I don’t have much to say about 2017. It went about as…well as I expected it to. The internet and politics have become the circus they deserve to be portrayed as, and I can't help but raise a glass and simultaneously criticize everyone, and everything while laughing my ass off. A retreat to music sometimes provides a decent escape, when/if needed. At least October provided me one good surprise that will hopefully never leave my life.
The music aspect of 2017 wasn’t something I was much blown away by, I'll be honest. Trap Them announced their end, that was probably my biggest disappointment for the year. But album-wise, well I didn’t need to mediate on this as long as I usually do. Now I’m sure there’s at least a few of you out there that’s going to be wondering why [insert band name here] isn’t on the list. Two reasons: 1. I didn’t like the album very much. 2. I didn’t hear it.
I’ve managed to scrounge up fifteen albums I’d say are worth remembering from this year.
15. Stimulant – Stimulant
Noisy, violent, fast, blasting—this is pretty much what I crave in an album. And Stimulant (feat. ex-members of Water Torture) delivers on every level. Over twenty-one tracks the band rides erratic beats and sludgy passages. There’s always enough variation to keep the album feeling fresh and hitting hard every time I spin it. It’s grinding powerviolence for grinding powerviolence.
14. Incendiary – Thousand Mile Stare
Hardcore is an interesting genre because as soon as it evolves itself, it resets and goes back to its roots. I take bands more on how well they play rather than rewriting the rulebook. And isn’t that what everyone’s doing with the death metal revival? Shit ain’t new. Thousand Mile Stare isn’t something that hasn’t been heard in hardcore before, but Incendiary is one of the best current composers in the genre. They give a nod to the old and embrace the new. I’ve been listening to this constantly since before it came out. And to me, the mark of a good album is not wanting to put it down.
13. Necrot – Blood Offerings
Speaking of death metal, Necrot put out a juggernaut of OSDM. This album should be packaged with gauze it cuts so deep. No, it’s not a gory mess or anything like that. But it’s so heavy and raw that you’re bound to cut yourself on this one at least once.
12. Idylls – The Barn
I didn’t like The Barn the first time I listened to it. I thought it was weak and hackneyed and just mediocre. I’m not the biggest noise-rock fan to begin with but I do fucking adore Prayer for Terrene. So I gave it a few more spins. And every time its intensity picked up and a ferociousness erupted that slowly wrapped its thin fingers around my throat. There’s something dark in Idylls barn that follows you home. It’s a pretty good album, yeah.
11. Power Trip – Nightmare Logic
Destroy. Destroy everything. Never stop destroying.
10. hermit – Hierophant
This one came out of nowhere. I stumbled upon it and can’t remember how. Since then I’ve listened to it on the regular. It’s a hazy, slow building, and horrific noise experience. Like a stalker that follows you home every night and slowly lets its presence be known. And before you know it, it’s in the house.
9. Employed to Serve – The Warmth of a Dying Sun
Post-hardcore, hardcore, grind, breakdowns—Employed to Serve are a mountain of aggression that feels never ending. The Warmth of a Dying Sun is frantic and heavy with incredible composition. Like someone who can’t stand still (raises hand), the band is constantly zesting up their songs. An interesting guitar lick here, a sudden breakdown there, or a drum fill to twist things around—it’s a roller coaster of a record.
8. Liguna Ignota – All Bitches Die
It’s the best album The Body didn’t write. Well, that’s one way to describe it anyway. Like a lot of other people, I first heard Liguna Ignota through a post by The Body. And goddamn is this album heavy hitting. Sitting between noise, doom, and classical, All Bitches Die is a forty-minute barrage of abuse that is sometimes like the skin being peeled back and sometimes like a bandaged wound. It’s never safe and it always hurts.
7. Krallice – Go Be Forgotten
Avang-garde, technical—I dunno what you wanna call Krallice's black metal, but damn do they pull through. Two records in the span of one month. It’s enough to take in. And since I only ever give one spot to a band, Go Be Forgotten wins this round. It’s Krallice doing what they do best: writing, twisted technical, unforgiving black metal songs that sound raw as hell. These tracks get stuck in my head.
6. Blut Aus Nord – Deus Salutis Meæ
Industrialized doom/black metal is the angle here. And as always, Blut Aus Nord pull off their vision in a most horrific way. Deus Salutis Meæ sounds like the summoning of an otherworldly plague. On this, their twelfth release, the band is anything but starved for inspiration. And they are anything but imitators.
5. Cleric – Retrocausal
I scrapped my list for a while after listening to this the first time. Christ, what a sinister amalgamation of grind, sludge and experimentation. I can’t describe this, it’s overwhelming and I love it.
4. Spectral Voice – Eroded Corridors of Unbeing
This album is like being stuck in a dilapidated haunted mansion with long, lanky hallways. Spectral Voice’s debut is everything I had hoped for and more. I guess I’m just obsessed by things that remind me of horror or great vast expanses of horrific visions, but that’s just the case here. This album is a trip between worlds that keeps things dark and gritty. Death/doom in one of its finest hours.
3. Full of Hell – Trumpeting Ecstasy
Full of Hell is my favorite modern band. I’ve been listening to them since I stumbled upon their split with Goldlust. The rate and which they’ve pushed themselves throughout their career is incredible, never abandoning where they began, but always snapping a little more. Trumpeting Ecstasy is a focused album. Where Rudiments of Mutilation burned between segments of noise and grind, Trumpeting Ecstasy is an album that’s strongly focused on grind and death metal. Once Warner Herzog opens the album it’s a twenty-three-minute of heaviness and blasts. There's noise to break things up or add to the tracks along the way as well. The last two tracks in particular make this album shine.
2. Pyrrhon – What Passes for Survival
A technical death metal album with an attitude and some severe mental damage. It’s aggressive as hell and constantly fresh-sounding. And instead of burning through one technical riff after another, Pyrrhon take their time to get heavy, slow things down, and build them up again. It’s one of the most carnivorous albums I heard this year.
1. Black Cilice – Banished from Time
That’s right. Black Cilice’s Banished from Time is my album of the year. I can’t really describe what this album does to my head. It’s transportive, it’s ghostly, it’s between dimensions. It starts raw as hell and just goes from there. The howls are like cries in the night and the guitar sweeps between soothing and biting. It’s taken root under my skin since I heard it. It’s an experience that makes me feel less human.
Favorite EPs of 2017
5. WVRM – Can You Hear the Wind Howl?
4. Heathen Beast – $cam
3. Pissed On – The Hanged Man
2. Terminal Nation – Absolute Control
1. Thantifaxath – Void Masquerading as Matter
Honorable Mentions (no order)
Artificial Brain – Infrared Horizon
Couch Slut – Contempt
All Pigs Must Die – Hostage Animal
Primitive Man – Caustic
Seminary – Autonmynous
Converge – The Dusk in Us
Lock Up – Demonization
Friendship – Hatred
Incantation – Profane Nexus
Wolfbrigade – Run with the Hunted
Buckshot Facelift – Ulcer Island
Looking for an Answer – Dios Carne
Norse – The Divine Light of a New Sun
Cannibal Corpse – Red Before Black
Weregoat – Pestilential Rites of Infernal Fornication
Dying Fetus – Wrong One to Fuck With
Cavernlight – As We Cup Our Hands and Drink From the Stream of Our Ache
Chepang – Dadhelo: A Tale of Wildfire
A Peste – Subterrâneo
Phobia – Lifeless God
Integrity – Howling, For the Nightmare Shall Consume
Grind of the Dead – No Lives Matter
Witch Vomit – Poisoned Blood
Krallice with David Edwardson – Loüm
