I’ve always held the belief that music wasn’t better in the past, people just have survivorship bias. What are your genuine favorite albums of the last few years?
Personally, I’m loving The Rime of Memory by Panopticon, Ants from Up There by Black Country, New Road, and Hellfire by Black Midi.
PetroDragonic Apocalypse by King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard
and it’s not even close. This is one of my favorite albums of all time. Prog metal at its finest!
King Gizzard never stops pushing bangers, do they?
KNOWER - Knower Forever
Kim Dracula - A Gradual Decline…
Kadabra - Umbra
Mammal Hands - Gift from the Trees
Atsuko Chiba - Water, …
Archspire - Bleed the Future
Twelve Foot Ninja - Vengeance
All Them Witches - Nothing as the Ideal
Between the Buried and Me - Colors 2
DARKSIDE - Spiral
Vola - Witness
Sleep Token - -both albums-
Lucid Planet - ll
Kimono Drag Queens - Songs of Worship
Woodkid - S16
Algiers - There Is No Year
And of course… most of what King Gizzard released.
For just the albums I’ve listened to extensively and probably many more that I really enjoyed I think it’s been a good few years.
Kimono Drag Queens are such a good band. Criminally underrated rated.
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Steve Lacey- Gemini Rights
Foals- Life is Yours
Japanese Breakfast- Jubilee
Covet- Cartharsis
JUNGLE- Volcano
Black Thought & Danger Mouse- Cheat Codes
Tom Misch & Yussef Dayes- What Kinda Music
Yussef Dayes- Black Classical Music
Any of King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard’s 10 albums relased since 2020
Doom Scroll - Immoral Compass
Mr Gnome - The day you flew away
Jonathan Wilson - Eat the worm
Viagra Boys - Cave world
Wet leg - Wet leg
Chet Faker - Hotel surrender
Igorrr - spirituality and distortion
Amigo the Devil- yours until the war is over
Out of orbit - OOO
I could go on.
I’ve been absolutely loving Knower Forever by Knower from last year. Who else is doing stuff like this?
Although my favorite KGLW albums are from 2019, there are great ones from 2020 onward as well.
I’m also liking Expert in a Dying Field by the Beths right now.
Since Google Play Music went away, I think it’s been harder to find new stuff I like. Recently, I’ve found better new stuff on my local public radio station.
KGLW never stops putting out bangers, they’re machines.
I actually end up browsing Rate Your Music for whatever happens to be recently released and highly rated, and listen for myself before deciding to buy the album or not. I’ve stopped streaming except as a means to preview albums, supports the artists more and lossless sounds better to my ears, or at least higher quality MP3s. Can’t tell between the nicer MP3s and FLACs tbh.
My favorites are Nonagon Infinity, KGLW, and PetroDragonic Apocalypse. So they’re pretty consistent across time IMO.
the album Future Nostalgia by Dua Lipa is a masterpiece in pop. I don’t think she’s release anything quite up to that standard since (not that she’s released much).
This is exactly correct. Child of the early 70s.
I heard my peers say this about the 80s and had to laugh and laugh.
For every Prince, there were 100 sucky bands.
There are so many, if I had to limit myself to just a few highlights though:
Starset - Horizons
The Glitch Mob - Revisions
Skrillex - Quest for Fire
Northlane - Obsidian, Alien
Noisia - Closer
Erra - Erra
Polaris - Fatalism, The Death of Me
The Chemical Brothers - For that beautiful feeling
Justin Hawkes - Existential
Poppy - I Disagree
Porter Robinson - Nurture
Muzz - The Promised Land
HEALTH - Rat Wars
There’s just so much good music out there, especially recently.
So far, these three come to mind:
Mammoth WVH (2021 self-titled debut)
- Eddie Van Halen’s son Wolfgang’s debut album in which he wrote and recorded all instruments. It’s some fantastic hard rock about not giving a shit what other people expect of you. “Mammoth” embodies the spirit of the album, while “Stone” is one of the best low-tempo, high-energy songs I’ve ever heard.
Pawns & Kings (2022) - Alter Bridge
- A heavy, raw, intense and politically charged album about how the new generation of humanity needs to be better if we want any sort of societal continuity. I may be playing it up but the music is kickass.
Fortitude (2021) - Gojira
- Most of Gojira’s music is about the doom we’re sowing by destroying the planet. This album is a stark tonal shift for them in that almost all of it is supposed to be positive and encouraging. “The Chant” is nothing but encouraging those who suffer oppression to fight on for their rights. “Into the Storm” is an anthem for fighting for political change in a world that beats everyone down for trying to challenge the status quo. This album was exactly what I needed after COVID had already gone on for a year and showed no signs of stopping.
If you like politically charged albums, check out God’s Country and Hostile Architecture, by Chat Pile and Ashenspire respectively. Unashamed and raw are what I’d use to describe them.
Chat Pile mfn rulz
I’ve been meaning to listen to Gojira for a while- what album/song/whatever do you recommend I start with?
Hoo boy what a question.
TL;DR: I would say give at least one song from each album a try since they have a good amount of variety in their sound from one album to the next. I recommend:
Terra Incognita: “Clone” The Link: “Remembrance” From Mars to Sirius: “The Heaviest Matter of the Universe” The Way of All Flesh: “The Art of Dying” L’Enfant Sauvage: “Planned Obsolescence” Magma: “Magma” Fortitude: “Fortitude” followed by “The Chant” (they go together)
Otherwise, If you like heavy metal, Terra Incognita is great. “Clone” and “Blow Me Away You (Niverse)” get stuck in my head a lot. “Planned Obsolescence” from L’Enfant Sauvage (one of my favorite songs ever) is about as in-your-face “fuck off, capitalism” as a song can get.
If you like environmentalism in music, the theme persists throughout their discography but From Mars to Sirius is chock full of it. “Ocean Planet” builds to one of my favorite lines in any song ever with a painfully dissonant melody at the very end of the song. It’s also hard to ignore “Flying Whales” with all the memes and the song is written from the perspective of whales looking down in sorrowful pity on how humanity treats their shared home, plus the song has a wonderful chorus. And I can’t not mention “Global Warming.” It might just be Gojira’s magnum opus imo. “Toxic Garbage Island” is a really cool rhythm-heavy song about treating the planet like a giant trash can with one of the most emotional finales of any song I know.
“The Art of Dying” is an incredible song about what it means to die well. The music is incomparable, and it pairs really well with “The Way of All Flesh” which is an artistic audible rendering of the experience of actually dying - only listen to it if you plan to listen to all 17 minutes of it.
If you need something more encouraging, “Born In Winter” has been my track of choice many a late night. “New Found” is also shockingly uplifting compared to the rest of their music.
Truthfully, I love all of their music and I normally will turn on an album and listen to it start-to-finish. I most commonly do that with their album Magma because it’s extremely well paced musically and emotionally. While in the process of writing it, Joe and Mario Duplantier’s (vocalist/guitar and the drummer) mother died and you can definitely feel it. The album is mostly about the way that strong human emotions can feel like Magma boiling inside of you, and I think it’s extremely well conveyed. I go back and forth between thinking “Global Warming” and the entire album Magma are their greatest work.
This is a really solid writeup. L’Enfant Sauvage is a banger front to back. Of particular note for me are Explosia, L’enfant Sauvage, and Gift of Guilt.
Magma feels really good too. Silvera and Stranded are the standard picks, but Magma and Low Lands are worth checking.
Fortitude… Born for One Thing starts it off nicely, but Amazonia just bugs the shit out of me to the point that everything that follows sounds bad. I have listened once with that song blocked, and I enjoyed it much more, but not enough to give more info.
“Only Pain” is my pick for the real peak of Magma. I always get stoked out of my mind when that drum intro comes on.
I’m surprised you don’t like Amazonia. It does sound like it has some power metal influence but I think it’s got a great sound overall. I especially love the mouth harp intro lol
The mouth harp is legit annoying.
Wow, nice. I love it when people are clearly so interested in what they’re writing about.
Sounds like I’ll start with Planned Obsolescence then, and work my way through their stuff. Thanks for such solid recommendations. :)
Hey I’m just glad more people are interested in them.
Thinking about “Planned Obsolescence” reminds me that another of Gojira’s greatest skills is in writing endings. Plenty of songs have great endings, and every single album ends with something emotionally memorable. It’s probably why I love listening to all of their albums start-to-finish. There’s a great sense of completion and closure to all of them.
Terra Incognita’s “1990 Quadrillions De Tonnes” (the weight of the Sun) is layered with the sounds of people screaming as the Earth burns. The Link’s “Dawn” is a dark naturalist instrumental. From Mars To Sirius’ ending… well you should just listen to it. “The Way of All Flesh” I already mentioned. L’Enfant Sauvage’s “The Fall” is about as dark as the entire album gets. Magma’s “Lowlands” into “Liberation” tears my soul to shreds. And Fortitude’s “Grind” is the heaviest, most depressing sarcastic call to inaction to follow all of the encouragement that came before it, reminding the listener that the world is not easily fixed.
Damn I think I really love this band more than I thought I did lol
lol sounds like you do, good on you. I’ve been listening to them for a bit and I really like them. I’ll be checking them out some more later, thanks again for the great comments!
Aesop Rock - Integrated Tech Solutions
I’d probably have to go with Nightwish Human :||: Nature
It’s a very solid album, but to be honest I’m not sure if I’ve even listened to any other album in full from past couple years
Wake Up & It’s Over - Lovejoy (although the singer has had some stuff come up about him being nasty with his ex girlfriend recently)
Soul Elegy - Termina
Take Me Back To Eden - Sleep Token
Fatalism - Polaris
ANALYSIS PARALYSIS - MAY-A
Post Human: Survival Horror - Bring Me The Horizon
Euthanasia - Stray From The Path
Pressure Machine by The Killers
Just want to shout out a couple more bangers;
God’s Country - Chat Pile
Hostile Architecture - Ashenspire
Some Nights I Dream of Doors - Obongjayar
