My 10 Favorite Non-Black Metal Records of 2024

That up there is Scene from a Deluge by Anne-Louis Girodet. I saw it in the Louvre when I was 13, and something about it must have really captured my little imagination, because for years afterwards, I called it my favorite painting. This was before the internet, and my parents didn't buy the art book, so I didn't lay eyes on it again for literally about 2 decades, when I took an art class and something we were learning about it made me remember it.

That has nothing to with this post; I just thought I'd mention it. Here are 10 records that I could not, in good conscience, leave out of the 2024 conversation. My tastes have always been on the dark/morose side, but looking at it, Christ, even by my own standards, this is a pretty bleak top 10. That's where I'm at, clearly. As some of you commented on my previous list: here's hoping that 2025 is at least a little better than 2024. Thanks to y'all, I keep getting "A Long December" by Counting Crows stuck in my head because of that line about "maybe this year will be better than the last."

Also, I know how this all might look -- the intro to my black metal top 20 kinda reads like a suicide note -- but I swear, I'm gonna be fine. A lot of things have gone/stayed right for me this year. My job, as busy as it keeps me, is great; I still have a wonderful, hilarious wife who loves and supports me; I have great friends and family in my corner; and music, even the bleakest of it, continues to bring me joy. Life is an endless parade of chaos and grotesqueries, but that's nothing new, right?

So now that I've been neurotic a bit more, and mentioned Counting Crows, let's get on with the list!

#10

Total Blue

Total Blue

Total Blue sounds like a lost ECM ambient-jazz gem from the early 80s. From top to bottom, at no point does Total Blue break the enchanting, time capsule-like vibe -- just soft, echoing synths, fretless bass, sporadic percussion, gentle saxophone, and the like, all melting into a nice, warm musical bath.

#9

Keeley Forsyth

The Hollow

The second coming of Tilt-era Scott Walker. Haunting, sparse compositions made up of organ, strings, horns/woodwinds, and sputtering percussion, with Forsyth's entrancing vocals at the center, offering comforting affirmations like, "Shake my life out of my mouth" and "Let the body lay down and die." Not an easy listen.

#8

Cabinet

Hydrolysated Ordination

Disgusting, muddy, experimental death metal encased in hovering, ghostly, atmospheric guitar figures. Kinda feels like the album itself is decomposing in real time as you listen to it.

#7

bnny

One Million Love Songs

"I'm hanging on to the good stuff / I'm hanging on to my big love."

An indie rock breakup record that I willfully misinterpret as a grief record. For instance, the first track, "Missing", plays as a sweet, dreamy reverie, until the final gut-punch: "When I'm with you, I almost forget / That he's missing." I understand the intention, but it's so easy to hear it as describing grief's tendency to stick around in the peripherals, even in our most joyful moments.

#6

Cosmic Putrefaction

Emerald Fires Atop the Farewell Mountains

Lysergic death metal -- in space! Honestly, the band name pretty much has it covered. Brutal and gross, with cool, angular solos and reverb-y death growl, plus a bunch of dissonant clean guitars and even some synth to flesh out the cosmic atmospheres. If this record hadn't come out this year, maybe I would've liked the new Blood Incantation more, because I wouldn't have had such a perfect counterpoint locked and loaded. Whoops!

#5

Grandaddy

Blu Wav

Grandaddy goes country -- in space! Nothing but slow-to-midtempo sadboi ballads, with a glimmering sheen of pedal steel and bright, gauzy synths. The vibe is there, but what really matters is that these are truly phenomenal, interesting songs with unorthodox subjects, like doomed inter-office romance and torturing an ex-lover with remote jukebox selections. Easily the most I have enjoyed a Grandaddy record since The Sophtware Slump.

#4

Lætitia Sadier

Rooting for Love

I have a friend who lives in another city and, bless him, listens to a lot of what I consider to be pretty boring music. It's not terrible, just not my thing: faceless neo-garage rock and polite, vibe-y, Spotify-approved R&B/pop. And earlier this year, he sent me a link to Billie Eilish's then-new album, which I'd already heard, and sure, it's fine. If you like it, I'm not trying to yuck your yum. But for me, it felt emblematic of many of the things that turn me off about pop music circa 2024 -- it's glum, musically bland, and you have to actually care about the artist's personal story to engage with it. And I do not care about Billie Eilish's personal story. She is rich beyond my wildest dreams, her life looks nothing like mine, and I couldn't give less of a shit about whether or not fame is hard for her, or she just figured out that she likes to eat pussy. (This is true of all pop stars btw, Billie Eilish just happens to be the one I'm talking about right now. I still like "Bad Guy".)

So I essentially say all that to my friend, because I know he can take it because he's secure in his own tastes -- an admirable trait -- and he's like, "Fine, dickhead, what are you listening to that's so great?" And what's the first album that pops into my head? Rooting for Love by Lætitia Sadier, which is now officially my favorite of Sadier's solo records. Like everything she does, it's bittersweet and subtle, with an undercurrent of unease. It pulls from jazz, fusion, chanson, post-rock, trip-hop, and bachelor pad music -- difficult, knotty music that is somehow all very easy on the ears. And it has one of my all-time favorite album closers.

What did my friend think? He said, "damn, this is really good," then we never talked about it again. I'm guessing he listened for about 30 seconds then put something else on. Probably thought, "huh, not terrible, just not my thing." He still sends me links to "grown folks music" pretty regularly, despite my telling him that all I listen to is "morose bullshit for cranky nerds", and I wouldn't have it any other way.

Previously:

All Lætitia Sadier related posts

#3

meth.

Shame

Unrelentingly ugly noise-rock-sludge-metal. Very reminiscent of early Swans, but with high and low-register growls, blast beats, and the kind of crushing heaviness that can only come from the realms of extreme metal. I was still in the depths of acute mourning for my friend the first time I heard this -- according to metadata, it was a week and one day after he passed -- and I played it so fucking loud I'm pretty sure I damaged my hearing. This record is a 43-minute-long panic attack, and it's been extremely cathartic to repeatedly almost level my house by blasting it while I do pushups.

#2

Itasca

Imitation of War

It's honestly going to be hard for me to talk about this record as a collection of music, as it has meant a great deal more to me than that since my friend Danny's passing. But I'll try. The watery, wandering guitars suggest to me a more meditative take on Meat Puppets circa Up on the Sun (one of my all-time favorite records, don't think it's ever come up on here), with just a touch of the icy shimmer of Joni Mitchell circa Night Ride Home. Vocally, Itasca (actual name: Kayla Cohen) is gentle, warm, and borderline conversational -- in places, the line between singing and speaking becomes blurred. Her lyrics are naturalistic, psychedelic, impressionistic, even fantastical, but grounded in very real emotion that often, to me, feels like grief; in fact, the last lines of the opening track, "Milk", go: "With my walking stick / I check the depths of my grief / Standing as water / I must dive down."

I had a whole story I was planning to tell about the first time I listened to it, but ultimately it's not that interesting: I was walking to meet my friends, still really going through the grieving process, it was sunny, I put this on, it touched my soul. I wish I could describe that feeling better, but words fail me. Itasca, play me out:

"Misguided wish for fire’s song

Chaos in the veil that we’re walking upon

My prayer is tired but my rosary is long

That’s the effigy I’ll hold 'til the shadow’s gone."

#1

Ingurgitating Oblivion

Ontology of Nought

Jazz and technical death metal have a lot in common. Both require considerable chops; favor angular, dissonant themes; and thrive in a near-constant state of barely controlled chaos. On paper, it's as intuitive a mix as black metal and shoegaze. However, unlike shoegaze, which is about 95% buying the right pedals and tweaking the vocal reverb, jazz requires a ton of training and practice to get right. And there is one key core difference: jazz is inherently loose in both composition and execution, and technical death metal is, conversely, extremely rigid in both areas.

Ingurgitating Oblivion is not the first band to merge the two (shout out Cephalic Carnage, who kinda sucked at it but bless them for trying, and who are somehow now coming up in my year-end content for the second time -- see #5) but they are by far the most successful. Ontology of Nought is an absolute mammoth of a record. It consists of five massive, amorphous pieces of experimental technical death metal played with the loose, explorative feel of avant-garde jazz, rich with non-metal flourishes -- vibraphone, sample manipulation, choral vocals, singing bowls -- and free-floating in pitch-black atmosphere. I've never heard anything like it.

At full-tilt, it's utterly disorienting. There's no obvious time signature or structure, no light or point on the horizon on which to affix your gaze; you're alone, treading water in the middle of the ocean in the dead of night, with no sense of space or time, getting pummeled by waves that you can't see or brace yourself for. And these moments are not brief -- the shortest song is just over 10 minutes long, and two songs top 18 minutes. However, the listener is offered respite in the form of extended denouements at the end of every track, wherein dark ambient and neoclassical elements are pushed to the forefront. I'm particularly fond of the end of "The Blossoms of Your Tomorrow Shall Unfold in My Heart", in which a choir of demonic angels repeatedly insists: "It does not have an essence / It will cease and be no more" as the music fades, until it's just a single speaking voice, repeating "no more" against a minimal, pulsing drone.

Just imagine that happening at the end of this list. That way, I don't have to come up with a proper ending.

My 20 Favorite Black Metal Albums of 2024

I'm gonna be totally honest with the five of you: 2024 was a shit year for ol' DEAR_SPIRIT. Between my friend dying, my cat dying, and the general states of culture, economics, politics, and society, it's been a truly disheartening soul-fuck of a year, and I have fucking hated every second of it. These year-end lists of mine always start with some kind of glib pronouncement about how awful everything is, but this year, I truly, truly mean it. Fuck this fucking year.

Of course, the near-constant mix of anger, sorrow, dejection, alienation, shame, disgust, and misanthropy I've been feeling can only mean one thing: that my love for black metal has never been stronger! As with last year, this easily could have been a top 50 if I had more time, but I don't, so 20 will have to do. Spoiler alert: Paysage d'Hiver is not on here. I liked that record a lot, just not as much as you do, probably.

To anyone who's left out there: thanks for sticking around to witness the final gasps of a dying mp3 blog. It's had a great/OK/passable run, and I'm not sure if I'm ever going to 'officially' put this thing to bed, but every post I make feels like it might be the last. To be clear, I'm not PLANNING for this post to be the last one -- I'm just saying, it might be, who the fuck knows. So if this is the last time you hear from me on here: you better listen to every single album I've ever posted from front to back, or I will find you and kill you.

#20

Dead Flesh Stigma

Necrocosmic Death Ritual

Industrial-infused madness courtesy of V-KhaoZ, an extremely prolific Fin with a bunch of other solo projects. Necrocosmic Death Ritual harkens back to a time -- the 90s -- when industrial black metal didn't have to be all cyber-future-digital-cyborg-dystopian, and could just be Satanic black metal with EBM-type drum machines and synths.

#19

Eschatologia

Transcendence

Queasy, dissonant sounds that have plenty in common with Moon, I Shalt Become, Velvet Cacoon, Xasthur, etc. There's a bit more spring in Eschatologia's step than those bands, but they're hovering around in the same tormented, spectral space.

#18

Nimbifer

Der böse Geist

German raw black metal that, for all its ferocity, maintains a sense of fragility and sorrow throughout. This is in no small part due to the recurring presence of ethereal, hovering guitar feedback. Unlike most raw BM, which typically has the feel of being shackled and whipped in a dripping dungeon, Der böse Geist sounds like it's constantly being pulled heavenward.

#17

Horn

Daudswiärk

Topnotch pagan black metal from a German institution. Runs the gamut of mid-paced, Nordland-esque atmosphere, blasting ferocity, and even what sounds to me like a bit of post-punk -- see the chiming guitar refrain of "Broth" -- but ultimately, you're just looking at majestic, melodic, folk-infused pagan BM at its finest.

#16

Solbrud

IIII

A double album of sprawling, earthy atmospheric BM that has unfortunately turned out to be the swansong from this excellent, underrated Danish band. In retrospect, the writing was on the wall: the central conceit of IIII is that it is divided into four parts, each representing a different element of nature, and each solely composed by one of the band's four members. However, this somewhat fractured approach resulted in the band's most diverse set -- see the unexpected pivot into glacial, Floydian psychedelia on "Sjælskrig" -- and as definitive a closing statement as one could have hoped for.

Previously:

Solbrud - Jærtegn (2014)

#15

Howl

Drought

Beastly caveman solo BM from Estonia of all places. Gnarly power-chord riffs, echoing rasps, and dive bombing solos, all encased in tastefully cavernous production. Great promo pic, too.

#14

Gråt Strigoi

The Prophetic Silence

Probably the best explicitly anti-fascist black metal I've ever heard -- maybe I'm forgetting something. Furious, heavy, and raw, with under/overtones of DSBM, dissonant post-sludge, and harsh noise-drone, the latter of which practically subsumes monolithic album closer "For the Blood Made Ruins".

#13

Leprous Vortex Sun

Ш​у​м н​е​б​ы​т​и​я

A gnarled, dissonant, nightmare-ish cacophony with no light and, save for a few pockets of rumbling dark ambience, no respite. Upping the chaos ante is the band's tendency to start songs at full-tilt -- almost in media res -- then ending them just as abruptly. There is little to no space between tracks, and often the only discernible shifts are textural or tonal. An excellent entry in the Deathspell Omega/Portal pantheon.

#12

Black Curse

Burning in Celestial Poison

Unrelenting black-death madness from a formidable lineup. Every time it seems like they're gonna take a second to breathe, it's as if they get injected with Bane juice and start raging all over again. A top-to-bottom kick in the teeth.

#11

Possessive

Res Ipsa Loquitur

Punishing, heavy, and straight-up cruel sludge/black/death. Res Ipsa Loquitur absolutely fucking hates you. It's honestly barely black metal, but close enough.

#10

Austere

Beneath the Threshold

Having returned last year with arguably their best album yet, Austere kept the miserable momentum going in 2024 by charging headlong into the melodic, mid-paced kingdoms of Katatonia and early Anathema. Their knack for beautifully downcast, simple yet memorable melodic themes remains, and provides a through-line to their droning DSBM past.

Previously:

Austere - Withering Illusions and Desolation (2007)

My 20 Favorite Black Metal Records of 2023

#9

Ildganger

For Hver Tanke Mister Sj​æ​len Atter Farve

Raw, ghostly atmospheric BM. There's a lot of intermingling of seemingly opposed elements here -- clean and distorted guitars, dissonant and melodic guitar lines, blasting ice-storms bumping up against still, minimal sorrow -- that really spoke to me in the aftermath of losing my friend, and that's the kind of emotional resonance that tends to stick with you. Two albums in, Ildganger's batting 100.

Previously:

My 20 Favorite Black Metal Records of 2023

#8

Hässlig

Apex Predator

Hateful, nasty-ass Ildjarn-core for crushing and consuming the weak. I feel a weird kinship with this band because they sound not at all unlike my old band, just way more dialed in, and obviously, that also means that their sound is just way, way up my alley. If this list was ordered by how much iron I've pumped while listening to them, Apex Predator would be at #1 by a comfortable margin.

#7

Astral Lore

Astral Lore

Three beautiful, sprawling pieces of black metal majesty from a band that seemingly sprung from out of nowhere, fully formed. Riffs often recall the droning fury of Ukranian BM, while the leads tend to have a more forlorn, funereal quality. In spite of the somewhat lo-fi, ‘live' (read: not individually tracked) recording, Astral Lore clearly have given a lot of thought to composition here, as each track tells its own story -- even with quite limited sonic ingredients. Fans of early Paysage d'Hiver, Drudkh, and maybe even Weakling should check in.

#6

Verberis

The Apophatic Wilderness

Two years removed from the creative breakthrough of Adumbration of the Veiled Logos, Verberis have reemerged both leaner and more cerebral. The guitars are cleaner and the writing is knottier -- at times bordering on math-y -- and the end result is shimmering, thematically esoteric, and utterly enthralling.

Previously:

My 20 Favorite Black Metal Records of 2022

#5

Scarcity

The Promise of Rain

Eventually, for a time, The Promise of Rain settles down a bit. But it starts with, without a doubt, some of the most batshit insane guitars I have ever heard on what's ostensibly a black metal record. Just utterly dissonant and ugly, but with this chiming, minimal, almost playful approach. Truly unhinged. Almost sounds like Drive Like Jehu tried their hand at black metal. It reminds me of the first time I heard "Pseudo" by Cephalic Carnage and I kept thinking about the guitarist showing up at band practice like, "Guys, check out this awesome riff I wrote!", then proceeding to play the most unintelligible sequence of garbled nonsense imaginable while looking at them expectantly.

Previously:

My 20 Favorite Black Metal Records of 2022

#4

Thy Woe

To Soothe the Torment Etched on Thy Solemn Face

Based on the cover, I was definitely expecting this to be dungeon synth-y raw BM for creeping through the shadows with a candelabra in your hand. (Or maybe amateurish DSBM.) And while that assessment wasn't completely off, it greatly undersells what's arguably the platonic ideal of second-wave black metal in 2024. You can headbang to it, you can cut yourself to it, you can worship Satan to it -- often all at once. Plus, from Bathory to Tragedy, I've always been a huge proponent of a well-placed bell chime, and Thy Woe's contribution to this storied lineage, "Cruel Fate's Design", is more than worthy.

#3

Oranssi Pazuzu

Muuntautuja

Oranssi Pazuzu have almost completely left black metal behind at this point. Muuntautuja is a chaotic, dense amalgamation of horror soundtracks, drone rock, and trip-hop -- at least two songs on here made me think of Subliminal Sandwich -- all twisted, beaten, burnt, sliced, stretched, and finessed into the band's skewed vision for the genre.

Previously:

Oranssi Pazuzu - Kosmonument (2011)

My 20 Favorite Records of 2020

#2

Akhlys

House of the Black Geminus

House of the Black Geminus hits like a fucking pitch-black tsunami. It's dense, impossibly heavy, and awe-inspiringly massive. Played at even moderate volumes, it feels like it takes on a psychical presence in the room. And that's just the sonics of it. Musically, this is the stuff of nightmares, with echoing guitar lines and thick-ass synths that sound like something John Carpenter and Alan Howarth might've come up with in their prime, compositions that start at a 10 on the anxiety scale then somehow build up from there, and unrelenting viciousness and brutality.

Previously:

Akhlys - Supplication (2009)

#1

Givre

Le Cloître

It starts with a whisper -- a graceful, descending guitar figure. A second guitar comes in, initially mirroring the first, then dropping lower to tap into an unexpected clashing of chords. It feels like foreshadowing -- the listener is immersed in this gentle, chiming guitar, but with periodic glimpses of dissonance that suggest that this tranquility is too fragile to last.

Le Cloître is a concept album, with each of its six tracks discussing the story of a different female Catholic saint. (Givre may or may not be Catholic themselves -- they're a bit elusive in interviews.) It covers a lot of terrain -- queasy orthodox BM, churning post-metal, atmos-sludge, and more traditional, epic BM -- but it all feels like it's flowing from the same sorrowful, tormented, blood-red river. It's the kind of emotional, singular listening experience that I've always found difficult to describe -- that's what music is for, right? But I can say, definitively, that Le Cloître is one of my favorite black metal records in existence.

Déçu - ..Whirlwind (2024)

French raw DSBM. ..Whirlwind is a great example of how production can absolutely make or break a black metal record. It's compositionally minimal, often to an extreme -- there are songs made up entirely of cycling back and forth between a pair of two-chord 'riffs' -- and with big, polished production, they'd probably drag. And yet, the warm, distorted, analogue wall of sound makes it feel like it's the end of the fucking world. When it first hit, it honestly reminded me of the first time I heard "Only Shallow" -- not so much in sound but pure, visceral impact.

Perhaps most importantly, though: you can just feel how real it is. No one makes a track like "Glacial Décadence des Lamentations." unless they're really going through it.

Free/name your price via bandcamp.

Track listing:

1. Être dans tes bras.

2. Dors, ne souffre plus.

3. Morose Regret & Malheur Éternel.

4. Dormir sous les sanglots. (Berceuse I)

5. Today I realized how much destruction reminded me of you.

6. Glacial Décadence des Lamentations.

The ecstasy of drowning

You should also listen to:

Animus - Poems for the Aching, Swords for the Infuriated (2005)

Wrath of the Weak - Alogon (2008)

Various Artists - Misguided Wish for Fire's Song - 2024 Pt. 1 (2024)

My car is an '04 Corolla that has no Bluetooth and no AUX. It has the radio and a CD player. Sure, I could get a new stereo system installed, but I've weirdly fallen back in love with the art of the mix CD. No matter how well they come together, Spotify playlists always feel unfinished to me, whereas with a mix CD, you finalize a playlist and actually create a physical artifact of it. Much more satisfying. Less practical, of course, but more satisfying.

So this is the most recent one that I've made, and it's a collection of some of my favorite songs that have been released this year so far. It's not comprehensive, and it definitely wasn't made for public consumption, but it hasn't left my CD player for two weeks now, and it's what I have for you. Here's a quick rundown of the track list. Sorry if this is weird, I don't know what the hell life is anymore.

1. Lætitia Sadier - "Cloud 6"

The last song on Rooting for Love, which is probably my favorite Sadier solo record. The abrupt, borderline jump-scare ending is brilliant.

2. Amaro Freitas - "Sonho Ancestral"

Brazilian jazz piano. Buoyant and reflective.

3. Grandaddy - "Long as I'm Not the One"

A shiny, mid-paced sad-sack ballad among a collection of shiny, mid-paced sad-sack ballads.

4. Gesaffelstein - "Hard Dreams"

Reminds me of the golden age of electroclash.

5. Chelsea Wolfe - "Whispers in the Echo Chamber"

From the whispered breakdown to the riff-y ending that quickly redlines: she's in her NIN era.

6. meth. - "Shame"

Devastating, merciless noise-sludge. Title track from what's probably my AOTY at the moment.

7. Mizu - "Pump"

Ambient cello/electronics/field recordings.

8. Itasca - "Tears on Sky Mountain"

Weightless, gently psychedelic folk rock. The song from which I lifted the pretentious name for this mix. Again, I wasn't planning on sharing this when I made it.

9. Julia Holter - "Something in the Room She Moves"

Y'all probably know this one.

10. Kelly Moran - "Dancer Polynomials"

Hypnotic, cascading piano.

11. Ildganger - "Dans Om Tomhedens Mund"

Depressive, atmospheric, anxious yet majestic, raw-ish black metal.

12. Elegý - "Ship of Hopes"

Melodic, epic DSBM/post-BM.

13. Lila Ehjä - "Rust"

Slow-burning electro-darkwave track that takes on a shoegaze-like wall of guitar as it progresses.

14. Six Organs of Admittance - "Slip Away"

A spacious, haunting, acoustic-led psych-folk elegy that tends to make me cry.

Hopefully this doesn't result in Google deleting my blog. Enjoy!

I'm not fucking around

We're halfway dead

Morwan - Svitaye, Palaye (2023)

Ukrainian one-man post-punk. Driving, urgent songs with a sorrowful, almost neofolk-esque undercurrent and a vast, echoing atmosphere. From Bandcamp: "The main theme of the album is the war. There are no specific stories or descriptions of the events of the war. It's more of an abstract and emotional thing. First impressions, moods or emotions experienced during certain events. Pain of loss, sadness, fear, hatred, anger, and aggression are all part of Svitaye, Palaye."

(Free/name your price download from Bandcamp.)

Track listing:

1. Журба

2. Сяєш

3. Полетіли

4. Грім

5. Тополі

6. Відчуваєш

7. Земля палає

It's dawning, it's burning

You should also listen to:

New Model Army - Vengeance (1984)

Rome - Flowers from Exile (2009)

DEAR_SPIRIT Tells You About 5 New Black Metal Records He Likes

Longtime readers will know that, aside from a few notable exceptions, I don't really tell y'all a lot about myself. Sure, if one were inclined to delve deep into the OPIUM HUM stacks, one could ascertain or infer a great deal about me through asides and offhand remarks, but overall, as personal as it can feel, I think this blog's pretty light on actual self-disclosure.

Therefore, y'all would have no way of knowing that the past year of my life has been a time of unprecedented personal growth. I feel like a very different person from the one that started this blog, and this version of me aspires to be a force for good and a source of light, and to reject the pitfalls of nihilism, misanthropy, and hopelessness.

Thankfully, none of this has impacted my abiding love for black metal and all the hatefulness and misery therein. In fact, over the past few months, I've been listening to more of it than I have in years. This is at least in part due to this year's crop of black metal records having provided a particularly plentiful bounty thus far -- from raw Darkthrone worship to dissonant death-infused chaos to strange and exciting new directions for the genre. These five records are ones that I absolutely love and that I haven't seen or heard a lot of hype around.

Jesum Christum - Svag Total

Raw, atmospheric solo project from a man who calls himself Adam CCSquele, a.k.a. drummer of the great Slægt. Epic, mournful guitar work and near-constant blasting complimented by some inspired instrumentation choices, such as the choral vocals and woodwinds that haunt the peripherals of "Drænet på uvist tid" -- easily one of my favorite pieces of black metal art in the past however-many years.

Listen/buy. (Name Your Price download!)

Uzlaga - The Sunken Seer

Down-tuned, heavy-as-fuck, ocean-themed black metal from this English solo project. Anthemic one-two beats, three-chord riffs, and vicious, reverb-drenched vocals, with a huge, densely layered sound, rounded out by a handful of industrial-tinged ambient interludes.

Listen/buy.

Denevér - A vérivók krónikái

Damn, another solo project. I swear I wasn't planning for this list to be all solo projects, I guess it's just a great year for BMSPs -- an acronym that really should already exist. Anyway, this one's Hungarian and vampire-themed, but it's not raw, spoopy vampiric black metal -- the icy, almost thrash-y riffing,  hyperspeed blasts, and overall ass-kicking delivery place it much closer to Battles in the North than Transilvanian Hunger. Plus some totally sick shred solos.

Listen/buy.

Madre - Embryo

French/Italian atmospheric industrial black metal. A thick, droning haze of tremolo-picked guitars, space-y synths, programmed hammer-blasts, harsh noise, and bestial howls from the void.

Listen/buy.

Schavot - Kronieken Uit de Nevel

Schavot has the sound of mid-late 90s second-wave black metal down to a T. From the melodic-yet-evil guitars, to the lupine vocals, to the subtle layers of ethereal keys, to the punchy but atmospheric mixing -- it's all there. They even got a Lady of the Lake to do some oohs and ahhs and a Pinhead soundalike to do spoken word. Absolutely nailed it.

Listen/buy.

DEAR_SPIRIT Tells You About 5 More New Records That He Likes

As some of you surely know, I don't post download links to brand new albums, with the obvious exception of albums that the artists themselves have made available for free download. As none of you know -- unless you've been spying on me, you weird pervert -- practically all I've been listening to is new stuff. And Steve Tibbetts while I do school work. So instead of yet another Steve Tibbetts record, these are 5 more recent favorites, and if you like one of them, please consider buckling down and actually buying it.

Scowl - Psychic Dance Routine

The first track on Psychic Dance Routine is a flaming, head-on collision of 'traditional,' circle-pitting hardcore and hooky pop-grunge à la Veruca Salt. The rest of the EP fleshes out that dichotomy in spectacular form. It's a blatant swing towards accessibility and a wider reach, but it's also easily my favorite thing this band has done.

Listen/buy.

Nicole Dollanganger - Married in Mount Airy

Vignettes of doomed romance, addiction, abuse, suicide, and murder via dark, surreal, undeniably Lynch-ian Americana. Dollanganger's dreamy, almost child-like voice and guitar are at the core of every song, but they're encased in layered, pitch-shifted sonics that have an unsettling, almost alien-sounding sheen. Fans of Ethel Cain should find a lot to love here.

Listen/buy.

Tujiko Noriko - Crépuscule I & II

Tujiko Noriko has been making excellent IDM/experimental pop/other electronic sounds since the turn of the millennium, and it's truly criminal that I have never posted about her on here. Her latest, Crépuscule I & II is an expansive double album of immersive, cavernous ambience: drifting, reverb-drenched synths, the odd scattered, slo-mo rhythm, and Noriko's whispery intonations.

Listen/buy.

Derhead - The Grey Zone Phobia

Dense, eerie black metal with a massive, all-consuming sound that suggests both the yawning cosmos and the crushing cacophony of urban sprawl -- quite appropriate for an album that purportedly encourages the listener to "contemplate the contrast between reality and the inner self." Labyrinthine but not overwrought, frightening singular but not self-consciously so. Undoubtedly some of the best black metal in recent memory.

Listen/buy.

Baaba Maal - Being

A seamless fusion of Senegalese desert rock and half-time electro-pop groove. Maal's vocals would be mesmerizing in virtually any context, but over distorted rhythms and subwoofer-knocking bass-lines, there are moments of true transcendence. Practically impossible to listen to at anything less than max volume.

Listen/buy.

DEAR_SPIRIT Tells You About 5 New Records That He Likes

I'm getting ready to flee to a Real Housewives-style house in Mexico with a bunch of friends, and between sunbathing, floating in a pool, swimming in the ocean, eating fresh-caught grouper, and taking tequila shots, I don't expect to have much time for nerdy music blogging. However, I do know that legions of rabid fans are hanging on to my every word, unsure what to listen to, when to listen to it, and generally how to live without my impeccable taste, acerbic wit, and timeless wisdom to guide them. So to tide you over, here, in no particular order, are 5 of my favorite records of 2023 so far. Go support some artists who are trying to make it work in the here and now.

Hamish Hawk - Angel Numbers

I'm not wasting time. This is my current AOTY. Arch, clever songwriting with a wide emotional breadth that both celebrates and takes the piss out of our dumb human endeavors. It's sarcastic and cutting, but warm and sweet at its core -- check out the mid-paced, "Dead Flowers"-esque "Rest and Veneers" for a taste of that sweetness. Fills the Morrissey- and Pulp-sized holes in my heart.

Listen/buy.

Exhibition - The Last Laugh

NYC hardcore/crossover of the highest caliber. My current favorite of an already extremely strong crop of hardcore records to be released this year. If you're not crowd-killing, head-banging, or crushing your PRs: I'm sorry but you're a lost soul and I can't save you.

Listen/buy.

ICECOLD BISHOP - Generational Curse

A heartbreaking exploration of generational trauma and institutional inequity that goes hard as fuck. ICECOLD BISHOP has an extremely versatile voice that effortlessly jumps from a B-Real-sounding yelp to a smooth sing-flow to a distorted scream, and he's fond of running it through filters and effects, so he ends up sounding like he's single-handedly embodying an entire, multi-generational community of voices.

Listen.

Lisa O'Neill - All of This Is Chance

All of This Is Chance starts off on an almost aggressively Irish note: first, we hear O'Neill's thick Irish accent, then she's mentioning potatoes in the second line. But All of This Is Chance quickly reveals itself as a deeply engrossing album full of droning, earthy instrumentation and haunting songs of love, famine, and resurrection. And birds.

Listen/buy.

Hammock - Love in the Void

My favorite pretty-sad post-rock album I've heard in years. It's hard to quantify what makes Hammock and Love in the Void stand out among the countless hordes of bands who move in the same lane, so I'll just say that, from its huge, immersive atmosphere to its patient, breathtakingly beautiful songs, Love in the Void is the most perfect version of itself imaginable.

Listen/buy.