After a long year of cataloging and ranking everything I've been listening to, I've finally finished it! I ended up writing lengthy reviews for my top 3, but I'll post those as their own individual threads to avoid clutter, as one of them was 1000 words and two of them hit 1700 words and just give very brief reviews of everything else.
Top albums
10. Toby Driver - They Are the Shield
A really beautiful work by Toby which is a huge return to form for him following his other solo albums and most of Kayo Dot's post-Blue Lambency content. It feels like the spiritual sequel to Part the Second.
9. Ihsahn - Ámr
I'll admit the only Ihsahn album I liked before now was After, but there's something captivating about Ámr. It feels like I'm poking around in an old haunted house, uncovering some secret lost to time and preventing a spirit from passing on.
7. [TIE] Irreversible Mechanism - Immersion
These guys really stepped it up from Infinite Fields and carved out their own niche in the progressive metal realm. A lot of comparisons were drawn to Fallujah and Rivers of Nihil, but IM keeps enough of their own identity and plays so masterfully that they can easily stand alone and amongst those giants. In fact, I thought their experimentation which much bolder and more confident in execution than "Where Owls Know My Name", which seemed to dip its toe into trying new things like clean vocals and saxophone and just as quickly hop out and rely on the same boring and monotonous bludgeoning we've already heard a hundred times from RoH. The atmosphere IM creates here is really quite special.
7. [TIE] Between the Buried and Me - Automata
I've been pretty disappointed with BTBAM since Coma Ecliptic's huge let-down which destroyed their Parallax II momentum. This album was an improvement, but not a big one. Still, it entertains well enough, especially if you put yourself in kind of a West World mindset and try to play along with the plot. Breaking it into two parts, however, was an utterly stupid move and killed all momentum for the album and separated the identities of two things meant to be a continuous tale. There was no space given for part I and part II to naturally join with each other. Instead, everyone listened to part I for a couple months and settled into it being its own thing and giving it a space that can't just be attached to another thing released months later. It has enough exploration of the band's sound that they haven't done too much yet that it has moments of refreshment for the BTBAM catalogue, but I still really hope they try harder next time.
6. Deafheaven - Ordinary Corrupt Human Love
This was an unexpected turn for the band following 2015's blackened New Bermuda. They finally fully embraced their surfer lifestyles and let it shine through in the music, pumping their blackgaze trademark full of surf rock, classic/ glam/ hair riffs, and indie music, along with a softer side of the band like in their duet with Chelsea Wolfe. It's still not the band in their complete form, but it is definitely the mould for it, and I can't wait for them to write for real now that they've experimented their way into a real identity.
5. The Ocean - Phanerozoic I: Palaeozoic
I was convinced for the longest time based on the singles (which form over half the album) that this would be album of the year for me. Then it turned out the three singles were the best tracks and the other four (two of which are short instrumentals) weren't up to the same level of quality. It's still an enjoyable album, and a welcome continuation to the ending of Precambrian, but this is of course really only half the album, and thus feels like only half of what we're intended to hear. Hopefully the next chunk which covers the appearance and timeline of dinosaurs will be much more well-rounded and complement part I enough to raise its score.
4. Pale Waves - My Mind Makes Noises
This was a real back and forth for me. When they first appeared on youtube with their single "Television Romance", I thought they were the hot new thing in new wave-influenced pop-rock. Then after listening to their singles as they continued to release them, the singer's voice began to grate on me. She was so nasally and slightly off-key that music became almost unlistenable. Then the album came out and I happened to give it a chance just to see what they were capable of. Thankfully, they appeared to have re-recorded her vocals for every single and apply this to the rest of the album, and her delivery was spot-on. This is a great batch of pop songs with some surprisingly well-crafted songs for a young band writing a debut.
3. The 1975 - A Brief Inquiry Into Online Relationships
See full review posted separately.
2. Black Tongue - Nadir
See full review posted separately (added onto the thread I made before).
1. Lychgate - The Contagion In Nine Steps
See full review posted separately.
Top songs
1. Jaws - Sleep Token
2. Love It If We Made It - The 1975
3. I Always Wanna Die (Sometimes) - The 1975
4. There’s A Honey - Pale Waves
5. If there is light, it will find you - Senses Fail
Honourable Mention
Rolo Tomassi - Time Will Die And Love Will Bury It
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