It has a lot going for it! But talking points alone can’t really explain what makes this album as stunning as it is. a complicated conceptual backstory about a mythical being that represents the darkest parts of ourselves. gorgeous space-vampire cover art from Alan Brown (Mastodon), and 5. rich depth of instrumentation that includes a heavy presence of acoustic instruments, 4. Esoctrilihum – Eternity of ShaogĮternity of Shaog, the fifth album by mysterious French black metal artist Esoctrilihum, checks off a lot of appealing boxes for one of the year’s most notable metal releases: 1. It’s tempting to call this a less-is-more situation, but there’s nothing minimalist or restrained about metal this overwhelming. And in doing so, each blast of gut-churning agony sounds as immaculate as ever, their guitar tones thick and noxious as Inland Empire smog, Ethan McCarthy’s bellows delivered with flames in his throat. But Immersion finds Primitive Man making their cathartic case in just over 35 minutes, with room to spare on the A and B sides.
Convenience isn’t necessarily what they’re after-none of us are leaving our houses right now, there’s no reason not to stew while listening to a 77-minute sludge marathon.
The difference is in how compact and digestible the experience is. None of which has changed on their latest album, Immersion. The way the group emits feedback feels like the gushing of a particularly ghastly open wound. The Colorado band’s music is slow and abrasive, it’s often ugly and horrific. Listening to Primitive Man is to hear pain converted into sound. I know I’m not done taking in all of Duma, and I look forward to where each subsequent listen takes me. Though the passage of time guarantees that my take on where an album should be ranked on a year-end list is an unfixed, evolving thing, I’m just going to give it to you straight and let you know this number’s just a placeholder. In their most visceral moments they fall somewhere between Atari Teenage Riot and Prurient, with an added dose of guttural black metal screech, but at just about any point throughout the album, what’s happening is thrilling, chaotic, dangerous, weird. I’m not even sure that “metal” really applies here in the way that it does to the 24 other albums on the list (well, 23 now that I look it over once more), as the duo create their industrial grindcore speedfreak noise exercises through primarily electronic means. I’ve heard very little this year, or any year, that sounds like the self-titled debut album from Nairobi’s Duma. Just because it’s not built to make you feel better doesn’t mean it won’t, however changing the world is an uphill battle, but music this furious and powerful is motivational fuel for kicking against the pricks. It’s harsh, angry music, and in its most triumphant moments, like the title track or “Jesus Built My Death Squads,” it sounds immaculate in its hostility. Climate change, capitalism, a hollowed-out sense of self worth- No One Wants to Speak About It isn’t comfort listening. The Seattle-based outfit, driven by a punishing Godflesh-style industrial metal throb and melodic guitar grind, draw their inspiration from how fucked everything is-not in a fantastical interpretation of the apocalypse, but a practical one. That said, escapism isn’t really what Adzes does. The escapist aspect of metal is paradoxically both overrated and underrated you can never have too much absurd air guitar pageantry as far as I’m concerned, but also riffs are never a good reason to excuse bad behavior. Nonetheless, I feel more than comfortable saying that these are the best metal albums of 2020. I didn’t have the time to add an extra five or 15, but suffice it to say there were a lot of albums that made 2020 slightly less of a nightmare even while pushing deeper into the darkest spaces.Īs with every year, this is a list of subjective favorites. Every year I have trouble narrowing it down, and since 2017 I’ve expanded my list twice, from 10 to 20 and then from 20 to 25. But metal, for being a genre of misfits and miscreants, still yielded some of the most powerful, life-affirming and soul-nourishing music of 2020. Some doom, some sludge, and a lot that can’t really be categorized in any easily understandable way. Of course, there was plenty of death metal that made 2020 bearable, even exciting.
But I also probably would have said, “Where’s the death metal?” If you had told me that some of the best metal albums of the year would be two-hour splits about the solar system, a quarantine-recorded hardcore album by seasoned vets and what can only be described as a three-LP soundtrack to a volcanic ritual, well, I might have believed you. In heavy music as it was with every aspect of 2020, this has been a strange year.
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