Best of 2024: The heavy stuff

Metal, punk, rock and more

Welcome to part 3 of the DFSBP year-end roundup! Part 1, dealing with new jazz recordings, can be found here; part 2, dealing with various reissues and archival releases can be found right over here; and part 4, my all-genres-in-play annual top 10, is over this way.

I’m a fairly omnivorous listener. This past weekend, I rocked out to Olivia Rodrigo’s “Good 4 U” at the gym and, later on, savored a repeat viewing of the classic outlaw-country doc Heartworn Highways. But just like everyone else, I have my particular zones of preference, and I don’t pretend otherwise. You keep an ear out in general, but each of us only has so much time — not to mention the fact that, at least for me, catching up on and/or revisiting old music is a constant activity.

So, no major news flash here, but to restate the obvious: Aside from jazz, much of what I keep regular tabs musically falls in the realm of heavy and/or aggressive rock-based music, from various forms of punk to the most outlandish death metal. (There’s plenty of “normal” rock in the mix too, often in the form of new releases by legacy acts.) So, now that I’ve spotlighted my favorite jazz from the year that has been, I want to set aside some space to recognize the heavy stuff.

I’m not going to bother with rankings here, but my No. 1 heavy record this year — actually my No. 1 record, period — is without question Rack by the Jesus Lizard, released in September on Ipecac.

Sometimes I find “music criticism” funny in that, hey, we’re all just people. Each with specific, long-established taste profiles, often determined in some large part by where, when and how we grew up. We like what we like, in other words. And pretending otherwise, or trying to hard to put some objective spin on it all, seems a bit silly.

Which is a roundabout way of saying: I fucking love the Jesus Lizard. I have for more than 30 years. I haven’t run the numbers in a while, but they’re almost certainly one of my 10 favorite bands of all time, in any genre. If their first album in more than a quarter century had been mediocre, I probably still would have spun it incessantly this year. But it wasn’t mediocre; it was extraordinary. Full of raucous energy, perverse sentiment and copious moments of brilliance from a man who, in my opinion, ranks among the most savagely inventive guitarists on earth, in any genre: Duane Denison.

It was an absolute honor to speak with him and the other members of the band for this New York Times profile in advance of the album, a joy to witness the Lizard live once again a couple weeks back and a true delight to rock out to this thing over and over and over throughout the year. I’m not sure where it ranks in their catalog. (Maybe fifth, after the pheneomenal Touch and Go quartet? Though I love Shot as well, so who knows — without question, it’s better record than Blue…) And honestly, I don’t care. I’m just really glad it exists, after prior assurances from Denison that it likely never would.

For more Jesus Lizard goodness, see Vish Khanna’s latest Jesus Lizard Week bonanza, consisting of interviews with each band member on his vital Kreative Kontrol podcast, reprising a series he launched around a decade ago, around the release of the excellent Book; my friend and former Rolling Stone colleague Kory Grow’s funny and illuminating David Yow interview; and my other friend Nick Millevoi’s insightful Premier Guitar convo with Denison.

Speaking of RS, I was happy to rejoin Kory and other longtime associates in celebrating the best metal albums of the year. Go here to read the full list, including blurbs on five of my picks, namely:

Gouge Away, Deep Sage (Deathwish Inc.)
A searing amalgam of turbulent hardcore and hooky, understated indie rock that would probably be my overall album-of-the-year pick during any 12-month period in which the Jesus Lizard did not also release a record.

Darkthrone, It Beckons Us All (Peaceville)
The latest from the indefatigable Norwegian duo, who seem to only grow more compelling (to me, at least) as they grow steadily less “relevant” to any notion of where metal at large is “headed.”

Sumac, The Healer (Thrill Jockey)
A true experi-metal behemoth.

Judas Priest, Invincible Shield (Epic)
Like Iron Maiden, Priest are still functioning at an improbably high level. Invincible Shield is fun as hell and suitably Priest-ly through and through.

High on Fire, Cometh the Storm (MNRK Heavy)
I’ve never been the hugest HOF fan in the past, but I was powerless against this riff onslaught. We all knew Coady Willis was a force, but he really joins the elite metal-drummer ranks with this one.

As far as the other titles on the RS list, I strongly endorse Chat Pile’s Cool World (The Flenser), on which the Oklahoma City noise-rock sensations elevate their game by re-committing to their core strengths, and I had a lot of fun savoring the concussive catharsis of Knocked Loose’s You Won’t Go Before You’re Supposed To (Pure Noise)* — another record that has had a deservedly wide resonance beyond insular heavy-music circles. (And shout-outs to my friends and former colleagues Rick Carp and Brenna Ehrlich, who expertly blurbed these respective titles for the list!)

And tying Cool World together with Rack above, here’s my interview with Chat Pile bassist Stin on the enduring brilliance of the Lizard.

From there, let’s move on to what I see as an interrelated quartet of strong full-lengths from esteemed, long-running death-metal outfits.

Brodequin, Harbinger of Woe (Season of Mist)

Defeated Sanity, Chronicles of Lunacy (Season of Mist)

Malignancy, …Discontinued (Willowtip)

Wormed, Omegon (Season of Mist)

All four of these bands — Knoxville, Tennessee’s Brodequin; Berlin, Germany’s Defeated Sanity; Yonkers, New York’s Malignancy; and Madrid, Spain’s Wormed — formed sometime in the ’90s, during the time when death-metal aesthetics were really firming up and becoming something distinct. And all four have been major touchstones in terms of where the genre has headed since then, pushing envelopes of both relentless speed (Brodequin, Defeated and Wormed, but especially Brodequin) and batshit technicality (Defeated, Malignancy and Wormed, but especially Defeated). At this point, each are elder statesmen in the genre, but all remain hungry and strongly committed to keeping their foot on the gas, so to speak — which means that any of these records can hang with these bands’ best work. Whether you follow death metal or not, the genre remains a bastion of excellence and commitment, and these records are exhibits A, B, C and D for 2024.

The Defeated Sanity record in particular is simply a marvel that any fan of any kind of aggressive and/or progressive music needs to experience. (For more on this visionary outfit, check out my Heavy Metal Bebop interview from back in 2020.)

In terms of the younger death-metal crop, Undeath’s More Insane (Prosthetic) was another rabidly intense and razor-sharp effort from one of the genre’s most galvanizing up-and-coming acts, while Emanations of Unconscious Luminescence (New Standard Elite), the debut LP from the international supergroup Theurgy, was perhaps the single most alien-sounding record I heard this year — a major compliment where death metal is concerned.

I also want to acknowledge the end of an era in avant-garde New York metal, namely the recent closing of Menegroth, the Thousand Caves, Colin Marston’s Woodhaven, Queens, studio. (I spoke about that milestone with Colin recently for Decibel. For more on Menegroth’s illustrious history, check out John Colpitts’s 2018 Bandcamp feature.) I know we’ll be hearing plenty more Marston-recorded music in the future, but for now, we got another significant haul this year — various terrific full-lengths involving him and/or close associates of the studio, tracked at Menegroth before the shuttering, including but not limited to:

Krallice, Inorganic Rites (self-released)

Pyrrhon, Exhaust (Willowtip)

Dysrhythmia, Coffin of Conviction (Nightfloat)

(And note that the Defeated Sanity album cited above was also a Menegroth production, while the Wormed LP was mixed and mastered there.)

And here are some more metal-, punk- or just plain, old rock-adjacent titles I dug:

Upright Forms, Blurred Wires (Skin Graft)*
I put down a bunch of words on this one here, but I want to reiterate how strong I think it is. As I wrote here, Nick Sakes, underground lifer and DFSBP namesake, just keeps pushing and evolving, and this record ranks with anything else in his extremely sturdy catalog.

Melt-Banana, 3+5 (A-Zap)
The latest from these legendary Japanese art-punks, sounding as giddily insane as ever.

Knoll, As Spoken (self-released)
Knoll, a young outfit from Tennessee, are of the most promising bands in the current metal underground. I was absolutely floored by their live set recently (at the Devastation on the Nation mini fest in Brooklyn, where they played first on a six-band bill and instantly commanded the room), and this record does a fine job of capturing the howling nightmarish chaos of their self-dubbed “funeral grind.”

Guided by Voices, Strut of Kings (Rockathon / Guided by Voices, Inc.)
I wholeheartedly celebrate the GBV-aissance, the iconic indie-rock outfit’s proudly hyper-prolific recent chapter, shepherded by my old friend (and the band’s in-house soundman and engineer) Travis Harrison, and chronicled in various spots by my newer friend, writer Morgan Enos. I can’t claim to be a GBV completist, but I’ve heard a lot of their records, and this one excites me as much as any I know.

Dirty Three, Love Changes Everything (Drag City)
The triumphant return of Melbourne’s finest. Ecstatic and heartrending as usual, but manifesting in new ways. Probably my personal favorite from “The Year of Jim White,” but it was a close call, since I also loved his debut solo LP, the debuts from new collaboratives the Hard Quartet and Beings, and his latest with Marisa Anderson.

Sebastian Bach, Child Within the Man (Reigning Phoenix)
This one really surprised me! If, like me, you harbor any kind of affinity for Bach’s classic Skid Row work, give this a spin and see what you think.

Couch Slut, You Could Do It Tonight (Brutal Panda)*
New York’s most harrowing band took their twisted noise-rock psychodrama worldwide this year, while also putting out their most fully realized album to date. (And shout out to the typically outstanding production job from Ben Greenberg, who continued his apocalyptic-rock hot streak on various 2024 releases, including the Chat Pile album above, which he mixed, and American Standard, the titanically nasty latest from his own band Uniform.)

Sheer Mag, Playing Favorites (Third Man)
More tasty yet gritty garagey-power-pop goodness from these retro-minded rock artistes.

40 Watt Sun, Little Weight (Cappio)
I suppose Patrick Walker will forever be “metal-adjacent” due to his history. But as with 2022’s Perfect Light, the latest from 40 Watt Sun transcends all categories. Timeless, transporting songs — too heavy (emotionally) for any sort of casual consumption. (This inclusion reminds me that for more treasures from the furthest reaches of the underworld, you will want to give a close look to Machine Music’s customarily idiosyncratic and encyclopedic Best Metal of 2024 round-up, which includes Little Weight in the No. 2 spot, continuing founder Ron Ben-Tovim’s longtime championing of all things Walker.)

J. Robbins, Basilisk (Dischord)
As with Nick Sakes above, I implicitly trust J. Robbins, the post-hardcore lifer behind Jawbox, Burning Airlines, Channels and other projects. If you’ve ever been a fan of his work in the past, I’m confident you’ll find plenty to love here, as I most definitely did.

Pearl Jam, Dark Matter (Monkeywrench / Republic)
I adore Pearl Jam, and having revisited the majority of their catalog after becoming enthralled with Dark Matter this past spring, I’m going to go out on a limb and call this their best album since Yield way back in 1998. There’s good stuff on all the records in between, but they really sound re-energized here — kudos to Andrew Watt, who clearly got the band fired up this time around. (For more, see this Broken Record interview with Jeff Ament and Stone Gossard.)

The Supervoid Choral Ensemble, Live From the Downwind Terminus (Vitriol)
In which the drummer of New York screamo-prog cult faves Gospel bashes out wordless high-energy progressive metal with guitarist Ben Sharp. Hits the rarely aimed-for sweet spot between Dysrhythmia and Keelhaul!

The Flying Luttenbachers, Losing the War Inside Our Heads (ugEXPLODE)
Picking up on that lifer theme again, anything Weasel Walter puts out is worth hearing, and ever since reviving his signature ensemble around five years back, he has continued to push it into new realms of avant-rock extremism. This one is brutal prog (mostly performed by Walter alone) at its nastiest and most compositionally sharp.

Extra Life, The Sacred Vowel (self-released)
The other side of the brutal-prog coin. A grand and imposing vision of stately yet pulverizing art song.

Dale Crover, Glossolalia (Joyful Noise)*
Sassy and sneakily melancholy garage-psych goodness from Melvins drummer and underrated guitarist-singer-songwriter Dale Crover. (And that new Melvins record, Tarantula Heart, is also damn good!)

Yesness, See You at the Solipsist Convention (Joyful Noise)
The under-heralded return of one of my favorite drummers — and musicians, period — of all time, Damon Che of Don Caballero fame. No sharp deviations from prior Che terrain here, but this collaboration with El Ten Eleven’s Kristian Dunn finds its own sonic space and makes for highly satisfying listening.

Cheer-Accident, Vacate (Cuneiform)
I’ve spent less time with this one than I’d like, but I can’t wait to dig in further. There are no inessential Cheer-Accident records, and their “easy listening” side, which is the focus here, is one of Thymme, Jeff & Co.’s most consistently rewarding — and often gently heartbreaking — musical zones.

Ulcerate, Cutting the Throat of God (Debemur Morti)
Ulcerate’s sonic fingerprint is unmistakable: oppressive and suffocating but also boldly melodic and crushingly sad, like funeral music for an entire civilization. (Immolation are a key touchstone, but instead of streamlining their sound over time, as those legends have done, Ulcerate have only grown more expansive and imposing.) Like past Ulcerate efforts, this one requires a lot of patience, but when I’m in the mood, nothing else will really do.

Pissed Jeans, Half Divorced (Sub Pop)
Philly noise-punks return with another helping of feel-bad tragicomedy. “Stolen catalytic converter!”

Shellac, To All Trains (Touch and Go)
A fitting if sadly unintentional swan song from one of the greatest and most stubbornly itself underground bands of the past 30 years. Thank you, Steve Albini.

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*I wrote press materials for these records.