The Antisocial Darwinist

Every Yule season I troll all the year-end “best-of” lists on a variety of metal blogs. Well, mostly just the splurge of lists posted every year on No Clean Singing (are there really any other metal blogs worth reading?), but there are always a few other things that crop up over the year by word-of-mouth, notoriety, or whatever. Between Christmas and New Years I inevitably spend a few days listening to tons of bands and treat myself to a big batch of new tunes to keep me occupied for the coming year. I figure I might as well post this year’s crop since there obviously aren’t enough lists already…

First, some new releases by classic bands were pretty good this year:

• Iron Maiden — Senjutsu
• Flotsam and Jetsam — Blood in the Water
• Cynic — Ascension Codes
• Hypocrisy — Worship

In particular the Hypocrisy record has really stuck with me since it came out. Here’s an earworm apropos to our current pharma-cursed era:

Then there were a few older records that have been on my radar for a few years — many years in one case — that keep popping up, so I finally decided to pick them up:

• Negura Bunget — Om
• Rivers of Nihil — Where Owls Know My Name
• Omnium Gatherum — Beyond

Then there were new releases by some more recent acts that I’ve been fans of for a long time:

• Converge + Chelsea Wolfe — Bloodmoon I
• Panopticon — …And Again Into the Light
• The Great Old Ones — Cosmicism
• Dordeduh — Har
• Thy Catafalque — Vadak
• Withered — Verloren
• Wolves In the Throne Room — Primordial Arcana

And last, my favorite, bands I’d never heard of until a few days ago that I’m excited to get to know better:

• Dormant Ordeal — The Grand Scheme of Things
• Spectral Wound — A Diabolic Thirst
• Dödsrit — Mortal Coil
• Fawn Limbs — Darwin Falls (How could I not have bought this one?)
• Lamp of Murmuur — Submission and Slavery
• Maysaloon — A Lip To Earth, A Lip To Heaven, and A Tongue To the Stars
• Necronautical — Slain In the Spirit
• Suffering Hour — The Cyclic Reckoning

And it’s worth separating out two records that stood out, both of which seem to be inspired by Dune. I still need to see that new movie version…

• Sunnata — Burning In Heaven, Melting In Earth
• Dvne — Etemen Ænka

I can’t say much about any of these yet since I’ve barely listened to any of them, certainly not enough to “review” them. Seems like I’ve been able to get more writing done on this blog in the last couple of months (yay tenure!), so maybe I’ll be able to sustain some regular (short) album reviews over the coming year.