The Nicsperiment's Top 15 Albums of 2018
The Internet has broken me, or rather made me break my rules. I've made a top nine album list since 2004, but this year I had to throw that number out the window. Due to websites like Bandcamp and Youtube figuring out and providing me exactly what kind of music I'm looking for, and also due to the fact that in the year of our Lord, 2018, The Nicsperiment finally purchased himself a smart-phone, I've been awash in enjoyable music. Or enjoyable for me. Perhaps you'll hate it.
Out of the few hundred albums I heard this year, out of the million or so that were created, here are my favorites.
15. Khemmis -- Desolation
Man, Desolation rocks. This album is some kind of mad fusion of modern and classic metal, prog and classic rock, and every note works, with a triumphant, fist-pumping vibe throughout.
14. The Bell Jar -- I Infest, Therefore I Am
I've always been surprised that I couldn't get into the work of Josh Porter. Showbread seemed like just my cup of tea, but I just didn't like how it tasted (also, let's end this tea metaphor ASAP!). I loved what Porter had to say in interviews. I have even enjoyed his sermons. Would I ever be able to jam his music? This debut album for his electro-punk act, The Bell Jar, answers that with a definitive yes. I Infest, Therefore I Am is relentlessly aggressive, featuring the lyrical depth and chilly screams expected from Porter, along with a great mix of aggressive and melodiously hypnotic vocals from Whitney Depaoli. The album rails against materialism and device addiction, using allusions to Little Shop of Horrors, including the somehow completely logical closer of a Broadway-style cover of that play's "Suddenly, Seymour."
13. The Necromancers -- Of Blood and Wine
It's a bluesy, stoner-metal, progressive rock opus about Vlad Dracula, with driving, straightforward rock suddenly blooming into twisty, winding, meditative passages and stompy doom, with harmonic solos bordering on hair-metal virtuoso territory. Bloody awesome.
12. covet -- effloresce
Tough to get math rock right. The genre is full of virtuoso performances, but they're often emotionless. After all, math is in the title, promising complex technical structures that marvel the mind, but not so much the heart. On effloresce, covet are not only able to stir the emotions and the mind, they're able to pull off the rare math rock hat trick-the songwriting is aces. effloresce is full of great instrumental tracks that show off Yvette Young's mastery over the electric guitar, yet it's clear Young values feeling over chops, always serving the song before showing off. Her bassist and drummer, both virtuoso players in their own right, know the invaluable trick of simultaneously underplaying and stunning. effloresce, cohesive from start to finish, is a landmark release in math rock, and a brilliant album in any genre. (Yes, italicized "and" hat trick!)
11. Pianos Become the Teeth -- Wait for Love
I didn't know they still made music like this! It's like that moody, really emotional circa-2005 indie rock music, where it still rocked, and the band members could actually play. There's optimism to start with, and then it gets all grey skies, and then all determined, and then one of those "I'm at peace with this" closers. Also, Wait for Love actually gets stronger in its latter half instead of muddying out! This would have been my jam in 2005, and it's even more my jam now.
10. mewithoutYou -- [Untitled]
I hear a lot of talk about mewithoutYou returning to form, but the truth is, everything they've put out this decade has been excellent. The art-rock (or if you like adding "post" to things, post-punk and post-hardcore) quintet are back with another blitz of spacey, stormy, effects-filled jams, mixed with a few well-placed, all out scorchers, and frontman, Aaron Weiss, switching from his gentle singing to absolutely pissed-off banshee screaming on the latter. Weiss' lyrics seem to descend deeper into spiritual chaos and discord the more normalized his real life becomes, with his words banging off each other discordantly, even as he's intoning one of the albums many lilting melodies. Er...2005?
9. Celeste Original Soundtrack -- Lena Raine
Celeste is not only my favorite video game of 2018(of those I've played), but one of my favorite games ever. This is thanks in no small part to the incredible talents of composer, Lena Raine, whose synth-based soundtrack provides a brilliant, optimistic theme for the protagonist, Madeline, along with awe and beauty-invoking music as she climbs the titular mountain, and tense melodies and beats as Celeste faces off against the darkest aspects of her own mind.
8. REZN -- Calm Black Water
Calm Black Water is a perfect blend of dark, bluesy, psychedelic doom, with riffs that could fracture the moon, and trance-inducing atmospheric grooves, which conjure an icy, pitch black cave at the bottom of the sea. The latter is created by lock-step bass and percussion, effects-laden guitar and keys, and chant vocals, a blissful combination.
7. Appalooza -- Appalooza
You're driving a badass motorcycle through a desert, and once you pass journey's midpoint, the path grows dark, misty and mystic. Appalooza are the tightest rock band I've heard in a long time, rocking so hard in a sort of piston-firing fashion, and when the atmosphere starts to thicken, they lose none of their focus, with a vocalist who can go from beefy and smooth, to an asphalt-ripping howl that would turn Kurt Cobain's head. Also, their sound engineer deserves an award, because this mix is thick and nasty.
6. Black Salvation -- Uncertainty is Bliss
Woah, it's like Echo and the Bunnymen's members were born in the 80's instead of the 50's! This sounds like if some loose-cannon psychedelic rock band were playing in a blues club that's circling the event horizon of a black hole. Or that same band playing on top of sinking wreckage, violently bobbing down a raging, flooding river at 3 am. Either way, Black Salvation are playing like they're about to get sucked into oblivion or drown. I don't use the word "epic" lightly, and in fact, I haven't used it yet in this piece, but that's because I saved it for this album. It's darkly epic.
5. The Ocean -- Phanerozoic I: Palaeozoic
Okay, maybe I'll use "epic" twice. The Ocean have released a lot of music I haven't been able to get into over the last decade, but that isn't the case here. Going back to making their albums all about geologic eons, Phanerozoic features sprawling, multi-dimensional and dynamic songs, covering a full spectrum of sound and feeling. The band and vocalist are capable of pulling off technically impressive progressive metal tracks, but can go heavily atmospheric, near ethereal, and heavy as all the rock formed during the album's titular eon. This music feels both ancient and modern, a testament to not only the band's skill, but the amount of detail and time they put into this release. Also, as far as feels...this feels like Opeth...in 2005.
4. Wauwatosa -- Souvenirs
Hey, did somebody say 2005? The year after I graduated college, I got booted off the radio, as I was no longer a college student. I listened to my old station and place of work on a regular basis, particularly when I painted an isolated house with the radio as my only company, and boy does Wauwatosa give me the vibes of the indie music of 2005. There's a Radiohead-level of experimentation going on here, as this Norwegian electronic duo bring in a busload of friends to collaborate with organic instruments and vocals. The result is delightfully unpredictable, yet highly listenable, and hopefully not just lightning in a bottle as the first LP for this young band. Souvenirs also has an excellent emotional flow, working its way to an ending on some type of sunset mountaintop of feelings. Some high praise, but another 2005 reference: this reminds me of driving home through rural North Louisiana in late summer along the Mississippi, back toward Pointe Coupee Parish the day before Katrina...while I listened to Air's Talkie Walkie.
3. Spaceslug -- Eye the Tide
Polish three-piece, Spaceslug, have released three albums over the span of nineteen months, and in that span of time, have completely conquered the realm of stoner doom--or as they refer to it themselves, kozmic doom. The band's latest album, Eye the Tide, somehow features even heavier, sludgier riffs than before, somehow improved chanting vocals from Jan Rutka, more diverse instrumentation, touches of black metal, a slightly darker tone, the winding, relaxed, space-traveling meditative progressive passages they're famous for, and the best flow of any of their albums yet. I don't know how they're doing it, but I hope they can somehow keep it up. It's the perfect soundtrack for a Saturday morning drive through space.
2. Rival Consoles -- Persona
I...I don't think I can do this one justice. This is a landmark album. What Ryan Lee West has done with this electronic project is astounding. Persona is an incredible work of art. I'm gonna have to get hippie here: the sound of this album, in my mind, postulates that once an artificial intelligence reaches the moment of singularity, it will not destroy human existence, but reach out to humankind and heal our minds. Texturally, Persona gives me the vibe of the sun-bleached stone wall of some Mediterranean villa, bordered by impossibly blue water, and also a mind searching through the cosmos...yes, I don't do drugs...I already said yesterday...music is my drug. The vast array of sound, feeling, volume, texture, and rhythm West is able to cover here, while sustaining cohesion and flow, is remarkable and uncommon. If this is the last thing I hear, my ears would die satisfied.
1. Sunnata -- Outlands
Music. Is. Subjective. Sunnata's Outlands is my favorite album of the year. It was released and I purchased it in March, but I've jammed it virtually every week since. I am listening to it right now. I love how it reminds me of wandering into a dark wood at night, the earth growing steeper and rockier, fighting for ground, and then the sky flashes unearthly bright, and silhouetted ahead is an enormous, antlered human figure. Yeah, that's weird. Yeah, that's a personal, visual interpretation of aural information. Your ears might not translate Outlands' building, tribal sounds, which coalesce from chanted vocals, guitar that builds from strummed meditative patterns, to Earth-shattering riffs, eternal grooves, and a general sense of mysticism, into the same ocular imaginings. You might not see the sky crack open when Szymon Ewertowski and Adrian Gadomski sing that last, guttural, stretched out "Higherrrrrr!" Yes, this is another Polish band. I don't know what's going on over there. I don't know why that nation's hard rock bands are hitting my musical spot so consistently this year. Keep it up, Poland. Keep it up, Sunnata. I'd rather be lost in the woods than anywhere else.
Out of the few hundred albums I heard this year, out of the million or so that were created, here are my favorites.
15. Khemmis -- Desolation
Man, Desolation rocks. This album is some kind of mad fusion of modern and classic metal, prog and classic rock, and every note works, with a triumphant, fist-pumping vibe throughout.
14. The Bell Jar -- I Infest, Therefore I Am
I've always been surprised that I couldn't get into the work of Josh Porter. Showbread seemed like just my cup of tea, but I just didn't like how it tasted (also, let's end this tea metaphor ASAP!). I loved what Porter had to say in interviews. I have even enjoyed his sermons. Would I ever be able to jam his music? This debut album for his electro-punk act, The Bell Jar, answers that with a definitive yes. I Infest, Therefore I Am is relentlessly aggressive, featuring the lyrical depth and chilly screams expected from Porter, along with a great mix of aggressive and melodiously hypnotic vocals from Whitney Depaoli. The album rails against materialism and device addiction, using allusions to Little Shop of Horrors, including the somehow completely logical closer of a Broadway-style cover of that play's "Suddenly, Seymour."
13. The Necromancers -- Of Blood and Wine
It's a bluesy, stoner-metal, progressive rock opus about Vlad Dracula, with driving, straightforward rock suddenly blooming into twisty, winding, meditative passages and stompy doom, with harmonic solos bordering on hair-metal virtuoso territory. Bloody awesome.
12. covet -- effloresce
Tough to get math rock right. The genre is full of virtuoso performances, but they're often emotionless. After all, math is in the title, promising complex technical structures that marvel the mind, but not so much the heart. On effloresce, covet are not only able to stir the emotions and the mind, they're able to pull off the rare math rock hat trick-the songwriting is aces. effloresce is full of great instrumental tracks that show off Yvette Young's mastery over the electric guitar, yet it's clear Young values feeling over chops, always serving the song before showing off. Her bassist and drummer, both virtuoso players in their own right, know the invaluable trick of simultaneously underplaying and stunning. effloresce, cohesive from start to finish, is a landmark release in math rock, and a brilliant album in any genre. (Yes, italicized "and" hat trick!)
11. Pianos Become the Teeth -- Wait for Love
I didn't know they still made music like this! It's like that moody, really emotional circa-2005 indie rock music, where it still rocked, and the band members could actually play. There's optimism to start with, and then it gets all grey skies, and then all determined, and then one of those "I'm at peace with this" closers. Also, Wait for Love actually gets stronger in its latter half instead of muddying out! This would have been my jam in 2005, and it's even more my jam now.
10. mewithoutYou -- [Untitled]
I hear a lot of talk about mewithoutYou returning to form, but the truth is, everything they've put out this decade has been excellent. The art-rock (or if you like adding "post" to things, post-punk and post-hardcore) quintet are back with another blitz of spacey, stormy, effects-filled jams, mixed with a few well-placed, all out scorchers, and frontman, Aaron Weiss, switching from his gentle singing to absolutely pissed-off banshee screaming on the latter. Weiss' lyrics seem to descend deeper into spiritual chaos and discord the more normalized his real life becomes, with his words banging off each other discordantly, even as he's intoning one of the albums many lilting melodies. Er...2005?
9. Celeste Original Soundtrack -- Lena Raine
Celeste is not only my favorite video game of 2018(of those I've played), but one of my favorite games ever. This is thanks in no small part to the incredible talents of composer, Lena Raine, whose synth-based soundtrack provides a brilliant, optimistic theme for the protagonist, Madeline, along with awe and beauty-invoking music as she climbs the titular mountain, and tense melodies and beats as Celeste faces off against the darkest aspects of her own mind.
8. REZN -- Calm Black Water
Calm Black Water is a perfect blend of dark, bluesy, psychedelic doom, with riffs that could fracture the moon, and trance-inducing atmospheric grooves, which conjure an icy, pitch black cave at the bottom of the sea. The latter is created by lock-step bass and percussion, effects-laden guitar and keys, and chant vocals, a blissful combination.
7. Appalooza -- Appalooza
You're driving a badass motorcycle through a desert, and once you pass journey's midpoint, the path grows dark, misty and mystic. Appalooza are the tightest rock band I've heard in a long time, rocking so hard in a sort of piston-firing fashion, and when the atmosphere starts to thicken, they lose none of their focus, with a vocalist who can go from beefy and smooth, to an asphalt-ripping howl that would turn Kurt Cobain's head. Also, their sound engineer deserves an award, because this mix is thick and nasty.
6. Black Salvation -- Uncertainty is Bliss
Woah, it's like Echo and the Bunnymen's members were born in the 80's instead of the 50's! This sounds like if some loose-cannon psychedelic rock band were playing in a blues club that's circling the event horizon of a black hole. Or that same band playing on top of sinking wreckage, violently bobbing down a raging, flooding river at 3 am. Either way, Black Salvation are playing like they're about to get sucked into oblivion or drown. I don't use the word "epic" lightly, and in fact, I haven't used it yet in this piece, but that's because I saved it for this album. It's darkly epic.
5. The Ocean -- Phanerozoic I: Palaeozoic
Okay, maybe I'll use "epic" twice. The Ocean have released a lot of music I haven't been able to get into over the last decade, but that isn't the case here. Going back to making their albums all about geologic eons, Phanerozoic features sprawling, multi-dimensional and dynamic songs, covering a full spectrum of sound and feeling. The band and vocalist are capable of pulling off technically impressive progressive metal tracks, but can go heavily atmospheric, near ethereal, and heavy as all the rock formed during the album's titular eon. This music feels both ancient and modern, a testament to not only the band's skill, but the amount of detail and time they put into this release. Also, as far as feels...this feels like Opeth...in 2005.
4. Wauwatosa -- Souvenirs
Hey, did somebody say 2005? The year after I graduated college, I got booted off the radio, as I was no longer a college student. I listened to my old station and place of work on a regular basis, particularly when I painted an isolated house with the radio as my only company, and boy does Wauwatosa give me the vibes of the indie music of 2005. There's a Radiohead-level of experimentation going on here, as this Norwegian electronic duo bring in a busload of friends to collaborate with organic instruments and vocals. The result is delightfully unpredictable, yet highly listenable, and hopefully not just lightning in a bottle as the first LP for this young band. Souvenirs also has an excellent emotional flow, working its way to an ending on some type of sunset mountaintop of feelings. Some high praise, but another 2005 reference: this reminds me of driving home through rural North Louisiana in late summer along the Mississippi, back toward Pointe Coupee Parish the day before Katrina...while I listened to Air's Talkie Walkie.
3. Spaceslug -- Eye the Tide
Polish three-piece, Spaceslug, have released three albums over the span of nineteen months, and in that span of time, have completely conquered the realm of stoner doom--or as they refer to it themselves, kozmic doom. The band's latest album, Eye the Tide, somehow features even heavier, sludgier riffs than before, somehow improved chanting vocals from Jan Rutka, more diverse instrumentation, touches of black metal, a slightly darker tone, the winding, relaxed, space-traveling meditative progressive passages they're famous for, and the best flow of any of their albums yet. I don't know how they're doing it, but I hope they can somehow keep it up. It's the perfect soundtrack for a Saturday morning drive through space.
2. Rival Consoles -- Persona
I...I don't think I can do this one justice. This is a landmark album. What Ryan Lee West has done with this electronic project is astounding. Persona is an incredible work of art. I'm gonna have to get hippie here: the sound of this album, in my mind, postulates that once an artificial intelligence reaches the moment of singularity, it will not destroy human existence, but reach out to humankind and heal our minds. Texturally, Persona gives me the vibe of the sun-bleached stone wall of some Mediterranean villa, bordered by impossibly blue water, and also a mind searching through the cosmos...yes, I don't do drugs...I already said yesterday...music is my drug. The vast array of sound, feeling, volume, texture, and rhythm West is able to cover here, while sustaining cohesion and flow, is remarkable and uncommon. If this is the last thing I hear, my ears would die satisfied.
1. Sunnata -- Outlands
Music. Is. Subjective. Sunnata's Outlands is my favorite album of the year. It was released and I purchased it in March, but I've jammed it virtually every week since. I am listening to it right now. I love how it reminds me of wandering into a dark wood at night, the earth growing steeper and rockier, fighting for ground, and then the sky flashes unearthly bright, and silhouetted ahead is an enormous, antlered human figure. Yeah, that's weird. Yeah, that's a personal, visual interpretation of aural information. Your ears might not translate Outlands' building, tribal sounds, which coalesce from chanted vocals, guitar that builds from strummed meditative patterns, to Earth-shattering riffs, eternal grooves, and a general sense of mysticism, into the same ocular imaginings. You might not see the sky crack open when Szymon Ewertowski and Adrian Gadomski sing that last, guttural, stretched out "Higherrrrrr!" Yes, this is another Polish band. I don't know what's going on over there. I don't know why that nation's hard rock bands are hitting my musical spot so consistently this year. Keep it up, Poland. Keep it up, Sunnata. I'd rather be lost in the woods than anywhere else.
Comments
Also, I'm bad with listening to new music. I don't know if I listened through a full 2018 album … and I write for a music site! Better luck, this year? =P