The old adage rings true: time flies when you’re having fun. This is now my third year end list for the Subway. My 100th review for the blog was published this year… and also my 150th (as well as my first interview!). Moreover, over the course of 2024, I heard 1025 new releases. The Progressive Subway also grew a lot this year: our Instagram run by my lovely girlfriend Akhila [Editor’s note: real life girlfriend, not the only woman he’s ever spoke to but exclusively online and she doesn’t really know it… although I’m only going off what he’s told me] nearly tripled its followers; we set record highs in readership; and we had a new consistency of publishing we’d never had before. This growth should continue into 2025 with the big announcement coming soon (wink). I take lots of pleasure writing music reviews for the Subway—who wouldn’t love having the trump card that I’m literally a music critic in arguments with friends and family—but what truly makes this place special is our sense of community, and I’m thankful to call all of my blog peers my friends. Whether messing around with Zach, discussing cover art with Dave, debating Sabrina, being mercilessly roasted by Chris, harassing Sam for help with math in subjects he’s never taken, reminding Akhila to make Instagram stories, pinging Doug into whatever garbage he purposely avoids, feedbacking Ian’s novellas, listening to Francesco rant about why folk metal shouldn’t have harsh vocals, or talking br00tal music with Cooper (who is really the chillest guy you’ll ever meet), I enjoy writing here so much. Even if this wasn’t the strongest year musically in my opinion (in fact, it’s the weakest since 2014!), life’s about the friends we make along the way, right? That made me throw up writing it—unlike the Wizard of Oz in Wicked, I’m not a sentimental man—so let’s get back to the music. Whittling over a thousand releases to only ten is never easy, but here goes nothing:
Non-Subway Honorable Mentions:
Jpegmafia – I Lay Down My Life for You: Instantly one of my favorite rap albums of all time, ILDMLFY is addictive from Peggy’s hilarious bars (really, who else would start an album with “I’m like Dillon Brooks… but worse”) to the wild sampling and even him showing off metal-tinged guitar chops.
Ihsahn – Ihsahn: I reviewed the orchestral version here, but the real deal is the apex of a career spanning thirty years. With full, rich orchestration and perfectly composed ebbs and flows, this is truly worthy of a late career self-titled treatment.
Opeth – The Last Will and Testament: While it’s no In Cauda Venenum1, it’s clear Mikael and co are having a blast. This is Opeth at their goofiest ever, a wacky concept album with some of their most virtuosic performances ever.
Wintersun – Time II: It is everything 12 year old me dreamt of. This would have been perfect if it came out a decade ago–it’s certainly not perfect to me now–but Jari finally released it. It’s still surreal.
10. In Vain – Solemn
Style: melodic death metal, progressive death metal (mixed vocals)
Recommended for fans of: Opeth, Insomnium, In Mourning, Disillusion, Countless Skies
The final spot on my list was highly contested with stunning folk-y releases from Sur Austru and Sangre de Muérdago nearly ousting Norwegian prog death institution In Vain from a spot at all. At the end of the day, however, I’m a more simple guy than I’d like to admit and the hooky melodies splattered across Solemn had to gain a spot on the list in the final hour. At the heart of it all (or really the tail end) is “Watch for Me on the Mountain,” a track so splendidly beautiful as to make me, the paragon of Stoicism, emotional. Subterranean Masquerade’s Vidi Dolev handles his fair share of the vocal duties on the track, and his timbre is a match made in heaven with Sindre Nedland’s, soaring and hopeful. Things may be Solemn, but they’re never sad, and In Vain unleashed the best version of themselves this year.
Recommended tracks: Shadows Flap Their Black Wings, Beyond the Pale, Eternal Waves, Watch For Me on the Mountain
Related links: Bandcamp | Spotify | Facebook | original review
9. meth. – Shame
Style: dissonant sludge metal, noisecore (mostly harsh vocals)
Recommended for fans of: Nails, Thou, Plebeian Grandstand, Black Tongue
Shame is a nuclear weapon of vitriol, frontman Seb Alvarez’s mix of anger, shame, and guilt coming out in blood-soaked chunks of hate. From Alvarez’s punishing hardcore barks to the crushing riffs to the hypnotic repetition, Shame is claustrophobically inescapable: it’s armed with a healthy share of punishing dissonance to boot. Assaulting riff after assaulting riff, you start to empathize with Alvarez’s shame indoctrinated within him by the Catholic Church, and by the end of the title track, I feel it with him. It’s simply the best sludge metal album I’ve ever heard.
Recommended tracks: Doubt, Compulsion, Shame
Related links: Bandcamp | Spotify | Facebook | original review
8. Misanthropy – The Ever-Crushing Weight of Stagnance
Style: technical death metal, brutal death metal, progressive death metal (harsh vocals)
Recommended for fans of: Archspire, Analepsy, Atheist, Devourment
Over the last ten years, only three albums that were released in December have made my top ten of any given year2. This is a statistically significant proportion of albums for a month to reach the year-end list (as in it’s super low if we assume a 1/12 chance)—I ran the hypothesis test. It’s really improbable for a record as good as The Ever-Crushing Weight of Stagnance to come out when it did, but goddamn is this one a ripper, perfect for Yuletide celebration3. Take the jubilant swing of First Fragment and shove it through a layer of grime like Devourment and you get close to Misanthropy’s sound. The album is wildly unhinged with riff after riff after riff of quality stuff, a headbanger’s delight, but it’s always got a proggy rhythm or technical edge to it. Caveman music for the thinking man™.
Recommended tracks: Of Sulking and the Wrathful, A Cure for the Pestilence, Descent, Sepulcher
Related links: Bandcamp | Spotify | Facebook | original review
7. Scarcity – The Promise of Rain
Style: avant-garde black metal, totalism, dissonant black metal (harsh vocals)
Recommended for fans of: Glenn Branca, Imperial Triumphant, The Dillinger Escape Plan
I feel a spiritual connection of sorts to the desert and have made several pilgrimages both on my own and with others to Death Valley and Joshua Tree in the last couple years—to hike, to stargaze, and to simply experience the desiccating heat. To steal my own words from my review of The Promise of Rain, I live for the dearth of water, glut of sunlight, and paucity of humanity. Scarcity’s vocalist and lyricist Doug Moore was inspired by a similar desert pilgrimage to southern Utah on The Promise of Rain, and it’s clear with the connection I experience with the album. Channeling the sublime energy of a live performance, Scarcity’s second album scorches and sizzles as microtonal guitar lines grow in angsty tension until they finally coalesce, and then collapse into disharmony again. The Promise of Rain is a living, breathing album and the musicians are just vessels of their instruments, harnessing a power far beyond themselves.
Recommended tracks: In the Basin of Alkaline Grief, Scorched Vision, Venom & Cadmium, The Promise of Rain
Related links: Bandcamp | Spotify | Facebook | original review
6. Aquilus – Bellum II
Style: symphonic black metal, folk, classical (mixed vocals)
Recommended for fans of: Opeth, Ne Obliviscaris, Emperor, Agalloch, Chopin, Debussy
Horace Rosenqvist may be the best composer in metal, full-stop. For those following Aquilus for as long as I have (which is the majority of my metal-loving life), this comes as no surprise, but the third album from the man (and now with a band, to boot) is sublime. Enchanting dark folk and atmospheric, Medieval-tinged Impressionist classical music wilt into what can only be described as early Opethian black metal—the rarely-imitated days of Orchid and Morningrise. With Bellum II, it’s an endless string of tension and release, delicate and violent. Rosenqvist’s work spans the full range of human emotion, and listening to this on a rainy evening with a nice fantasy book and some tea, I can’t help but be as cozy as a clam.
Recommended tracks: Nigh to Her Gloam, My Frost Laden Vale
Related links: Bandcamp | Spotify | Facebook | original review
5. Bríi – Camaradagem Póstuma
Style: folk black metal, atmospheric black metal, trance, drum’n’bass, jungle (mixed vocals)
Recommended for fans of: Kaatayra, Fishmans (Long Season)
Ne Obliviscaris were clearly the standout artist of the 2010s for me, two albums of the year still in my top ten records of all time and a third album only slightly weaker. They made their mark while “only” releasing three albums (and a couple demo-y EPs). Mastermind behind Bríi, Caio Lemos, has released eighteen full-length releases across his projects since January 1, 2020. Not all of them are as high quality as each of NeO’s masterpieces, but Lemos has attained an unreal level of consistency, and his peaks are as high as anybody’s. 2020’s Só Quem is my album of the decade halfway through, and Corpos Transparentes was my first official Subway album of the year in 2022. This spot on the list was always destined to be Lemos’s, and even if he didn’t reach the giddy highs of some of his other recent releases, Camaradagem Póstuma feels like home to my ears, a comforting mix of electronica with a light black metal quality. It’s the best Caio Lemos project of the year, and that’s why it’s on the list. Period.
Recommended tracks: Médium, Aparecidos, Baile Fantasma
Related links: Bandcamp | Spotify | Instagram | original review
4. Marjana Semkina – Sirin
Style: progressive rock, chamber folk, chamber pop, post-rock (clean vocals)
Recommended for fans of: Caspian, Kate Bush, Iamthemorning
As much as I positively adore each Iamthemorning album, even writing about the special place the debut has in my heart earlier this year for the blog, I honestly find Semkina’s solo work to be possibly more stunning4. Sirin is dark and moody, and for good reason—Semkina and Kolyadin (of Iamthemorning) fled their homeland of Russia in support of Ukraine recently, and Kolyadin was even detained for a while in Thailand. Sirin ebbs and flows with grace in and out of crescendos, and Semkina’s voice has never sounded surer as if she is the sirin herself (a Slavic folklore creature who mourns for humankind). Beautiful as it is, Sirin feels as heavy as any of the metal on this list.
Recommended tracks: We Are the Ocean, Anything But Sleep, Death and the Maiden
Related links: Bandcamp | Spotify | Facebook | original review
3. Lamentari – Ex Umbra in Lucem
Style: symphonic black metal (harsh vocals)
Recommended for fans of: Emperor, Ihsahn (especially his new album), Fleshgod Apocalypse, Septicflesh, Limbonic Art
Long before I wrote here, some twat on Reddit suggested I try the new EP from some Danish black metal band; that band was Lamentari and that dumbass Redditor is now my peer here, Chris. Well after hundreds of recommendations shared between each other in the following years, Lamentari is still his best5. Filthily virtuosic guitar solos, real orchestra and choir, sprawling prog track structures, blast beats: all hallmarks of an instant Andy classic. I waited five years for their debut full length, and Ex Umbra in Lucem is everything I dreamt of, a bombastic yet dark affair, excessive and delicious. I only wish it were longer, but Ex Umbra in Lucem [Chris’ Version]6 fixes that problem, leaving this thing to have essentially no issues. It’s just a grand old time.
Recommended tracks: Tragoedia In Domo Dei, Intra Muros Mentis, Appugno
Related links: Bandcamp | Spotify | Facebook | original review
2. Iotunn – Kinship
Style: progressive death metal (mixed vocals)
Recommended for fans of: Opeth, Amorphis, In Mourning, Ne Obliviscaris, Insomnium
2021’s Access All Worlds was one of the most promising prog death debuts our scene had ever seen, and Iotunn have only improved their craft. With my taste in music, Kinship making my list was inevitable, but it took really engaging songwriting and the best vocal performance of the year courtesy of Faroese legend Jón Aldará to soar this high. All it takes is a single listen of “Earth to Sky,”—really just saying the title—to have the chorus stuck in my head all day, and longer tracks like “Kinship Elegiac” and “Mistland” are progressive metal tour de forces. Iotunn are already becoming staple giants (pun intended: their name means “giant” in old Norse) in the mixed vocal prog death world, and they’re still just getting started.
Recommended tracks: Kinship Elegiac, Mistland, Twilight, Earth to Sky
Related links: Bandcamp | Spotify | Facebook | original review
1. Pyrrhon – Exhaust
Style: dissonant death metal, mathcore, technical death metal (mostly harsh vocals)
Recommended for fans of: Imperial Triumphant, Gorguts, The Dillinger Escape Plan, Chat Pile, Car Bomb, Frontierer
Society’s reached a point of exhaustion. Everything’s gone to hell. On a personal level, I study pure math and I’ve got a lot of late nights in the library, so I’m pretty mentally exhausted at this point in the year, too. Pyrrhon weaponize the themes, but Exhaust is an energetic rollercoaster of violent mathcore and technical death metal wizardry. Doug Moore’s savage vocals have been my muse all year7, the man’s poetry and performance showcasing his disgust with the state of the world. With highlights like “The Greatest City on Earth,” each play of the compact album leaves me needing more because, despite how acerbically dissonant and violent Exhaust is, above all it’s catchy, groovy, and, dare I say, fun. If any album sums up how 2024 felt, it’s this one.
Recommended tracks: Not Going to Mars, The Greatest City on Earth, Strange Pains, Luck of the Draw, Stress Fractures, Hell Medicine
Related links: Bandcamp | Spotify | Facebook | original review
- My second favorite Opeth album behind BWP, fight me. ↩︎
- Galneryus’s Under the Force of Courage and Dessiderium’s Aria were the other two. ↩︎
- Although my family wouldn’t let me play it when opening gifts smh. ↩︎
- I’m sorry, Gleb! I love your solo work, too, don’t worry. ↩︎
- As I wrote this I decided it might be Ulver – Shadows of the Sun, but it’s a toss up. ↩︎
- This entails adding on their standalone single “Nihilatis” from a couple years ago to the end of the tracklist. ↩︎
- Recall he’s lower down on my list on the Scarcity album, too! ↩︎
