With everyone from major-label pop stars to underground avant-garde acts releasing music, 2024 has been one of the best years in recent music industry memory. With that, it’s only fitting that I go back and reflect on the best albums of 2024. This list is not in any particular order.
The Perfect Child – Spiral Staircase
This third album by Spiral Staircase is their best yet. Spiral Staircase has long been a criminally underrated artist, with their experimental and harsh sound perfectly fitting their emotionally devastating lyrics. Their newest album The Perfect Child, clocking in at just under 2 hours, is an emotional rollercoaster that left me shaking for 30 minutes after the last notes of the final song faded away. The album seamlessly blends doomgaze, post-rock, noise rock, and avant-folk into a truly crushing experience. Fair warning, this album is one of the loudest I have ever listened to and I noticed audio clipping on every track. This doesn’t detract from the album in any way, just don’t listen at max volume.
Every Bridge Burning – Nails
Nails has long been one of the best and most beloved grindcore and powerviolence acts out there, up there with the likes of Pig Destroyer, Wormrot, Cloud Rat, Terrorizer, Nasum, and Discordance Axis. They came out the gate swinging with their crushing debut album Unsilent Death, 23 minutes of pure pulverizing violence and grindcore noise that sports a BPM in the 200s. Nails’ newest album continues with the formula present on all their previous albums starting with Unsilent Death, albeit now with a more prominent metalcore influence. But don’t let that metalcore influence fool you, this is still some of the most brutal grindcore around, distilled down into only 18 minutes.
Songs of a Lost World – The Cure
With their first album in 16 years, post-punk/gothic rock legends The Cure has shown that Robert Smith has not lost his edge with age. Songs of a Lost World offers musical quality that reaches the same heights as, and in some cases surpasses, 1989’s Disintegration. From the six minute opener “Alone” that instantly pulls you in, all the way to the 12 minute closing track “Endsong”, Songs of a Lost World stands as testament to the enduring quality of The Cure. Highlights include “Alone”, “Warsong”, and “Endsong.”
You Could Do it Tonight – Couch Slut
The fourth album by NYC noise rockers Couch Slut shows a massive evolution in vocalist Megan Osztrosits’ singing; by no longer using black metal shriek that was often buried in mixing, her vocals are far clearer and easier to hear. But make no mistake, while the vocals may be cleaner and less harsh, the music is anything but. The album continues the fusion of noise rock and sludge metal that was present on the prior albums, and the music is just as abrasive and punishing as ever. Lyrically, the album oozes with the same nihilism and misanthropy that was present on the prior albums. Particular highlights are “Wilkinson’s Sword”, “The Donkey”, “Ode to Jimbo”, and “Downhill Racer.”
Impossible Light – Uboa
The first album by Uboa since her 2019 breakthrough The Origin of my Depression, picks up exactly where its predecessor leaves off. Uboa’s vocal performance is as tortured and her lyrics as bleak as ever. While the previous album was recorded following a failed suicide attempt and concerns Uboa’s depression and gender dysphoria, Impossible Light focuses of her experience transitioning. Uboa’s lyrics have always been particularly impactful to me, as it feels that she is the only trans musician who has been able to express the realities of being trans in the way I have experienced those realities. Only Uboa has been truly able to express the terror and horror of being trapped in a body that doesn’t truly belong to you, helpless to stop physical changes in your body that you despise, and the all consuming desire to be literally anyone else that keeps you up at night crying. Uboa has long been one of the harsher death industrial artists, often bordering on harsh noise and glitch, and Impossible Light is no exception. The album touches on everything from death industrial, to dark ambient, to glitch, to harsh noise, to darkwave, to industrial rock. While the album may be dark and depressing, it ends with a ray of hope, a light at the end of the tunnel. The album shows a brighter future for Uboa, one not defined by the misery, gender dysphoria, self-hatred, and suicidal ideation that were central on her previous album. As a whole, Uboa’s music will always be the one of the most visceral, horrifying, and accurate depictions of the transgender experience to ever be created, and is well worth your listening. •