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Favourite Albums of 2024:

Al Namrood – Al Aqrab

-their 9th full album in 15 years and they've fully honed their blackened Arabic metal sound to integrate all the elements into a brutal and spine-tingling unity.

Angry Blackmen – The Legend of ABM

-Chicago hip-hop duo with a massive debut album. Hardcore rhymes over glitchy & grungy beats. Some of it a bit like if RTJ was playing mould-infested basements instead of stadiums.

Chat Pile – Cool World

-brain-poisoned avant noise rock tormented by 21st century existence. The arty angles of Sonic Youth, the shambolic clatter of the Jesus Lizard and the heft of Unsane.

Couch Slut – You Could Do It Tonight

-intense on multiple axes and far from easy listening. Dense,punishing noise rock topped with Megan O's screamed tales of fucked-up shit.

Cuntroaches – S/T

-scatological psychedelic hardcore, a fetid fever dream of noise.

Drew Mcdowall – A Thread, Silvered and Trembling

-fog-bound Highland dronefolk, utterly gorgeous.

Lord Spikeheart – The Adept

-brutal blend of glitched out Kenyan drum rhythms, heavy electronics and extreme metal vocals with a guestlist of legends like Scotch Rolex & Backxwash.

Meemo Comma – Decimation of I

-uncannily eclectic mix which has a through-line of beatless ambience but wanders from pastoral flute to 90s ambient techno via 70s Berlin.

Oranssi Pazuzu – Muuntautuja

-nominally a metal album, but the off-beat drums, piano, and grungy speaker-shredding electronics take it into mind-melting realms of weird, while sacrificing none of the power.

Perc – The Cut Off

-razor sharp techno which starts and ends deceptively ambient but has a load of industrial clangers and even some filthy 90s-style acid in between.

Persher – Sleep Well

-in which a pair of hip techno lads indulge their love of extreme metal/hardcore, bringing their sharp-edged production skills to a set of sideways bangers whose instrumentation resolutely defies analysis (are those real drums? Are those guitars or synths? Does it matter?).

Pharmakon – Maggot Mass

-clattering rhythmic industrial, soundtracking total ecosystem collapse. Every element is just right and spares no intensity.

Pound Land – Mugged

-dense repetitive sludge with layers of dirty synth and sax squall topped with Adam Stone's pissed-off Northern drawl. This is England 2024.

Shit & Shine – Rum & Coke

-a return to their horrible trance-sludge roots, but with fewer drummers and added Callum from The Shits on vocals.

Thank – I Have A Physical Body That Can Be Harmed

-post-punk, synths and noise rock all in the mix, with a bone-dry sense of surreal humour. While people rightly praise Freddie's outstanding lyrics & delivery, drummer Steve (ex-Cattle) is genuinely jaw-dropping.

Tristwch Y Fenywod – S/T

-a gothic combo of Cure-style bass, drum pads triggering much more than just trad percussion sounds, ethereal Fraser/Shaw type vocals and a custom microtonal dual Russian zither. And it's all in Welsh. Deservedly ransacking best-of lists across the web.

UKAEA – Birds Catching Fire In The Sky

-a mix of clashing, metallic industrial techno with Middle-Eastern sounds and a cast of female guest vocalists make this both extremely now but with deep cultural roots.

Violence Gratuite – Baleine a Boss

-I'd probably get the genres wrong if I attempted them, but it's got polyrythymic hiphop beats, chiptune noises and multitracked vocals in multiple styles (mainly in French).

Wound – Plasticene

-tons of gorgeous synthetic ambience backed with distant nature sounds and worrying TV recordings about chemicals.

Xylitol – Anemones

-a surprise break-out hit combining old-school junglist rhythms and tons of bloopy and lush synth work, somewhat reminiscent of the very best of early Aphex-y stuff.

And here's a Youtube playlist of tracks from all 20 albums.