Year-End Top 5
▼ Music
Top 5: Necrophagia
The legacy of horror, terror and old-school death metal that is Wellsville, Ohio’s Necrophagia keeps getting better and better. Their seventh release, WhiteWorm Cathedral, is sure to open up the seven seals of Hell and unleash the apocalypse in the form of aural destruction and mental imagery assaults. Necrophagia incorporate an almost obsessive love for horror films which, in addition to the band’s own ideas and interpretations of those horrors, have always made for fun listening. … read more
Top 5: Pink Mountaintops
Get Back received mixed reviews across the board—some reviewers lauded the album as a rock n’ roll tour de force (Mojo, PopMatters) and others expressed wishy-washy reactions (Paste, Pitchfork). Most seemed, to some extent, to decry the sixth track, “North Hollywood Microwaves” because Annie Hardy (Giant Drag) raps about the joys of cum, declaring “I am a slut!” amid her blithe confessions of bestiality with donkeys and bears (because men no longer satisfy her). The prank worked. … read more
Top 5: Pharmakon
Margaret Chardiet crafts industrial noise music under the project name Pharmakon. Over the past few years, she has slowly built a name for herself (and her friends) in an isolated music bunker located in the Far Rockaway, NYC. Chardiet’s work is intended to be experienced live, but for those of us who have not had this opportunity, the Abandon EP is a substitution. … read more
Top 5: my bloody valentine
Twenty years of rumors, side projects and silence after my bloody valentine’s Kevin Shields announced the band’s progress on a follow-up to their shoegaze genesis, Loveless, my bloody valentine self-released m b v along with a deep sigh of relief. Though the band is the brainchild of Irish teenagers in the ’90s, my bloody valentine’s m b v stands out as an organic output incubated into perfection and birthed at just the right moment to head our generation’s reclamation of ’90s attitude and aesthetic. … read more
Top 5: Light/Black
When talking shop over recordings, you sometimes hear of bands “catching lightning in a bottle” with their music. If that analogy rings true, Light/Black didn’t just bottle it, they christened their amps with it. Make no mistake, the way they wrote and structured this album was no accident, nor did they cater to any minor niche group who may not like a certain kind of tone. This is a fucking good, heavy rock album. … read more
Top 5: J.D. Wilkes and the Dirt Daubers
Earlier this year, I was stunned and saddened to hear of the breakup of Th’ Legendary Shack Shakers, the band that Col. J.D. Wilkes fronted and took from obscurity to prominence. With the exit of longtime bass player Mark Robinson, Wilkes decided to start a new chapter with his wife, Jessica Wilkes, who was already a part of J.D.’s mountain string band, The Dirt Daubers. Jessica takes on bass playing and shares lead vocal duties in the new incarnation. … read more
Top 5: Galactic Cannibal
Pist, agitated and frothing at the mouth, We’re Fucked erupts with jovial violence meant as a blueprint for shout-alongs at live punk shows. Reviewers—and the band itself—have dichotomized Galactic Cannibal’s sound as being “pop punk + hardcore,” which skirts that this record is a short, sharp shock of street punk with its catchy gang vocals and major-key progressions coupled with vocalist Peter J Woods’ snarling assault. We’re Fucked, however, transcends these sonic genre conventions … … read more
Top 5: Daughter
It’s hard to put into words the emotions that Daughter’s full-length debut, If You Leave, bring up. Each time I turn it on, it’s as if Elena Tonra’s voice is reaching deep into my soul and shaking up all of those miserable, broken-hearted experiences, and then serving them back to me in a beautifully decorated, melancholy cocktail. … read more
Top 5: Danny Brown
Right from the first track (“Side A [Old]”), it’s obvious that this ain’t that old Danny Brown shit. He takes us there, into his old life—his mom braiding hair on the front porch (“25 Bucks”) and a crackhead burning off his lip doing stove hits (“Torture”). But this is new territory for Brown. Old strays from the minimalist and vocal-centric emphasis of XXX and the ’90s-worship of The Hybrid, and shows that Brown is as versatile and conceptual as ever. Old is more put-together, more focused around each song’s vibe or story. … read more
Top 5: Cult of Luna
Ascending out of the black abyss after five years of quietly lurking in the adumbrative shadows, Cult of Luna released their album, Vertikal I, which transcended the norm and boundaries of the typical metal wavelengths. With all the cultivation and care that went into Vertikal I, however, the album did not illuminate the full spectrum of sound that the band had intended to highlight. In 2013, Vertikal I was made whole, as Cult of Luna introduced three extra songs and a remix on a separate EP: Vertikal II. … read more