2022! Another year in the books! Vladimir Putin invades Ukraine! Volodymyr Zelenskyy invades all our hearts! Queen Elizabeth died! Charles III is the first corpse ever to become King of the UK! A bunch of really bad things happened with respect to women’s rights and American democracy in general!

A lot of good music came out, too! Here are 25 albums I deemed worthy enough to assemble into a list and shove off onto the unsuspecting Internet. Don’t bother to make a drinking game out of how many times total I used the word “industrial” in this post. The answer is eight. See you all in 2023, which isn’t even a real year.

#25 – Superorganism – World Wide Pop

One of the more colorful albums of the year came from Superorganism’s weirdo collective and their off-kilter pop sensibilities. Featuring glossy, over-the top songs of controlled chaos, slippery hooks, frantic tempos, and a grab bag of assorted musical ideas, the band attempts to throw everything at the wall. I’ll admit that this stuff isn’t perfect, but I had a lot of fun with World Wide Pop and it deserves to make it on my list this year. If I’m going to listen to straight-up pop music, I’d rather be weird about it.

#24 – Oneida – Success

Oneida has been keeping it weird for decades, freely playing noisy rock music that takes the foundations of indie rock and bastardizes it into something unrecognizable. On Success, the songs are full of bizarre, energetic hooks, fuzzy garage punk jamming, grungy alt-rock, and all around kitschy, self-aware fun. The highlight is the pseudo-cover of the Beatles’ “I Want to Hold Your Hand” (“I wanna hold your hand/Between my teeth/I won’t draw blood/Don’t want it on me“). See, there’s my sense of humor in action. It’s disappointing.

#23 – Guided by Voices – Crystal Nuns Cathedral

Keeping up with Robert Pollard’s Guided by Voices project is nothing short of impossible since the guy has been putting out 70 records a year for the last 180 years, and god knows I haven’t been keeping up with it all myself. There’s a distinctive difference between his current period and his classic mid-’90s period, though. It’s not lo-fi, and he seems to have a real band behind him.  Plus, there’s not the usual hodge-podge of 20 songs. It’s as if Pollard is restraining himself with age. OR, he’s running out of ideas! In either case, Crystal Nuns Cathedral is a great collection of melodic indie rock, loaded with vibrant hooks and ’60s pop pastiches. It may not be life-changing or ground-breaking, but it gets a decent spot on my list.

#22 – BUÑUEL – Killers Like Us

Your own mileage may vary when it comes to noisy bullshit with “vocals” by an incredibly jacked black dude with an incredibly intimidating stage presence, but I adore this kind of stuff. Gritty, dirgy, uncompromisingly harsh, aggressively desperate. It’s impossible for me to focus on anything else when I’m listening to Killers Like Us. Throw this one on, son, you need a little more chest hair.

#21 – Chat Pile – God’s Country

Based out of Oklahoma, Chat Pile’s take on sludgy, political noise rock sounds a lot like if Jesse Pinkman from Breaking Bad was really angry about social injustice. Lead vocalist Raygun Busch rants and raves about nihilism, futility of human existence, pessimism of human beings in general, all over squealing guitars and feedback noise. He really sells it, too. I can actual believe the pain and incredulity in his voice while he screams stuff like “I COULDN’T SURVIVE OUT IN THE STREETS! COULD YOU?! I’VE NEVER HAD TO PUSH MY SHIT AROUND IN A SHOPPING CART!” There’s so much good use of empty space here too, creating crushing tension. The silence is louder than anything. Fuck heavy metal, this shit is the real scary music!

#20 – Luminous Vault – Animate the Emptiness

I love me some industrial black metal, so Luminous Vault’s debut album hits the spot more than most of the metal I’ve heard all year. The awesome, dripping rainbow album art is worth the price of admission alone, but the music’s combination of industrial electronica with extreme metal is nothing short of captivating. Buzzing synths with melancholic, clean guitar riffs. Thumping EDM beats with hoarse, gritty shrieking. Sprinkles of fizzy synth crescendos with soaring power metal chords. None of it’s ever cheesy. I never feel stupid for listening to it, and that’s the most important part! On the list it goes.

#19 – Jenny Hval – Classic Objects

This Norwegian singer-songwriter puts out album after album of disquieting, cerebral music. Covering topics such as religion, love, politics, and social justice with nuance and poetry, Classic Objects is just another notch in her oversized belt. A lot of ghostly field recordings and dreamlike stream-of-consciousness ramblings are here that requires active listening to fully unlock the magic, so if you’re a passive listener then check elsewhere. Maybe you’re just not ready for this woman’s big ol’ belt! Maybe you’d prefer listening to Justin Bieber and Ed Sheeran fight over who has the most garish tattoos of all time.

#18 – The Otolith – Folium Limina

Some real kickass stuff here. Folium Limina is a 63-minute slab of atmospheric, drawn-out, grandiose doom metal laced with enchanting violins and crushing guitars. Add ethereal female vocals and you’ve got one of the most engrossing metal projects of the year. I usually have a problem with metal albums exceeding an hour in length, because where do these metal bands fucking get off? But the Otolith’s debut has no filler at all. It’s like Neurosis if Neurosis wasn’t so boring! Sorry, that’s unfair. But life isn’t fair.

#17 – Black Dresses – Forget Your Own Face

It’s another year, so it’s another album from the angry Canadian “fuck my life for being born queer” noise rock duo. It’s twenty glorious minutes of yelling stuff like “Wish you were me? Man, I wish you weren’t me/You got this record deal but you’re so ugly” and “Everything I want is fiction/What I need does not exist” and “I am so easy, whoever you are/You can take whatever you need from me” over industrial noise and avant-melodies and distorted bullshit. Corporate greed? Bigotry? Patriarchy? Persecution? Ada Rook and Devi McCallion are here to say FUCK all that noise. This is raw emotion. If you don’t like this then just throw away your music collection!

#16 – Oliver Sim – Hideous Bastard

I have to admit that I was originally drawn into this by the cover. Had I known Oliver Sim was one of the guys from The xx, and band I don’t like very much at all, I would’ve never given this a shot. I WOULD HAVE THROWN IT INTO A FIREPIT. This album is good though; a display of uncomfortable vulnerability, personal struggles with homosexuality, and insecurities aplenty. All that with chugging drums and cool vocal layers. It’s like Perfume Genius were actually interesting! But he’s not, so here we are.

#15 – Big Thief – Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe in You

After half a dozen years of listening to Big Thief and not understanding the hype, Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe in You made a fan out of me. Also, typing the full album title pads the word count out on this list, which is always a good thing. Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe in You is 80 minutes of off-kilter folk, alt-country, a little psychedelia, a little noise rock, a little shoegaze, and all around excellent songwriting. Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe in You is the best album called Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe in You you’ll find all year!

#14 – Black Cross Hotel – Hex

Traditional heavy metal and post-punk filtered through an eerie haunted house. What the hell is this stuff? I’ve never heard anything like this! Punk vocals, punk attitude, heavy metal riffage, John Carpenter synth flourishes, with lyrics all alluding to horror movies. IT’S A COMBINATION THAT MAKES ME WANT TO THROW THIS ALBUM IN THE FIREPIT! But it works, and it’s addictive, and I can’t get enough of it. Spin this disc on Halloween and put on your nerd glasses, kids. This is one for SPOOKY SEASON.

#13 – Zeal & Ardor – Zeal & Ardor

Manuel Gagneux got himself a real band and made a great album of eclectic, disparate styles. The man — who once took suggestions on Bandcamp and made songs that mashed genres together — is seasoned at making music that sounds unusually cohesive. Apocalyptic soul, industrial gospel, piano balladry, baleful blues, outlaw country, chamber pop, there’s no stone left unturned… ok, well you can think of many unturned stones, but give me another 2022 album that so seamlessly fuses all these disparate styles and makes it sound so natural. You can’t. Don’t even try. I know where you live.

#12 – Panda Bear / Sonic Boom – Reset

I didn’t think I’d like an album that took a lot of cues from the stink-ass Beach Boys, but here we are. Panda Bear teams up with long-time collaborator Sonic Boom and actually allows him to share the artist credits this time! Besides the Beach Boys, you can hear influences pulled from the Beatles, ELO, the Zombies, Tangering Dream, Kraftwerk, Sparks, Lou Reed, and many others while keeping some of the usual glossy indie sensibilities of Animal Collective. If you like sunny classic rock, you will like this. But maybe this isn’t for you. Maybe you like to hear Robert Plant shout “BAYEE-BAY! BAYEE-BAY!” over and over again. If that’s the case, you can skip this fun album.

#11 – Just Mustard – Heart Under

What I like the most of Just Mustard’s second album is the eerie combination of shoegaze with industrial rock and trip hop. Like a noisier Portishead, with scraping guitars, watery echos, and the sounds of filthy old machinery in a haunted steel mill. Melody turns to chaos. Like dream-pop slipping into a nightmare. Like My Bloody Valentine gone slightly demonic. Very original stuff! Lots of tension! Unnerving! Lovely! I’m hungry right now, I think I’ll eat just mustard!

#10 – SASAMI – Squeeze

Industrial nu-metal and country pop? What the fuck? Yes! Sometimes it’s entirely one, sometimes it’s entirely the other, and sometimes the two shall meet in a gloriously odd way. Surging metal riffs, grungy anachronistic alt-rock, distorted vocals, cheesy Shania Twain-eqsue country anthems, hipster bullshit; the whole grab bag approach is thoroughly exciting. Look how excited I am right now. It’s very exciting. I can’t wait to see what SASAMI does next. I hope it’s Beethoven’s 9th conducted entirely with an orchestra of farts.

#9 – An Abstract Illusion – Woe

Pensive, aggressive, bluesy, synthy, extreme, deafening, dynamic, mellow. These are all words that describe me! And, in a pinch, they also describe An Abstract Illusion’s excellent sophomore progressive metal album. Atmospheric synths and ambient passages. Adventurous songwriting and dense riffs. Haunting clean vocals and crushing death metal vocals. Cathartic crescendos and, uh… cathartic decrescendos. If you’re card-carrying member the Porcupine Tree or Opeth club, then this is a must-listen. But maybe this isn’t for you. Maybe you like to hear Robert Plant shout “BAYEE-BAY! BAYEE-BAY!” over and over again! Sorry, I’m repeating myself. Sorry, I’m repeating myself.

#8 – Black Country, New Road – Ants from Up There

Black Country, New Road’s second album isn’t quite the blowout that the debut album was, but its departure from the sound I fell in love with had grown on me as the year went on. Instead of the abrasive, unlistenable, ugly catharsis of Album #1, here there’s soaring, melancholy, beautiful catharsis! Catharsis all the same, though, and it gets a very respectable spot in my Top 25. Lead vocalist Isaac Wood has a nervous breakdown and works in a bakery now, so Album #3 is assuredly going to be an even more wild departure. I’m here for it.

#7 – Animal Collective – Time Skiffs

The ultimate hipster band put out the first listenable album in over 10 years. Slippery, colorful art pop with the kind of hooks that nobody but Animal Collective can pull off, AND it’s not even annoying like Strawberry Jam or Merriweather Post Pavilion! These people are old now, so toning it down a tad is exactly the direction that their music needed. I look forward to this continuation of toning it down until I can’t tell if I’m listening to Animal Collective or Beach House, and then I can safely say that I hate this band all over again.

#6 – Viagra Boys – Cave World

Hot off the heels of last year’s Welfare Jazz comes Cave World, Swedish punk group’s third album. And let me tell you something: this stuff slaps. Viagra Boys always slaps. I’ll slap you if you don’t listen to it! No, I certainly won’t. I’m a man of peace. Songs here stick to two themes: self-deprecation/ironic arrogance and transparent political commentary. There are three, count ’em THREE, songs about humanity’s failure to evolve! There’s a song about all the microchips in the Covid vaccines where he sounds like a ranting Nick Cave and playing the part of a frothing alt-right conspiracy theorist! There are a couple of songs about how shitty fragile alpha males are! I love this album, I love this band, I love this album, AND I love this album!

#5 – SCALPING – Void

Imagine a combination of industrial noise, pulsing EDM, dour hip-hop, some restrained punk, and plenty of organic percussion, and you’ll have a decent idea of how Scalping’s proper debut sounds. I think the cover does a pretty good job to make a visual out of the dark, ethereal, yet sharp and contained music. Hard to all imagine, right? That’s why you need to listen to the damn thing instead of reading about it! Weirdo.

#4 – Mary Halvorson – Amaryllis

Mary Halvorson is one of the most interesting guitarists in modern jazz. A disciple of Anthony Braxton, my favorite jazz musician, her avantgarde techniques are slow and steady, never aggressive. She is able to make her guitar slip and slide as she flows like water between microtones. Amaryllis is one of two albums that Halvorson dropped this year — the other Belladonna, which, embarrassingly, I haven’t listened to yet considering how great Amaryllis is. It’s nothing short of spectacular, featuring a sextet of accomplished musicians, angular and labyrinthian slabs of layered guitar/vibraphone, brassy solos of both trumpet and trombone, subtle bass backbones, and shuffling drums. Subdued and experimental, the group often sounds like Eric Dolphy’s archival releases with off-kilter lounge atmospheres and sudden tempo shifts. I could talk about about this release for another 600 words, but I won’t! I’ll just leave Amaryllis here at a very respectable #4.

#3 – Drug Church – Hygiene

Post-hardcore in the good noise rock way and not the bad emo way, Drug Church plays a very satisfying combination of melodic hardcore punk with the kind of stark, pensive, and cerebral punk rock you’d get from your Minneapolis scene bands — Hüsker Dü, the Replacements, or (if you really want to dig deep) Arcwelder. The hooks on Hygiene are incredible, and the succinct 26-minute run time means I’m starting this fucker over from the beginning after the last notes of “Athlete on Bench” are finished. Criminally underrated stuff, don’t sleep on it.

#2 – Spiritualized – Everything Was Beautiful

Jason Pierce, aka J. Spaceman (pronounced spuh-CHEH-men, if you’re into 30 Rock), is incapable of making a bad album. Even at their worst, they’re remarkably consistent. This is Spiritualized’s NINTH album, holy shit, and it’s fantastic. It feels like a spiritual successor to their near-perfect 1997 album Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space, from the spacey opener “Always Together With You” to the bluesy rocker “Best Thing You Never Had” to the ambiguously themed “The Mainline Song” (which could be about drugs OR trains OR both!) and beyond. Addictive melodies, cathartic instrumental choruses, resonant lyrics, this album wouldn’t be out of place if it dropped in 1970. Since I love classic rock, this one is a no-brainer. Thank you, Dr. Spaceman.

#1 – black midi – Hellfire

It’s a good year for bands with “black” in their name! The fourth “black” album on my list, but first in my heart. black midi’s third studio album is everything that I was looking for this year: jaw-droppingly crisp virtuosity, avant-prog polyrhythms, hyper-speed vocals, military drum cadences, out-of-place lounge jazz and syrupy crooning, existential dread, and much, much more! The music is colorful, piecing together components that shouldn’t work as well as it does. The guitars are herky-jerky, the melodies are cartoony, the arrangements are impossibly tight, the tension is palpable. I should make this my #1 of the year! Oh wait.