Posted in Whathaveyou on June 12th, 2026 by JJ Koczan
South African hitters Ruff Majik are skipping the studio. They’ll record their new album at four shows next month — two of which take place at That Winter Fest, held over two weekends in Johannesburg and Cape Town (would) — and one of which is in a secret location that, just guessing here, also isn’t a recording studio. The idea is to put forward as much humanity as possible at a time where that in itself feels like an act of rebellion. To create something more than the data center they’re building in your otherwise residential neighborhood and telling you it needs the water more than you or your family or your dog or anything else alive. Opening a mouth and speaking in a human voice, but you know, with songs and riffs and probably beer spilled on you and so on.
I count myself so, so lucky to have seen this band live, and still I’m jealous if you’ll be at one of these shows, because you know they’re going to bring it for the material they’ll then take and use to comprise the record. You’ll get to say you were there. You’ll have that memory stored in the goo of your brain. The band will be on to their next marauder’s errand, but you will have both the experience and the document to attest to it. Doesn’t get much more human than that.
The PR wire dropped this mere moments ago as though it too high-temperature to hold comfortably. Ruff Majik‘s two recent singles and latest EP stream at the bottom:
RUFF MAJIK DECLARES WAR ON A.I. WITH NEW ALBUM: “REEFER SADNESS (AND THE UNBEARABLE WEIGHT OF MODERN LIVING)”
In an era increasingly dominated by artificial intelligence, algorithmic playlists, and machine-generated slop, South African fuzz-punks Ruff Majik have announced their most ambitious and confrontational project to date.
Their next album will be titled: REEFER SADNESS (AND THE UNBEARABLE WEIGHT OF MODERN LIVING)
And it will not be recorded in a studio.
It will be recorded live, in front of real people, with real mistakes.
Every cheer, every missed note, every burst of chaos and moment of unexpected magic will remain exactly where it belongs: in the music.
Most importantly, every person attending these performances will become part of the record itself. The band will also announce an international ‘support’ counterpart in the coming weeks.
—
The album will be captured across four performances during July 2026:
• 11 July — That Winter Fest, Sognage (Johannesburg) • 12 July — Secret Location • 17 July — That Winter Fest, District (Cape Town) • 18 July — Aandklas (Stellenbosch)
Every moment exists once and can never be repeated.
Machines can imitate music, sure.
But they cannot create a room full of strangers singing together. They cannot create the feeling of standing shoulder-to-shoulder with a fellow reveller while a song falls apart and somehow becomes better because of it. They cannot be punk.
The band has issued a simple challenge to proponents of AI-generated music (Suno specifically it would seem, if their social media is to be considered):
Can your machine do this?
Can it fill a room?
Can it make people sweat?
Can it make people cry?
Can it make a crowd of strangers feel like they belong to something bigger than themselves?
Ruff Majik is willing to bet it fucking can’t, and awaits Suno’s response on further parameters for the wager.
REEFER SADNESS (AND THE UNBEARABLE WEIGHT OF MODERN LIVING) begins recording this July.
Ruff Majik: Johni Holiday – Lyrics, vocals, guitar Brendon Bez – Guitar Jimmy Glass – Bass Steven “Boz” Bosman – Drums, percussion, programming
And so we reach the penultimate day of this Quarterly Review; whichever quarter it is, I neither know nor particularly care, I’m just happy to be writing.
It’s been solid days so far. Yesterday was a little harried on timing, but that’s as close to an actual snag as I’ve gotten, which I’m happy to say. The music’s been good, the images and embeds have either been there already or have been easy to find, and there were only one or two things I had to replace along the way because they weren’t coming out for like another couple months. I’ve never been able to keep track of release dates.
I thought about putting a thing in the sidebar so people could list stuff and each week there would be a list, but I feel like I’d be the only one doing it and that’s not how I want to spend my limited time. I want to spend it writing, so I do. And no, it’s not even a little lost on me what a gift that is. It’s why I keep telling you my wife is so amazing. Part of why, anyhow.
We wrap tomorrow, so here’s today.
Quarterly Review #31-40:
Ruff Majik, Tan Halen
The central thesis of Ruff Majik‘s recent single “Tan Halen”, that “Sundays are for surfing,” becomes the hook and foundation of this four-song EP of the same name that’s the band’s most substantial offering since they ended a relatively brief hiatus at the start of this year. On the four-track outing, “Tan Halen” is accompanied by “Tvn Hvlen (Tvpe Mix),” which sounds more compressed and vocals-forward, the haggardly swaggering prior single “For the Life of Me,” here presented in an alternate mix that in its maddening chorus brings up the snare and feels more chaotic at the end, and lastly, “Tan Halen (Too Much Fuzz, Not Enough Drums),” which is true more on the second account than the first — how much fuzz is too much for Ruff Majik? is that a pinnacle that’s yet been reached? — but with the drums lower in the mix and the filthy tones surrounding has kind of a garage rock feel, which again, is fair enough for a song about surfing. Only missing here is their first 2026 single, “Can of Wyrms” (posted here), but you can’t have everything. I’m just glad they’re putting out new music.
Releasing through Small Stone Records (US) and Kozmik Artifactz (EU), Spanish classic heavy rockers Green Desert Water bring warmth to boogie and once again distill decades of influence into a cohesive, movement-minded, dynamic package. Eerie Meadows is their third album and in pieces like “The Blacksmith” near the outset or the sweeping “Wolfhound” and shuffling “Bos Primigenius” ahead of the finale “Meteora” on side B, they make it all sound easy, natural, like it couldn’t be any other way. The way that happens is through command of craft, and Green Desert Water are there too in the push of fuzz that emerges at the end of soulful leadoff “Northern Lights,” the bluesier “Holy Ground” and the big crashes/softshoe of the title-track, the trio having constructed songs that can have been worked on but don’t feel like, that engage without cloying, and which thrill in their sundry twists and redirects. I’m not sure what more one could ask of them.
No, I don’t think Berlin newcomers Go Mahhh are the first to posit themselves as being “as high as the mountain,” as they do on opener “High Mountain,” in the stonerly genres, but their tight and heavy psychedelic rock comes through as inherited, and songs like “Happy Satan’s Reign” and the proto-chugging “BBSBBQ,” the kraut-dancey “Anatoliosis” and the percussively shuffling “The Sun King” offer variety united by an underlying current of weirdness. Perhaps it’s all leading to the seven-minute finale “Mind Aussalt” (sic), with its drift and drone and ’60s guitar earlier on, but the band never rest too long in one place, be it the buzzing roll of “Blood Transfusion” or the interlude “MSAZ-20,” with intertwining lines of standalone guitar. Part of me wants to talk about the potential for growth here and the idea that Go Mahhh are debuting with significant range on Doppelgänger, but honestly, the spirit of the album is so much more about the joy of exploration that pulling myself out of the moment feels inappropriate. Some records, you just want to go where they take you.
Heath‘s 2024 debut, Isaak’s Marble (review here) offered hints of progressivism to come, but Murmurations goes to another level, digging in across three tracks to recharacterize their sound from boogie traditionalism to something more expansive and their own. The two-minute mostly-vocals intro “Exordium in D Minor” leads into two 15-minutes-each cuts “Murmurations” and “Nosedive,” and while clearly jam-based, the two songs follow plotted, sometimes winding courses, still keeping a classic feel but lighting a fire under it by the time the title-track is through. Comprising what I assume is the entirety of side B, “Nosedive” unfolds patiently with Rhodes ambience and a gradual build of guitar, working its way to and through a build that hits into surprising heft before its done but makes its core impression in its burner midsection, because nothing tops a crescendo like another, slower, crashing crescendo. It’s like the chemistry here is slapping you in the face, and with the growth they show in this material, Heath‘s limits feel far off on the horizon.
There’s no obfuscation on The Crooked Skulls‘ debut full-length, Midnight Sun. The New Jersey crunch-riffers come right at you with it: thick tones, gravel-throated vocals, and an overarching groove somewhere between slower Orange Goblin and classic Corrosion of Conformity, leaving room for a bit of shove in “Skull Bong” and “Broken” while the mostly-instrumental “Slowsteal” cuts the pace and unfolds with an airier solo in its second half as part of a righteously nodding culmination. Elsewhere, the urgency of centerpiece “Let Me Out” reminds of The Obsessed riding the line between rock and doom, and the penultimate “Iron Smile” brings no less than Fu Manchu‘s Bob Balch in for an expectedly shredding guest guitar spot. Even there, The Crooked Skulls aren’t up to anything too fancy. They’re not looking to dizzy you with complexity so much as dizzy you with a fist upside the head, and that edge of East Coast confrontationalism becomes part of what makes their material feel so immediate in its execution right unto closer “Judgement Day,” which holds its burl through the finish. No tricks, but songs.
A healthy dose of Pentagram-style doom boogie pervades Broadslab‘s The Fifth Essence, and reasonably so as the Mike Dean-produced, Raleigh, North Carolina-based four-piece make their way to the nine-minute organ-laced capper “Constellations” through the classic swing of “Animal Divinity” and “Leslie” at the outset, setting an energetic and stage-ready tone for what follows, the interlude “Alienation” ahead of the all-in shred and burl of side A closer/centerpiece “Shameful Reality,” a more aggressive take than either of the first two cuts, but the beginning rather than the end of their branching out therefrom. The seven-minute “Keep on Rollin'” (not a Samavayo cover) and “Constellations” comprise most of side B, with the longer interlude “Quintessence” between, duly subdued to lead the way from the dual-vocal-style shove of the song before into the immediate kick the band deliver on their way to the extended jamming that carries them out. This might be their first record in 12 years? All the more of an occasion, then.
Bergen, Norway’s Purple Skies make their long-play debut with A Million Years, and thereby foster a sound that’s informed by retroism without actually sounding like it was recorded on vintage gear. That is, as “Haven” and “Too Worn to Tell” demonstrate, they aren’t beholden to a vintage aesthetic, despite influence by bands like Witchcraft (which you can hear in the vocals as well as the guitar progressions they follow) and whichever of their acolytes you’d prefer to namedrop. That doesn’t account for everything on the nine-song A Million Years — to wit, the harmonies on the title-track — but it’s a start and so is the record. They seem to find another layer of tonal depth for “Worthless Men,” and it’s perhaps telling that both of the closing duo of “Archaic Freeway” and “Red Road” are in some way about transportation, because movement is an important factor the whole way through. I wouldn’t say it’s all forward-thinking — having a song called “Bitchcraft” in 2026 is a downer — but they give themselves something to work from in these songs and one will be curious to hear how they refine over time what this material lays out so organically.
The verses are a little more opaque in their biting, harsh-throated sludgecore screams — Ken-E Bones of Negative Reaction comes to mind — but there’s no mistaking the point of view in the hook of “F.T.W.”: “Fuck the world/Fuck AI/Realize the billionaires want us all to die,” and so on. Kudos to Texas’ Red Beard Wall for having a not-shitty opinion. “F.T.W.,” which indeed is restored to its pre-Millennial acronymic purpose (this is not “For the Win,” it’s “Fuck the World”), is joined by the likewise structured “W.A.N.T.S.” (“We Are Not the Same”), and in neither case is Red Beard Wall mainman Aaron “He of the Red Beard” Wall fucking around. “W.A.N.T.S.” uses meme culture to convey no less disaffection than the song before it, and is accordingly castigating as it shifts into a chug worthy of Rickshaw Billie’s Burger Patrol before its sub-four-minutes are up. The above-noted hook of “F.T.W.” is the frame for the short offering and maybe the most fitting summary of Wall‘s lyrical point of view, but shit, it’s not like he’s wrong, politically or in the riffs. It might not change the world, but it’s a well earned lashing out thereupon.
Trondheim’s White Tundra debuted in 2023 with their self-titled LP (review here) on Apollon Records before aligning with Argonauta imprint Octopus Rising for the six-song/37-minute follow-up full-length, Stories From the Dark. The second offering demonstrates more than a handful of positive lessons from the first, including the uptempo swing at the start of “Healer” and the symmetry across the album’s two sides, each of which works from its shortest to its longest inclusion. Fortunately, to coincide with this, their niche feels even more dug out as their own here, with deep fuzz and gravelly vocals as mainstay elements uniting the material, be it the spacious, eponymous closer “White Tundra” or the extra-dense-seeming nod of “The Lake” just before it. There’s more to discover in their songwriting — that is, I don’t think they’re done growing — but their ideas are surpassing their influences now in a way they weren’t three years ago, and for sure it’ll be a third record I’m going to watch for. Incremental, natural growth underway.
Titled simply EP, this three-song/15-minute pummeler draws together aspects of war/death metal and sets them in a context led by riffs, so that the battle-themed horrors of “Trench Division” and the roll of “Bog Bodies” and the lurch early in “Venomous Trait” balance extremity and accessibility in a way that feels like someone should probably send it to Fenriz. Has Fenriz heard this yet? It’s the band’s first release — the lineup includes Jason Brackin, Chad Remains (Ghorot, ex-Uzala), Jacob Depolitte and Marco Gonzalez, or so I’m told — and somewhat indistinguishable from a demo for that, but the fact is that while they might be outwardly basking in a kind of metallic primitivism, knuckle-dragging their and your way to oblivion with only gutturalisms for comfort, there’s no time wasted on EP in informing the listener who Past the Light are and what are their intentions in grim bludgeonry. Telling of things to come? I know better than to predict, but there’s intricacy amid the slaughter if you’re willing to hear it. The test is on you as the listener, whether and for how long you can hang in.
Posted in Whathaveyou on May 1st, 2026 by JJ Koczan
“Tan Halen” is the third standalone single South African heavy rockers Ruff Majik have issued since January, preceded by “For the Life of Me” (posted here) and “Can of Wyrms” (posted here), which respectively featured guest appearances from solo artist Dan Patlansky and Slomosa‘s Benjamin Berdous.
The new song finds the four-piece on their own, both continuing to pull away from and advocate against the ‘content-driven’ mindset of social media while at the same time, it has to be said, putting out some righteous algorithmic fare. “Tan Halen” appears in three mixes on what I’ll call an EP because, well, there’s an alternate mix of “For the Life of Me” too, so it’s not just the single and I don’t think anybody frets much about what’s an EP and what isn’t these days. That’s old-man-standing-in-front-of-his-record-shelf shit. Those shelves don’t even exist now.
If you ever needed a ready example for the difference in vibe a mix can make, dig the vocals-forward take on “Tvn Hvlen (Tvpe Mix)” and the garage-ier sound of “Tan Halen (Too Much Fuzz, Not Enough Drums).” All are plenty volatile in their writhing groove, but each also has its own angle, like three middle fingers coming at you, each from a different position.
Probably not gonna get off the internet this weekend, sadly, and I’ve never surfed, but I take the point:
“Surf’s up.
Tan Halen is out now, or whatever we’re supposed to say about it.
Get off the internet and go catch a wave this weekend.”
Tracklisting: 1. Tan Halen 02:42 2. Tvn Hvlen (Tvpe Mix) 02:46 3. For The Life Of Me (Alternate Mix) 03:47 4. Tan Halen (Too Much Fuzz, Not Enough Drums) 02:51
Produced by Lazarus Kingsley Heath Recorded in Mixed by Bill Knope Mastered by Rebirth Music Tape mix mastered by Bill Knope Cover photography by Luke Minnaar
Ruff Majik: Johni Holiday – Lyrics, vocals, guitar Brendon Bez – Guitar Jimmy Glass – Bass Steven “Boz” Bosman – Drums, percussion, programming
Posted in Whathaveyou on March 3rd, 2026 by JJ Koczan
“For the Life of Me” — which both asks and answers the question posed by the band via “I couldn’t remember why we started this whole thing in the first place” below — is the second Ruff Majik single since the South African four-piece made a return from months of hiatus in January’s wee hours with “Can of Wyrms” (posted here). It starts out with a slick bluesy groove and that is perhaps what’s setting the tone for the guest solo from guitarist/solo-artist Dan Patlansky, who sits in here where Slomosa‘s Benjamin Berdous joined the fray for “Can of Wyrms.”
And it was a fray. So is the new song, with shades of Greenleaf‘s heavy sway run through Ruff Majik‘s desert-hued color filter, an anthemic hook and due shove. “For the Life of Me” feels like it’s bashing away, and it is for a little bit there, but the amount of heart and urgency the band pack into the three-and-a-half-minute track gets to the core of what this band is able to do, and so feels all the more like a ‘welcome back’ moment.
Live activity is happening, noted below as hoisted from social media:
Chaos has always been a friend to Ruff Majik.
At some point, it became part of our marrow and blood too.
For the life of me, I couldn’t remember why we started this whole thing in the first place.
I remember now.
Mixed by Justin Bernardo Mastered by Bobby Johnson, Rebirth Music Released via Sound Of Liberation Records Dan Patlansky – Guest solo
public service announcement. don’t be a fuckhead. love your fellow humans. see you in the pit. @daisyjonesbar – 7 March [redacted] – 13 March
Ruff Majik: Johni Holiday – Lyrics, vocals, guitar Brendon Bez – Guitar Jimmy Glass – Bass Steven “Boz” Bosman – Drums, percussion, programming
Posted in Whathaveyou on January 6th, 2026 by JJ Koczan
South African heavy rockers Ruff Majik walked away last May, alluding to concerns of mental health and the drain/drag of being in a band trying to engage an audience. No, they didn’t use those words. Their return with a new single, which features Ben from Slomosa and apparently a slew of others from the South African underground on vocals, expressing a collective point of view of those left behind by suicide. The chorus, “May valkyries carry you home,” is duly stirring, and all the more effective for the group voice delivering it. Ruff Majik always had a good sense of production adding to their material.
The band’s last album, late 2024’s Moth Eater (review here), stepped forward from 2023’s Elektrik Ram (review here) but was perhaps too much too soon as the band’s manic pace of touring and releasing led to their unwinding, even if just for a time. There’s talk of restraint in the PR wire info below, but you’ll find the track has plenty of let-loose behind its push, and while it’s not the first time Ruff Majik have purposefully directed themselves toward the anthemic, they’re going for community resonance here, and the track is affecting. More so when you read the lyrics on the Bandcamp page.
Surprise this morning from the PR wire:
A new chapter begins for Ruff Majik with the release of latest single Can Of Wyrms
South African heavy rock outfit Ruff Majik return with Can Of Wyrms, a stark and emotionally unguarded single that confronts suicide from the perspective of those left behind.
Rather than romanticizing loss or framing it through spectacle, Can Of Wyrms documents grief as an ongoing presence — unresolved, heavy, and communal. The song was written years ago, but only now finds its moment, arriving as the band re-emerge after a period marked by silence, distance, and personal reckoning.
Frontman Johni Holiday has previously spoken openly about PTSD, agoraphobia, and cycles of dependency formed while touring — struggles that ultimately led to Ruff Majik stepping away before the weight became fatal. That pause, and the clarity it forced, directly informs the song’s restraint. Can Of Wyrms does not seek answers. It acknowledges absence, as well as the battle waged by those in the thick of it.
Musically, the track balances Ruff Majik’s stoner-punk urgency with a raw yet anthemic vulnerability. Gang vocals — recorded with friends and members of the South African underground music community — form the emotional core of the song, reinforcing its central idea: this grief is shared, not isolated.
The single also features guest vocals by Ben from Slomosa, adding a further layer of communal voice and international solidarity to a deeply personal release.
All proceeds from Can Of Wyrms, including associated merchandise, will be directed toward mental-health support initiatives.
The release coincides with Ruff Majik’s first live performance (31 January, Pretoria, South Africa) , since their hiatus — not framed as a victory lap, but as a statement of intent. In the band’s own words: “There is work to be done.”
Can Of Wyrms is not a eulogy. It is a warning, a remembrance, and a refusal to buckle under the pressures of the world.
This single is currently available on BandCamp only, and will be released on all other platforms on 16 January 2026. The band will take no requests for press until the first phase is complete.
Special crowd vocal features from Delilah LaVey, Shinesh Rambali, Danny Ylang, Jess Anderson, Matthew Nijland, Wilco Meyer, Estian Smith, Jimmy Glass, Brendon Bez, Lars Key, Kayleigh Mocke, Ahreev Govender, Zuanre Voges, Lumar Schutte
Ruff Majik are: Johni Holiday (vocals & guitar) Cowboy Bez (guitar & vocals) Jimmy Glass (bass) Steven Bosman (drums)
Posted in Whathaveyou on May 27th, 2025 by JJ Koczan
Admittedly, I’m not getting “band is done forever” vibes off Ruff Majik‘s somewhat vague breakup post. Some bands lay it all out — this is what happened, who what where when, etc. — but Ruff Majik founding guitarist/vocalist Johni Holiday is lighter on details: “…I want to live. I want to survive whatever this is. I want to feel, without bleeding for it.”
Mental health has been at play for Ruff Majik all the while, sometimes with emphasis on ‘play.’ Their two most recent albums, last Fall’s Moth Eater (review here) and 2023’s Elektrik Ram (review here), certainly put the theme forward, and chaos has been a friend of the South African rockers for the last decade. If you shake hard enough, eventually the wheels are going to come off. If they need to stop before that happens, it’s a commendable thing that they’re stopping.
But there’s no “done forever” here. The word ‘hiatus’ isn’t used, and Holiday is one to choose words carefully if you’ve ever read his lyrics, but it’s pretty clear he and Ruff Majik aren’t disappearing forever so much as stepping back and sorting out what they feel like needs sorting. Holiday, joined in the band by bassist/sometimes-vocalist Jimmy Glass, guitarist/sometimes-vocalist Cowboy Bez and drummer Steven Bosman, recently opened a venue, Sowaar Bar, in Pretoria, and surely that’s going to eat up some of your available-otherwise-for-anything hours. And between that, life, and the state of the world, taking care of yourself can sometimes require radical action. Ruff Majik were never strangers to being rad.
I included a couple links above. I could’ve included more. Going back to their early EPs, Ruff Majik‘s brash, attitude-laced and readily transgressive desert-heavy rock undertook a special, distinctive and honest progression. Whether that’s all the way done or not — and if we’re placing bets, I’m going with “not” — if it’s done for now, that’s an ending worth marking on the way to whatever the future might bring, even if that’s nothing.
Either way, I’m really, really glad I got to see this band the one time I did. Here’s looking forward to the next one.
From social media:
2015 – ♾️
For years now I’ve been pushing through grief, exhaustion, heartbreak, sickness, and occasional self-sabotage. Now, for the sake of myself, I need to stop.
I don’t know what happens next — and I think that’s okay.
What I do know is that I want to live. I want to survive whatever this is. I want to feel, without bleeding for it.
We’ll see each other again somewhere in a dimly lit dive bar. We’ll sing together again. Until then, thank you for everything.
— Johni Holiday
Ruff Majik are: Johni Holiday (vocals & guitar) Cowboy Bez (guitar & vocals) Jimmy Glass (bass) Steven Bosman (drums)
Posted in Features on December 19th, 2024 by JJ Koczan
[PLEASE NOTE: These are not the results of the year-end poll, which ends in January. If you haven’t contributed your picks yet, please do so here.]
—
Hi, and welcome to The Obelisk’s year in review for 2024. This is a thing that’s kind of developed over the 15-plus years the site’s been in operation, and it’s something that people sometimes tell me has been a help when it comes to finding new music. I know for myself as well, I’ve referred back to these lists a lot in subsequent years, to see where bands were and where my head was, and so on. Are best-of lists meaningful, at all, in any way? Probably to the person making them, and that’s me, so I’ll proceed.
I thought the format last year worked pretty well, so I’ve hijacked it for use here. Not something I expect anyone to notice, but I did want to mention it on the off-chance. I don’t have a best live album of the year, but there are a few worth talking about, surely.
It’s been a busy, fast year. The barrage of music is overwhelming — and as problems go, that’s among the best ones to have — but I do think we’re seeing some tapering off. Generational turnover is, in fact, a constant, but the 2020s are taking shape now with bands who started making their name around the mid-2010s shifting into headliner status, new bands coming up beneath, more diverse in sound and construction, and with new ideas. This isn’t universal, but it is the ideal vision of the thing. Circle of life and such.
But it’s a lot. Including the 50-releases-strong Quarterly Review last week, I’m well north of having reviewed 400 total different mostly-full-lengths since January. That’s insane. The math is obvious, but I’ll point out anyhow that you could buy an album for every day of the year and have enough for an extra month-plus afterward. An astonishing amount of music, and I’m by no means reviewing everything.
Which brings me to the inevitable last point. I haven’t reviewed everything. If you’re here wondering where Opeth and Blood Incantation are landing on my list, they aren’t. Nothing against either of them, I just haven’t dug into the records since I knew I wouldn’t be reviewing them. The regular standard of doing as much as I can, when I can, about as much as I can, applies.
Please if you disagree with some pick below or other — and if you do, that’s healthy — I kindly ask you to keep things civil in the comments. I’m not here to call people out on enjoying things I don’t — fascism aside — and I know it makes me sad when I break my ass for days to put this together and the first comment is, “NO [WHOEVER]. LIST SUCKS. NEVER READING THIS FILTH AGAIN,” etc. Before you comment, please take a second to read what you put back to yourself for kindness. That’s good for spelling too, not that I’d know.
That’s all the stalling I can do. Time to dive in. Happy holidays.
—
The Top 60 Albums of 2024
**NOTE**: If you’re looking for something specific, try a text search.
—
60-31
60. Psychlona, Warped Vision
59. Trillion Ton Beryllium Ships, The Mind Like Fire Unbound
58. Massive Hassle, Unreal Damage
57. Temple of the Fuzz Witch, Apotheosis
56. Space Shepherds, Cycler
55. Abrams, Blue City
54. Castle Rat, Into the Realm
53. Heath, Isaak’s Marble
52. Weite, Oase
51. Cosmic Fall, Back Where the Fire Flows
50. Troy the Band, Cataclysm
49. Sunnata, Chasing Shadows
48. Skraeckoedlan, Vermillion Sky
47. Acid Mammoth, Supersonic Megafauna Collision
46. Deer Creek, The Hiraeth Pit
45. Big Scenic Nowhere, The Waydown
44. Grin, Hush
43. The Swell Fellas, Residuum Unknown
42. The Gates of Slumber, The Gates of Slumber
41. Coltaine, Forgotten Ways
40. Mountain of Misery, The Land
39. Mammoth Volume, Raised Up by Witches
38. Delving, All Paths Diverge
37. High on Fire, Cometh the Storm
36. Thou, Umbilical
35. The Giraffes, Cigarette
34. Fu Manchu, The Return of Tomorrow
33. Full Earth, Cloud Sculptors
32. Daevar, Amber Eyes
31. Causa Sui, From the Source
Notes:
Just in case you’re the type of person who’d say, “Oh how could you have a top 60? after a certain number it’s all the same,” I’ll admit that’s true, but 60 is apparently nowhere near the ‘certain number’ in question for me this year. I agonized over this part of the list. More than the top 30, and more than picking a best short release, best debut, or anything else. I wanted basically a second top 30, and I feel like if I saw this as that, as 30-1, I’d congratulate whoever submitted it on their taste. But maybe that’s just me agreeing with myself.
I like the mix of up and comers and established acts here. Sunnata and Skraeckoedlan, The Giraffes, of course High on Fire, Deer Creek and so on, mixing with up and comers like Full Earth, Daevar, Acid Mammoth, Trillion Ton Beryllium Ships, Heath, Troy the Band and Weite. I feel somewhat compelled to justify my High on Fire placement, especially looking at the results so far of the year-end poll. They’re amazing, they’re devastating, they’re a singular live act, but I just didn’t listen to the record that much. There. A big part of me feels like it should be top 10 just by virtue of who the band are, but if I did that for everybody who deserved it, I wouldn’t have room for anything new. All I can do is be honest to my own listening habits and opinions. I know High on Fire are really, really good. I know this album is really, really good. That’s why it’s on this list. Should it be higher? Probably. I’m doing my best.
Thank you for your kind attention in this matter. Also, listen to The Giraffes.
You won’t hear me say a downer word about An Earlier Time‘s quieter stretches, but it’s the sweeping moments like “Limitless” that find Boston’s Sundrifter making the most resonant impression. Their third full-length and the follow-up to 2018’s Visitations (review here), it was a strong declaration of who Sundrifter want to be as they continue to grow, and deserved more love than I saw that it got.
Oh, look out for Mr. Blogosphere. He’s out here taking a real risk putting Tranquonauts on the year-end list, like the combining of forces between Melbourne, Australia, heavy psych blues rockers Seedy Jeezus and guitarist Isaiah Mitchell wasn’t gonna work the second time around? Wow, Mitchell‘s and Lex Waterreus‘ guitars sure do sound awesome together. Oh — it’s a hot-take! Better get your react videos ready. The internet is terrible. This album offers escape from it.
At the risk of having to give back my Music-Journalism-Level membership to the Sycophant Society, I’ll dare to point out that Chat Pile are way, way hyped. That happens sometimes. It’s not like they’re out there being like, “Hey we’re the noise rock white dudes shifting paradigms for noise rock white dudes, best in a generation.” It’s people like me with all the hyperbole and comma splicing. I get that too. It’s a sound geared toward inciting a strong reaction, from the sneering sarcasm of the title down. By the way, am I the only one who looks at the title Cool World and thinks of the 1992 semi-animated film of the same name? I kind of hope so. See? Big feelings all around.
Rest assured, I don’t, but if I had any friends, I’d be like, “Hey, you should check out this band Gnome from Belgium. They’ve got fun riffs and they beat you over the head with them until you remember them by heart.” And these ‘friends’ would be all, “Wow man, that sounds definitely like something I would ever want to introduce to the scope of my life experiences! Thank you! I’m so glad to be your friend and the world is definitely a better place with you in it.” And then everybody’s day is better, all because of sharing and the shenanigans-laced riff metal proffered by these three behatted miscreants from Antwerpen.
—
26. Brant Bjork Trio, Once Upon a Time in the Desert
Brant Bjork‘s solo band begat Stöner, and Stöner begat Brant Bjork Trio as Bjork, drummer Ryan Güt and bassist Mario Lalli (Fatso Jetson, Mario Lalli and the Rubber Snake Charmers, Yawning Man, etc.). I’ll cop to being a nerd for Brant Bjork‘s output generally — it’s a kind of cool so definitively Californian, my NJ-ass self can’t help but admire it — but the chemistry in Once Upon a Time in the Desert is on point to an undeniable degree, and the songs are a reminder of how the back catalog got so strong in the first place. What else could you want?
Five albums in, a post-arrival Sergeant Thunderhoof stand ready. They know who they are, what they want their songs to do, why and how to make it happen. The Ghost of Badon Hill gives a conceptual focus to unite material intentionally sprawling, and lets listeners immerse in a narrative all the more easily for the quality of its songcraft. Self-recorded, it is masterful in performance and assured of its execution, pored over but not overworked; the happy accidents might have been left in on purpose, but they still sound like accidents. And Sergeant Thunderhoof still sound like a band driving themselves toward the unknown.
Doom metal is lucky to have Early Moods laying out a template for the next generation to hopefully follow. The Los Angeles five-piece’s second full-length, A Sinner’s Past, refined the lurch of their 2022 self-titled (review here), and the combination of hard touring and progressive craft continues to bode well as they look toward their next offering. They’ve put in their work, however swift their ascent to this point might feel, and they’re about one great record away from standing among the best doom of the 21st century. You could easily argue they’re already there. Every reason is accounted for on A Sinner’s Past.
—
23. Morpholith, Dystopian Distributions of Mass Produced Narcotics
Iceland’s Morpholith enter the conversation with Dystopian Distributions of Mass Produced Narcotics, which has cosmic-doom breadth and bong-metal crush to spare in the first four minutes of “Psychophere” alone, never mind anything that surrounds. The band’s debut is a bombastic plodder, beating out the march to a futuristic — and cold — vision of the riff-filled land that may or may not be Reykjavik in the wintertime while simultaneously being both very much of weed and not outwardly about it, seeming to have much more than addled, Mid Atlantic Ridge-heavy riff worship because — look out! — they do. If cosmic doom is ever going to be more than a loose thread connecting YOB and Ufomammut, bands like Morpholith need to keep pushing it forward like this. “Dismalium.” I dare you.
—
22. Lamp of the Universe Meets Dr. Space, Enters Your Somas
Lamp of the Universe is multi-instrumentalist, songwriter, producer and vocalist Craig Williamson, based in New Zealand. Dr. Space is synthesist, keyboardist, producer, bootlegger and bandleader Scott Heller. The ‘meeting’ of these two expanded minds takes place over two extended tracks, one vinyl side per, of lush psychedelic and multi-tiered drones, absolutely perfect for the zone-out hypnosis you’ve been trying to put yourself in all day but for that pesky consciousness. I wish I could come up with some kind of ritual awesome enough for the keyboard textures in “Enters Your Somas” or the propulsive space rock thuddenchug of “Infiltrates Your Mind,” but some sounds are just too cool for the planet. Come see how the freaks get down.
I spent some significant time with Dool‘s The Shape of Fluidity this Spring, before and after seeing them at Roadburn (review here), which was another highlight of the year. The album’s triumph, in songwriting, in transcending genre bounds and in conveying its theme of breaking loose from the gender binary, gave my parent-of-a-trans-kid self a hopeful vision of a future beyond dark, hateful rhetoric or implied/real violence. It showed me a possible path to victory on what will be and already is a hard road. It was there when I needed it, which is a specific ideal of art providing care. I’ll never forget that.
Granted the Western soundscaping at the outset of the eponymous “Buzzard” lays it on thick, but it’s supposed to! We’re talking fire-and-brimstone earthbound Americana folk with a doomly rhythmic cast, given the self-aware title of Doom Folk by the solo artist Buzzard, aka Christopher Thomas Elliott, laying it on thick is the point. Elliott has a follow-up out soon already. Thinking of Doom Folk as the beginning of a creative progression makes its nuance and individualist drive even more exciting, but the rawness of this debut, the straightforwardness of its structures and the resulting memorability are part of the appeal for sure.
Seven bangers. Not a dud in the bunch. Two nine-minute songs and you still couldn’t say a moment of High Desert Queen‘s rightly anticipated sophomore LP is wasted. Not when you’re building up to the roll of “Head Honcho,” certainly. The Texas outfit built on the good-time largesse and party-but-not-a-party-so-cool-you-don’t-feel-welcome vibing of 2021’s Secrets of the Black Moon (review here) and set themselves vociferously to the task of being the change in heavy rock that they wanted to hear. Palm Reader‘s infectiousness is a strength, both in terms of a catchy piece like “Ancient Aliens” or “Time Waster,” and also in the overarching positive-framed mood and heart so clearly put into the material.
—
18. Ufomammut, Hidden
Released by Supernatural Cat and Neurot Recordings. Reviewed May 21.
Now a quarter-century on from their start, Italian trio Ufomammut have yet to put out a record that didn’t sound like a forward step from the one before it. And Hidden is their 10th album. The band are progenitors and refiners of a cosmic doom sound that is unto itself, and cuts like “Kismet” and “Leeched” manage to be both lumbering in their massive-tone grooves and sprawling with a synthy ambience that, though certainly influential, is immediately recognizable as Ufomammut. Hidden is part of a creative trajectory, to be sure, and the arc is ongoing, but there’s more than enough substance here to leave a crater behind in the listener’s brain.
In its arrangement as five separate dreams taking place over its component tracks, the only thing Pentasomnia doesn’t take into account is that another Iota LP was a dream all on its own even before music actually happened. A full 16 years after shaking the galaxy’s core with their 2008 debut, Tales (discussed here, and here), the three-piece of guitarist/vocalist Joey Toscano (Dwellers, Hibernaut), drummer/producer Andy Patterson (The Otolith, ex-SubRosa, etc.) and bassist Oz Yasri (ex-Bird Eater) making a comeback — let alone it actually being good — was nigh on unthinkable. Then you heard “The Intruder” and reality shifted just a bit. Pretty sweet.
Few albums in 2024 were as entrancing as Langt, Langt Vekk, the hopefully-not-a-one-off collaboration between Norwegian progressive heavy instrumentalists Kanaan and neofolk contemporaries Ævestaden. Both adventurous outfits in their own right, the combination of elements, from live drums and synth to traditional plucked strings and Norwegian-language vocal choruses, works stunningly well. That little bit of fuzz in “Habbor og Signe,” or the cymbal wash behind “Dalebu Jonsson” — the songs are full of these little nuances or flourishes waiting to be found, but even with the most superficial of listens, the achievement resounds, whether one approaches from a viewpoint of heavy rock, prog, folk or psychedelia.
You know, I’ve kind of dug DVNE records all along, and I can’t really call Voidkind a surprise after 2021’s Etemen Ænka (review here), but these songs — “Eleonora,” “Sarmatae,” “Abode of the Perfect Soul,” among others — hit me much harder than I had expected, and the more I listened to try to twist my head around “Reliquary,” the more the album as a whole revealed of its character and detail. I review a lot of stuff, and I hear more than I review, so I don’t always get pulled back by every record, but Voidkind kept calling for return visits.
Look. If you’re reading this, I know I don’t have to tell you about Orange Goblin. Even if you don’t already have a soft spot for the long-running UK doom rockers, they’re perfectly happy to pummel one into you with Science, Not Fiction, their first album since 2018 and a realignment toward a harder-edged heavy rock sound, where the last, say, two records had leaned more metal. I heard some griping about the production not helping, but I heard absolutely nothing to complain about here. The band are on fire and the recording shows it, the songs aren’t necessarily any great progressive leap but for sure they’re Orange Goblin songs, and for a band who owes nobody proof of anything, they set a high standard and deliver accordingly, like god damned professionals should.
—
13. Spaceslug, Out of Water
Released by Electric Witch Mountain Recordings. Reviewed May 14.
What I didn’t get about Spaceslug until I finally saw them live at Desertfest New York (review here) was just how metal the impact of their songs can get. It’s not necessarily that they’ve grown more aggressive, unless you want to incorporate harsh vocals or shouting — “Tears of Antimatter” also has gently-delivered barely-there spoken word, so it depends on the story you want to tell — but the blend of melancholic doom, heavy psychedelia and melodic fluidity that has become Spaceslug‘s stylistic wheelhouse is not to be missed. Out of Water finds them at their broadest and least concerned with genre, and brings into relief how special a band they’ve become. Also it rocks.
No secret how Craneium are doing it on Point of No Return; it’s right there in the songs. All of them. “One Thousand Sighs,” “The Sun,” “A Distant Shore,” “…Of Laughter and Cries,” “Things Have Changed” and “Search Eternal.” Texture and hooks, heft and scope and melody and crash and shove, classy progressive execution and swaggering conjurations. Most of all, songs that stay with you. Chances are, if you heard this record and gave it its due attention at some point in your time with it, you didn’t have to do much more than read the titles to have the tracks playing in your head. That’s not a coincidence. It’s craft. It’s a willful outreach on the part of the band and material. It’s what makes you want to sing along. And why would you not?
—
11. Guhts, Regeneration
Released by Seeing Red Records and New Heavy Sounds. Reviewed Feb. 5.
More on it below, but for the moment, suffice it to say that the bludgeoning and/or scathe of Regeneration at its most intense and the depths its mix seemed to find, the debut full-length from New York post-metallers Guhts dared visceral emotionality in a way few records so heavy could or would hope to. The willing-to-break-her-voice-if-necessary performance of Amber Gardner and the weighted undulations surrounding from guitarist Scott Prater, bassist Daniel Martinez and drummer Brian Clemens, the open sway, unfettered crush, and quiet spaces offsetting all that bombast result in both a chaotic feel and an applicable world. Therefore it must be modern. Fine. It sounds like the future.
As to how Philadelphia’s Heavy Temple managed to fit so much swagger onto a single platter, you’d have to ask them, but their second album, Garden of Heathens, landed hard in tone and attitude alike. Songs like “Extreme Indifference to Life,” “House of Warship” and the galloping payoff of “Jesus Wept” ahead of the thrashy finale “Psychomanteum” affirmed what was set out in 2021’s Lupi Amoris (review here) and their earlier short releases while marking out and conquering decisively new territory in their sound. I know it was recorded two years ago or something like that, but it’s still a band beginning to realize their potential in craft and performance, and if a third LP happens sooner than later, so much the better.
—
9. 1000mods, Cheat Death
Released by Ouga Booga and the Mighty Oug and Ripple Music. Reviewed Nov. 11.
Whether one embraces Cheat Death because the songs kick ass or because 1000mods are so vivid and uncompromising in pushing themselves forward from release to release, I don’t think you’re wrong. The forerunners of their generation in Greek heavy rock remain among the finest Europe’s heavy underground have to offer, and the atmosphere they’re able to conjure alongside the straight-ahead Matt Bayles-produced punk-metal hooks of these songs is emblematic of why. Without ever giving up their foundation in heavy rock, 1000mods have consistently refined their processes and grown as songwriters. The joke of Cheat Death is how alive the material feels.
Faced with the considerable task of following up the to-date album of their career, Elektrik Ram (review here), just one year later, South African heavy rockers Ruff Majik did not flinch. Instead, Moth Eater takes the outright charge and sharpness-minded efficiency of its predecessor in a stated trilogy that began with 2020’s The Devil’s Cattle (review here) and sets it as the foundation for a confident, creative growth and sustainable expansion of sound. They’re a little more willing to dwell in parts, and they’re well aware of how catchy they can be, but also, they know the power of momentum and they’re fully in control of the narratives they’re telling. As Moth Eater readily demonstrates, it’s hard to know which of that it is that makes them most dangerous.
It’s hard to overstate the accomplishment of Nell’ Ora Blu, and I’m well aware that the critical sphere is full of plenty who’ve spent the better part of 2024 trying. Reasonable. The completeness of the world Uncle Acid and the Deadbeats built in the work based around the concept of soundtracking a giallo film that didn’t exist was singularly evocative. With original dialogue recorded (in Italian) specifically for ‘movie’ ambience, Uncle Acid took what had always been an influence on the band’s sound within genre-cinema and its methods of storytelling, and flipped the process on its head by creating its own story. Their influence is already well spread throughout the heavy underground, for sure, but in bringing a vision to life, this might be the album Uncle Acid have been working toward all along.
A forward-thinking masterwork from even before “Deadname” sneaks a layer of acoustic guitar under the mountain of distortion in the verse lines and “Arrival” and “Transitions” give evocative chronicle to the album’s trans-experiential theme — it is the band’s first since guitarist/vocalist Simona Ohlsson transitioned, and admirable for both its projected triumph and vulnerability around that — the fifth full-length from Vokonis continues the progressive path they have walked for the last decade-plus. A lineup change has brought some shift in dynamic, but a new strength of voice behind the material that makes “Phantom Carriage,” “Chrysalis,” and, suitably enough, “Arrival,” feel like a declarative pinnacle, and having something to say makes the raw impact of its heaviest moments all the more powerful.
There’s little funnier to me about heavy rock as it exists in 2024 than the idea that Greenleaf would be a band people take for granted. “Oh, Tommi Holappa and Company putting out another collection of classic-heavy and blues-rocking bangers? Business as usual, I guess.” Until you listen to the album, maybe. Then you get the tumble of “Avalanche,” the hooks in “Breathe, Breathe Out,” and “A Wolf in My Mind,” the subdued-bluesy pair “That Obsidian Grin” and “An Alabastrine Smile” to remind how you much this band has been able to grow since Arvid Hällagård made his first appearance with them a decade ago, the way they’re able to move through a jam and land in a groove as solid as “Oh Dandelion,” reminiscent of Clutch in its start-stop funk but defined by its own persona. Every Greenleaf record is a gift. If feeling that way means I’m not impartial, good. We understand each other.
—
4. Rickshaw Billie’s Burger Patrol, Big Dumb Riffs
Promises made, promises kept. Austin-based crunch purveyors Rickshaw Billie’s Burger Patrol stripped any and all excess out of their approach on Big Dumb Riffs, resulting in a quick-feeling collection of memorable, heavy tracks that, whether fast like “1800EATSHIT” or slow like “In a Jar,” are united in the album’s central stated purpose. Already an established brand of heavy revelry, the three-piece didn’t change anything radically in aesthetic terms, but the songs found their target one after the other, front to back, and were clever and well composed, however willfully lunkheaded the central riffery might have been. They’re headed to Europe in Spring, and I’m already hearing rumors of a next record, so keep an eye out in 2025.
Slomosa‘s released-in-2020 self-titled debut (review here) was a salve to many in troubled times, representing a next-generation hope for underground heavy in energetically-delivered, classic-feeling songs. Tundra Rock, which gives a name to the band’s style seemingly in direct answer to anyone who might class them as ‘desert,’ confirms the Norwegian four-piece at the forefront of an up and coming cohort of younger acts beginning to find their expressive modus and step beyond their root influences. Tundra Rock finds Slomosa doing this while giving their dual-vocal live dynamic vibrant studio representation and growing their material in character and melody alike. Heavy rock and roll is Slomosa‘s for the taking.
A record that didn’t need to be loud to be heavy, Brume‘s Marten is without question my most-listened-to album of 2024. That needs no qualifying. I had high expectations going into it after seeing the San Francisco band at Desertfest New York 2022 (review here), and Marten surpassed every hope I might’ve been able to harness for it and then some. The collective voice of the band incorporating multiple viewpoints from bassist/vocalist/keyboardist Susie McMullan, guitarist/vocalist Jamie McCathie, drummer Jordan Perkins Lewis, and in her first appearance as a full-on member of the band, cellist/vocalist Jackie Perez Gratz (Grayceon, Amber Asylum, etc.), resulted in a fluid but deeply divergent collection, comprised of songs that went where they wanted to go — or didn’t, thank you very much — according to their own whims and purposes. It is a landmark for Brume and, if any number of subgenres are lucky, a blueprint from which others will hopefully learn.
I acknowledge breaking my own rules here — splits are always, until and including this year, categorized as short releases in these lists — but when it came to it, the thought of putting Elephant Tree and Lowrider‘s The Long Forever anywhere else, considering it as anything else, seemed ridiculous. Especially if you count writing the liner notes for it, I’ve gone on at length about the release as an intersection of crucial moments for the respective bands, with Lowrider following their first album in 20 years, Refractions (review here), and Elephant Tree answering the progressive statement of their own second LP, Habits (review here), both released in 2020. The storyline gets deeper as Elephant Tree also look to reestablish themselves following a near-fatal accident suffered by guitarist/vocalist Jack Townley, melding rawness of tone with lush vocal harmonies, and Lowrider drag fuzz-rock traditionalism kicking and screaming into a reality of being both fun and intelligent. There ultimately was nothing else to call The Long Forever than the album of the year. If that comes with an asterisk because it’s a split, it doesn’t lessen the effect of hearing it at all. So yeah, I’m breaking the rules of the game. I’m inconsistent. Unprofessional. Biased. I don’t know what to tell you except love makes you do crazy things. In these songs themselves — do I even need to talk about the collaboration — and in the drive behind them, that’s what most resonates here.
—
The Top 60 Albums of 2024: Honorable Mention
—
If the 60 above wasn’t enough, here are more leads to chase down, alphabetical but in kind of a hyper-specific, ass-backwards-seeming way:
Acid Rooster, Alber Jupiter, Altareth, Alunah, Astrometer, Bismarck, Black Capricorn, Blasting Rod, BleakHeart, Blue Heron, Bongripper, Boozewa, Caffeine, Carpet, Castle, Cleen, Clouds Taste Satanic, Codex Serafini, Cold in Berlin, Cortez, The Cosmic Dead, Crypt Sermon, Daily Thompson, Deadpeach, Deaf Wolf, Demon Head, Destroyer of Light, Dopethrone, Duel, Earth Ship, Elephant Tree, Emu, Familiars, Bill Fisher, 40 Watt Sun, Ghost Frog, Goat Major, Guenna, Heath, High Reeper, Hijss, Horseburner, Ian Blurton’s Future Now, Insect Ark, Inter Arma, Kelley Juett, Juke Cove, Kalgon, Kandodo, Kant, Kariti, Kungens Män (x2), Kurokuma, Leather Lung, Legions of Doom, Lord Buffalo, Magic Fig, Magick Brother & Mystic Sister, Magick Potion, Magmakammer, Mammoth Caravan, Massive Hassle, MC MYASNOI, Merlin, Methadone Skies, Monkey3, Morag Tong, The Mountain King, Mount Hush, MR.BISON, My Dying Bride, Myriad’s Veil, No Man’s Valley, Norna, The Obsessed, Oryx, Pallbearer, Patriarchs in Black, Pia Isa, Planet of Zeus, Red Mesa, Rezn, Rifflord, Sacri Monti, Sandveiss, Satan’s Satyrs, Saturnalia Temple, Scorched Oak, Sheepfucker & Kraut, Slift, Slower, Slow Green Thing, SoftSun, The Sonic Dawn, SONS OF ZÖKU, Spacedrifter, Spiral Grave, Spirit Mother, Stonebride, Sun Blood Stories, Sunface, Sun Moon Holy Cult, Swallow the Sun, The Swell Fellas, Swell O, Temple Fang, 10,000 Years, Thomas Greenwood and the Talismans, Thunderbird Divine, Tigers on Opium, Traum, 24/7 Diva Heaven, Valley of the Sun, Vlimmer, Void Commander, Weather Systems, The Whims of the Great Magnet, Whispering Void, White Hills, Per Wiberg, Esben Willems, Worshipper, WyndRider…
Notes:
With the eternal caveat that I’ll be adding to the honorable mentions for the next few days as people drop names they remembered and I forgot, I’ll say I can live with the list as it is now. I wouldn’t go so far as to say I’m happy with it, but I’ll live. I felt like there was just too much good stuff in the 60-30, stuff that deserved a better look, and god damn, look at the honorable mentions. You’re gonna tell me Rezn wasn’t top 30 material? Or Inter Arma, or 10,000 Years (who I still need to review), or Kandodo or Cortez, or Bongripper, Blue Heron, Merlin, Slower? Mount Hush, Vlimmer, Destroyer of Light — I could do this all day. That Carpet record. That MR.BISON record. Valley of the Sun. I see these names and want to punch myself. Then I see the names in the top 30 and I go, “Well…” and kind of have to hold off. I guess that means it turned out to be a pretty fantastic year.
I know for a fact I didn’t hear everything that came out, and I’m willing to bet that any number of people who see this will have their own opinions on the best albums of 2024 from top to bottom. I celebrate this difference and look forward to being exposed to new sounds because of it. Let comments fly, please. Once again, my only ask is that you keep it kind as relates to my own list(s) and any other picks someone might offer. If I’ve got facts wrong, something was a Dec. 2023 release instead of Jan. 2024, whatever, by all means, let me know. But we’re all friends here and being a jerk about it solves nothing.
And yes, I’ll admit to projecting some self-criticism in the Elephant Tree/Lowrider selection for album of the year. All I can tell you is I stand by that pick. It’s that because when I was putting together the list, it couldn’t have been anywhere else. I don’t love breaking my own arbitrary rules nearly as much as I love imposing those arbitrary rules in the first place, but sometimes apparently one is forced from one’s comfort zone to their own general betterment. Who knew?
Of course we’re not done yet.
—
Debut Album of the Year 2024
Guhts, Regeneration
Other notable debuts (alphabetical):
Azutmaga, Offering
Buzzard, Doom Folk
Castle Rat, Into the Realm
Cleen, Excursion
Coltaine, Forgotten Ways
Full Earth, Cloud Sculptors
Goat Generator, Goat Generator
Goat Major, Ritual
Grave Speaker, Grave Speaker
Guenna, Peak of Jin’Arrah
Hashtronaut, No Return
Heath, Isaak’s Marble
Hijss, Stuck on Common Ground
Kalgon, Kalgon
Kant, Paranoia Pilgrimage
Kitsa, Dead by Dawn
Leather Lung, Graveside Grin
Legions of Doom, The Skull 3
Magic Fig, Magic Fig
Magick Potion, Magick Potion
Morpholith, Dystopian Distributions of Mass Produced Narcotics
Myriad’s Veil, Pendant
Neon Nightmare, Faded Dream
Plant, Cosmic Phytophthora
Rabid Children, Does the Heartbeat
Saltpig, Saltpig
Semuta, Glacial Erratic
SoftSun, Daylight in the Dark
Spacedrifter, When the Colors Fade
Sun Moon Holy Cult, Sun Moon Holy Cult
Ten Ton Slug, Colossal Oppressor
Tet, Tet
Tigers on Opium, Psychodrama
Tommy and the Teleboys, Gods Used in Great Condition
Troy the Band, Cataclysm
Weather Systems, Ocean Without a Shore
Esben Willems, Glowing Darkness
Young Acid, Murder at Maple Mountain
Notes:
First about Guhts: From the Andy Patterson recording and parts of the songs themselves, Guhts weren’t hiding influence from the likes of SubRosa or Julie Christmas, Made Out of Babies, etc., but what Regeneration did so well — and what I was trying to convey above — was take those recognizable elements and redirect them toward an expressive individuality. That album could be punishingly heavy or sweet and soothing and the fact that you never quite knew which was coming next was a major asset working in the band’s favor. There are a lot of killer debuts on this list, and plenty I’m sure that I’ve left off because, well, I’m inept, but Regeneration was so sure of what it was about and so crisp in making that real through sound that it’s still stunning.
A lot to celebrate on this list. Full Earth at the outset of a hopefully long-term progression. Tigers on Opium with attitude and craft. Castle Rat giving stage drama studio life. Weather Systems picking up where Anathema left off. Promising starts for Pontiac, Hashtronaut, Neon Nightmare, Cleen, Coltaine, Troy the Band, Buzzard, Magic Fig, Legions of Doom, and Heath, among others. If you’re worried about the state of underground heavy music, you don’t need to be. Granted the future of anything is unknowable even before you apply “uncertain times” caveats and all the rest, but bands are stepping up to carry the torch of established sounds and pushing themselves to realize new ideas — whether that’s Guhts and Magic Fig or Tigers on Opium, or Legions of Doom, Ten Ton Slug, Weather Systems and Monolord’s Esben Willems, new players or ones who’ve been around for decades.
If you want a top ten — and who doesn’t? — in addition to Guhts, make your way through Full Earth, Sun Moon Holy Cult, Morpholith, Guenna, Coltaine, Troy the Band, Young Acid, Emu, Buzzard and Kant to start, and you can dig deeper from there. That’s actually 11, but I don’t care. More new music won’t hurt you.
We press on.
—
Short Release of the Year 2024
Moura, Fume Santo de Loureiro
Other notable EPs, Splits, Demos, Singles, etc.
Aktopasa, Ultrawest
Alreckque, 6PM
Bog Wizard, Journey Through the Dying Lands
Conan, DIY Series Issue 1
Cortége, Under the Endless Sky
Cult of Dom Keller, Extinction EP
Michael Rudolph Cummings, Money EP
Deer Lord, Dark Matter Pt. 2
Eagle Twin & The Otolith, Legends of the Desert Vol. 4
Fuzznaut, Wind Doula
Fuzzter, Pandemonium EP
Geezer & Isaak, Interstellar Cosmic Blues and the Riffalicious Stoner Dudes
Harvestman, Triptych EP(s)
Hermano, When the Moon Was High
Hollow Leg, Dust & Echoes
Holy Fingers, Endless Light Infinite Presence
King Buffalo, Balrog
Lurcher, Breathe EP
Okkoto, All is Light
Ord Cannon, Foreshots EP
Orme, No Serpents No Saviours
Pelican, Adrift/Tending the Embers
Pontiac, Hard Knox EP
Rope Trick, Red Tide EP
Sacred Buzz, Radio Radiation
Smoke & Doomsday Profit, Split
Spiral Guru, Silenced Voices EP
Toad Venom, Jag har inga problen osv...
Trigona & IO Audio Recordings, Split
Various Artists, International Space Station Vol. 2
Notes:
This category includes so much and can range so vastly between an EP that’s about 30 seconds short of being a full album to a standalone single released just for the hell of it to a band’s first rehearsal room demo. “Short releases” encompasses a lot, and as noted above, I’ve already broken my rules about where splits go. What about The Otolith and Eagle Twin? Geezer and Isaak? Smoke and Doomsday Profit? Trigona and IO Audio Recordings? The International Space Station four-wayer? If I’m crossing lines, don’t these also need to be considered as full-lengths?
You know what really sucks about it? This is an argument I’m going to have with myself for probably the next year. An existential crisis playing out in the back of my mind. More important? The Moura EP. The soundtracky textures the Spanish folk-informed progressive psychedelic rockers brought to the follow-up for their second album were both otherworldly and ground-born, and the material put emphasis on how much care and craft goes into their work while retaining the organic core against the threat of pretense. It was my most listened to short release of 2024, followed by Pelican, Holy Fingers, Pontiac, Toad Venom, Hollow Leg (x2), and Sacred Buzz. A new King Buffalo single was a late-year boon, that Hermano was worth it for the previously-unreleased studio track alone, and strong showings from Michael Rudolph Cummings, Deer Lord, Conan and Cortége, along with the aforementioned splits, assured that through the entire year, attention spans would receive consistent challenge in the movement from one thing to the next.
By way of a familiar confession, my list of short releases is nowhere near complete. It never is, and it never really could be. I’m sure there will be some I left out that I’ll add in for honorable mentions, etc., but I stand by the Moura pick for best short outing. They brought a soul to it that put the lie to the notion of EPs as between-album gap-fillers, and in a year that didn’t lack substance among its brevity-focused options, Fume Santo de Loureiro stood out in character, aesthetic and songwriting. Nobody else is making music quite like Moura.
If you have more to add here, by all means, please and thank you. Comments are below.
—
Live Albums
Live Album of the Year 2024
Temple Fang, Live at Krach Am Bach
Castle, One Knight Stands: Live in NY
Danava, Live
Elder, Live at Maida Vale
Snail, Thou Art There
Stöner, Hittin’ the Bitchin’ Switch
Sula Bassana & Skyjoggers, Split
The Whims of the Great Magnet, Live at Bankastudios Maastricht 22-12-2023
Notes:
Fewer releases listed here than last year, but some killer ones for that. I put Temple Fang out there as live album of the year, and since we’re late in the post I’ll tell you honestly that it probably could be any of these on a given day. Danava’s live record crossed decades in badassery, the Sula/Skyjoggers split captured the vibe of a club night in Germany, the Whims of the Great Magnet’s live release made an excellent predecessor to their out-this-month studio album, Snail recorded theirs at a show I put on, Stöner capture the end of their two-album cycle with an awesome set, and Elder are Elder. The Maida Vale recording is short, and their songs are long, or you probably would’ve heard a lot more about that this year. If/when they do a proper live album, it will be a no-brainer.
But the Temple Fang has it all in molten progressivism, heavy tones, immersive psychedelia and outright soul, and of the bands I’ve managed to list here — if you want to add to the list, please do — there’s nobody who so much defines what they do by its live incarnation. Temple Fang’s music changes every night. They follow where it leads in a different way, and the ritualization of their performance comes through in Live at Krach Am Bach resoundingly. I’m not saying a bad word about their studio work to this point, but their heart manifests in a different way and at a different level onstage. They’re a great band and this shows a big part of why.
—
Looking Ahead to 2025
Names, right? This one’s all about the names? Get to the names, jack? Okay, calm down.
With eternal appreciation to the folks of fine, upstanding moral character in the ‘The Obelisk Collective’ group on Facebook for the assistance, here’s a smattering of what one might look forward to in 2025:
Aawks, After Nations, All Them Witches, Amber Asylum, Author & Punisher, Bandshee, Black Spirit Crown, Bog Wizard, Bone Church, Borracho, Bronco, Buzzard, Dee Calhoun, Causa Sui, The Cimmerian, Clutch, Conan, Corrosion of Conformity, Daevar, Dead Meadow, Dead Shrine, Demons My Friends, Dream Unending, DUNDDW, Dunes, Flummox, Fuzz Sagrado, FVZZ POPVLI, Gaytheist, Gin Lady, Gnarled, Gnod & White Hills, Gods and Punks, Godzillionaire, Haze Mage, Kaiser, Kal-El, King Buffalo, Lamassu, Lo-Pan, Madmess, Mantar, Masters of Reality, Messa, Seán Mulrooney, Mouth., New Dawn Fades, Nightstalker, Øresund Space Collective, Pentagram, Pesta, Pothamus, Dax Riggs, Seedy Jeezus, Slomatics, Slow Wake, Stoned Jesus, Stone Machine Electric, Temple Fang, 3rd Ear Experience, Triptykon, Trouble, Turtle Skull, Warlung, Weedpecker, Yawning Balch, Year of the Cobra, YOB… and because it still hasn’t happened and someone invariably calls me out if they’re not listed: Om.
If you have names to add, “smash that comment button,” in the parlance of our times. Only don’t really smash it because you might hurt your hand or break your phone with your awesome strength.
—
THANK YOU
It was among my primary goals for this post that it should be shorter than last year’s, and it looks like I’ll achieve that with room to spare, so I’m glad. Sometimes I get carried away, I think I probably don’t need to tell you.
Before I let go of 2024 — actually I still want to review that The Whims of the Great Magnet studio release and I’ve got a Darsombra video premiere set before the end of the year, news to catch up on from like the last two weeks and a whole lot more to cover — I’d like to take a moment to thank you one more time for reading and for being part of this project this year and each year it’s been ongoing. Your support is absolutely what keeps this site going and it means more to me than I can ever hope to comprehend.
Thank you to The Patient Mrs., who in the course of a given week let alone year puts up with more of my bullshit than any human being should ever have to. “Yes, love, the world’s ending and we have no money and the house is falling down around us and the dog needs to pee, but I just need two or three hours to go sit and write about riffs — is that cool?” Or better, when I’m pissy about it. The “my wife is a saint” routine is pretty played out as far as dudely excuses for being selfish, lazy and/or dumb go, but well, I am all of those things on the extreme regular and she hasn’t booted my ass to the curb yet. I find this to be a reason to celebrate and a thing to appreciate. I am loved and cared for in ways I could never hope to earn.
Thank you to my family for their support, year in and year out. They’ve all got Obelisk shirts and they all wear them, and while I’m not sure they understand the true depths of egoistic depravity involved in this project, they’ve been on board with it since the start, and this includes my wife’s side of the family as well. I am incredibly lucky to have the life I have.
I’m going to keep listening to music, keep writing about it as much as I can. I’m not quite as generally panicked about it as I used to be — older, busier in different ways, over the FOMO, maybe a little more discerning in terms of taste? — and I’m significantly less likely to break my brain answering email, but I’m doing my best.
The Obelisk presses on into what will be a busy 2025. I’ve got trips slated to Planet Desert Rock Weekend in Las Vegas this January, Desertfest Oslo in May, Freak Valley in Germany in June, Bear Stone in Croatia in July, and Desertfest New York in September, with more hopefully to come. I look forward to these adventures and to doing the writing that will happen as part of them, and one more time, I thank you for your time and attention in reading, in the past, now, and in the future. I’m taking tomorrow off. All the way off. Back on Monday for more.
[Press play above to stream Ruff Majik’s Moth Eater in its entirety. Album is out tomorrow, Oct. 4, through SOL Records. The band are currently on tour in Europe with Gnome. Dates are here.]
Hail narrative, and double-hail the wielding of it. Ruff Majik‘s fifth album in six years, Moth Eater is also their first for the Sound of Liberation label arm SOL Records and it finds the South African four-piece — vocalist/guitarist Johni Holiday, guitarist/vocalist Cowboy Bez, bassist Jimmy Glass and drummer Steven “Boz Moon” Bosman — with grueling tales of underground debauchery, trials and triumphs, set to dizzying instrumentalist turns and full-rush party-vibe conjurations. To aid in the telling are guests like South Africa’s Reegan Du Buisson (Evergloom, Facing the Gallows) on opener “What a Time to Be a Knife,” and Lerato, who appears on the side B funk-fortified groover “Ingozi” (the Zulu word for “danger” as the lyric sheet notes), and Sweden’s Arvid Hällagård (Greenleaf, Young Acid, Pools), and an overarching structure that brings the sometimes disparate tracks together with transitional recordings of voicemails that are mostly funny and no doubt have their foundations in stories too.
Because make no mistake, even though the songs are short, shove-prone, and fun, what’s happening on Moth Eater — which is not-coincidentally subtitled ‘The Lorekeeper’s Bible’ — is nothing less than Ruff Majik realizing the power of and taking control of their narrative. “Dirt and Deer Blood?” Oh that’s a story. The angry voicemail before the drums start opener “What a Time to Be a Knife” that ends with the threat, “I’ll make sure you never play another show in this town, bru!” as if the band’s intentions were so limited to a single city? That’s a story too. “Wasted Youth?” Come on. That’s a drinking song. Of course it’s a story.
You get the idea. The story is story. This is consistent in some ways with the last two, also stellar, Ruff Majik full-lengths, 2020’s The Devil’s Cattle (review here), where they learned genre was a tool to be manipulated, and more especially 2023’s Elektrik Ram (review here), with which much of Moth Eater is in conversation, sometimes directly, as in the voicemail from the CEO of Riffcom as played by Paul Gioia (All This for Nothing), who congratulates ‘Wilkinson’ on a job well done after the brainmelting percussive thrust of early cut “By the Hammer,” following up on a similarly charming gag from the last record, and sometimes indirectly, as in the way “What a Time to Be a Knife” middle-fingers-up rages in the spirit of Elektrik Ram‘s opener “Hillbilly Fight Song” or “All You Need is Speed” from The Devil’s Cattle, or even the fact that the last line of the closing title-track on Moth Eater is “I feel fine,” where Elektrik Ram wrapped with, “I wish I was dead.”
That that choice feels purposeful at all — and it does — is emblematic of Ruff Majik‘s attention to detail, but one doesn’t have to dig even so far to find that. It’s audible in the multi-layered vocal arrangements throughout, with Holiday‘s voice pushed low on “We’re Not Out of the Swamp Yet” and at its most Axl Rose-esque in “Wasted Youth,” or instrumentally, in the way Glass‘ bassline matches the vocal thoughtfully in the otherwise frenetic “By the Hammer” — which is so much of a story it’s mythology — for the lines, “Oh, and the blood it would stain her pretty white dress/Oh, if Odin wills, she’ll have their heads,” or the manner in which “Cult Eyes” finds itself in a mid-tempo bluesy swagger so suited to the Holiday/Hällagård duet that tops it, or how “Baby’s First Guillotine” moves from its perhaps ill-advised opening voicemail — a German-accented guy talking in a lisped voice about the band shaking their asses resolving in the punchline, “that’s what’s fappening”; I’m sure there’s a story there, too, but it could be taken as a little ha-ha-queerness-is-funny-because-it’s-different-from-me in a way that’s probably more sixth-grade than the band intended — into self-titled-era Alice in Chains-style pulls of guitar in its tension-releasing chorus.
Such persistent self-awareness and generally intelligent structured craft and lyrics are not anchors holding the band back. Instead, as much as it’s a party on the surface, depth abounds in a lyrical reference like “I’m killing snakes/Call me Patrick” in “What a Time to Be a Knife” — subtly namedropping the patron saint of Ireland — and the last lyrics, “Oh Mary, you should’ve seen me in my prime/I could’ve made it, I just didn’t have the time” from the maddeningly catchy “Battering Lamb,” which is a highlight examining the life of a band trying to exist in the current underground sphere, its own chorus, “And I’ve won some/But I’ve lost some too/I’ve been told it’s all part of the game/And I’ve burned through/A stack or two/I’ve been told money ain’t no thang,” encapsulating the experience from inside a nebulous idea of what ‘making it’ means in the first place when the rewards are often intangible at best. That the voicemail accompanying “Battering Lam” at the start and finish is a desperate fan who “needs the fuzz in my life” and “needs some Majik” as though addicted to it should not be taken as a coincidence. Clearly among the things Ruff Majik know about themselves is they know when they’re on fire.
Much of Moth Eater is spent in that very state. To wit, as “Dirt and Deer Blood” shifts from its opening sample of a longwinded tour manager/driver into its verse, Ruff Majik have by then amassed enough capital in attitude to sell the bridge lines, “Y’all don’t even know who the fuck I think I am,” and “Y’all keep playing preacher and I’ll keep getting lit,” without sounding ridiculous. No minor accomplishment, and the song itself is likewise a burner. Sound of Liberation‘s Matte Vandeven (also My Sleeping Karma and The Great Escape) offers some noncommittal compliments after “Baby’s First Guillotine,” and the joke is that the band are killing it. Broadly speaking, the songs don’t make efficiency the top priority in a way that Elektrik Ram often did, and that’s something you can hear even when “What a Time to Be a Knife” kicks back in after a stop that, on the record before, would’ve just been its cold ending. The tradeoff for that immediacy is the material here does more. In that song, for example, the final section rides a more open groove and turns well-timed repetitions of “Get fucked!” into a memorable impression that defines in part the point of view of everything that follows. It enhances the story Ruff Majik are telling, and story is the priority.
A singalong finish for “Wasted Youth” — “Now all I’ve got left is wasted youth/And all I have is half of the truth/I said I never felt lonely/Until I met you/Until I met you…” — gives over (without a sample between) to the title-track, which establishes acoustic guitar early and trades off into a fervent push echoing “By the Hammer” as much as the quieter parts and lyrics complement Elektrik Ram‘s previously-alluded-to “Chemically Humanized.” Decidedly, willfully more lighthearted, “Moth Eater” caps the LP that shares its name with the punchline for all the voicemails spread across its span with a simple deleting of messages. It’s a little awkward after the very-much-an-ending way “Moth Eater” rounds out, but if they were going to conclude that thread at all — and they were, because storytelling — that’s a fair enough way to do it, reinforcing the attitude underlying the songs front-to-back and underscoring the band’s intention to do their own thing in their own way, even if it means they’ll never get another show in this town again, whatever town this may be.
There is a particular element of glee as Ruff Majik dash from part to part, righteous in their us-against-reality cause and assured by a strength of songwriting that makes the song likewise casual-cool and roilingly infectious, and if Elektrik Ram was staring into the abyss, Moth Eater is perhaps throwing the abyss in the van and hitting the road alongside it in buddy-comedy fashion. It is undeniably Ruff Majik‘s own in persona and execution, and even if the trilogy that began in The Devil’s Cattle is done — which it may or may not be — the band thankfully show no signs of letting up anytime soon. May their next round of adventures also result in such a broad swath of stories recounted.
