I’ve always held the belief that music wasn’t better in the past, people just have survivorship bias. What are your genuine favorite albums of the last few years?
Personally, I’m loving The Rime of Memory by Panopticon, Ants from Up There by Black Country, New Road, and Hellfire by Black Midi.
Sleep Token - This place will become your tomb (2021) / This eden (2023)
Grim Salvo - MILDRED (2022)
Tame Impala - The Slow rush (2020)
Spiritbox - Eternal blue (2021)
Bad Omens - THE DEATH OF PEACE OF MIND (2022)
Can I include EP’s? If so, Lorna Shore - … And I return to nothingness (2021)
Black Tiger Sex Machine - Once upon a time in cyberworld (2022)
Apashe - Renaissance (2020)
Florence + The Machine - Dance fever (2022)
Hozier - Unreal unearth (2023)
I’m sure there’s more
It’s definitely survivorship bias and likely that the barrier for entry is a lot lower now, so only ‘better’ music would be made (ie record companies doing risk assessment and deciding what would be more likely to sell) / your average person can make music now relatively easily, which I suppose technically ‘dilutes’ the overall ‘quality’ of music today - take your pick
That Bad Omens album is so good. I really need to listen to more Sleep Token too.
List is a genre trip and a half. Nice picks :)
Lmao thanks, yeah I like variety haha
same- went straight from Lorna Shore into Lil Darkie earlier lmao
I saw Lorna Shore as the warm-up for the Mega Monsters tour and I have to say whoever did the mixing for that performance is awful at their job. I had never heard any of their music before and I’m pretty sure I can still say that in all honesty. The vocals sounded like nothing but static and the instruments didn’t sound like much more than speaker feedback lol.
For someone who hasn’t found many heavy metal bands to enjoy other than Gojira, are they worth looking into?
Homie can scream like nobody’s business, but that’s what you’re gonna get.
My path went from Gojira, to Mastodon, David Maxim Micic, and Rivers of Nihil (check out where owns know my name).
If Metal metal isnt really your thing, check out Leprous. Malina and Pitfalls both kick ass and are about as far from metal where you still get some recognizable tropes.
I mean I like them, so I’m gonna say yes haha
Sorry you had a terrible sound engineer that night though :/
Yes
PetroDragonic Apocalypse by King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard
and it’s not even close. This is one of my favorite albums of all time. Prog metal at its finest!
King Gizzard never stops pushing bangers, do they?
KNOWER - Knower Forever
Kim Dracula - A Gradual Decline…
Kadabra - Umbra
Mammal Hands - Gift from the Trees
Atsuko Chiba - Water, …
Archspire - Bleed the Future
Twelve Foot Ninja - Vengeance
All Them Witches - Nothing as the Ideal
Between the Buried and Me - Colors 2
DARKSIDE - Spiral
Vola - Witness
Sleep Token - -both albums-
Lucid Planet - ll
Kimono Drag Queens - Songs of Worship
Woodkid - S16
Algiers - There Is No Year
And of course… most of what King Gizzard released.
For just the albums I’ve listened to extensively and probably many more that I really enjoyed I think it’s been a good few years.
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Kimono Drag Queens are such a good band. Criminally underrated rated.
Steve Lacey- Gemini Rights
Foals- Life is Yours
Japanese Breakfast- Jubilee
Covet- Cartharsis
JUNGLE- Volcano
Black Thought & Danger Mouse- Cheat Codes
Tom Misch & Yussef Dayes- What Kinda Music
Yussef Dayes- Black Classical Music
Any of King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard’s 10 albums relased since 2020
Doom Scroll - Immoral Compass
Mr Gnome - The day you flew away
Jonathan Wilson - Eat the worm
Viagra Boys - Cave world
Wet leg - Wet leg
Chet Faker - Hotel surrender
Igorrr - spirituality and distortion
Amigo the Devil- yours until the war is over
Out of orbit - OOO
I could go on.
Amigo the Devil- yours until the war is over
Thanks for letting know about this. Last album I knew he dropped was Born Against. I’ll definitely look into this. I saw him open for Drokkick Murphy’s. It was a great show.
What the Dead Men Say - Trivium
Lamb of God - Lamb of God
Omens - Lamb of God
Abyss - Unleash the Archers
Violence Unimagined - Cannibal Corpse
Fortitude - Gojira
Zeit - Rammstein
Modern Primitive - Sceptic Flesh
Although my favorite KGLW albums are from 2019, there are great ones from 2020 onward as well.
I’m also liking Expert in a Dying Field by the Beths right now.
Since Google Play Music went away, I think it’s been harder to find new stuff I like. Recently, I’ve found better new stuff on my local public radio station.
KGLW never stops putting out bangers, they’re machines.
I actually end up browsing Rate Your Music for whatever happens to be recently released and highly rated, and listen for myself before deciding to buy the album or not. I’ve stopped streaming except as a means to preview albums, supports the artists more and lossless sounds better to my ears, or at least higher quality MP3s. Can’t tell between the nicer MP3s and FLACs tbh.
My favorites are Nonagon Infinity, KGLW, and PetroDragonic Apocalypse. So they’re pretty consistent across time IMO.
This is exactly correct. Child of the early 70s.
I heard my peers say this about the 80s and had to laugh and laugh.
For every Prince, there were 100 sucky bands.
soooo many terrible one hit wonders…and you had to sit through so much talking, commercials and garbage to catch one good song on the radio.
I love it now I can catch a good tune (one of the reasons I’m on the fediverse) and then go explore the band & music associated to it and plunk it in a Playlist.
So far, these three come to mind:
Mammoth WVH (2021 self-titled debut)
- Eddie Van Halen’s son Wolfgang’s debut album in which he wrote and recorded all instruments. It’s some fantastic hard rock about not giving a shit what other people expect of you. “Mammoth” embodies the spirit of the album, while “Stone” is one of the best low-tempo, high-energy songs I’ve ever heard.
Pawns & Kings (2022) - Alter Bridge
- A heavy, raw, intense and politically charged album about how the new generation of humanity needs to be better if we want any sort of societal continuity. I may be playing it up but the music is kickass.
Fortitude (2021) - Gojira
- Most of Gojira’s music is about the doom we’re sowing by destroying the planet. This album is a stark tonal shift for them in that almost all of it is supposed to be positive and encouraging. “The Chant” is nothing but encouraging those who suffer oppression to fight on for their rights. “Into the Storm” is an anthem for fighting for political change in a world that beats everyone down for trying to challenge the status quo. This album was exactly what I needed after COVID had already gone on for a year and showed no signs of stopping.
If you like politically charged albums, check out God’s Country and Hostile Architecture, by Chat Pile and Ashenspire respectively. Unashamed and raw are what I’d use to describe them.
Chat Pile mfn rulz
I’ve been meaning to listen to Gojira for a while- what album/song/whatever do you recommend I start with?
Hoo boy what a question.
TL;DR: I would say give at least one song from each album a try since they have a good amount of variety in their sound from one album to the next. I recommend:
Terra Incognita: “Clone” The Link: “Remembrance” From Mars to Sirius: “The Heaviest Matter of the Universe” The Way of All Flesh: “The Art of Dying” L’Enfant Sauvage: “Planned Obsolescence” Magma: “Magma” Fortitude: “Fortitude” followed by “The Chant” (they go together)
Otherwise, If you like heavy metal, Terra Incognita is great. “Clone” and “Blow Me Away You (Niverse)” get stuck in my head a lot. “Planned Obsolescence” from L’Enfant Sauvage (one of my favorite songs ever) is about as in-your-face “fuck off, capitalism” as a song can get.
If you like environmentalism in music, the theme persists throughout their discography but From Mars to Sirius is chock full of it. “Ocean Planet” builds to one of my favorite lines in any song ever with a painfully dissonant melody at the very end of the song. It’s also hard to ignore “Flying Whales” with all the memes and the song is written from the perspective of whales looking down in sorrowful pity on how humanity treats their shared home, plus the song has a wonderful chorus. And I can’t not mention “Global Warming.” It might just be Gojira’s magnum opus imo. “Toxic Garbage Island” is a really cool rhythm-heavy song about treating the planet like a giant trash can with one of the most emotional finales of any song I know.
“The Art of Dying” is an incredible song about what it means to die well. The music is incomparable, and it pairs really well with “The Way of All Flesh” which is an artistic audible rendering of the experience of actually dying - only listen to it if you plan to listen to all 17 minutes of it.
If you need something more encouraging, “Born In Winter” has been my track of choice many a late night. “New Found” is also shockingly uplifting compared to the rest of their music.
Truthfully, I love all of their music and I normally will turn on an album and listen to it start-to-finish. I most commonly do that with their album Magma because it’s extremely well paced musically and emotionally. While in the process of writing it, Joe and Mario Duplantier’s (vocalist/guitar and the drummer) mother died and you can definitely feel it. The album is mostly about the way that strong human emotions can feel like Magma boiling inside of you, and I think it’s extremely well conveyed. I go back and forth between thinking “Global Warming” and the entire album Magma are their greatest work.
Wow, nice. I love it when people are clearly so interested in what they’re writing about.
Sounds like I’ll start with Planned Obsolescence then, and work my way through their stuff. Thanks for such solid recommendations. :)
Hey I’m just glad more people are interested in them.
Thinking about “Planned Obsolescence” reminds me that another of Gojira’s greatest skills is in writing endings. Plenty of songs have great endings, and every single album ends with something emotionally memorable. It’s probably why I love listening to all of their albums start-to-finish. There’s a great sense of completion and closure to all of them.
Terra Incognita’s “1990 Quadrillions De Tonnes” (the weight of the Sun) is layered with the sounds of people screaming as the Earth burns. The Link’s “Dawn” is a dark naturalist instrumental. From Mars To Sirius’ ending… well you should just listen to it. “The Way of All Flesh” I already mentioned. L’Enfant Sauvage’s “The Fall” is about as dark as the entire album gets. Magma’s “Lowlands” into “Liberation” tears my soul to shreds. And Fortitude’s “Grind” is the heaviest, most depressing sarcastic call to inaction to follow all of the encouragement that came before it, reminding the listener that the world is not easily fixed.
Damn I think I really love this band more than I thought I did lol
lol sounds like you do, good on you. I’ve been listening to them for a bit and I really like them. I’ll be checking them out some more later, thanks again for the great comments!
This is a really solid writeup. L’Enfant Sauvage is a banger front to back. Of particular note for me are Explosia, L’enfant Sauvage, and Gift of Guilt.
Magma feels really good too. Silvera and Stranded are the standard picks, but Magma and Low Lands are worth checking.
Fortitude… Born for One Thing starts it off nicely, but Amazonia just bugs the shit out of me to the point that everything that follows sounds bad. I have listened once with that song blocked, and I enjoyed it much more, but not enough to give more info.
“Only Pain” is my pick for the real peak of Magma. I always get stoked out of my mind when that drum intro comes on.
I’m surprised you don’t like Amazonia. It does sound like it has some power metal influence but I think it’s got a great sound overall. I especially love the mouth harp intro lol
The mouth harp is legit annoying.
Here’s a few I’ve enjoyed in recent memory:
- Koyo - Would You Miss It?
- Militarie Gun - Life Under The Gun
- Tigers Jaw - I Won’t Care How You Remember Me
- Yard Act - Where’s My Utopia?
- Vacation Manor - Vacation Manor
- Hotline TNT - Cartwheel
The Koyo album is great if you like punk/hardcore/emo, same with the Militarie Gun one. Tigers Jaw has been one of my favorites for a while, and this album is one of their best imo; great band if you like indie rock/emo. Yard Act’s a British rock band with post-punk influences, you might like them if you enjoy that signature dry British humor in combination with some social commentary. Vacation Manor is a more laid-back indie rock band with more classic Americana/Springsteen influences, I can’t recommend them enough for people who have a sweet spot for classic rock. Lastly, Hotline TNT’s album is worth a listen for people who enjoy shoegaze and indie rock, they have a really great DIY sound with just enough polish to tie the album together and keep it accessible. The 2020’s have been a damn good year for music, at least as far as the bands I’ve been keeping up with.
Edit: added Tigers Jaw, I couldn’t leave them out
Militarie Gun & Koyo are killing it. I would like to add Fleshwater’s We’re Not Here to Be Loved.
Ooh that was a solid one too, good catch. Can’t wait to see what else they have in store
Taylor Davis - Songs of the Lost Woods
I pretty regularly pick up new music.
Fun machine
https://batboymusic.bandcamp.com/album/fun-machine
I guess this is pop punk rock? It has a lot of lines in it I think about a lot. “Ask me again how it’s going even though you know it isn’t going anywhere”. “I don’t want you to romanticize falling the fuck apart”.
The dark path to the light
https://wolvennest.bandcamp.com/album/the-dark-path-to-the-light
This is some good witchy shit. The last track is so menacing I love it.
I tried to get into the full album, but “Decoder Ring” is the only track off Fun Machine that really does it for me. That said, I listen to it just about daily
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I’ve been absolutely loving Knower Forever by Knower from last year. Who else is doing stuff like this?
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Sometimes I Might Be Introvert - Little Simz
Great choice. Little Simz needs more love.
