites review
• Bandcamp

BEST OF THE LIGHTER BITES

The non-metal top 12, or 13. Basically, the number of albums I wanted to feature. Could also call this the “Mostly Prog Rock and Electronic List,” because I definitely don’t pay as much attention to a lot of other styles as some other members of the crew. Too busy trying to catch up on all those years I ignored foundational classics in favor of listening to Exodus’ seventh-best album. Always a journey, this music stuff. And ain’t that grand?

12. Arabs in Aspic – Madness and Magic

This M.O. of this group of playful Norwegian proggers seems to be simply “The 70s: all of it, please.” While they are primarily indebted to several prog greats, it’s also possible to hear everything from Sabbath’s fuzz and Uriah Heep’s folksier side to Alice Cooper’s showmanship. In other words, Madness and Magic isn’t remotely lacking in musical thrills, emotion, or personality.

• Bandcamp

11. AC/DC – Power Up

It’s hard to tell how this will rank in their career in a few years, but the narrative surrounding it, plus the absolute freshness of it, makes it so feel-good. AC/DC hasn’t had anything to prove in 40 years, but this is one of the few albums where they seem to realize it, sounding perfectly at ease with being a bunch of grizzled old guys playing no-frills rock and roll.

• Hompage

10. Blue Öyster Cult – The Symbol Remains

It might have a bit of filler (few albums over an hour don’t), but the best 45 minutes here rival several of their middle-tier-but-still-very-good albums. That’s both more than we expected from them at this point and a real treat. They also just seem like they’re having an absolute blast throughout, playing a good variety of styles and offering ample highlights, the greatest of which is an instant BÖC classic in “The Alchemist.”

• Homepage

9. Kairon; IRSE! – Polysomn

After two albums that were equal parts dreamy space rock soundscapes and prog-psych freakout, Kairon; IRSE! decided to lean more to their whimsical and shoegazing side… which admittedly felt like a letdown at first. Once I gave into the shift I found Polysomn to be as expertly crafted as the earlier albums, not to mention a wonderfully escapist and delightfully relaxing journey. Svart win #1.

• Bandcamp

8. Polymoon – Caterpillars of Creation

The ethereal psych/post/gaze of Polymoon makes for a great companion to the previous album on this list, and not just because they’re both on Svart (Svart win #2). More because they both appear to be such mood albums on initial spins before eventually revealing more complex backdrops. From the slightly MBV-y wash of noise to the bright leads, everything about Caterpillars of Creation is 100 percent pleasant.

• Bandcamp

7. E-Musikgruppe Lux Ohr – Non Plus Ultra

Hey look, Svart win #3. Ambient, slow burn soundscape electronic. But wait, there’s more! E-Musikgruppe Lux Ohr blends a largely IDM base sound with kosmische, space, prog, and post rocks, resulting in a vast sound that is at times as alarming as it is relaxing and trippy. That glorious soundtrack quality, but you provide the imagery.

• Bandcamp

6. Ulver – Flowers of Evil

This is one of the few times that Ulver ever repeated a style for two albums in their very long career, sticking with the synthpop vibes of The Assassination of Julius Caesar. To my ears it isn’t quite up to the quality of its predecessor, but it still rules a ton and separates itself ever-so-slightly by being a touch more rock. Most important: it’s still insanely infectious.

• Bandcamp

5. Autechre – SIGN & PLUS

Autechre obviously saw the mere 65 minutes of SIGN and realized that just wouldn’t do after their previous three full length sets added to about 14 hours, so they almost immediately released a second 2020 album. Both are (relatively) less experimental than many of their other post-2000 works, with SIGN leaning a bit more to the ambient and drifty side and PLUS a touch more glitchy and weirdly danceable. Most importantly, both offer a futuristic vision that is warm and welcoming, as opposed to all the typical existential terror. Comfort is good.

• Autechre at Warp Records

4. Hällas – Conundrum

Hällas call their fresh brand of classic/prog music “adventure rock,” and it’s hard to disagree. That is, if the adventure in question is riding down a neon-lit highway in your t-top. Not since High Spirits’ debut has an album seemed as ready for driving fast under the stars during the 80s. The band’s folksier melodies and organ tie them to older prog and a bit of a swords and sorcery vibe, but the very 80s synth sections pull them back to the neon, like Dolph Lundgren’s He-Man being pulled into California in the Masters of the Universe movie. Only a lot better than that.

• Last Rites review
• Bandcamp

3. Wobbler – Dwellers of the Deep

You’ll notice that this list has as much Norwegian prog on Karisma Records as it does Svart acts. All of these bands were new to me in 2020, and it was some other folks’ excitement for this new Wobbler that helped introduce me to the label and their ridiculously good roster. But independent of all that, Dwellers of the Deep is an absolute gem of prog. The Yes comparisons are apt as an entry point for new listeners, but the band absolutely deserves such a comp not just in terms of style but quality. Also that uncanny ability to weave a gripping story and nail the biggest, most thrilling moments.

• Last Rites review
• Bandcamp

2. Neil Young – Homegrown

An instant classic in the loosest use of the term “instant,” as Neil had this one shelved since 1975. The songs here that we already knew tend to make more sense in their originally intended context, and those we didn’t – the soothing country rock of “Try,” the drunken warble of “”We Don’t Smoke It No More,” the reserved grunge rollick of “Vacancy” – are of such high quality that it leaves one wondering how they remained hidden so long. This feels like the missing piece between the pain and anguish of The Ditch Trilogy and the sense of moving forward on albums like Zuma and Comes a Time. I figured that Homegrown would yield a couple nice treasures. I didn’t expect it to feel like this much of a gift to massive fans.

• Neil Young Archives

1. Airbag – A Day at the Beach

You’d have to drop a pretty magical album to top a long-missing classic-era Neil Young record in my eyes, and with A Day at the Beach, that’s exactly what Airbag delivered. A masterpiece of understated neo-progressive rock, this record holds strong comparisons to the haunting (but not metal) side of Anathema, with shades of synth rock and darker new wave washing over all the melancholy. A Day at the Beach wants you to fully embrace a sense of sorrow so that relief washes over you with every electronic pulse, leading bass line, subtly captivating vocal melody, Gilmour-y lead, or dynamic swell. If there was a more achingly beautiful rock song than “Sunsets” in 2020, I didn’t hear it.

• Bandcamp

2020 SUPERLATIVES

PRO-EST Bass Player of 2020: the one and only Joey Vera. With top notch work on two albums in my top 10, this one was a pretty easy decision. Vera has sneakily carved out a hall of fame career as one of the most dependable and hardworking providers of low end in the business.

FUNNEST Trend of 2020: bands that aren’t Carcass being Carcass better than 2020 Carcass can be Carcass. Septage, Pharmacist, Houkago Grind Time, Aspirate Coma, Miasmatic Necrosis, and probably others ground their gore with the best of them.

BUSIEST Pandemic Worker: Colin Marston. With respect to other very busy 2020 musicians, check out what Mr. Menegroth did this year:

• • New albums from Behold the Arctopus, Krallice, Hathenar, and Encenathrakh
  • Debuts from Xazraug, Edenic Past, and Rejoice! The Light Has Come
  • THREE new Indricothere albums
  • Compiling a lot of older recordings including three symphonic releases and a Glyptoglossio album
  • Guest spots on the new Defeated Sanity, Imperial Triumphant, SVNTH, and Wayfarer records
  • Production/mastering/engineering jobs on about 20 or so records beyond his own

REALEST Shit Just Got Real Moment: The aforementioned first solo on “Nightfall” on the Autonoesis debut.

EXTRA-EST Band of 2020: Old Nick. It isn’t just the output (seven EPs, two splits, and two full lengths) and the hilarious song titles (“Bedeviled by the Ghost of Your Mother’s Father’s Mother’s Aunt”) but also how they went about it. Their deceptively smart black metal showed serious growth within less than a single calendar year. Also, one of their albums is named The Night of the Ambush and the Pillage by the Queen Ann Styl’d Furniture, Animated by One of the Dozen or So Spells That Thee Eastern Vampyre Has Studied. Come on.

GREATEST Deep Dive: Scandinavian prog rock. In addition to the Wobbler, Airbag, and Arabs in Aspic up there, I dove into Anekdoten, Shaman Elephant, and several others, both thanks to the discovery of a couple new labels and the help of some other LR proglodytes.

FAREWELLS

Impossible to overstate how much these two men will be missed or how much they enriched my life through their music. Farewell and eternal thanks.

The post Best Of 2020 – Zach Duvall: Life’s A Binge appeared first on Last Rites.

And yet, I feel like every year-end list I’ve written for the past half decade has started with some variance upon “Well, this was a tough year, but…”  Is this what adulthood is, just an endless spiral of increasingly terrible years? If so, then imagine how unfathomably unfathomable the awfulness of 2021 will be…

Let’s not even go there.

Things are looking up, though, right? Here in the US, we at least elected a president that isn’t a total moron, although it remains to be seen if the current president (who is not only a complete and total moron, but is the defining complete and total moron) will somehow manage to wreck that, since he keeps trying. So maybe…

Let’s not even go there.

One thing that’s been here for me forever — or for as long as I can remember, at least — is music, which is why I’m here, doing what I’m doing, babbling incessantly about music. For all its myriad failures, 2020 at least brought me plenty of great music, so since we’re not going to those dark places, let’s cut to the damn chase and go here:

THE SECOND TEN, IN ORDER

20. Worm – Gloomlord

Apparently, Worm’s earlier efforts are more in the black metal camp, but however they got to it, Gloomlord is swampy death / doom goodness that borders upon the funereal, all echoed vocal and crushing slow riff beneath some sweet melodic leads. Think early Paradise Lost slowly drowning in a swamp and you kinda got the picture… Gloomy gloom, my good glum chums, and great.

• Don’t believe me? Ask this doofus.
• Throw ’em a frickin’ swamprat bone here.

19. Pharmacist – Medical Renditions Of Grinding Decomposition

You know what rules? Carcass’ second record, Symphonies Of Sickness. (Also, every other Carcass record, pretty much…) You know what else rules? This Symphonies Of Sickness second-coming from these Japanese sickos, all fuzzy riff and gurgle-guttural goodness from the Earache school of hurting ears. Don’t let the pretty picture on the cover fool you — this is some gross stuff, kids.

• Don’t believe me? Ask me again.
• Throw ’em a frickin’ freshly defleshed bone here.

18. ACxDC – Satan Is King

Southern California’s favorite Satan-loving powerviolence / grindcore band returns with this subtly titled full-length. (The title is a pisstake on Kanye’s Jesus Is King, if you’re interested.) Sonically, it’s a fine and fun slab of the band’s trademark hardcore-leaning pummeling, hitting hard with the catchy “singalong” of the title track, the relentless barrage of “Copsucker,” and the raging on-a-dime turns of “Turncoat,” and all of it wrapped in the stoutest production ACxDC has yet seen. ACxDC will knock your ears about with powerful violence and warped sense of humor, and you’ll damn well like it.

• Don’t believe me? Ask me again, except over here this time.
• Throw ’em a frickin’ demoncore bone here.

17. Necrot – Mortal

Frills? Bells? Whistles? Who needs ’em… Necrot certainly doesn’t. Mortal is old-school death metal done right, which is to say that it’s straightforward, brutal, crushing, carving, deadly… Nary a wasted note or a misplaced beat, no other adjectives necessary — no “tech,” no “prog,” no “atmospheric,” no bullshit. Just death freakin’ metal, like the good Lord intended… Turn it up; throw the horns in the air; and scream along.

• Don’t believe me? Second opinion.
• Throw ’em a frickin’ spiky-logo old-school rifftastic bone here.

16. Incantation – Sect Of Vile Divinities

The production of this one has been a bit of a sticking point for some of the fellas, but to these ears, these newfound cleaner and less murky tones don’t detract much from Incantation’s best quality, which, of course, is their ability to create great and ugly death metal. Sure, now it’s less mucky, and that muckiness has long been a hallmark of the band, but when you can still knock out songs like “Entrails Of The Hag Queen” and “Fury’s Manifesto,” there’s more than enough beautiful ugliness to go around.

• Don’t believe me? Well, I done told you…
• Throw ’em a frickin’ blasphemous bone here.

15. Meth Leppard – Woke

This Aussie grind duo returns with a stellar full-length, filled with their usual blast-happy riff-o-rama and smart-ass humor. Sure, the one-note singular-grunt vocals can get a little monotonous, but still, tracks like “Dead Kardashians,” “Sick Bern,” and the killer (if titularly incorrect) “Thrash Sucks” are bringing on the headache in the best possible way. Are you geddon it? Yeah, you should gedd it.

• Don’t believe me? Don’t worry — I missed it, too, the first time around…
• Throw ’em a frickin’ bone here, mate.

14. Testament – Titans Of Creation

In the pantheon of classic thrashers who still got the fire, Testament is right behind Overkill to me, a classic-era band who fell just outside The Big Four and yet who has never fallen to the same lows that those four have. Coming off the lackluster Brotherhood Of The Snake, Testament’s back with a ferocious thrasher in Titans Of Creation, one of their heaviest to date, and further proof that these old titans haven’t lost a step. Does it reach the heights of The New Order or Practice What You Preach? Nah, of course not — we’re past that now. There’s no real surprises here: Just lyrics about the usual suspects like war and murder, and plenty of guitar-slinging riffs from the Peterson-Skolnick team. Still, all of that adds up to Testament doing what Testament does best.

• Don’t believe me? Ask-o-lito.
• Practice what you preach and throw ’em a frickin’ bone here.

13. Defeated Sanity – The Sanguinary Impetus

I don’t always like noodly technicality in my death metal, but when I do, I want all of it. Thankfully, Defeated Sanity can scratch that itch, and here, they scratch it with all the brutal subtlety of a chainsaw. There’s as many twists in these riffs as Chubby Checker and Dee Snider playing Twister in a tornado, as guitars and bass skitter and skedaddle around Lille Gruber’s rolling drumwork, and all topped with a beautifully toilet-level guttural from Josh Welshman. Sanity is overrated anyway; let it be beaten.

• Don’t believe me? Ask ol’ Captain Kick-Ass over here…
• Throw ’em a frickin’ brootech bone here.

12. Ripped To Shreds – 亂 (Luan)

Oh, what’s that you say? Classic-styled death metal with old-school grind influences? Well, sign me up, dammit. One-man project Ripped To Shreds is the brainchild of Andrew Lee, now expanded into a full line-up, and you can think of it as the unholy spawn of Terrorizer grinding and classic death like Asphyx. Themed around Chinese folk tales of war and battle, Luan is one hell of a rager, and another feather in the cap of a relatively young band. More like Riffed To Shreds, amirite? (I’m right. I’m always right.)

• Don’t believe me?  Ask DMD (Death Metal Dummies)
• 在這裡向他們扔骨頭.

11. Psychotic Waltz – The God-Shaped Void

First off, if you haven’t already, take a few minutes and read this primer. Therein lies a far better summary of the importance of Psychotic Waltz than I could ever give, here or elsewhere, and then, when you’re done there, you can get on with the business of The God-Shaped Void, which is an excellent album from an underrated band, and certainly one that I wasn’t expecting to land an album on my 2020 year-end list. But damned if they didn’t, and as you listen to the moody and melodic prog-metal mastery that The God-Shaped Void contains, you’ll understand why.

• Don’t believe me? Ask the Prog King himself.
• Throw ’em a frickin’ god-shaped bone here.

THE FIRST TEN, IN ORDER

10. PYRRHON – ABSCESS TIME

In any given year, there are probably dozens of extreme metal records — if not more than dozens — that are described by overly enthusiastic critics such as myself as “mind-melting” or “punishing” or “ear-destroying” or some other such appellation. And probably most of them don’t truly qualify as such because they aren’t Pyrrhon records. (Note: It’s “Pyrrhon,” pronounced “Pyrrhon.”) Brooklyn’s noisiest bunch of free-jazz-inspired prog-tech-whatever death metal nerds returned in 2020 with Abscess Time, their fourth full-length and their best one, another collection of skronky ugly mind-melting punishing ear-destroying hyperbole-resistant kickassery. Dylan DiLeila’s riffs twist and move in ways that no riff ever should, and yet these do move those ways, whichever ways they may be (and sometimes in many ways at once), and they’re all the better for it; the rhythm section of Erik Malave and Steve Schwegler skitters and slams and stomps and stutters through whatever strange dystopian nightmares vocalist and lyricist extraordinaire Doug Moore conjures up.

Pyrrhon’s world is a harsh one, and we’re lucky to live in it.

• Don’t believe me? Ask a ghost.
• Throw ’em a frickin’ bone here, or Doug Moore will kick your ass.

9. FUCK THE FACTS – PLEINE NOIRCEUR

After a five-year hiatus, Canada’s funnest fact-fucking grinders return with another slab of brilliant “bastardized grindcore,” which really just means that it twists and turns and zips and zags and lights and darks and fasts and slows and reds and blues and most of the other adjectives, all in one, balancing blasting aggression against post-metal melodies and outside-the-box arrangements into one long slab of half-French / half-English fury. They’ve been trending ever upward for nearly twenty years now, with each record more interesting than the last, and Pleine Noirceur continues their streak of excellence, from the brilliant “Doubt, Fear, Neglect” and the blistering “Ailleurs” through the sludgy and emotive “Everything I Love Is Ending” to the drifty dreamy “An Ending.” Total darkness never seemed so vibrant, and this band never fails. Each listen unfurls a new twist, a new turn, a previously unheard riff, or more likely, a new context, a new color, a new angle and a riff previously unheard in exactly that proper context or color or angle.

In today’s world, facts seem to matter increasingly less, so I guess it’s safe to say fuck ’em, at this point, right? So get on with it while the world burns, and let’s get to grinding.

• Don’t believe me? Well, here’s the facts, Jack
• Jette-leur un os frickin ici,

8. WAKE – DEVOURING RUIN

And hey, speaking of Canadian grindcore bands that operate outside the genre’s norms, here’s a new one from Calgary’s finest, and it picks up where the absolutely brilliant Misery Rites left off, pushing even further afield of traditional grindcore into the post-metal atmospherics that closed that album. Wake has long borrowed from various offshoots of extreme metal, but Devouring Ruin sees them exploring the more atmospheric side of their spectrum. It’s an expansive take on extremity, heavily reliant upon the NeurIsis palette, but it’s also a devastatingly visceral listen, as discordant riffing collides with chiming arpeggios and all of it ebbs and flows with a nearly cinematic scope. Fear not dedicated grinders: Some blastbeats do find their way in — underneath some skronking chunky riffs in “Mouth Of Abolition,” for example, or the blistering first half of “In The Lair Of The Rat Kings” — but mostly, Devouring Ruin keeps its pummeling to a more controlled attack, like the sludgy trudge of the ten-minute “Torchbearer” or the melodic haziness that colors the end of … also, the ten-minute “Torchbearer.” (It’s a long song, dammit; there’s a lot going on there.)  At this point, Wake is likely only truly a grindcore band about 35% of the time, and nominally a grind band because they traditionally have been one, but whatever genre description you choose to bestow upon them, they’re a Very Damned Good band and one of the more interesting outfits to break forth from grindcore’s admittedly limiting confines in recent times. Like the Fuck The Facts, there’s much to unpack in this atmospheric grinding, and repeated listens only peel back the layers further and further, revealing the greatness within.

Change is good; embrace the changes.

• Don’t believe me? Ask the ghost again.
• Throw ’em a frickin’ bone here, eh, you hoser.

7. NAPALM DEATH – THROES OF JOY IN THE JAWS OF DEFEATISM

Throes Of Joy In The Jaws Of Defeatism was quite awhile in the making – it’s been five years since Apex Predator, a gap only partially stopped with the collection of odds and ends in Coded Smears and the pre-Throes teaser Logic Ravaged By Brute Force. Still, not much has changed in the Napalm world, sonically, at least. Even without the creative input of guitarist Mitch Harris, who played on the record but did not contribute any material to the writing, the remaining core of Barney and Shane and Danny are still blending that signature ferocious death / grind with their other well-established influences, like the post-punk of “Amoral” or the industrialized “A Belly Full Of Salt And Spleen” or the blackened industrial grating of “Joie De Ne Pas Vivre.” All of those are among Throes Of Joy‘s least traditionally Napalm Death moments, and yet they’re among its best, and in that, and in their experimental bent, they somehow become among Throes Of Joy‘s most perfectly Napalm Death moments. Are you following me? No? Well, piss off, then, and just listen to the damned record — it’s a rager, from start to end, just like you’d expect from these Brummie bastards.

Napalm Death has been a personal favorite and an extreme metal standard-bearer for over a generation. Throes Of Joy In The Jaws Of Defeatism is exactly the kind of album that shows why we always come running back for more. Long the kings of grinding, and forever may they reign.

• Don’t believe me? You should.
• Throw ’em a frickin’ dead bird bone here. (No birds were harmed in the making of this link.)

6. DROPDEAD – DROPDEAD (2020)

Troubled times make for good political punk rock, at least. I’ll admit that that perspective is a huge case of bright-siding, and coming from a place of privilege in that these troubled times haven’t been as directly troubled for me as they have for many. But regardless of the impact of that trouble, in these days of strife unlike any most living generations have seen, it’s right and justified to be completely pissed off. And Dropdead is nothing if not completely pissed off. Back with their first full-length in 22 years, Rhode Island’s favorite fast-and-furious hardcore punks may be a little older and wiser now, and maybe just a hair or two less fast than before, but nothing much else has changed. Bob Otis still barks and screams out screeds against oppression (be it of humans or animals), against injustice and against the broken system that fosters it, and against the racist wannabe-totalitarian regime approximately half of us Americans installed in the White House in 2016. Arriving approximately halfway through the ten-month-and-counting COVID plague, and just a few months before the US election, Dropdead 2020 reminded us of the importance of paying attention, of being actively tuned into the world around you, of the need to “fight and emancipate, conspire and communicate, arise and retaliate.”

Listen to Dropdead. They speak truths. Listen often. And listen loudly.

• Don’t believe me? Dropdead probably doesn’t care if you don’t believe me.
• Throw ’em a cruelty-free vegan bone here.

5. KATATONIA – CITY BURIALS

Everyone’s favorite sadsack Swedish sonsabitches return with another maudlin set of songs that balance the band’s proclivity toward the progressive with the moody metal that made them one of the twin towers of extreme mopeyness. (And who’s the other tower, you ask? We’ll get there in a second… Be patient. Don’t rush me.) If you’ve been keeping up with the Katatonias, you know what City Burials sounds like: prog-rock-cum-metal arrangements, with the latter of those two styles in shorter supply than it was ages ago, in line with the previous however many Katatonia releases. Scattered Nyström riffs serve as punctuation, but mostly, Burials is about the downtrodden atmosphere built on Renkse’s minor-key melodies and a collection of stunningly killer Kata-tunes. When a band writes songs that are good enough to overlook the 8th-grade-notebook emo-ness of lines like “I can feel you pierce my heart,” you know they’re truly onto something. When those songs are as good as “The Winter Of Our Passing,” or “Behind The Blood,” or the killer “Untrodden,” then what they’re onto is greatness, so take your anti-depressants and join in the fun.

Unless you’re in baseball, there’s nothing wrong with crying sometimes.

• Don’t believe? Ask this yo-yo-lito one more time.
• Throw ’em a really sad frickin’ bone here.

4. PARADISE LOST – OBSIDIAN

Oh, you listened to the Katatonia and you’re still feeling sad, are you? But not quite sad enough? Well, fine, then; let’s get sadder. Come on over and join us in the throes of clinical depression, as brought to you by the wonderfully morose death/doom/goth hybrid that is modern Paradise Lost. Now several albums into their second wind, our Haligonian heroes are coming off their sidestep backwards into the more traditional death/doom of Medusa — that one being by far the heaviest album they’ve made in thirty years. Obsidian is that sidestep in reverse, back from the heavier metallic edge, again towards the balance achieved on the greatness of The Plague Within and Tragic Idol. Holmes’ despondent croon is offset by his recently rediscovered goblin growl, and Mackintosh has never lost that ability to bring those beautiful guitar melodies. So in that regard, Obsidian is vintage Paradise Lost, just updated for the new age, like all of their various vintages condensed, from the goth metal majesty of Draconian Times to the death/doom of Gothic to the perfect blend of Tragic Idol. Running at a kingly level from the Sisters Of Mercy-tinted “Ghosts” to the new-classic closer “Ravenghast,” Obsidian is a study in radiant darkness.

Thirty years in and still sadder than everyone: Let’s hope these poor bastards never cheer up.

• Don’t believe me? That makes me almost as sad as Paradise Lost.
• Throw ’em a clinically depressed bone here.

3. ARMORED SAINT – PUNCHING THE SKY

Noticing a trend yet? Yeah, that’s right: As usual, a large part of my top ten is dedicated to my longtime loves. But hey, it’s been a good year for the old guard, and high among those high-level entries is this latest from California’s finest, the East LA titans of traditional metal, Armored Saint. This band has never made a bad record, though obviously some are better than others, so I was expecting a damned solid slab of riffy straight-up heavy-damned-metal, with John Bush’s gravelly wail leading the charge, as always. What I was not expecting (but was not-so-secretly hoping for) was the band’s strongest record in three decades, the best they’ve released since the early 90s, when Symbol Of Salvation dropped and their classic era was subsequently truncated by Bush’s defection to Anthrax. (In his defense, he did help that band make their best record, Sound Of White Noise. Feel free to fight me on that opinion. You’ll lose.) Punching The Sky is classic Armored Saint, but it doesn’t feel old at all — in fact, it’s very much the opposite. This album crackles with life, with energy, with killer melodic metal like the title track, like the grin-inducing first single “The End Of The Attention Span,” like the blistering “Missile To Gun,” or the rollicking “Never You Fret.”

This, kids, is how heavy metal is done. Pay attention.

• Don’t believe me? Never you fret: You get another chance.
• Throw ’em a frickin’ bone here, or they may decide to punch you, too.

2. CIRITH UNGOL – FOREVER BLACK

And speaking of old California metal bands… I have to admit that, if you’d told me last year that a new Cirith Ungol album would sit near the top of my 2020 year-end list, I’d have told you, “Of course it will!” But I wouldn’t actually have believed you. I suppose that means I should listen to you more often, but why start now, right? Anyway, I certainly would’ve hoped you were right, and thankfully, you were. Let’s not make a thing of it. Forever Black is exactly the kind of new Cirith Ungol album that any Cirith Ungol fan has been hoping for for, what, three decades now? Which, of course, is to say that it’s a Cirith Ungol album that sounds like it could’ve easily been made back in the Golden Days, with some epic trad-doom mastery like “Stormbringer” sitting comfortably side-by-side with the sing-me-a-song-you’re-a-singer from “Heaven And Hell” bounce of “The Frost Monstreme” and the hard rock of “Fractus Promissum.” Tim Baker still has that crazy yelp, and Cirith Ungol still rocks like hell. All is right with the world…  well, at least, with Cirith Ungol’s world.

Welcome back, fellas. We really missed you.

• Don’t believe me? Read this masterwork here.
• Throw ’em a frickin’ Elric Of Melnibone here.

1. FATES WARNING – LONG DAY GOOD NIGHT

Long Day Good Night didn’t drop until November, and still, no album dominated my 2020 listening more than this one. But really, Fates Warning’s control of my year began even earlier, back in the Spring. You see, locked down in quarantine and bored and desperate for something new, I finally cracked and did that which I swore I wouldn’t ever do. I, dedicated purchaser of several (several, several) thousand compact discs, finally broke down and purchased new vinyl. But it wasn’t new vinyl, of course, because that’s a dicey prospect, so what I really did was start buying albums I love on vinyl. And one of those was Fates Warning’s early-90s masterpiece Parallels, which is by far the LP I’ve spun the most in 2020, without question. So that’s really where my 2020 Fates Warning re-obsession began, and it’s carried through into a complete re-immersion into every album they’ve released. (Except maybe FWX.)

And then, by some miraculous twist of fate, just when I’d re-listened to them all to death, they released a new album. And what’s even better than that is that it’s a killer, an absolute masterwork from a band that has about six masterworks and plenty that come close. Coming off one of those finest hours in Theories Of Flight, Matheos, Alder, and company have crafted another one of their finest works, with so much more moody prog-metal brilliance in tracks like “The Destination Onward,” the radio-ready-and-yet-still-strong “Now Comes The Rain,” and the utterly completely 100% astoundingly great “The Longest Shadow Of The Day” followed by the ominous “The Last Song.” Alder sounds great; Vera’s bass is both understated and perfectly prominent, particularly in the jazz fusion licks of “Shadow”; Jarzombek is rock-solid and inventive, as always… and yet, it’s still Matheos’ show here, because it’s his songwriting that always defines how incredible this band has been for decades now. Fates Warning is a damned national treasure, and they should never stop doing this.

So, yeah, seriously, guys — please don’t let that be the last song. Please. We need you.

• Don’t believe me? Check with the boss, then.
• Throw ’em the frickin’ #1 Bone Of The Year right here.

THE SHORT ONES, IN NO ORDER

Beaten To Death – Laat maar, deel een: ik verhuis naar Mastbos

This one’s sort of a cheater to include down here, because this EP is really part of an LP that the band released only to vinyl, and then broke apart and released as four digital entries. but with different mixes. Two of those EPs are out so far, of which this is the first. I don’t care how you get it, in short digital form or the longer physical one, just know that it’s Beaten To Death, which means it’s fun as hell grindcore with some really cool melodic moments and clever song titles like “Flatulence Of Emotion” or “The Old Man And The Internet.” Sure, the vinyl is probably cooler, but this works, too.

• Don’t believe me? You’ll have to. We didn’t cover this.
• Throw ’em one frickin’ bone in a four-part series here. Or buy the vinyl from the link off to the right on that page.

Septage – Septic Decadence

Another Carcass-loving batch of goons with another short burst of pus-dripping excellence, this one. It saw fewer spins than the Pharmacist full-length, but nevertheless, Septage’s brand of severed-tongue-in-rotten-cheek grossness (*) is worth that many spins and more. There’s a plague going on, as you likely know, so let Septage give you a safer way to get sick.  (*I’m pretty sure I used this exact turn-of-phrase in my Machetazo review. Deal with it. It’s a good one. I may use it again someday. That’s how I roll.)

• Don’t believe me? Ask the giraffe.
• Throw ’em a frickin’ lump of raw meat here.

Sulaco – The Privilege

There’s a band that’s been on my mind… all the time… Su-Sulaco… Okay, that might be overstating it a bit, but I got to make a Phil Collins joke, so sue-sue me, yo. Still, my amazing sense of humor notwithstanding, Sulaco is an underrated beast, a tech-grind collective that throws out killer riffs with a seemingly natural ease. Two years after their last full-length in The Prize, Erik Burke and company are back with The Privilege, and in the process, they’ve upgraded the weakest link in their savagery, adding new vocalist Jason Leone’s formidable array of screams in place of Burke’s more hardcore-barking style. In the process, they’ve reached a new level, and The Privilege is ours to listen.

• Don’t believe me? Well, you have the privilege of doublechecking…
• Throw ’em a frickin’ super-riffy tech-grind bone here.

Escuela Grind – GGRRIINNDDCCOORREE

It will take me longer to come up with a description of GGRRIINNDDCCOORREE than it will for you to listen to it, so why don’t you just click on that link down there, yeah? Oh, you’re going to make me do my job? Fine. How about this: Up-and-coming old-school grinders toss off a tribute to the classics; throw it all back to the days of early Earache Recods, when the grind was short and fast and raw as hell. Slap-A-Ham more your style? Then surf over to the partner release, PPOOWWEERRVVIIOOLLEENNCCEE. Let’s just hope they stop these EPs before they get to MMUUMMBBLLEERRAAPP.

• Don’t believe? Take 90 seconds to read this.
• Take 90 seconds and throw ’em a frickin’ bone here.

Wake – Confluence
Grindcore bands aren’t really known for eleven-minute songs — more like eleven-minute albums, usually— but then again, they also aren’t known for more drifty, dreamy post-metal stylings, either. But also then again, as I may have mentioned elsewhere, Wake isn’t your typical grindcore band anymore. Working well outside its chosen style’s confines, Confluence works… well.. well, especially as a companion piece to Devouring Ruin. From the eleven-minute “Disparity And Chaos” outward and updward, this EP lives up to its title, expertly merging the various facets of Wake’s influences into one cohesive whole, the atmospheric and/or aggressive in perfect harmony, and all of it churned together and killing.

• Don’t believe me? Ask the new guy.
• Throw ’em another frickin’ bone here, eh. Or 1.28 bones, at the current exchange rate.

THE NOT-METAL ONES, IN NO ORDER

Bruce Springsteen – Letter To You

The Boss proves he’s still in charge with this Letter To You, his first record with the E Street Band in 6 years. A reflection on mortality and aging from a guy who turned 71 this year, Letter is a powerful listening experience, both in terms of its thematic depth and also in terms of its sheer rock ‘n’ roll power, the latter of which is an E Street specialty. With three songs resurrected from nearly 40 years ago, it’s a celebration of where Bruce and the boys are now and also where they came from. More importantly, it’s one of the strongest records Springsteen has released in ages, with the blue-collar poet and the bombastic arena rocker in equal measure, that special balance that only the Boss can truly manage. Check it out.

Jason Isbell & The 400 Unit – Reunions

Of the past four Isbell releases, with or without longtime backers the 400 Unit, I think I like Reunions the least, but it’s testament to Isbell’s high-quality output that even the album I like the least is unquestionably a year-end-lister. From the opening self-examination and call to action of “What Have I Done To Help?” through the plaintive beauty of “Only Children” and the sparseness of “St. Peter’s Autograph” and the recovery rocker “It Gets Easier,” Isbell proves yet again that he’s one of the greatest songwriters in contemporary music, fearlessly painting vivid and beautiful pictures of himself and the world around him, the strengths and the shortcomings of both. Like Springsteen and the E Street Band, Isbell and the 400 Unit make American rock ‘n’ roll fused with the poetry of folk, muscular and cerebral in equal measure, and both of them continue to make stunning records.

AC/DC – Power Up

At this point in their career, I doubt that anyone was truly expecting AC/DC to return with their best album in decades, but damned if they didn’t do just that. Sure, that accolade isn’t exactly of the highest order — it’s been nearly thirty years since their last indisputable classic, The Razor’s Edge. But even the worst AC/DC is still better than most rock bands’ best work. Add to that the loss of bandleader and World’s Greatest Rhythm Guitarist Malcolm Young, and the fact that Power Up shows a reunited band (as much as possible, anyway) still firing on most all cylinders is very little short of amazing. You know what it sounds like; it’s AC/DC. And it’s damned good.  Check it out.

Black Swan – Shake The World

Frontiers Records has the market cornered on these collaborative efforts from the hard rock giants of yore, and most of those run the qualitative gamut from disposable to decent. Black Swan is the exception. Starting with ex-Dokken bassist Jeff Pilson and Winger / ex-Dokken guitarist Reb Beach, Black Swan also benefits heartily from the still-powerful pipes of McAuley-Schenker Group vocalist and half-namesake Robin McAuley and from Ace Frehley drummer Matt Starr. Not surprisingly, this is a melodic rock platter in the vein of all those bands, with Beach’s tasteful shredding and some fine performances from McAuley, whose voice hasn’t lost a step. Classic hard rock from some classic hard rockers, and one of my go-to albums throughout 2020. Check it out.

Wobbler – Dwellers Of The Deep

Intricate arrangements that showcase instrumental flair in the manner of a certain classic prog band? Yes. Songwriting that never gets overshadowed by said flair, also in the manner of like a certain classic prog band? Yes. Ethereal harmonies that float atop that flair in melodies that lilt and soar majestically, again like a certain classic prog band? Yes. Vintage-styled prog rock that arrived forty-five years too late, this Wobbler album checks all the boxes for my inner prog-nerd, and do I dig it? Oh, absolutely: Yes. You should, too. Check it out.

RIP 2020, IN NO ORDER

Even the famous amongst us were not spared the unfathomable awfulness of 2020. We lost quite a few titans this year, so a hearty farewell to the following, in no particular order whatsoever, except — let’s be honest here — the top two did by far the most important work:

Ruth Bader Ginsburg
John Lewis
Neil Peart
Peter Green
Sean Connery
Ken Hensley
Lee Kerslake
Sean Reinert
Adam Schlesinger
Alex Trebek
Billy Joe Shaver
Jerry Jeff Walker
Toots Hibbert
Jerry Stiller
Sean Malone
Pete Way
Paul Chapman
Fred Willard
Edward Van Halen
John Prine
Jason Rainey
Lou A. Kouvaris
Riley Gale
Little Richard
Tony Lewis
Don Larsen
Gordon Haskell
Spencer Davis
Wilford Brimley
Johnny Nash
Chadwick Boseman
Joe Payne
Walter Lure
Max von Sydow
Alan Peters
Steve Priest
Justin Townes Earle
Frankie Banali
David Prowse
Martin Birch
Terry Jones
Keith Olsen
Kobe Bryant
Phil May
Florian Schneider
Brian Howe
Joe Diffie
Ian Holm
Bill Withers
Josh Pappé
Bob Kulick
Kenny Rogers
…and anyone else I may have forgotten.

And th-th-th-th-that’s all, folks. Let’s put all 94 months of this year behind us and get on with living. Stay safe; stay healthy; keep your head up; keep listening to all the music that you possibly can. Thanks for reading, and we love you all.

The post Best Of 2020 – Andrew Edmunds: Alligators Can Grow Up To Fifteen Feet, But Most Of Them Still Only Have Four appeared first on Last Rites.

As anticipated, metal was no different; 2020 supplied a dauntless assemblage of top-shelf releases tall enough to shadow Lady Liberty herself, making attempts to glean and arrange the crème de la crème feel a bit like organizing and rating your darling children. All said and done, we’re very lucky to have them all, but you know the drill: The game requires winners at the end. But holy holy holy, was there ever a lot of contenders—arguably more so than any other year—so that means you can expect to see extremely diverse lists from one site to the next. That’s good, right? When faced with an embarrassment of riches, spreading the wealth is the grandest of ideas.

Take for example the curious fact that Last Rites and Decibel Magazine share a grand total of four releases in our contrasting Top 25s this year, and we have ZERO in common once you hit the enchanted Top 10. This seems…unusual. Throwing both under the microscope, Decibel’s overall list features a couple / few bands considered to be on-trend by the public at large, whereas our list features virtually nothing considered in vogue and a number of picks that reveal the collective crew decision to meet the year’s endless right hooks and leg sweeps with a more defensive Miyagi-do karate style that emphasizes tradition, finesse, and, um, nerdiness? That’s code for “we still really love the old bands, and we listened to a lot of unfashionable prog / progressive (the two are different) music this year.” The biggest fight behind closed doors at LR HQ in 2020 involved how to deal with a stack of contenders that straddled the line with regard to heaviness, and a number of us hoped we could figure out how to mention the weird obsession with Khan’s Space Shanty (1972) that bubbled to the surface after seeing the Pallbearer lads mention it in an article back in October.

Oh, hey, speaking of Best Of Lists, did you catch our ten-part (plus a few appendages) 100 Essential Albums of 2010s list that ran earlier this year? It was a significant endeavor that hopefully delivered another bright spot amidst all the madness of 2020, and it substantiated the truth that often the best way to combat a really shitty year is by revisiting past years when things weren’t, you know, quite as shitty.

Okay, no need to drag things out any further. As always, a terrifically sincere thank you is owed to the readers who continue to cram our words into their eyeballs, particularly those who occasionally take the extra step of hitting that «Donate Now» button stashed under Support Last Rites over there to the right >>> of our front page.

The crew of Last Rites remain committed to spotlighting what we truly believe to be the noblest riffs metal and its applicable off-shoots have to offer, and we look forward to continuing that course in 2021. We very much hope you plan to join us on our continuing adventure.

Oh, and dear planet Earth, pull yourself together, old friend.

25. UNDERGANG – ALDRIG I LIVET

“Denmark’s masters of all things sewered, Undergang, operate in a sphere that’s born from an Eternia slime pit and demonstrates a lifelong association and commitment to disgust. The humor is a little more on the ‘saluting a thermonuclear boil on your neck that just, awwwww, spoke its first words’ end of the spectrum, but even the album cover for this, the band’s fifth full-length, appears as if it might be a Garbage Pail Kid that somehow managed to survive and become all growed up. (Deheaded Ted?)” [CAPTAIN]

• Last Rites review
• Album at Dark Descent Records Bandcamp

24. AFTERBIRTH – FOUR DIMENSIONAL FLESH

“Much of the music is positively bright, either emphasizing the progressive threads or taking on some atmosphere, but the album is always more than eager to devolve into another set of gross, squelching thuds. All four dudes in Afterbirth take part in this bru-prog dichotomy, even if Smith’s deepest-of-all-death-growl vocals are likely to be the most responsible for any unidentifiable fluids. The total package ought to appeal to fans of Demilich, Wormed, or even Smith’s main band Artificial Brain, but Afterbirth definitely ends up being its own astutely disgusting, or disgustingly astute thing.” [ZACH DUVALL]

• Last Rites review in Death Metal Dossier
• Album at Unique Leader Bandcamp

23. GRAYCEON – MOTHERS WEAVERS VULTURES

“Love isn’t particularly fashionable in heavy metal, but this is an album animated by both fierce love and righteous anger. Mothers Weavers Vultures loves all the more desperately because it takes its strength from the certainty of death. This is an album that celebrates the fact that our lives are punctuated by periods rather than ellipses, and thus challenges us to be the authors of each word in our story.” [DAN OBSTKRIEG]

• Last Rites review
• Bandcamp

22. DROPDEAD – DROPDEAD 2020

“Dropdead is a band that has always worn its heart on its sleeve when it comes to their beliefs, and 2020 is no exception. Maybe you agree with them, maybe you don’t — I tend to — but their message has been consistent for three decades, and there’s no doubting their conviction. Times of strife fuel the fires. From this burning hellscape of a time, we’ve been #blessed with some great angry records, from the recent Napalm Death rager to this absolute barnstormer of a pissed-off punk rock record.” [ANDREW EDMUNDS]

• Last Rites review
• Bandcamp

21. MY DYING BRIDE – THE GHOST OF ORION

“[‘The Old Earth’] ought to evoke feelings of timelessness with its more harrowing guitar-violin interplay and aggressive finish. The riffs are downright monolithic, while Stainthorpe provides a combination of truly gorgeous singing and some of the most forceful, haggard growls he’s ever put to tape. It’s also another late-album My Dying Bride song (only an outro follows) that closes a bit of an arc. After all, they may mope and plod for about an hour, but never without a purpose.” [ZACH DUVALL]

• Last Rites review
• Homepage

20. ENSLAVED – UTGARD

“…this fresh batch of songs offers yet another demonstration of the band’s recombinant genius. It’s a little like striking off into a wilderness area you’ve explored dozens of times, only to find that the trails are overgrown and strange. You know the trees and rocks but your eye can’t complete your inner map without a trusted guide. Utgard is a marvelous album that trusts in the listener’s instinct and intelligence, and it can only further cement Enslaved’s status as unparalleled champions of progressive and emotive heavy metal.” [DAN OBSTKRIEG]

• Last Rites review
• Bandcamp

19. WORM – GLOOMLORD

“For as much as Gloomlord thrives on its gloriously fetid atmosphere, just beneath the bubbling murk of the sound are some impressively smart songwriting moves and beautiful highlights. Chief among those highlights is a tremendous guitar solo that emerges at about 5:52 into ‘Apparitions of Gloom.’ Not only is the solo itself meticulously composed and outrageously uplifting for such an otherwise dour-sounding album, but it twins back with some doubled lead guitar to make one of the most impressive uses of shredding in tar-slow metal…” [DAN OBSTKRIEG]

• Last Rites review
• Bandcamp

18. ARMORED SAINT – PUNCHING THE SKY

“Armored Saint is one of America’s finest heavy metal institutions, now nearly forty-years strong. If you’re not on board, then you’re missing the boat, and if you’ve climbed aboard somewhere in the past however many decades, then there’s absolutely no way you aren’t happy with Punching The Sky. It’s the best they’ve done in a long while, maybe since Symbol Of Salvation (at the very least since Revelation), and it’s an absolute stunner from a classic band that’s at the top of their game, still.” [ANDREW EDMUNDS]

• Last Rites review
• Bandcamp

17. PSYCHOTIC WALTZ – THE GOD-SHAPED VOID

“The God-Shaped Void is absolutely the next natural step for Psychotic Waltz, sounding just as if it was made in 1998 as the follow-up to Bleeding. That may seem a little anticlimactic, but this is a band that made four great albums and found a way to progress from each one to the next, so a next step should be pretty exciting. It must have been really difficult, actually, to pick back up right where they left off almost a quarter of a century ago. Surely there were a thousand voices telling them to modernize, catch some trend, do something flashy and therefore relevant. It’s evident, though, the voices they tuned into were their own, as true to the band’s vision as they’ve ever been.” [LONE WATIE]

• Last Rites review
• Homepage

16. DEFEATED SANITY – THE SANGUINARY IMPETUS

“The Sanguinary Impetus is truly no less brutal than anything these guys have managed in the past—it simply accomplishes the goal of crushing your marbles by making so many ruthless hairpin turns that even a homing pigeon with a miniature atlas strapped to its back will end up defeated and sobbing on the curb after this 34-minute bombardment. There’s also a strange sense of… homeyness or comfort in the brutality? It almost feels as if the back-and-forth between getting mauled by a deranged bear and relentlessly stung by a funky fresh crew of wild hornets is by request, and there’ll probably be tea afterwards.” [CAPTAIN]

• Last Rites review
• Bandcamp

15. ETERNAL CHAMPION – RAVENING IRON

“Does Ravening Iron exceed the band’s previous masterpiece? For yours truly, the answer is… Yes and no. My personal interpretation is that the band have presented two complimentary works, that, when viewed together, are even greater than the sum of their components. The colder, more hazy fantasy atmosphere of The Armor Of Ire represents the ice and shield to Ravening Iron‘s more immediate and aggressive fire and sword. The production on the latter is more of a blaze to Armor‘s mighty winds, and while Armor certainly wears a bit more Manowar influence on its sleeve, Ravening Iron hits the Manilla Road vibes a lot harder.” [RYAN TYSINGER]

• Last Rites review
• Bandcamp

14. NAPALM DEATH –
THROES OF JOY IN THE JAWS OF DEFEATISM

“As with Apex Predator before it, and Utilitarian before that, and Time Waits For No Slave before that, Throes Of Joy In The Jaws Of Defeatism is the sound of one of the greatest extreme bands of all time reminding us that they are exactly that, one of the greatest, and here are twelve (or more) reasons why. There are no wasted moments, no extraneous riff or scream, no moment of spite and fury put anywhere but in the exact perfect place. Now the eighth album produced by Russ Russell, Throes is a sonic juggernaut, punchy and clear and devastating.” [ANDREW EDMUNDS]

• Last Rites review
• Homepage

13. DARK QUARTERER – POMPEI

“Dark Quarterer’s great strength is telling these stories through the music, as lyrics and vocals and instruments are braided in the songwriting process so that the weave is both stronger and more aesthetically interesting than the strands individually. The listener’s experience, of course, is the proof of concept. We all know the story: it’s a volcano, it erupts, people are killed and buried. Yet the music captures the imagination nonetheless through that immersive and dynamic songwriting approach coupled with passionate playing that touches the listener emotionally.” [LONE WATIE]

• Last Rites review
• Bandcamp

12. HÄLLAS – CONUNDRUM

“Yet at the heart of all tunes – roto-toms and synthesizers aside – the same feeling and timeless energy swaths the tunes in the Cape of Hällas. Against a background of pink nebulae, guitar riffs crunch and punch while drums gallop along on a tight hi-hat, pumping the musical engines into warp overdrive. These are tunes for adventure, curiosity and ultimately personal reflection. For what are we in this vast nothingness, if not nothingness ourselves?” [MANNY-O-LITO]

• Last Rites review
• Bandcamp

11. BÜTCHER – 666 GOATS CARRY MY CHARIOT

“‘Iron Bitch’ lays down exactly what we can expect for the album: the hyper fast NWOBHM melodies a la Slayer’s Show No Mercy and hints of Metallica’s Kill ’em All, coüpled with the maniac speed and güitar füry of thrash bands like Whiplash or Nuclear Assault make the chariot feel wildly in danger of flying off the roads of a post-nüclear apocalyptic wasteland. Additionally, aptly monikered vocalist R. Hellshrieker barks, gruffs and shrieks his way across the riff-laden terrain. adding delicioüs little touches süch as rolling r’s and empowered howls from hades throughout the track.” [RYAN TYSINGER]

• Last Rites review
• Album at Osmose Productions Bandcamp

10. KATATONIA – CITY BURIALS

“Now perhaps the single greatest accomplishment of City Burials is Katatonia’s effortless ability to combine their compositional prowess across different eras of their career. There are more than a few odes to Night is the New Day here, as the instrumentation is heavier than it has been in years. There’s also a nod back to the days of Discouraged Ones, as you’ll hear some alternative sounding guitar riffs supporting clean leads and raspy vocals. Finally, Katatonia has taken The Fall of Hearts and added in highlights from their earlier days to make it feel like the most complete Katatonia record to date.” [MANNY-O-LITO]

• Last Rites review
• Homepage

9. WYTCH HAZEL – III: PENTECOST

“Shades of Thin Lizzy immediately bash you in the face as the guitars tear a hole in your chest using harmonized guitar leads. Don’t worry, pal. That hole is about to be filled up with love and lyrics and adventure. And the best part, you ask? The togetherness. There’s a lovely warm sound to the production and a collective call to arms in the vocals that makes the listener never feel alone in this world. These aren’t the tales of a lone knight on a mission to avenge the murder of his father and siblings and the kidnap of his mother. No. Rather, the tracks imbue a collective excitement and pure feeling of collective energy…” [MANNY-O-LITO]

• Last Rites review
• Bandcamp

8. AUTONOESIS – AUTONOESIS

“But then comes the bit that’ll make you put the dishes back in the sink and just go sit down for a minute to just take it all in: Out of a build of minor key riffing reinforced with some ethereal synths comes a ripping solo that erupts from a flurry of sweeps into a soaring melody. It’s not only pretty awe-inspiring from a technical perspective, but it is just so goddamn emotive. Drawn out, but never stagnant, the solo carries the song into a higher plateau of climax—yet the full potency of the Autonoesis solo has yet to be realized.” [RYAN TYSINGER]

• Last Rites review
• Bandcamp

7. HAVUKRUUNU – UINUOS SYÖMEIN SOTA

“Certainly, the center of a bloody conflict is a life-or-death situation and requires a sense of immediacy, but Havukruunu takes it all in stride, riffing with not just adequacy to the tempo but with grace and style and, hell, a swagger. Images of our hero dancing around the clash of swords and the swinging of axes beneath a cloud of arrows and catapult shots immerse the listener in the soundscape. This is epic black metal on the 5D IMAX THX Deluxe 8000 scale. It’s possible to smell the sweat and drying blood over the near-never-ending run of the kick drums pacing with a quickness and a purpose, dead set on delivering the hero towards their goal.” [RYAN TYSINGER]

• Last Rites review
• Bandcamp

6. MALOKARPATAN – KRUPINSKÉ OHNE

“Krupinské ohne pushes 50 minutes with just five songs. Many of the tools they use to fill this space were established on previous albums, particularly Nordkarpatenland, while others are fresh. But what really sells the album is how Malokarpatan manages to increase the seriousness and complexity of their songs while also releasing their funnest album yet. Krupinské ohne is about the Catholic Church burning a coven of witches in Krupina during the 17th Century, and was designed to call back to 70s progressive rock. Bizarre themes, a broad scope, and tip-top musicianship—seriousness with a smile, to be sure.” [ZACH DUVALL]

• Last Rites review
• Bandcamp

5. ORANSSI PAZUZU – MESTARIN KYNSI

“In a word, this album is special. It is uniquely Oranssi Pazuzuzan, and it challenges both the band and the listener. Mestarin kynsi is another captivating, restless, and impeccable album that builds on their legacy. It rises above the high standards placed by the band’s continued exploration of hypnotic tension and visceral release. Get your mind right and climb aboard. Oranssi Pazuzu is one of the most exciting and challenging bands out there (waaaaay out there), and their trajectory aims ever upward.” [FETUSGHOST]

• Last Rites review in Missing Pieces
• Bandcamp

4. PHARMACIST –
MEDICAL RENDITIONS OF GRINDING DECOMPOSITION

“Like you, the Japanese goregrind duo Pharmacist also enjoys Carcass, and they also really enjoy Symphonies Of Sickness. From the rotten fuzzy tones and the relentlessly slicing riffs to the combination of inhuman gurgling and biting snarl — and of course, there’s that special ew-that’s-nazzzzty album art — Pharmacist has fully embraced the sense of putridity that characterized that early landmark record. They’re far from the first to do so, of course, but they do it with such stomach-churning pizzazz that it’s impossible to resist.” [ANDREW EDMUNDS]

• Last Rites Fast Rites review
• Bandcamp

3. CIRITH UNGOL – FOREVER BLACK

“Album number five is, simply put, everything a fan of Cirith Ungol could ever hope for concerning the next chapter. The band has always had a knack for opening with an absolute banger, and ‘Legions Arise’ is truly that in abundance. The production is modern and ‘clean,’ but it doesn’t sacrifice the necessary raw edges, and there’s little doubt that Baker’s early call of ‘So rise like the chosen you all have become / We march forth in battle, together as one’ won’t reach the ears of even the most vintage-minded troglodytes buried in the deepest recesses of the underground. ‘Exhilarating’ might be the easiest descriptor; ‘massively fucking exhilarating’ would be the more scientific designation. [CAPTAIN]

• Last Rites review (and much more)
• Bandcamp

2. FATES WARNING – LONG DAY GOOD NIGHT

“A certainty: When Fates Warning gets their album covers right—which, as we know, isn’t always a guarantee—they get them so frigging right that fans eventually cannot separate the greatness of said art from the music that dwells behind it. Such is the case with Long Day Good Night, which finds the band reconnecting with a darker vibe that’s certainly fitting of the times, but similar to Patrick Atkin’s wonderful cover artwork, things never fully pull away from the supporting light. The abundance of charming melody always prevails—Matheos of course dominates, but long-time live guitarist Michael Abdow is in attendance enough with lifting leads that he’s pictured in the press photo, and Ray Alder’s talent for absurdly engaging vocal hooks ensures that every song delivers that familiar sense of isolated comfort.” [CAPTAIN]

• Last Rites review
• Bandcamp

1. THY CATAFALQUE – NAIV

“Sometimes Naiv wants you to get mean; sometimes it wants you to close your eyes and go to Your Cave; sometimes you’re expected to dance your mortal ass off to irresistible beats; and sometimes you have to raise your fist in the type of unabashed heavy metal furor that you might not expect from a Thy Catafalque record. There are a million ways to describe this band and this record, but perhaps it’s easier to just point out the obvious: this stuff is just so damn cool. Kátai is simply playing with a loaded deck at this point. In terms of his fearlessness, deft touch for the widely varying material, and his choices in collaborators, he has never been achieving at a higher level.” [ZACH DUVALL]

• Last Rites review
• Bandcamp

The post Best Of 2020 – Last Rites Combined Staff Top 25 appeared first on Last Rites.

On to the devil music. We have several albums that made strong showings on the staff playlists this month, but the clear winner is staff favorite, Finnish black metal outfit Oranssi Pazuzu and their recently released album Mestarin Kynsi. I say staff favorite, but as of yet, nobody has managed to get off their ass and review the album. Then again, I haven’t written a review in over a year, so maybe I’ll just keep my mouth shut. Then again, I barely give a shit about black metal, so it was never going to be me reviewing it anyway. We do, however, have a review for this month’s second place finisher, Shards of Humanity’s Cold Logic. Mr. Edmunds was quite pleased with this Memphis-based death / thrash band’s long-in-coming sophomore release, and you can read his thoughts about it right here.

Third place this month is a three-way tie, but includes only two bands. Cirith Ungol’s comeback album Forever Black shared first place last month, and the album and band are still very much on the staff’s mind, as both Forever Black and One Foot in Hell take a part of third place this month, with a few other Cirith Ungol albums also making playlist appearances. This current staff interest in Cirith Ungol is likely spurred not only by the band’s new album, but by Captain’s heartfelt and extensive Cirith Ungol tribute/primer/review, which I urge you to read. Rounding out the third-place three-way is another staff favorite, Katatonia, with its latest album City Burials—the scoop on which, Manny-O-Lito (né War) has right here.

Finally, please enjoy the staff-curated Spotify playlist below, while you share your own playlist in the comments. Until next month, Stay safe, stay sane, and if you’re lucky enough to have one who’s still around, call your mother.

• Zach Duvall
  King Crimson – Radical Action to Unseat the Hold of Monkey Mind
  Kraftwerk – Autobahn
  Oranssi Pazuzu – Mestarin kynsi
  …and Oceans – Cosmic World Mother
  Talking Heads – Fear of Music
  Ningen-Isu – Buraihoujou
• Andrew Edmunds
  Incantation – Vanquish In Vengeance
  Rotten Sound – Murderworks
  Manliftingbanner – We Will Not Rest
  Katatonia – City Burials
  Testament – Titans Of Creation
  Shards Of Humanity – Cold Logic
• Manny-O-War
  Devangelic – Eretsu
  Spandau Ballet – True
  Cirith Ungol – One Foot in Hell
  Oranssi Pazuzu – Mestarin kynsi
  Mercyful Fate – Time
  Anubis Gate – The Detached
• Megan Astrael
  Oranssi Pazuzu – Mestarin kynsi
  Meshuggah – Koloss
  Witch Mountain – Mobile of Angels
  Sunn O))) – Pyroclasts
  Pat Metheny & Lyle Mays – As Falls Witchita, So Falls Witchita Falls
  Solar Fields – Blue Moon Station
• Danhammer Obstkrieg
  Autechre – Incunabula
  Autechre – Amber
  Autechre – Tri Repetae++
  Autechre – Chiastic Slide
  Autechre – NTS Sessions
  Autechre – Exai
• Ryan Tysinger
  Cirith Ungol – Forever Black
  Valdrin – Beyond the Forest
  Nahash – Wellone Aeturnitas
  Bathory – Under the Sign of the Black Mark
  Challenger – Turned to Dust
  Altar of Gore – Obscure & Obscene Gods
• Fetusghost
  Poison the Well – Opposite of December
  Earthbong – Bong Rites
  Chapel of Disease – …And as We Have Seen the Storm, We Have Embraced the Eye
  Dreamville – Revenge of the Dreamers III
  Ghostface Killah/BadBadNotGood – Sour Soul
  The Kilimanjaro Darkjazz Ensemble – The Kilimanjaro Darkjazz Ensemble
• Captain
  Cirith Ungol – Frost and Fire
  Cirith Ungol – King of the Dead
  Cirith Ungol – One Foot in Hell
  Cirith Ungol – Paradise Lost
  Cirith Ungol – Forever Black
• LoneWatie
  Anubis Gate – Covered in Colours
  Howling Sycamore – Seven Pathways to Annihilation
  Oranssi Pazuzu – Mestarin Kynsi
  Shards of Humanity – Cold Logic
  JG Thirwell & Simon Steensland – Oscillospira
  Son Little – aloha
• Madman
  Vader – Solitude in Madness
  Aether Realm – Redneck Vikings from Hell
  Umbra Vitae – Shadow of Life
  Katatonia – City Burials
  Lovebites – Electric Pentagram
  Dead Kennedys – Plastic Surgery Disasters/In God We Trust, Inc.
• Jeremy Morse
  Mercyful Fate – Melissa
  Mercyful Fate – Don’t Break the Oath
  Mercyful Fate – In the Shadows
  Shards of Humanity – Cold Logic
  Solstice – White Horse Hill

The post Staff Infections – May 2020 appeared first on Last Rites.

But we must pause to ask a question: What is it that makes Katatonia so wonderful? Music aside, the band has undergone myriad personnel changes over their nearly thirty-year career. Each period of their musical development has been marked by the introduction of a new member. Most notably of late is the loss of Peter Eriksson, replaced by Roger Öjersson. Roger’s work on The Fall of Hearts was nothing short of stellar and he follows up that performance with a simply mind-altering display of prowess to go along with his backing vocals.

Another inclusion that has been a large part of their recent, modern progressive era is the addition of J. P. Asplund as percussionist for The Fall of Hearts. The dual rhythms have allowed Katatonia to lend a certain tribal feel to their more ambient passages. While Asplund wasn’t made a full-fledged band member (with all privileges and benefits therein) like Öjersson was, his mark on Katatonia remains across City Burials (albeit probably played by Renkse). The polyrhythmic touches are nothing short of captivating despite being almost unnoticeable at first blush, when compared to their prior album. This level of subtle complexity has imbued their work with an air of sophistication and a certain credulity to their morose message. “The road to the grave is straight as an arrow.”

So Katatonia has certainly undergone a plethora of personal changes in their very long, celebrated career as versatile metal darlings of melodic doom/death, but perhaps the most shocking change for City Burials is that of their iconic lead vocalist Jonas Renkse. For this recording, he has emerged as something of a completely different singer, stretching his voice into never before heard (from him) upper ranges with strength, conviction and emotive melody, and the result of this evolution is nothing less than magical. (Has someone been listening to Leprous lately?)

It’s not enough to simply say that Renkse has leveled up: His performance on City Burials reveals maturity as well as an uncorking of potential. As the album has more than a few possible “hits” — “Behind the Blood” or “Vanishers,” for example — Renkse gets several opportunities to croon hooks and counter-melodies, as well as to harmonize with himself in radio-friendly, heart-wrenching ways. Simply put, this is Katatonia as you have never heard them before. The raw, emotional displays that were always laid bare on earlier albums now reach deep into the roots of their production, revealing not only a genius of composition, but a brilliance of album layout, artwork, personnel, and subtle brush strokes to create a masterpiece.

Now perhaps the single greatest accomplishment of City Burials is Katatonia’s effortless ability to combine their compositional prowess across different eras of their career. There are more than a few odes to Night is the New Day here, as the instrumentation is heavier than it has been in years. There’s also a nod back to the days of Discouraged Ones, as you’ll hear some alternative sounding guitar riffs supporting clean leads and raspy vocals. Finally, Katatonia has taken The Fall of Hearts and added in highlight from their earlier days to make it feel like the most complete Katatonia record to date. While facing the impossible task of following up their 2016 LP, Katatonia chose to make simple, effective choices to put together an album that holds its own not against merely their contemporaries, but also against themselves — a metric that can only be used when a band has reached true greatness.

So, enough effusive gushing: Let’s talk about some tracks on this album.

Just a note, or plea, before we truly begin: Subtlety is a word you’ve read before, one you are reading now, and one you will read many times over later in this review. The devil is in the details, and with Katatonia, that devil is absolute brilliance. So please do me, and yourself, and Katatonia a favor and listen to this (and their earlier works) through a decent (or better than decent) set of headphones. You don’t want to miss the soft polyrhythms, breathy keyboards, or the delicate touches of guitar layered so perfectly throughout. Give this album your full attention. Please. While City Burials is fun, great, awesome, rad, etc. through your car speakers, blasting out of your stereo, or pumping from your Bluetooth speaker as you ride your bike in traffic, the true genius is revealed in the more subtle listening environment.

Juxtaposing the poppiness of “Behind the Blood” is the fourth track, “Rein.” Drawing heavily on Night is the New Day-era Katatonia composition, a maudlin tune descends into a staccato chorus thickened with distorted guitar chords and tensely delivered monotone vocals. As the heaviness of the song rages on, it puts itself in stark contrast to the lighter tracks that surround it, highlighting the sheer breadth of Katatonia’s melodic reach here in 2020. Tracks like “Lacquer” and “Vanisher” sit in stark contrast to the heaviness of “Rein” yet they are still inextricably linked by the heart-wrenching, morose guitar work of Öjersson and Nystrom. In that way the whole of City Burials is thematically consistent yet vastly different — much like Katatonia’s long and celebrated career.

The aforementioned “Vanishers” puts fans in the airiest of Katatonia works to date. Heavy on the keyboards, “Vanishers” sees Renske float and soar with help from the lovely voice of Anni Bernhard (Full of Keys). Niklas Sandin’s bass pops around the electric piano sounds, anchoring the lusciously sparse backdrop of the rhythm section and allowing Renske and Bernhard to shine in their harmonious, ethereal delivery of melody and lyric. It’s also the most electric-piano-heavy, nearly jazzy styling for Katatonia, and it absolutely works. The cohesion of the musicians — their musical souls inextricably linked throughout composition and recording — simply shines when the band lets loose their most minimal composition.

“City Glaciers” is the most logical extension of The Fall of Hearts. Tribal drumming dominates the opening as Renkse harmonizes with himself and guitars pluck loose, agitated melodies. The work on the bass drum is again perfection — kicked on the downbeats and creating anticipatory anxiety when the track is ready to explode in a wave of foamy ocean. Here the guitars are heavily layered and underscored by orchestration of the keyboard type. The track is lusciously full of invigorating contrasts and complimentary musical potions. So easily does this song build and progress that it leaves the listener wanting for a sense of time; the song simply exists as a seemingly infinite experience.

The closing track, “Untrodden,” is one that simply cannot be ignored. Slow keyboards contrast the more alarm-like guitars; the dulcet tones of the electric keyboard crop up, and the band falls into a groove full of soul, rhythm and more than a drop of sadness. Moving into its second phase, the guitars go heavy on the reverb and use cyclical riffing to create anticipation of the fuller chorus sure to come. Like waves, the track crashes again and again upon the sympathetic area of your brain. Then, in an explosion, Öjersson takes off into what is simply a masterful and monumental guitar solo. Sparing no affectation, he bends, whines, and screams his way up the fretboard, slipping blues-notes and speedy chromatics into his voracious melody. The term “power ballad” doesn’t connote enough emotion — this track is more than that. It’s an absolute beast of a closer, leaving you wanting more and more and more… which we will hopefully receive.

If it’s not clear: Katatonia has delivered us a wonderful gift in 2020. As the band builds in complexity and finds even more confidence in their subtleties, they become a band worthy of more deep-diving adventures. The comparison between City Burials and their earlier work reveals stark differences, and more importantly, some beautiful similarities, allowing the heart of Katatonia to continue beating long after humanity has destroyed this beautiful earth. Remember: “The road to the grave is straight as an arrow.”

The post Katatonia – City Burials Review appeared first on Last Rites.