2024's Best Albums (so far)

  Trevor sometimes continues to distance himself from his early synthwave work, indulging more and more in the dark and atmospheric. Over the last decade he's dabbled in some really great covers as well. This time he applied his new style to an entire album over covers.

If you're used to his style, then it's no surprise his previous covers have included tracks by the likes of The Cure and Depeche Mode which was closer to the vibe of his original works. Appropriately, the artists he covers this time mimic the dreamy vibe he's turned to lately; Chris Isaak, Sade, Pink Floyd, Deftones, and yes... even Justin Timberlake and Nine Inch Nails.

  I'm not going to check how many albums Bob Vylan has put out so far. All I know is that every time they DO put out an album I expect them to eventually fizzle and run out of ideas like how much punk bands succumb. The great thing about Bob Vylan, though, is that they never do. The fact that they came out of the gates originally mixing punk with grime and hip hop just gives them even more license to continue trying new things.

This album is a great mix of everything they've done before: thrashing punk riffs, reggae, hip hop, and some truly bizarre trip hop style tracks. I'm not going to elaborate much more. I've said enough about these guys in my previous years' recaps. If you really are in the need for something different, you have to give them a try if you haven't already.

   

  This is the ungothiest album on this list. Yot Club is a low-fi indie, jangly happy band. WTF is happy doing on here? Well. This album, like most of John Ryan Kaiser's works, it's actually more manic. For every happy happy smack-my-head-on-the-table jam, there's a slightly morose, introspective song. Pervading the entire album is a bit of dreaminess to the guitars and vocals that evokes a sense of sad nostalgia; Almost as if he's singing about a place lost despite being a young guy that's probably still living the life and is in the place that he'll later actually be pining about.

   It's new. It's interesting. He records his music in his bedroom. I'm all-in on Yot Club.

   Twin Tribes is slowly becoming one of the heavyweghts of modern darkwave. They'll be headlining the Dark Ceremony festival in Houston with The Chameleons and Clan of Xymox. That's quite the hype to live up to. Their new album, Pendulum, contains the energy necessary to do so. While other established darkwave bands explore new avenues of music, Twin Tribes doubles down on the traditional style.

   A mix of reverberating guitars, dark synthwave bass, and drum machines captures the essence of the last 10 years of darkwave music. In fact, it's too perfect. I'm not sure where they're going to go from here, but let's just enjoy the moment.

   At the intersection of punk and goth lie bands such as The Misfits, Christian Death, and The Damned. VR Sex started more in the style of Drab Majesty, but if they keep on their curreny tragectory, they'll no doubt be remembered as filling up the same space as the formerly mentioned bands. Like most darkwave bands from the 2010's who used the genre as a staging point to gain popularity and explore their style, VR SEX quickly found a more abrasive ideas and ran with it.

   They've gotten progressively weirder in the last 5 years; more experimental and satirical while relying more on conventional guitar sounds. Hard Copy is significantly different from their first two albums by far. Other bands who started out as darkwave, like Drab Majesty and Soft Kill, have strayed more into shoegaze and indie rock, respectively. VR SEX also follows a similar rock trajectory, but ultimately when they hit the fork in the road where the genres split, they've chose the more confrontational path.

    French Police got mid-tier billing at Cruel World festival along side the Mission, The Stranglers, and Heaven 17. Like Twin Tribes, their expectation preceeds them. And like Twin Tribes they have a more traditional reverby guitar and Peter Hook-eque bass driving their music, but it's much more chill and laid back than Tribes, yet the tempo is probably even faster. If you're more into head bopping and less into rocking out, then BULLY is probably more up your alley. The vamping style guitar is so quick it's actually more like a Yot-Club or Vampire Style weekend flavor of darkwave which results in almost something that's more.. "dark pop" for lack of a better term. Either way, I dig it.

  The complaints about Ministry are often the same: In the mid 90's they turned into a droney speed metal band that made the same album over and over again. I don't blame people for jumping ship. That all ended just after 2013's From Beer to Eternity. That album showed glimpses of Al wanting to try something new. After Beer to Eterniry, Al went on a rampage re-leasing compilations of his old work over the next three years. It must have done something to him creatively because since then Al Jourgenson and friends have been on a genius three album run. NWA's Arabian Prince, Jello Biafra (he's back), Tool's Paul D'Amour, and Gogol Bordello's Eugene Hutz are all collaborators during this run, giving us a much needed break in the 20 year long wall of speed metal. Al started experimenting and pushing boundaries again. This new album even ends with a cover of Fad Gadget's "Ricky's Hand".

This album is still mostly industrial metal, but you can tell that that the last decade of revisting and instrospection has helped the artist formerly known as Alejandro Ramirez Casas open up the idea of actually trying again and working different influences into his studio work. Mix that with the fact that Al has become more politically literal and explicit, triggering the people who were never smart enough to understand that he's always been "woke" for the last 40 years is just... well... (kisses fingers). MUAH!

   Years ago I went to see a Halloween screening of the original 1922 silent film, Nosferatu, at the American Film Institute's original 1930's art deco style Silver Theater in Maryland. There was a small live orchestra at the front of the theater giving their interpreted live soundtrack to the movie. It was awesome. Icelandic Darkwave act Kaelan Mikla teams up with countryman composer Bardi Johannsson for a similar idea, creating a new soundtrack for a 1921 silent film from Sweeden.

   I haven't seen the film. To be honest, I've never heard of it until now. I actually listened to the album a couple of times not realizing it was a soundtrack. I just figured it was a darkwave act I enjoyed trying to make a more dark-style classical music themed album, similar to what Boy Harsher has been up to. Kaelan Mikla usually has these Kathleen Hanna style vocals to accompany their tracks, but this is mostly an instrumental album and it really is amazing whether you're listening to it intently or just as background music.

   This is the third year in a row that Soft Kill has appeared on this list. It isn't often there is someone so prolific that makes albums so consistently great every consecutive single year. Early Cure and Siouxsie and the Banshees come to mind. Not only does Soft Kill do exactly this, but they refuse to restrict themselves to a single genre: Darkwave, indie rock, gothic rock, low-fi, jangle pop, etc.

   Escape Forever gets my album of the year so far at our halfway mark. This is an album that's eclectic, but still cohesive. No matter what mood I'm in, it's the type of record I can always put in and enjoy.

Nine Inch Nails: Challengers Soundtrack (Too short to be an album)
TR/ST: Self Titled EP (Been waiting 5 years for a full length album)
Beach>, Windmill Hill (Solid post-Portishead music))