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.
What the Dead Men Say - Trivium
Lamb of God - Lamb of God
Omens - Lamb of God
Abyss - Unleash the Archers
Violence Unimagined - Cannibal Corpse
Fortitude - Gojira
Zeit - Rammstein
Modern Primitive - Sceptic Flesh
Sleep Token - This place will become your tomb (2021) / This eden (2023)
Grim Salvo - MILDRED (2022)
Tame Impala - The Slow rush (2020)
Spiritbox - Eternal blue (2021)
Bad Omens - THE DEATH OF PEACE OF MIND (2022)
Can I include EP’s? If so, Lorna Shore - … And I return to nothingness (2021)
Black Tiger Sex Machine - Once upon a time in cyberworld (2022)
Apashe - Renaissance (2020)
Florence + The Machine - Dance fever (2022)
Hozier - Unreal unearth (2023)
I’m sure there’s more
It’s definitely survivorship bias and likely that the barrier for entry is a lot lower now, so only ‘better’ music would be made (ie record companies doing risk assessment and deciding what would be more likely to sell) / your average person can make music now relatively easily, which I suppose technically ‘dilutes’ the overall ‘quality’ of music today - take your pick
List is a genre trip and a half. Nice picks :)
Lmao thanks, yeah I like variety haha
That Bad Omens album is so good. I really need to listen to more Sleep Token too.
I saw Lorna Shore as the warm-up for the Mega Monsters tour and I have to say whoever did the mixing for that performance is awful at their job. I had never heard any of their music before and I’m pretty sure I can still say that in all honesty. The vocals sounded like nothing but static and the instruments didn’t sound like much more than speaker feedback lol.
For someone who hasn’t found many heavy metal bands to enjoy other than Gojira, are they worth looking into?
Homie can scream like nobody’s business, but that’s what you’re gonna get.
My path went from Gojira, to Mastodon, David Maxim Micic, and Rivers of Nihil (check out where owns know my name).
If Metal metal isnt really your thing, check out Leprous. Malina and Pitfalls both kick ass and are about as far from metal where you still get some recognizable tropes.
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
Here’s a few I’ve enjoyed in recent memory:
- Koyo - Would You Miss It?
- Militarie Gun - Life Under The Gun
- Tigers Jaw - I Won’t Care How You Remember Me
- Yard Act - Where’s My Utopia?
- Vacation Manor - Vacation Manor
- Hotline TNT - Cartwheel
The Koyo album is great if you like punk/hardcore/emo, same with the Militarie Gun one. Tigers Jaw has been one of my favorites for a while, and this album is one of their best imo; great band if you like indie rock/emo. Yard Act’s a British rock band with post-punk influences, you might like them if you enjoy that signature dry British humor in combination with some social commentary. Vacation Manor is a more laid-back indie rock band with more classic Americana/Springsteen influences, I can’t recommend them enough for people who have a sweet spot for classic rock. Lastly, Hotline TNT’s album is worth a listen for people who enjoy shoegaze and indie rock, they have a really great DIY sound with just enough polish to tie the album together and keep it accessible. The 2020’s have been a damn good year for music, at least as far as the bands I’ve been keeping up with.
Edit: added Tigers Jaw, I couldn’t leave them out
Militarie Gun & Koyo are killing it. I would like to add Fleshwater’s We’re Not Here to Be Loved.
Ooh that was a solid one too, good catch. Can’t wait to see what else they have in store
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).
Osees - A Foul Form
Run the Jewels - RTJ4
KGWL - PetroDragonic Apocalypse
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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?
My fav album of the 2020’s would probably be Saviors by Green day. I however dont look at the release date of the album Im currently listening too often so It gets pretty hard to make a good list.
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.
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.
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!
I don’t think these albums will exactly match the music tastes of people here, but here we go:
- Phuture Noize - Silver Bullet (Hardstyle)
- Phuture Noize - From Star to Stardust (Hardstyle)
- Etherwood - Neon Dust (Chill DnB/Electronic music)
2020
- Tricot’s Makkuro (black, 真っ黒)
- Sinai Vessel’s Ground Aswim
2021
- Low’s Hey What
2022
- Kessoku Band’s Kessoku Band (self-titled, 結束バンド)
- Yuga’s Speechless Nights (言葉のない夜に)
- Wreath’s Decade of You
2023
- Ado’s Utattemita Album (歌ってみたのアルバム)
- Homecomings’ New Neighbors
- James Blake’s Playing Robots into Heaven
Pressure Machine by The Killers
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.
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.
