James Ballinger
10. Run the Jewels – Run the Jewels 2
Easily the best hip-hop record of the year, nothing more to say other then get it now.
9. Obliterations – Poison Everything
One of the bands I was most excited to see this year at Southwest Terror Fest were Obliterations, and the set was bonkers. The record is a blast of Poison Idea meets Motorhead fury.
8. Triptykon – Melana Chasmata
Perfect record, great vinyl packaging too.
7. Drunk Dad – Ripper Killer
It’s hard not to hear the Nirvana “Bleach” era influence here. And yeah, even though that was noted in a handful of reviews, it’s hardly a throwback record. Drunk Dad has their own thing going on, and this record rules. It’s a killer ripper. Killer.
6. Deadkill – No,Never!
The most fun record of the year. But not harmless fun, there will be harm. You’ll probably get so drunk you puke later, you’ll wake up in a pile of puke, and you do it again, because you’re a badass. A solid, straight-forward punk rock record, ending with “The Desert”, one of my favorite songs of the year. Glug glug.
5. Melvins – Hold It In
The most exciting Melvins record in years, with Buzz and Dale teaming up with Butthole Surfers Jeff Pinkus and Paul Leary.
4. Mac Demarco – Salad Days
I had never heard of Mac Demarco until I was driving home from a show late one night, listening to KEXP, and “Fortress of Solitude” came on. I’ve been hooked ever since. I’m a hipster now.
3. Eyehategod – Eyehategod
It’s been a long wait, but worth it. Their first record in forever, their last record with founding member and drummer Joey Lacaze (RIP), it’s violent and still completely vital.
2. Helms Alee – Sleepwalking Sailors
This record owned the better part of my year. One of the Seattle trios best records, melodic and durgy goodness.
1. Yob – Clearing The Path To Ascend
There has been a fair amount of recent press on this record lately, and by much better writers then myself. But this is the record that made me more than just a Yob fan. It’s flawless, from the start to the brilliant and beautiful closer, “Marrow”.
Honorable Mentions:
Murder City Devils – The White Ghost Has Blood on its Hands Again
The Body/Thou – Released From Love
J Mascis – Tied To A Star
Floor – Oblation
Pig Destroyer – Mass & Volume
Lee Newman
10. Sempiternal Dusk – Sempiternal Dusk
This long-awaited full-length is equal parts the wild bombast of Incantation and the gloomy temperance of Void Meditation Cult. Simplistic guitars that sound like an oppressive fog, restrained drumming and masterful songwriting are a fresh take on everything we liked about death metal in the first place.
Listen: “Moon Beneath Hook Cross”
http://darkdescentrecords.bandcamp.com/track/moon-beneath-hook-cross
9. Thom Yorke – Tomorrow’s Modern Boxes
Released without any prior warning through a first of its kind, pay what you want BitTorrent system, Thom Yorke is known for using his releases as commentaries on music in the digital age. But beneath this showy contrarianism is a quiet enigma of an album. Spare, burbling electronics patter over reedy, reserved vocals like a mild rain. While not the emotional wallop Yorke is known for, Tomorrow’s Modern Boxes is a hushed little album, evoking small paranoias and small hopes.
Listen: “Guess Again”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hbK-wsrdoHA
8. Rome – A Passage to Rhodesia
Neofolk and martial industrial are some of the more conflict-ridden areas of musical interest, as anyone following this year’s Death In June vs. Antifa shitstorm can attest. But there’s no need to worry about the tired danger of Nazi imagery here. Rome’s clever lyricism and slick, gothy production capture the romance of history and war. A breath of fresh, bracing, slightly mortar-scented air in an insular, dispute-prone genre.
Listen: “One Fire”
7. Cut Hands – Festival of the Dead
An album that feels like a shot of adrenaline to the heart: voodoo drums, harsh electronics and trance-inducing noise. Leaning less heavily on atmospherics than previous releases, Festival of the Dead delivers warlike drumming so relentlessly ecstatic that anyone who doesn’t feel their heart racing while listening to it is probably dead.
Listen: “The Claw”
http://blackesteverblack.bandcamp.com/track/the-claw
6. Teitanblood – Death
Let 2014 be known as the year metal got its bass back. Gone are the days of the ear-splitting, tin can treble that was so popular through the late 2000s – on this album, Teitanblood beef up their production and deliver a cacophonous, genre-defining work. Given how frequently mortality is bandied about in metal circles, it almost seems presumptuous to call an album just Death, but no body of work is more deserving of the title than this one.
Listen: “Sleeping Throats of the Antichrist”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W4Upx4v9hP8
5. Disemballerina – Undertaker
Has loss ever been so beautifully, hauntingly set to music? Here, the Portland acoustic trio spins silken, brittle death acceptance meditations that feel like drinking alone on winter nights. Undertaker opens with a recorded sample of someone’s final breaths, and only gets darker from there. I’m not crying, you’re crying.
Listen: “Carpathia”
http://disemballerinapdx.bandcamp.com/track/carpathia
4. Dead Congregation – Promulgation of the Fall
Ever since their 2008 full-length Graves of the Archangels, Dead Congregation has kept us wanting more like the most addictive of drugs. This is death metal at its nastiest and most satisfying, all crunchy distortion, guttural vocals and double-kick drums. Never monotonous or muddy, always crushing. Please don’t make us wait as long for the next one, okay?
Listen: “Quintessence Maligned”
http://deadcongregation.bandcamp.com/track/quintessence-maligned
3. Perturbator – Dangerous Days
Music for the Blade Runner future that never came to be. Endless layers of thick, pulsating synths call to mind pink neon, feathered hair and cyberpunk fantasies. Sinister and campy in equal measure, Dangerous Days is a wildly fun exploration of 1980s futurism.
Listen: “Perturbator’s Theme”
http://perturbator.bandcamp.com/track/perturbators-theme
2. Necros Christos – Nine Graves
Occult metal snake charmers Necros Christos continue to beguile. Nine Graves finds the band doing their signature balancing act between slinking, midtempo death/doom metal and Middle Eastern-flavored acoustic interludes, but it also dredges some of their earliest, gnarliest tracks out of their tombs and reworks them into polished gems that may just be some of their finest work.
Listen: “Black Bone Crucifix”
http://necroschristos.bandcamp.com/track/black-bone-crucifix
1. Merkabah – Moloch
An unsettling and magnetic free jazz/prog/metal mélange out of Poland that sounds like Kayo Dot’s angrier, darker cousin. This band is so dynamic that the first five seconds of Moloch convinced me to buy their entire discography without a second thought. One of the most underrated releases of the year – don’t sleep on this one.
Listen: “Reed Idol”
http://merkabahpl.bandcamp.com/track/reed-idol
Brian Kim
10. Key of Solomon – Exile
Key of Solomon’s final record is a perfectly balanced dagger of epic nonstop shredding and sticky melodic riffage. It’s a tragedy that this record was released posthumously and the band won’t be melting faces with these songs live, but who knows maybe they’ll reunite in ten years.
9. Earth – Primitive and Deadly
At this point, Earth’s sludgy doom has been mastered to a point of undeniable beauty. Listening to this record is not unlike watching a sculptor turn a block of stone into an exquisite statue, slowly capturing detail and form. Guest vocals from Rose Windows’ Rabia Shaheen Qazi put the track “From The Zodiacal Light” into legendary status.
8. Ladder Devils – Clean Hands
Groove heavy noise-rock with punk and post-hardcore undertones, it’s like Ladder Devils researched all the heavy music I like and wrote a record just for me. These guys deliver the goods raw and hard on their debut full length.
7. Deadkill – No, Never!
No, Never! is hands down one of the best punk rock records I’ve heard in years. It’s fun and energetic without being irreverent, it’s catchy and full of hooks without sounding poppy or cheesy. This record may not exactly be breaking new ground, but it’s expertly written and gives me everything I want out of a solid punk album.
6. Shellac – Dude Incredible
There’s just something about Steve Albini’s noodling, angular guitar riffs that strike a chord with me. On Shellac’s fifth record, their first release in seven years, they victoriously continue their hallmark of stretched out uniquely minimalist mathy noise-rock.
5. Rx Bandits – Gemini, Her Majesty
Rx Bandits have always held a special spot in my heart, especially as they began to delve deeper and deeper into proggy insanity over the course of their past few records. After a nearly five year hiatus, they’re back with a slightly more straight-forward but no less pleasing album full of masterfully intricate instrumentals and soulful, melodic vocals.
4. Kithkin – Rituals, Trances, and Ecstasies for Humans In Face of the Collapse
These self proclaimed “Cascadian treepunks” have released a remarkably solid record bursting with wild energy and catchy hooks. Kithkin conjure up a brand of art rock that is uniquely their own, banging out tribal rhythms and intertwining heartfelt crooning with witchy chanting over dense layers of guitar sorcery.
3. Wild Throne – Blood Maker
While initially disappointed when Bellingham’s explosive power trio Dog Shredder rebranded themselves as Wild Throne, any and all doubts I had were immediately washed away upon first listening to their debut EP, Blood Maker. The band maintains their incomparable energy and furious musicianship but takes it up to a new level of songwriting and accessibility.
2. Death From Above 1979 – The Physical World
While The Physical World isn’t quite as raw as previous records, it’s still just as packed with energetic, dancey beats and powerfully addictive riffs. Every track on this record is gold, the songs have evolved and the musicianship of the band seems to have grown beyond the boundaries of what they used to be into something new and unstoppable.
1. Bent Knee – Shiny Eyed Babies
It’s not too often when a song sends shivers down my spine, but this record practically hits me with shivers all the way through. I can confidently say there is no band around that quite sounds like Bent Knee, who seem to defy genre at every angle, using the full spectrum of noises available to them in nearly every way conceivable. Shiny Eyed Babies is truly a magnificent work of art, and if there’s one record you check out from this list, this should be it.
Honorable Mentions:
Against Me! – Transgender Dysphoria Blues
Beck – Morning Phase
Hans Zimmer – Interstellar: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack
Sioux – The One and the Many
Tobacco – Ultima II Massage
Jeffery M. McNulty
In alphabetical order:
1. Blood Sun Circle – Bloodiest/Sunniest
This is the one I keep coming back to. These Syracuse, NY dudes used to have a killer noise rock band called the Engineer but this new stuff is even better. We’re talking total Nick Cave worship, but in a novel, new way. The music is really, really heavy without having much distortion on it. I can’t stop listening to this record! I won’t stop!
2. Conan – Blood Eagle
Well, on first listen all I could think of was, “A band named Conan ought to be better than this…” (I am a huge Robert E Howard fan and even have a tattoo of Frazetta’s Conan on my arm) But the more I listened to it the more I liked it. Then my friend was combing through the music on my phone and he played this record, I was like, “Who is this? They rule.” and he was like, “Conan?” and I was like, “Oh shit I like Conan now!” Cool story bro. Another great British doom band.
3. Floor – Oblation
One of the best bands in the world breaks up, then gets back together ten years later and puts out one of the best records of the year? Not surprising at all.
4. The Funeral and the Twilight – Falling Corpse
Aside from Godflesh these guys were the best show I saw this year. They utterly stole the show. I had to go back and look at the calendar to remember who played because they were that fricken’ good. (It was the Atlas Moth and they ruled as well…) This recording is not quite show stealing good. A little something got lost in the translation. The brilliance of drummer is kind of hidden behind poorly tuned toms and too much trashy room sound. The bass is sometimes buried but the guitars have the correct haunting quality and the vocals, which are clearly the spotlight, are on point. At first listen one might think, “Hey these dudes know their Birthday Party, right on!” But delve into the lyrics a bit and you realize dude knows his magic. He’s invoking some dark energy and I like it! If this band ever makes it back out from Minneapolis go see them!!!!
5. Glose – The Very Best of…
This one was kind of a sleeper from me. Not sure what my problem was but for some reason when I heard one of my favorite local bands put out a record I didn’t rush out and get it. But now I wish I had because then I could have been listening to it for that much longer! Such good riffs! Seriously, Glose is one of the best bands in town right now.
6. Godflesh – World Only Lit by Fire
The time I saw Godflesh at the OK Hotel for the Streetcleaner tour was stuck permanently on my list of best shows ever. Then they somehow decide to get back together and put out another album? World Only Lit by Fire has them crushing it in the original style of Godflesh, the song ‘Carrion’ is so good! Their show at Neumos confirmed their status as THE HEAVIEST BAND IN THE WORLD.
7. Grey Widow – “I”
This is the best doom record this year in my opinion. It is impossible to say how much I love this Brighton, UK band. The closest I can come to would be: “I fucking love this band! Please come to Seattle!”
8. Lord Mantis – Death Mask
I can’t nail this record down stylistically and that’s why I like it. It starts off sounding kinda like a black metal influenced German industrial band and then moves into crushing doom with some of the best vocals (and vocal production) I’ve heard in years. Doom bands take note: effects other than cavernous reverb are not cheesy; they make you sound more epic!
9. The Proselyte – Our Vessel’s In Need
Another record I keep in heavy rotation. I saw this amazing band from Cambridge, MA at the Highline and they blew me away. The singing is so good! Sometimes heavy (think Helms Alee or Sandrider) and other times actually singing like Josh Homme does for Queens of the Stone Age. Also, they have choruses. Hear that? Choruses you can sing along to. I know, Weird.
10. Today Is the Day – Animal Mother
Throughout his career Steve Austin has been on the forefront of noise metal (Or whatever you want to call it, along with Zeni Geva he practically made it up!) I love this record for a couple reasons: 1: The production is totally different than the current modern style and it sounds both fresh and dated in a good way. It’s not all compressed and hyped; it sounds intense because of the musicianship. And Steve’s trademark wicked vocals. And 2: they do a Melvins cover. There is even an acoustic song.
Bands I recorded that belong on this list:
Earth Eater – Witnessed
Bad ass. These guys rule the middle-school crust and power violence styles. Can’t think of another band in Seattle that hits it as hard in this style, not with so many dads in it anyway!
Sayonara – We Must Be Cruel Today
“Sayonara are Capitol Hill super group fronted by the best live photographer in town. Now is your turn to take the pictures.” After that description Sayonara will surprise you by how amazing their songs are. Which is not surprising considering the pedigrees of everyone in the band. Every song on this EP is amazing.
Brandy Rettig
1. Buzz “King Buzzo” Osborne – This Machine Kills Artists
When I heard Buzzo play this album live, it was so unexpectedly aggressive that I was actually startled when he attacked his guitar to punch out the first notes. All of the songs on This Machine Kills Artists would have made for a solid Melvins album, but this unique solo format allows them an incredible life of their own. Here Buzz has redefined the term “acoustic,” effectively making unplugged heavier than anyone ever knew was possible.
2. Bali Girls – Dead Reckoning West
The opening drums of the nearly 8 minute long “March” have been stuck in my head since I first played it last May. The bass is abrasive and punishing, shoving you in the chest and pushing you backwards. But like a spider’s web, the guitar catches you, pulls you in closer, entangling you further and further until you can no longer move. Give up the struggle and let Dead Reckoning West sink it’s fangs into you once and for all.
3. Helms Alee – Sleepwalking Sailors
Layer upon layer of never-ending undulating rhythms, meticulous stops and starts, spurts of auditory ferocity and beautiful harmonies. Sleepwalking Sailors is Helms Alee at their pinnacle.
4. YOB – Clearing the Path to Ascend
Eloquent, moving, and emotional. Crushingly heavy yet incredibly gentle, with Clearing the Path to Ascend, YOB is a powerful lioness carrying us, helpless cubs, in her deadly jaws, setting us down safely out of danger without so much as a scratch on our delicate skin.
5. QUI – Life, Water, Living
The frenzied duo of Paul Christensen and Matt Cronk bring a sometimes jazzy, sometimes spastic, melodically textured sound with Life, Water, Living. Pervasive throughout the entire work is their unique and quirky humor. “Ham Spray” never fails makes me laugh as I sing along and “Whateryadoin’” is as smooth as it is sly.
6. Stephen Tanner – Music Blues
An autobiographical album featuring everything miserable about the author’s entire dreadful existence from birth ‘till now. Sludgy, slow, completely enveloping and secretly familiar in the universal experience of inner pain. Like quicksand, if you step into this, you’re not coming out. Comfortably close to what could have easily been a Harvey Milk album.
7. Indian – From All Purity
Filthy fucking dirty sludge in your fucking face.
8. Austerity Program – Beyond Calculation
Smog coated, driving mechanical grindings, screeches and crunches interspersed with backfires that spit out black smoke thick enough to choke your airway. Hook a hose up to the tailpipe and suck on it.
9. Old Iron – Cordyceps
Cordyceps are a type of fungi who attack a host by forcing their way inside of it and, over time, replace the host tissue with a twisted body made up of irregularly shaped hardened tubular branches. Some even have the power to affect the behavior of their host, causing a type of insanity. An aptly named album for the effect Old Iron will have on your brain.
10. Hew Time – Hew Time
A dazzling demonstration of the oldest known instrument in documented in history: Drums! Hew Time is a modern version of classic jazz drumming styles (think Max Roach circa 1966) featuring Dale Crover (Melvins), Coady Willis (Melvins/Big Business), and Joe Plummer (Modest Mouse). Smoother and lighter than you might expect, but surprisingly dense none-the-less.
Pam Sternin
10. Freak Vibe – Prostration
Poison Ivy fucking Lux Interior up the ass.
9. Nudes – Stain
Pretty sure this sounds exactly like being on the business end of a wood chipper as it spits crude oil and rusty nails at your face. You can’t help but notice you’ve gone deaf.
8. Sashay – Kate Moss Un-Break My Heart
Queercore knuckle tats.
7. Mysterious Skin – Demo
There’s 100 people in this room. That means there’s 200 legs and arms. 200 legs and arms stomping and slinging into each other and knocking my beer all over the place. She’s screaming I don’t know what and this band fucking rules, I’m drunk.
6. Brain Scraper – Desensitized
Like slipping on a banana peel while brushing your teeth with a high powered chain saw.
5. Tacos – S/T
Slam a crunchy shell into your palm. Cusp it hard now because you’re bracing for the slathering of your life. Do you have what it takes? Smash that beef in there! Don’t be gentle, make it messy. Throw lettuce at it! Now the cheese, oh yes more cheese! Please don’t stop! I want to see it, show it to me weeping with sour cream. Lick it, I said LICK IT! Hold that chaliced hand high above your head and exclaim, “Fuck yeah, Tacos!”
4. Prizehog – Re-Unvent the Whool
If every species on this planet…land, sea, air…declared a simultaneous war on and successfully eradicated the human race. That necessary, premeditated undertaking crescendos into the “mass hush”. Drop the needle. Witness the battle. Savor the massacre.
3. Swans – To Be Kind
I had this one really fucked up nightmare. I was a man in a chintzy wallpapered, second story motel room in the 1920’s. It was night and it was humid. There was one yellowed lamp illuminating the room. I was standing, wearing a white collared button up shirt, suspenders latched onto loose fitting gray slacks and shiny, narrow tipped brown shoes. I feel like I was a traveling salesman. I had an ax raised over my head and there kneeling on the floor in front of me was this balding, sweaty, overweight man. He looked like a salesman, too. I remember there was reason for me to execute him and the man seemed accepting of his position, slouching like a dead fish on his knees, waiting the clock out on life. My ax came down and split him in two. Then suddenly there was a point of view shift and I had switched bodies, I had now become the crouched man. The ax just plunged through the top of my head. I felt a rush of fluid warmth inside me. My mind was sounding off a fevered, high pitched alarm. Muscles seized tightly in defense. Muscles slowly release. Involuntarily exhaling, succumb. The left half of my body sloughing off the right side like lunch meat.
2. Great Falls – Ossature
JESUS FUCKING CHRIST! HOLY SHIT! WHAT THE FUCK! ARE YOU FUCKING SHITTING ME! SHIT FUCKING FUCK FUCK! This band will injure you audibly, physically and somehow leave you with a momentary lapse of tourettes.
1. Helms Alee – Sleepwalking Sailors
Running through the forest surrounded by nothing but the musk of moist soil, the creaking of brittle bark and the shimmering whisper of pines. After you are shivered without shelter against the pelting rain. When a fresh kill dangles between your teeth. When you emerge from the wild knowing six senses instead of five, soul whole.
Jake McCune
10. Bongripper – Miserable
Bongripper do a special thing by rejecting vocals. They weaponize doom metal, crafting riffs that cascade into one another over the course of dense, lengthy compositions. Sooner or later, you realize you’ve been banging your head for the past 45 minutes. Through three thundering tracks downer doom, ‘Miserable’ is a display of Bongripper’s genre mastery.
9. Swans – To Be Kind
Seeing Swans live at the Showbox this year made me realize that the group is probably the closest thing we have to a team of superhumans on this planet. Michael Gira’s ability to create giant, swooping maximalist overtures is matched only by the intensity and talent of his fellow Swans. As Gira himself exclaims on album highlight “A Little God in My Hands” – OH YEAH.
http://younggodrecords.com/products/to-be-kind
8. Gridlink – Longhena
Gridlink, the only band in the world that aligns my interest in grindcore and top-down ‘bullet hell’ shooters, called it quits this year. They left us ‘Longhena,’ an album double the length of their previous efforts and packed with micro anime grind masterpieces. Gridlink were truly unique in both their sonic and visual aesthetics, this one is definitely bittersweet.
http://handshakeinc.bandcamp.com/album/longhena
7. Panopticon – Roads to the North
Austin Lunn made my favorite metal record of 2012 with his bluegrass-driven exploration of black metal and American coal mining, ‘Kentucky.’ His latest – ‘Roads to North’ – is aptly titled, paving new territory forward from the southern foundations of his previous effort. It serves as proof that Panopticon’s style is continuing to evolve, and Lunn’s vision is clearer than ever.
http://thetruepanopticon.bandcamp.com/album/roads-to-the-north
6. Fórn – The Departure of Consciousness
Debut of the year, hands down. Cavernous, suffocating doom from Boston that holds enough weight to stand out amongst a sea of bands that tune down their guitars and scream into microphones. There’s a picture of these guys playing a show in a damn cave floating around the internet, that about sums up their sound better than any of my words could.
http://forn.bandcamp.com/
5. Pharmakon – Bestial Burden
Margaret Chardiet makes one hell of a racket. Her project Pharmakon’s use of static drenched screams and thundering, industrial beats is made horrendous by themes of bodily terror and sickness. Chardiet’s own experiences suffering in hospitals is said to be her thematic muse. This is music as a form of exorcism.
4. The Body – I Shall Die Here
The vision that the Body conjure with their apocalyptic tantrums is a cleansing one, a complete rejection of life. This LP, produced by like-minded musician The Haxan Cloak, intensifies the unnerving electronic side of the band past the breaking point. The songs still contain many traditions of The Body, drowned in a sea of digital decay and haunting samples.
http://the-body.bandcamp.com/album/i-shall-die-here
3. Thou – Heathen
Thou have a tireless work ethic that yields increasingly mature and exquisitely composed heavy music. Opening track, ‘Free Will,’ is a monument to the band’s work as songwriters, and it stands as my favorite song of the year. Overall, Heathen is an outstanding display of mastery from a band that has been refining their sound for nearly a decade.
http://thou.bandcamp.com/album/heathen
2. Run the Jewels – Run the Jewels 2
After uniting on Killer Mike’s 2012 opus R.A.P. Music, Jaime and Mike have been on a terror across the music world leaving no survivors. In two years time they’ve created a revolution, delivering anthem after anthem of destructive, snarling rap music and creating a following of loyal jewel runners. This album is so good it makes me feel spoiled by life.
http://www.complex.com/music/2014/10/run-the-jewels-2-stream
1. Disemballerina – Undertaker
Disemballerina seemed like an internet hidden treasure up until they released Undertaker this fall, but i’ve been on the hype train since their 2010 demo. The gorgeous, melancholic blend of chamber instruments and doom atmosphere displayed on this record cements the trio as one of the best underground bands in America. Using cello, viola and acoustic guitar, Disemballerina compose dirges heavier and more haunting than any metal record of 2014.
http://disemballerinapdx.bandcamp.com/album/undertaker
Dustin Carroll
1. The Great Old Ones – Tekeli-Li
2. Hexis – Abalam
3. Tombs – Savage Gold
4. Thou – Heathen
5. Downfall of Gaia – Aeon Unveils the Throne of Decay
6. Wayfarer – Children of the Iron Age
7. Panopticon – Roads to the North
8. Blut Aus Nord – Memoria Vestusta III
9. Muscle and Marrow – The Human Cry
10. So Hideous – Last Poem/First Light
Honorable Mentions:
Saor – Aura
Mare Cognitum – Phobos Monolith
Lantlos – Melting Sun
Exhausted Prayer – Ruined
Sempinternal Dusk – s/t
