Now that we've come to the end of 2021, our usual year in review is here today. I'll see you all again starting on the first week of January, and I've already got a wide array of excellent premieres lined up throughout most of January and February!
I feel like every year I've been doing this column has been a good year for tech-death, and yet some years are just ridiculous. 2021 was absurd and saw numerous high-profile quality releases that were fantastic along with a slew of important releases from up-and-comers most people were hearing from for the first time.
As usual, I'll list my shortened best of the year list, and try to split the difference between releases most people know I also loved and ones fewer people know that deserve just as much love and attention. Here is my top 15 listed in unranked order: Ad Nauseam – Imperative Imperceptible Impulse, Logistic Slaughter – Lower Forms of Life, Archspire – Bleed the Future, Blindfolded and Led to the Woods – Nightmare Withdrawals, Klexos – Apocryphal Parabolam, Diskord – Degenerations, Replicant – Malignant Reality, Deviant Process – Nurture, Ophidian I – Desolate, Alustrium – A Monument to Silence, Ominous Ruin – Amidst Voices that Echo in Stone, Michel Anoia – Nervures, Redemptor – Agonia, First Fragment – Gloire Éternelle, and Sunless – Ylem.
Below you'll find an additional lists of albums and EPs to check out, with the same focus on trying to share more of what not everyone knows over other great releases from the year any tech-death fan knows and loves already, realistically. Everything listed is worth checking out and I'll leave it at that.
*Lastly, I tried to do what I did last year and made a Spotify playlist with one song apiece from everything listed here along with other things I loved but didn't list here due to the factors stated above. Not everything is on Spotify as usual though so a few listed here won't be featured there.
Additional 2021 Albums to check out
Infiltrated Mankind – Inside the Apelike
Dead Exaltation – Despondent
Avtotheism – The Sleeper Awakens
Dormant Ordeal – The Grand Scheme of Things
Anna Pest – Dark Arms Reach Skyward With Bone White Fingers
Hatalom – Occhiolism
The Scalar Process – Coagulative Matter
Faeces – Nihilominus
(*Don't let the name Faeces fool you, this is seriously good stuff)
Atvm – Famine, Putrid, and Fucking Endless
Dagtum – Revered Decadence
Inoculation – Celestial Putridy
Noctambulist – The Barren Form
Cognitive – Malevolent Thoughts of a Hastened Extinction
In Asymmetry – Ashes of Dead Worlds
2021 EP's to check out
Hadal Maw – Oblique Order
Obvurt – The Beginning
Needlepusher – Abyssal Internment
Goreworm – Plague of Shadows
Black Hole Deity – Lair of the Xenolich
Nightmarer -Monolith of Corrosion
Turris Eburnea – Turris Eburnea
Subnuba – Veneficus Aeturnus
Anal Stabwound – Abstraction Bathes In Sunlight
(*Once again, don't let the band name fool you. This release is sick.)
Unfathomable Ruination – Decennium Ruinae
Monochromatic Residua – Eternal Mountain
