Here are the albums that, for me, truly succeeded in what they were aiming to do, whatever that was: evocation of pure mood and atmosphere, winding up a remarkable multi-album psychological journey, being cheerfully upbeat, distilling the chaos of current times into a few powerful ideas, or simply existing despite all odds. Albums that are compelling, evocative, astonishing, and/or just plain enjoyable.
Everyone who knows me and is familiar with my reviews (and my current ongoing biography) were probably pretty sure what I’d choose for top spot, and they were indeed correct—but it was no runaway romp. It took a lot of thought, and the gap between No. 1 and No. 2 is very small indeed.
I’ve briefly discussed a few of the albums that follow at earlier points in the year, but now is the time to gather up those releases as well as the music that has appeared since, and pull it all together into one grand summary.
Alas, this year I barely had time for music exploration: I was heavily engaged in completing the first major draft of the biographyI’m writing, so that I could get it out to my beta-readers. I couldn’t dive deeply into the music pile until September. As a result, my “long list” is even shorter than it usually is, and I’m later than usual because I’ve had to spend a lot of time catching up. My personal Rule For Reviewing is not to comment on an album until I’ve listened at least half-a-dozen times, and a couple of the albums I wanted to include (or at least consider) were released pretty late in the year.
Genre-wise: metal and post-metal (quite a bit of that, actually—I am fond of the heavy stuff), rock, prog, industrial, ambient, post-punk, and some other things that don’t really fall under any specific genre but are probably closer to prog if you have to put them somewhere.
So…yeah, what follows is what stuck with me in 2025. I’ve whittled a potential list of about 25 albums down to 15, and I’ve gone with that number (instead of, say, 10) because I liked a lot of what I heard. Still, there were a handful I couldn’t quite squeeze in, but hey, you can’t include everything (however, I’ve seen a couple of lists on Substack that apparently did try to include everything. Come on, 100-Albums-of-The-Year guy—nobody has that kind of time!).
I will split this into two parts, posted separately: Part 1: the bottom ten albums plus a look ahead, and Part 2: the Top 5, with their longer summaries.
Every year I complain that I didn’t really listen to as much music as I wanted to, and every year I manage to scrape together some sort of list of music that I did listen to. This year was not different except that I was even more distracted than usual for most of the year and I often found that I was not in the mood, or did not have the opportunity to really explore new music. Work and some personal matters were kicking my ass, and when I was in the proper headspace a much more important project took my focus. Somehow though I ended up with a long list of about two dozen albums, so I guess it wasn’t as bad as I thought.
However, I have to say that I found this year’s crop of releases less than compelling. Nothing really blows me away. This is not to say that there aren’t good albums on the list, but overall The Year in Music feels a bit underwhelming. However, it is also The Year of the Vocalist: man, there are some great singers on some of these albums! Manuel Gagneux, Yann Ligner, Patryk Zwoliński… you guys killed it.
In terms of genres: 2024 has made up for last year’s dearth of metal. I heard quite a bit of it this year, along with prog and prog-related, industrial, and some art-rock. There was no Steven Wilson this year, so no pop. (/jk)
I have nine solid contenders, and if I had to pick one more to make it an even 10… well, there are four leftovers of roughly equal merit so I might say something about those, too. I’m still not real sure about the order though, or which album I would make “Number 1”. There are two or three that could take that spot.
It seems ironic to have a section on concerts, because I went to so few of them. For the second year in a row I managed to attend a mere half-dozen shows. I think my gig-going days are winding down: the physical toll is getting greater, and the cost…! Sure I love to support the bands but we are ticket-fee’d to death before we even get in the door, and then the merch cost…. As much as I regret not doing it, I haven’t bought a shirt for over a year. But that’s an old story and I can’t see it changing any time soon.
These days there has to be a really good reason for me to hit the venues, and frankly there are fewer and fewer bands coming this way that I really want to see (most of those are small-to-medium European acts and are unlikely to be able to afford to tour over here).
The shows I did see were scattered throughout the year: Earthside opening for Caligula’s Horse in February; Ministry/Gary Newman/Front Line Assembly in March; VNV Nation in April, Riverside in June; Billy Idol in August; and Zeal and Ardor in November. I’ll start in third place and work towards the top.
Riverside Live at Torwar Arena. June 1, Warsaw.
This show was the grand finale to a huge (year-and-a half, all told), and hugely successful world tour in support of the band’s 8th album, ID.Entity, released in January of 2023. We can acknowledge the somewhat divided opinions about the album within the more established Riverside fan base, but I do believe it gained them more new fans, especially overseas, than any of the other albums. The gig was planned for June 1, to be recorded as an official live release, and in a bigger venue than they had heretofore played anywhere outside of festivals. They were going to go out with a bang, figuratively and (given the confetti cannons) literally, not to mention the massive laser-heavy light show. There was no way I was going to miss this gig: these are my boys, after all, and I love them dearly.
I had a marvelous time. It was reminiscent of the February 2017 shows when Riverside returned from their year’s hiatus after the death of Piotr Grudziński, and the fans came together in remembrance and celebration. Everyone was there, from all over Poland, Europe, the UK, and farther afield. It was an opportunity to reconnect with the Riverside Family, most of whom I had not seen since 2017, and a bunch I had never met before. It was a concert meet-up at its best.
Given all that, why is it Number 3?
Unfortunately, despite the elaborate hype and promotion and all the initial excitement, the show itself struck me as somewhat flat. It felt over-rehearsed and suffering from a lack of spontaneity that the guys didn’t seem able to overcome. I had certainly seen the band put on better, more dynamic shows: the incandescent gig in Chicago in 2015; the monstrous show in Warsaw in October 2018 to start off the Wasteland tour; the Montreal gigs in both 2022 and 2023. All of those were Riverside at their energetic best, truly the live band Mariusz Duda insists they are. June 1 in Torwar was not one of those shows, which is why I never said much about it at the time or afterwards.
Zeal and Ardor. Opera House, November 28th.
I didn’t know a whole lot about these guys except that they were out of Switzerland, and had some interesting-sounding songs: metal, but on a foundation of southern spirituals and slave protest songs. I liked what I’d heard of their latest album, but hadn’t played it a lot–in fact, I don’t think I had played it all the way through when I bought a ticket on a whim. I had no other gigs planned for the near future, and they sounded intriguing enough to take a chance on.
I am very glad I did so. It’s a big band, with six guys on stage. Along with the regular metal-band two guitars/bass/drums lineup, there are two guys who are straight vocalists, along with the lead singer/guitarist. The music has a great emphasis on intricate vocals, strong harmonies, and call-and-response amongst the growls (it is, after all, a metal band). And as heavy as they occasionally get on the album, they ramped it to a whole new level live: intensely powerful and raw, much more than the studio stuff would lead you to expect. Dynamic, energetic, and yet in between songs the leader, Manuel Gagneux, is funny and personable, and unexpectedly American (given his name and where the band hails from I guess I was expecting to hear at least a French accent). They did not play a long set which was a bit disappointing but it was thoroughly immersive and I’d go see them again in a heartbeat.
Front Line Assembly/Gary Numan/Ministry. History, March 16th.
Sometimes, you see the lineup for a tour, and the information is hard to process. Is this really a thing, or is it someone’s fantasy show and I’m just looking at a meme? These three acts all on one bill, every one of them a headliner, an industrial lineup of such legendary proportions–it hardly seemed possible. And yet there we were.
They were on the second leg of this tour by the time March 2024 rolled around, having taken it across the US first. I knew FLA and was a huge fan of Noise Unit, one of Bill Leeb’s other projects. I had seen Numan three times before on his own tours, but had never managed to catch Ministry. There was no possible way I was going to miss this show, even if it killed me, and given it was General Admission and standing, it just might. It was at a venue I didn’t know (the relatively new History), and it was gonna be packed because it had sold out almost instantly.
I got there early enough to be pretty close to the front, if not right on the rail, and the crowd was electric with excitement. And this show did not disappoint: crazy and intense and over the top, a crowd almost overwhelmed with joy and energy; even the security was good-natured, handing out water bottles as the heat and excitement grew, manipulating surfers over the rail, keeping an eye. I’ll give the venue kudos for that (it is a pretty nice place, actually). The individual sets must have been shortened but they didn’t feel that way–we certainly got our money’s worth from everyone. The show lived up to every expectation and then some. Gigs like this don’t come along too damned often.
It is that time once again, when I gather together the music that I have liked over the past year, and give a brief explanation of why I like it.
This year feels like a good year, and that is because most of the albums I’ve included feel like they may just stick around longer than the time it took to get to know them well enough to talk about them. Other of my year-end lists do include entries that never made much impact beyond the listening and inclusion; as much as I thought I liked them at the time, they ultimately made no lasting impression, which is not what I hope for. This year, either the albums are better, or I have made more of an effort to exclude the ones that might be short-lived. Or both. Still, there are a handful at the bottom end of this year’s list that are unlikely to be long-term players, but that do have some good songs, so hopefully I will continue to sample them.
There are fourteen albums here that represent a relatively narrow set of genres compared to other years. There is a fair amount of prog, or at least a fair amount of music from bands with a proggy reputation, which might be a bit of a surprise if you know me. I do not consider myself a fan of modern prog and do not seek it out, mostly because I find the vast majority of it tedious and entirely predictable. However, there are a handful of bands who fall under that (admittedly rather broad) umbrella who can manage to sound fresh, so I can’t write the genre off completely. A few of them released pretty good albums this year. There is some industrial/industrial-related, some post-rock, and straight-up rock. No metal or post-metal this year, and no oddball genres.
In terms of the ranking… I’ve put numbers on them but except for the three or four at the bottom, those numbers don’t mean very much. It’s crowded at the top. There are some clear distinctions among some albums, but there are also places where making a choice is largely arbitrary.
Back in July, I observed that the music of 2019 consisted largely of music I missed from 2018; and that continued through the rest of the year. However, new music also continued to appear, and most (but not all) of the expected releases finally materialized (exceptions: the new Body Count, and the oft-delayed new Tacoma Narrows Bridge Disaster, theoretically due early in 2020).
Overall, I find the musical year has been a bit lacking — almost all of the albums range from definitely listenable to very good, but none of them strayed into Great territory. Even the best album of the year has a handful of songs that could have been left off. Out of the 10 in the final list (and a shorter list this year than has been the case lately), I can listen to only 4 others in their entirety without my attention drifting; the rest are either solidly competent without being outstanding in any way, or have some excellent tracks among general indifference. This may be the first year where this has happened.
At any rate, on to the list, from 10 to 1.
10. Queensrÿche: The Verdict
My first Queensrÿche album; I have avoided them largely for the same reason I do not listen to Iron Maiden: I cannot stand operatic metal vocals. However, the tracks are solid, listenable, professional hard rock, the sort of album you can play when something is needed that isn’t quite aural wallpaper but also doesn’t demand a lot of attention. Satisfyingly heavy and melodic.
9. Torche: Admission
If you like it short, no pretensions, sludgy and heavy, these guys deliver. They can certainly settle into a groove when needed, but most of the songs here are brief and to the point.
8. Front Line Assembly: Wake Up the Coma
The return of the Canadian industrial stalwarts, first new material for a few years, and a few guests included. I still don’t think FLA is as good as Noise Unit (another Bill Leeb project) at its best, but they are legends.
The third album from the guys on the front lines of industrial metal, presenting their dark vision of the state of the world today. It is a hard, polished album, perhaps less gritty and fierce than their last one (<shutdown.exe>) and honestly I think it suffers for that.
6. Pelican: Nighttime Stories
It’s hard to believe these guys have been around for almost 20 years, but they are indisputably one of the best known instrumental post-metal outfits in the world, and this new album just reaffirms why.
5. The Tea Party: Black River EP
This year marks 30 years of existence (more or less — there was a hiatus for a few years) for this Canadian trio, although they have not been very active lately. A new album in 2014, few shows here and there, a Canadian tour in 2016, but little else. Late in 2018 they played a few gigs (I caught them in Toronto) in support of a new EP called Black River, and this was released at the end of November.
Generally I like songs here and there across their discography but nothing like an entire album, but this EP — six tracks over about 20 minutes — is surprisingly good. Very strong bluesy rock, rather less pretentious than is often the case with Jeff Martin; there really are no weak songs at all. I’m almost tempted to move this EP up a slot in the ratings, but for sentimentality’s sake I will leave it here.
4. Pretty Maids: Undress Your Madness
The fourth album of all new material since 2010, the year of their resurrection; it is safe to say that this past decade has been one of the strongest in their career, which says something considering that career spans damn near 40 years. I discovered them in 2016 with their album Kingmaker, (review here) and it was a revelation.
The Pretty Maids formula remains untouched: intersperse killer hard-rock stompers with monster metal face-melters, toss in the occasional hard rock ballad (which these guys do so well), keep melody to the forefront, and feature the work of Ken Hammer, probably one of the best and most entirely-overlooked guitarists in all of hard rock/metal. Overall, however, I think this album lacks some fundamental grittiness and drive that is present in Pandemonium (2010) and Motherland (2013), and to some extent Kingmaker. It seems a bit smoother, maybe looking back to an earlier era. It starts out with a huge bang, but it is hard for the rest of the album to live up to those three opening tracks. It is a very good album, but not the best they’ve done these past 10 years (that title track, though…!!). One does hope for the best of course, given that Ronnie Atkins was diagnosed with lung cancer in 2019.
3. Russian Circles: Blood Year
In the July post, I observed that I had only heard the new Russian Circles once, but it certainly held a lot of promise; I think it is safe to say (seeing where the album landed in the top 10) that it has lived up to that promise. Blood Year consolidates the band’s reputation as maybe the best out there at what they do, uncompromising instrumental post-metal, delivered with all the professionalism and passion the guys are capable of. I’m not about to argue whether it is their best album, but there is very little wrong with it. And the accompanying tour may well be one of the best I’ve seen from them.
2. Klone: Le Grand Voyage
The Frenchmen have surely delivered this year. Back in 2015 they released Here Comes the Sun, which marked a rather new prog-driven sound for them, and gained them a whole new following. Le Grand Voyage continues even farther down that road; they have left most traces of their metal past behind and have thoroughly embraced the lush, orchestral sound of the last album while completely avoiding the self-referential prog tropes that mar the presentations of so many current “prog” outfits. Le Grand Voyage is gloriously melodic, cinematic in scope, with some very immersive tracks (“Yonder”, and “Breach” particularly); alas it is not completely consistent in quality but definitely one of the best albums of the year in any genre.
1. New Model Army: From Here
NMA: another of those outfits that has existed for more than 3 decades, with a solid and dedicated following; this time however I wasn’t completely oblivious to their existence since a good friend happens to be a fan, and had recommended them before this, but somehow the appeal passed me by. But again, Spotify to the rescue: a song from their 2016 album appeared in my recommendations, and playing that led me to try the new album.
Which intrigued me enough to play it again, and then I noticed the lyrics.
At this point (due to space constraints) I’ll just observe that I tend to be fairly critical of lyrics and with few exceptions I don’t spend much time with them. But I am happy to be surprised by the exceptions.
Justin Sullivan is a master lyricist. I am extremely impressed, enormously captivated by his narrative power, his irony, his acute ability to grasp and illustrate relationships with a few well-placed words. The full review of this album will follow, and I could probably just write the whole thing with quotes from the songs. But of course, they are songs, and one cannot neglect the music: the album is almost entirely bass-and-drum driven, with acoustic guitar laid over that foundation. On this spare core are layered plenty of orchestral effects, heavy guitar, lots of density where needed … and entwined throughout are those words, telling us things about ourselves that we often don’t want to think about.
It is not a perfect album; there are a few tracks that could easily have been left off to the overall benefit of the album — they just are not up to the quality of the rest and end up as distractions.
I’ll leave you with “The Weather”. I’ll let you cogitate on it yourself, but if there is any song out there that is a song for our current times, this is it.
The Return of the Instrumental (and Poland Rising)
This was not one of my better years for musical discoveries. However, the past few years have been so good that I suppose the odds were against another, and it did not arrive. I only managed to come up with maybe 25 albums I wanted to listen to more than once, and some of those didn’t make it to a third play.
So: this year I have 15 albums in the list, like in other years, but I’ve decided to rank only the first five. The rest are in alphabetical order. Each of the final ten has its strong points, each its weaknesses, and any order I put them in would be largely arbitrary. Of the top five: I have to say only the first 2 albums are truly stellar, the third is definitely better than the rest, and 4 and 5 are strong enough to rank. You will find My Best Albums of the Year below the fold.
I would be remiss if I did not point out the fact that the three best albums (to my ears) for 2018 are all from Polish outfits. I’m pretty sure this is the first country sweep I’ve had. See more below….
As noted in the Introduction (which I hope you read first, link here), I have not actually ranked these albums, they are listed in alphabetical order. They do not differ from each other enough for a ranking to even make sense. They are albums that I play reasonably often, and/or have qualities that make them interesting, enough that others might find them worth pursuing (in fact some already have — some of these albums rank pretty high in other people’s lists). And fully seven of the ten here are instrumental.
Dead Letter Circus: Dead Letter Circus
This Aussie post-punk/indie bunch burst onto the scene in 2010 with a powerful first album, which contained some thoughtful, heavy tracks and a lot of promise. Alas, they never really seemed to be able to live up to that promise. Their second album, The Catalyst Fire, quite frankly was a mess, while the third, Aethesis, was about halfway listenable.
This, their fourth, finds them converging towards shorter pieces that are focused on their strengths: intense melodic rock, nicely-constructed, very consistent, even if the tracks begin to sound a bit the same towards the end. If they continue in this direction they may finally come up with the album they are capable of making.
I’ll start with the odds and ends of 2018. A few EPs were released that deserve mention but aren’t really long enough to be included in the album list. As well, some of the albums that didn’t make the list in the end did provide a great track or two, even if the rest of the album wasn’t up to snuff. And as always, I find stuff during the year that was released the year before, I just wasn’t paying attention at the time.
EPs
Gary Numan: The Fallen
An addendum to the spectacular Savage album from 2017, the ep provides 3 additional tracks.
It has been an interesting year for music – lots of good releases, a few disappointing follow-ups from bands I had found earlier, strong entries in genres I did not expect. The best albums of the year examine the human condition and find it wanting, and this year the expression of it has crossed all genres: the thrash-metal anger of Heart Attack and While She Sleeps, the existential philosophy of Alex Reed (Seeming), the bleak vision of Gary Numan, the push-back rage of race and poverty from Ice-T and Ice Cube. A beloved musician – one who is no stranger to lyrics of pain as it is – placing his torn-up heart on view with an album whose intensity of self-examination is almost too personal. It has been a tough and exhilarating year for listening.
This year brings a new Lunatic Soul, always a cause for celebration even if the album itself doesn’t strike quite as hard as previous ones. Once again, a plethora of unknown names with some great releases, and well-established acts who finally caught my interest with worthy efforts. In terms of genres: still some metal, still industrial electronica, some albums on the edge of prog (but no actual prog to speak of), some albums on the edge of pop, and this year a bit of…gangsta rap. Well, as I often say, You Just Never Know.
2017 also heralded the discovery of a band whose (recent, anyway) music has hit me inexplicably hard. They have been around for thirty-five years and I suspect for most of that time I would not have paid them any attention (if I had heard of them) … but their last four albums (new producer, entirely new sound) have just blown my head off. Those albums (and the related side-project by the lead singer) have all been on pretty heavy rotation since early spring, and I don’t see that changing any time soon.
Every year brings its particular sorting challenge, but this year it is a bit different. The top two spots are not in dispute; the issue here is that these albums tower so far above the rest of the pack I have given them their own slots, and kept 15 albums for the rest. In other words, I have a list of 2 and a list of 15, or I have a list of 17…whatever.
After the first two…well, things get much harder to sort out. Most of the subsequent fifteen albums are almost equivalent in quality; the mix of genres and styles is so wide that blunt comparison may as well be decided by closing my eyes and pointing: how does one fairly compare an album of country-rock by Swedes to gangsta-metal by an experienced Los Angeles media stalwart? Each album brings its strengths, and its weaknesses, and it becomes a matter of deciding which strengths are stronger and which weaknesses are least intrusive to the listening experience. That said, the first six albums in the List of 15 are almost equal in quality. But we will start with Number 17 overall (15) and work our way up. Continue reading Welcome to the Post-Apocalypse Or: The Year of Introspection 2→
