It’s time to update what’s new in music in 2024 that has at least caught my attention (or enough of the attention of others for me to try it).
It’s been a bit slow this year, but I’ve also not been actively looking – several other things are keeping me busy. I’ll save or bookmark something, but it might take a week or three for me to get around to focusing on it, so right now, there is not much here. Anyway, in no particular order….
Cyberaktif: eNdgame
Cyberaktif, a Bill Leeb project, existed briefly in 1990, and also included two of the founders of Skinny Puppy, to which Leeb had belonged for a few years in the 1980s before he left to form Front Line Assembly. They put out one album (Tenebrae Vision).
In February of 2024 Leeb resurrected the project and released eNdgame. It is very much in the industrial vein of FLA and Noise Unit (also recently re-animated by Leeb); it can be hard to tell them apart on a casual listen. At any rate, it consists of typically short industrial pieces, clankily electronic and synth heavy, with Leeb’s characteristic vocals. There are some decent pieces here (check out “A Single Trace” or “The Fright”), and some dark and edgy moments. It’s good, but not something I hanker to play.
Pelican: “Adrift/Tending the Embers”
The venerable post-metallers released a couple of tracks early this year, with their original guitarist, and there is no mistaking the heavy melodic post-metal stylings. The songs are available on Bandcamp and definitely worth picking up if Pelican are your thing.
https://pelican.bandcamp.com/album/adrift-tending-the-embers
The Quill: Wheel of Illusion
I’m still trying to make up my mind about this album. This Swedish foursome play heavy retro-sludge/doom/hard rock, and in general are very good at it, but I’m not yet sold on Wheel of Illusion. Most of the tracks seem a bit conventional, and so far only one track has really stood out. As well, the mix emphasizes the massive bass/drum rhythmic core, but dials back the vocals so deep they are almost buried. It’s too bad: I happen to like Magnus Ekwall’s rock-vocal stylings and would prefer to hear him more up front. I do like Roger Nilsson’s sledgehammer bass sound, and there is plenty of it here. That last track especially, “Wild Mustang”, is pretty solid, with a nice guitar solo and a beautifully anthemic wind-up.
The Pineapple Thief: It Comes to This
I have tried so hard to like these guys. I have a couple of their other albums, and certainly they are melodic, contemplative, lush and accomplished, and they are very popular with a lot of my friends, but… to my ears, everything sounds the same.
The initial reviews of this new one suggested that maybe they had stepped outside their normal boundaries, so I took a listen or three… alas, if there are any real differences from earlier albums, I can’t hear them. I want to emphasize: these are not bad songs. I like them when I hear them, but as soon as they are over – they’re gone. They leave nothing behind. Every Pineapple Thief song sounds so much like every other song that the albums almost don’t matter – all you need is one, and I guess this album will do as well as any.
Monkey3: Welcome to the Machine
Monkey3 is a Swiss stoner/space/post-rock outfit from Switzerland, known for their long, complex, atmospheric, and often very heavy instrumental tracks. I have to admit, they are compelling on the first few listens, with their densely layered themes and relentless, driving momentum, but I find that they promise more than they deliver. I like them when I play them, but I do have to be in a particular mood to sit through an entire album, and that mood doesn’t come around very often.
I will say this about Welcome to the Machine: there are a shit-ton of Pink Floyd references all through this album, from the sly to the blatantly obvious: the way a guitar sounds over here, and entire sections lifted from Floyd albums over there, ramped up to kick-ass level. One could spend the entire forty-seven minutes just on an Easter Egg hunt.
New Model Army: Unbroken
The best album I’ve heard this year is Unbroken, and it is outstanding. It took a few listens for me to get hooked, but that might portend its ultimate longevity. Unbroken is a brief but fierce album, with Justin Sullivan reminding us that he is indeed one of the best lyricists working today, that ragged voice delivering a focused and tinder-box anger about injustice, governmental complacency and mindless jingoism, among other ills. Still, it is not all cynicism and outrage. There is hope: “We all are stronger/than they would lead us to believe”, he reminds us in ‘Cold Wind’. The music carries these sentiments along: spare and jagged one moment, thick and heavy with bass, drums, even strings the next, rich in melody and texture, providing the perfect canvas for Sullivan’s laser-beam observations.
The best song, on an album of compelling songs, has to be ‘I Did Nothing Wrong’. This is an incandescent track, an emotional tour de force clearly inspired by the Royal Mail scandal, a song about ordinary people going about their ordinary business, bewildered and uncomprehending as their lives are upended – even destroyed – by faceless algorithms and bureaucratic indifference. This is harrowing stuff, a track to make you stare into the distance as Sullivan’s implacable words haunt your ears. I’m not sure what other albums are being released this year, but Unbroken sets a very high bar.
Singles so far:
Oceans of Slumber: “Where Gods Fear to Speak”
Well, this new single does not give me much confidence in their new album. I find it wanders all over the place, messy and directionless. It’s too bad: their last album was startlingly good.
Airbag: “Erase”
I guess a new Airbag album is coming. This is another outfit I’d like to like better than I do – which is not to say that I dislike them, but they (along with the Pineapple Thief, Klone, a few others) are a band that has created a specific formula that they seem reluctant to abandon. All their albums sound very much the same; in fact I think the last one (A Day at the Beach) passed me right by. I had owned three of their albums but decided that the only one I really needed was All Rights Removed – for me, that captures their lush and melancholic style as well as any other.
The single is definitely Airbag and I find I do like it. Will I get another Airbag album? We’ll see.
