Halfway Retrospective - My Top 10 Albums of 2014 (so far)

This has been quite a year for music, overall, and it's only half done! Here, I'll be talking about some of my favorite releases of the year so far.


1.  Have a Nice Life - The Unnatural World
     Genre: Shoegaze
         Back in 2008, Connecticut shoegaze duo Have a Nice Life released Deathconsciousness - a massive double album that infused shoegaze and post-punk's airiness with the depressive atmosphere of extreme metal, received the acclaim of critics the world over...and abruptly vanished. Deathconsciousness hasn't seen another repressing since, and despite an EP appearing briefly two years later, many considered the reclusive group gone forever.
           Until, abruptly, this past January saw the release of Have a Nice Life's sophomore outing The Unnatural World. At once somehow more melancholic, dark, and twisted than previous outings, the record delves deeper into both sides of Have a Nice Life's winning, genre-bending formula with post-punk songs such as 'Defenestration Song' and 'Dan and Tim, Reunited by Fate' contrasting with bleak, flighty drone sections like 'Music Will Untune the Sky' or 'Cropsey'. Yet there's always the omnipresent element of shoegaze bliss (if you can call it that on this record) that throws everything for a loop, soothing the rock and lending flight to the drone.
         This is a sorrowful, beautiful record that spans the genre gap between metal and shoegaze in an ingenious way, avoiding the now-clogged trail blazed by Alcest by, simply enough, playing extensively heart-wrenching shoegaze. Fans of both extreme metal and Slowdive will rejoice, and the six years since Deathconsciousness have been well worth it.

2. Thou - Heathen
     Genre: Sludge Metal

       Heathen is only Thou's fourth full-length, despite a veritable library of splits, EPs, compilations, and everything in between since the band's inception in the mid 2000s. I raved about this record back when it surfaced in February and relistening to it today, much of what I said still stands: this is the band at their most vacuous, monolithic, and downright pulverizing. Heathen is an absolute monster of a record, churning
tortuously through ten tracks with a funeral doom-like sensibility.
        The band's precise balance of sludge torpidity and dark clean sections, combined with Bryan Funck's signature scathing, bitter commentary, lends Heathen a bizarre sort of duality that previous Thou records experimented with but never truly realized, relegating it to a song or two. Heathen takes these droning, almost ambient sections and crafts them into flawless counterparts to the band's signature destructive sound, moving between the two tastefully, and often never really abandoning one for the other. At over an hour, it's an odyssey of a record, but in its swirling mires there's more color and heat than anyone can imagine.


3. Lord Mantis - Death Mask
    Genre: Blackened Sludge
     "BLOOD. RUST. INCINERATE." rumbles Ken Sorceron on 'Possession Prayer' of Lord Mantis' twisted new outing Death Mask. The blackened sludge supergroup, whose macabre album cover (designed by Jef Whitehead of Leviathan) attracted controversy earlier this year, are not newcomers to the field of utterly disgusting music, with 2011's equally vile Pervertor eliciting similar reactions to anyone with a conscience. But while Pervertor's filthy sludge grooves and torturous, retching vocals were its ticket to success, Death Mask both refines the stage set by previous Lord Mantis outings and adds in a few tricks of its own.
      Notably, this comes in the band's decision to have the sound explore the more sinister aspects of its 'blackened' heritage, avoiding the dredging sludge lines of previous outings. Where Pervertor was pure sludge heaviness, Death Mask is a record that horrifies as well as disgusts, and to the band's credit they've managed to unsettle a fair amount of tried-and-true metal fans - who sat through Pervertor and came back howling for more.
      Industrial themes run rampant, adding to the bizarre, frightening atmosphere as guitar lines surge out in a terrifyingly sensual way. When all gives way to black metal chaos in 'Negative Birth', or the weird vocals of 'Coil', the portrait is complete and you're met with one of the most bizarre and morbidly beautiful sludge albums to come out this year.

4. La Dispute - Rooms of the House
    Genre: Post-Hardcore

      La Dispute's emotionally wrenching lyrics and dreamy instrumentation have made the Michigan post-hardcore act one of the most praised and beloved bands in the modern genre. Rooms of the House, the band's fourth full-length, thus, was unlikely to be a disappointment, but the band rose above that expectation by putting out their most powerful, cohesive and unforgettable record yet. Gone are Jordan  Dreyer's melodramatic, emo-cadenced cries of despair for love lost. Instead, Dreyer moves between an emotional yell and a tortured spoken-word delivery. Not only does this give Rooms of the House a more mature tone (which, when its content is compared to previous La Dispute outings, is completely correct), but it silenced the most common criticism the band faced - its vocals.
       Wildlife, the band's 2011 LP, troubled itself with people at the centre of societal decay, and while Rooms of the House is still a passionately sad album, this time around La Dispute have focused on the emotional weight of the aftermath of tragedy. Dreyer's poetically bleak lyrics serve as the perfect punch to the gut that lend this album its pervasive element of grief - and while the rest of the band's music moves between sadness and anger, technicality and obtuseness, it serves as the perfect backdrop for eleven passionately delivered diatribes on tragedy.

5. Monolord - Empress Rising
   Genre: Stoner Doom Metal

      When the dust clears from the fuzzy onslaught of Empress Rising's title track, it's hard to believe Swedish doom outfit Monolord is only a three piece. The trio craft such a massive, intricate, scathing-yet-psychedelic wall of noise that it seems impossible without at least another guitar. Empress Rising, by stoner doom standards, hits all the right notes square on the head - reverb-laden vocals spinning grandiose fantasy tales? Check. Riffs that recall elephants patiently marching in formation for nine minutes without getting old? Check. A drummer going apeshit in the empty space between the slow crush of the guitar-bass monolith? Check again.

       But Monolord's strength doesn't lie in their hashed-out worship of Electric Wizard and Yob, but in the execution of those bands' visions with the addition of a healthy dash of vintage psychedelia - the album opens with a hypnotic, sitar-like guitar riff that echoes and twangs its way out of existence - 'Harbinger of Death' does something similar and manages to make the bass sound like a Jew's Harp. The title track closes with distant flashes and squeals as the riff that carried the song through twelve minutes suddenly breaks down, layering guitars together before ultimately collapsing. 'Audhumbla', the following track, mixes the psychedelics into a groovy, meandering riff in what's the record most straightforward doom song - echoing Ufomammut's dark, abrasive early days.
       For as much as 2014 was a sludge year, doom has suffered the short end of the stick - but with Yob, Anathema, and Pallbearer releasing new records on the horizon, combined with Empress Rising it's entirely possible that 2014's doom metal will be a question of quality, not quantity.
      

6. Thantifaxath - Sacred White Noise
    Genre: Progressive Black Metal

      Every year, a handful of black metal bands make their debut with a fantastic full-length - Wormlust and Vattnet Viskar spring to mind as some of last year's best new black metal acts - and this year it was Toronto's Thantifaxath's turn to leap out of nowhere with a mind-blowing, almost math-rock like take on black metal. Emboldened by the acerbic technical prowess of acts like Krallice, Thantifaxath's debut is a tense burst of energy that combines the speed and rawness of black metal with a dose of dissonance.          Sacred White Noise is a high speed journey that continuously finds new ways to surprise me.
 Despite tremolo picking being the centerpiece of their songwriting, Thantifaxath layer guitars upon each other in what could almost be a post-black move - except it's utterly void of post-rock's frivolity. This is nose-to-the-grindstone insanity as the band howls and hisses through six pitifully brief songs. Most of Sacred White Noise feels wonderfully off-kilter - like the listener is losing their balance as the band veers precariously-yet-purposefully through nooks and crannies. The previous comparison to Krallice is not quite fair - and while their influence on Thantifaxath is undeniable, Sacred White Noise is 100% its own beast, and well worth a listen for any black metal fan.
   

7.  Every Time I Die - From Parts Unknown
     Genre: Metalcore/Noise Rock

     Idiot in Remission writing about Every Time I Die? Unheard of! In any case, the Buffalo act's eighth full-length From Parts Unknown, represents a return to form that most fans have been waiting for since 2005's Gutter Phenomenon. From Parts Unknown sees the band re-exploring their chaotic noise rock roots and melding them with the refined vocals and sensibilities of their more recent metalcore efforts. Parts is a swaggering, sneering douchebag of a record - even the soulful Southern cleans of 'Overstayer' manage to sound vicious and barely restrained.
       The record's strength, however, isn't just a question of bringing back an old sound - From Parts Unknown saw the band examining their own discography for what they did best and shoving it all into a twelve-track, blistering 33-minute odyssey. The noise rock riffing is only one aspect of it - Andy Williams and Jordan Buckley slip Southern stylings into the guitars, and 'Moor', which begin with a clunking, dissonant piano, ratchet up the sense of inebriated chaos the band have been purveying from the beginning. At the end of the day, From Parts Unknown may be the year's finest metalcore outing yet, and it certainly ranks up there with the band's best.

8. Idylls - Prayer For Terrene
    Genre: Powerviolence

      Saxophones? In a powerviolence record!? Yes, you read that right. Australia's Idylls, who back in late March released their sophomore full-length Prayer For Terrene are known for purveying a sonic mess of hardcore, post-punk, and noise rock into a twisted amalgamation of pulverizing dissonance. And yes, saxophones shriek and whistle to dramatic effect almost at random as Prayer For Terrene blows itself to pieces. At twenty-seven minutes, the record is incredibly short, but the band manage to move tightly and insanely through so much noisiness and formless chaos that Idylls' 'hardcore' label seem more a courtesy than an established classification. But as noisiness yields to post-punk melancholy on 'Fagged Out on the Beach', before returning to punkish chaos in 'Animal Test', the record's penchant for sudden, inexplicable insanity shines that much brighter.
         Prayer For Terrene is a formless, seething, blistering record that gets more fun with every listen. It's an excellent followup to the band's 2012 debut Farewell All Joy, and sees the band navigate the mire of noisy, chaotic punk with skill and taste.

9. Agalloch - The Serpent and the Sphere
    Genre: Atmospheric Black Metal

     The Serpent and the Sphere, coming four years after Agalloch's last full-length Marrow of the Spirit and two after their crushing 22-minute one-song EP Faustian Echoes, is the band's most bizarre, introspective, and arguably atmospheric release yet. While previous Agalloch records opened with a burst of wind, 'Birth and Death of the Pillars of Creation' moves at a majestically slow pace, building on itself as acoustic guitars fade in and out, and John Haughm's sparse, but grating vocals set the tone for the rest of the record - allowing the wonderfully dark sylvan instrumentation to utterly encapsulate.

     That's not to say Serpent is a completely effervescent, head-in-the-clouds affair. While its post-rock tinged folk leads serve as the band's mainstay this time around, the commanding riffing of 'The Astral Dialogue' or 'Vales Beyond Dimensions' serves as a contrast to the rest of the record's delightfully minimalist songwriting. Despite seemingly appearing out of nowhere, Serpent is very much a synthesis of Agalloch's previous outings - in the acoustic calm of '(Serpens Caput)' or closer '(Serpens Cauda)', there's a hint of the band's White EP, while 'Dark Matter Gods' or the aforementioned 'Astral Dialogue' absolutely scream Ashes Against the Grain. Yet, for as familiar as some of the songs on Serpent get, the record remains unmatched in its sheer sense of introspection - perhaps lacking the definitive, tormented-soul punch of Marrow of the Spirit - and in this regard Agalloch have created an album that has taken many fans aback. Serpent is not a kinetic, dynamic woodland journey, but a more personal, meditative trip.


10. Swans - To Be Kind
      Genre: Post-rock/Art Rock

      And my journey to hipsterdom is officially complete - although I feel as though a metal fan being a Swans isn't totally unheard of. Ever since their return in 2010, New York's seminal No Wave masters Swans have shifted their tone to an equally dissonant, but highly atmospheric approach that almost echoes post-rock in its vast, droning soundscapes...but if you go into any of Swans' newest records expecting the piercing ethereal beauty of a Godspeed cut, you'll be sorely mistaken. Nowadays, Swans explore a dark, eerie sound that's singularly unheard of in modern post-rock circles.

       To Be Kind, when compared to modern Swans' two previous records (2012's The Seer and 2010's My Father Will Guide Me Up a Rope to the Sky), plays up the more mysterious, discordant textures that the band have been refining in their modern incarnation, and while To Be Kind is a tad more accessible (for a post-rock listener) than The Seer, this comes slightly at the cost of the interest factor. The band's instrumentation, including Michael Gira's vocals are, as usual, cryptic, haunting and spot-on. But To Be Kind's biggest drawback is its length - at nearly two hours, like The Seer, the record immediately becomes that much more monolithic and insane - beautifully contrasted with the kitschy, innocent baby faces that adorn the album cover. The atmosphere of To Be Kind is wonderfully bizarre - ranging from quiet and introspective on 'A Little God in My Hands' to thunderous and epic on the title track, which closes the album. That Swans are talented songwriters is no secret, but the sheer dearth and consistency of To Be Kind shows the band at an all time high.

HONORABLE MENTIONS:

Diocletian - Gesundrian
Eyehategod - Eyehategod
Indian - From All Purity
Svartidauði - The Synthesis of Whore & Beast

Temple Desecration - Communion Perished

Nothing - Guilty of Everything

St. Vincent - St. Vincent: 

Alcest - Shelter

Cursed Altar - The Light Shall Die

Young and In the Way - When Life Comes to Death 

Twilight - III: Beneath Trident's Tomb

USA out of Vietnam - Crashing Diseases and Incurable Airplanes
Wife - What's Between
'68 - In Humor & Sadness
Wreck & Reference - Want
The Great Old Ones - Tekeli-li
Woods of Desolation - As the Stars
Neige et Noirceur - Gouffre Onirique Et Abîmes Cosmiques
Triptykon - Melana Chasmata
The Body - I Shall Die Here


UPCOMING RELEASES (that I'm excited for):

Opeth - Pale Communion
Ides of Gemini - Old World New Wave
Earth - Primitive & Deadly
Yob - Clearing the Path to Ascend
Pallbearer - Foundations of Burden
Yes - Heaven & Earth
Wolves in the Throne Room - Celestite
Wormlust - Hallucinogenesis
Giant Squid - Minoans 
Solstafir - Otta
Nachtmystium - The World We Left Behind