Motorpsycho – Kingdom of Oblivion
Motorpsycho always sounds like a stubborn holdout of the classic rock era, and perhaps that’s because Norway only got America/British classic rock about five years ago or something.

Mogwai – At the Love Continues
I’m usually not gung-ho about post-rock, but Mogwai’s new album made me take pause a few times, and that’s a win in my book!

The Mountain Goats – Dark in Here
It would take more personal tragedy to be able to reach the same artistic heights John Darnielle had in his peak years, and I love the guy too much to ever wish that upon him.

Musk Ox – Inheritance
Great if you want some gorgeous, mesmerizing, cathartic neofolk without all that pesky neo-Nazism usually associated with the genre!

Noltem – Illusions in the Wake
Probably the most atmospheric of the atmospheric black metal records I’ve heard all year, don’t sleep on this if you like Agalloch.

Omnium Gatherum – Origin
A quintessential moody melodeath band makes another moody melodeath album that’s just like their other eight moody melodeath albums.

Oryx – Lamenting a Dead World
This sludge metal album has more surprising twists and turns than any sludge album has any right to be, great stuff here!

Paragon Cause – Autopilot
Sparkly dance pop with a jaded lyrical edge, I just wish they didn’t include so many different mixes of the same song on here.

Paranorm – Empyrean
Progressive or not, thrash metal is such a limited and exhausted genre that I cannot get excited about what the best of the year has to offer whatsoever.

Pestilence – Exitivm
Oh wow, another release from Pestilence, huh…yeah, it’s fine.

Plasmodium – Towers of Silence
Yuck, was this album recorded in a phone booth buried by lizards 400 years ago?

Plebeian Grandstand – Rien ne suffit
Plebeian Grandstand makes screamy psychotic black metalcore for Dillinger Escape Plan hipsters like me, and I can’t pretend to be too cool for it.

Polemicist – Return of the Sophist
A two-person team makes decent, but ultimately forgettable, slabs of melodic black metal that catch my attention only be cause one of the persons in “two-person” is a guitar-playing lady person and I think that’s rad as hell!

Pop. 1280 – Museum on the Horizon
Almost-generic combination of gothic deathrock and industrial rock, but not generic enough for me to not enjoy it anyway!

Porter Robinson – Nuture
Overly cutesy to a fault, but it works, and I can’t believe I’m giving a green dot to such a fey display of sunny nostalgia-drenched bedroom pop, but I am, so I must be growing up or something, and this sentence has really run off the rails, so I’ll stop right here.

Praise the Plague – The Obsidian Gate
Neurosis-core post-metal that has a dearth of truly inspired moments to make up for all the dull ones.

R.A.P. Ferreira – The Light Emitting Diamond Cutter Scriptures
Another excellent release from R.A.P. Ferreira proves that former-Milo can still R.A.P. with the best of ’em!

The Ruins of Beverast – The Thule Grimoires
The drummer is the star on this wickedly good mood-metal record, and the only problem I really have with it that it’s a tad overlong, but so is this post, so who cares?

Sault – NINE
lol, this record is good enough, but literally no one cares about Sault anymore?

Scotch Rolex – Tewari
Now we’re talkin’ – Berlin-based Japanese artist Shigeru Ishihara gifts us with the most original mishmash of breakcore electronics, angular funk beats, industrial drones, and screamo hip hop that you’ll hear all decade, let alone from 2021.

Self Esteem – Prioritise Pleasure
This second album from Rebecca Taylor’s solo project is simply a really good, funny, and personal pop record from a woman who channels both Stevie Nicks and Janet Jackson with equal fortitude.

serpentwithfeet – DEACON
This kind of male-fronted soul music is absolutely 100% not my bag, not even close, so I won’t call it good and I won’t call it bad and I’ll leave it at that.

Significant Point – Into the Storm
Wow, not only does this Japanese power metal band sound just like early Helloween (with pitch-perfect vocals, I kid you not), they also have all the vitality and potency of early Helloween! There’s only one way to express the gravity of how big of a fucking deal this is: this album write-up gets two sentences!

The Silver – Ward of Roses
A little bit of Katatonia, a little bit of Paradise Lost, a little bit of depressive suicidal black metal, and yet you get something as eerily beautiful as the stupid pink flowers on the album art.

Sloppy Jane – Madison
Delightfully weird singer-songwriter stuff backed by occasional orchestral elements; it’s a little too mellow throughout for my tastes, per se, but I’m looking forward to hearing what Haley Dahl and her band come up with next.

slowthai – TYRON
Do I need to be a Barbadian-British millennial angry about Brexit to enjoy slowthai’s music on a higher level, because I can work on it.

Snail Mail – Valentine
The opening title track is a deceptively great lead-in to a real slog of an album proper, so I implore the indie music publications to try harder at finding a darling.

Sons of Kemet – Black to the Future
This jazz group is all over the place in the most fun way possible, and I obviously wouldn’t want it any other way.

Space Afrika – Honest Labour
Dull sound collages, formless ambiance, and lengthy spoken-word passages make listening to this awful slog of record feel like a shitty homework assignment.

Spellling – The Turning Wheel
I’m in a similar boat with The Turning Wheel as I am with the Weather Station’s Ignorance (to a lesser degree), where it’s likely a fine album, but the super-glossy sophiti-pop production tended to bore the shit out of me.

Spectral Wound – A Diabolic Thirst
Want a new black metal album that sounds like the lo-fi late-first wave and early-second wave eras (there are about 7,500 of them this year) AND is also good at the same time (narrows it down to this!)?

Stereolab – Electrically Possessed: Switched On Vol. 4
Another fantastic compilation of rarities by one of the most fantastic bands ever, no complaints here.

Suffering Hour – The Cyclic Reckoning
Black/death metal; a cool display of psychedelia-tinged atmosphere and unsettling dissonance, so thumbs up from me.

The Temple – The Temple
This monumental self-titled debut brings a massive, dense slab of smoky, suffocating black/doom metal to the table and then immediately buckles that table into a pile of kindling.

That Handsome Devil – Your Parents Are Sellouts
Good to see That Handsome Devil are still making puerile surf rock, Raymond Scott cartoon music, and Tarantino soundtrack copies that I got way more excited about 12 years ago than I ever am able to anymore.

Tirzah – Colourgrade
Yuck, I’ve heard more expressive emoting from a 1960s-era dick-sucking robot than I can get from this entire album.

Tropical Fuck Storm – Deep States
Tropical Fuck Storm had a really great political art-punk debut in 2018 and it’s kind of been mediocre since, mostly because they proved to be a one-trick pony.

Turnstile – GLOW ON
This was fine, but I need to spend more time with it since I didn’t get around to this until I was deep in the personal throes of my insatiable Christmastime metal binge.

Twelve Foot Ninja – Vengeance
One of those Mr. Bungle bands that I’m incredibly wary of in my old age, but since I’m a sucker for djenty riffage (sorry), and since that style is a great compliment to all the oddball antics, green dot.

Twin Shadow – Twin Shadow
George William Lewis, Jr.’s five minutes of fame have been over for a long-ass time, but I can either say “for a good reason” or “unfairly” at the end there and leave it up to you to interpret at this point.

Tyler, the Creator – CALL ME IF YOU GET LOST
This is good, I like this a lot, but this not a Top 50 album for me in 2021 and I’m sticking to my shitty opinion!

Vaelmyst – Secrypts of the Egochasm
Boilerplate melodic death metal that only stands out because of its really stupid album name.

Vanishing Twin – Ookii Gekkou
Vanishing Twin has always been a little bit Stereolab and a little bit Jenny Hval, but for their third album they become a little bit Talking Heads too and that always makes the medicine go down, as they say (?).

Vertabra Atlantis – Lustral Purge in Cerulean Bliss
Even MORE of that deliciously dissonant, brain-bending black/death metal, yes please, ma’am, and thank you very much.

Vildhjarta – Masstaden under vatten
I waited a literal decade for Vildhjarta’s second album to be released, and I suppose my interest in djent had plummeted too drastically in that time to be able to enjoy this criminally overlong slog.

Vince Staples – Vince Staples
Vince’s very short, samey self-titled effort shows me that his glory days are over, and his relevance in the rap game is waning with each year that passes by.

Virginia Wing – private LIFE
The normally excellent Stereolab/Broadcast-type indie outfit put out an incredibly unfocused and unorganized record this year, which makes me sad because Ecstatic Arrow was my AOTY in 2018.

Voices – Breaking the Trauma Bond
This black metal album contains waaaaayy too much cheesy, piano-backed, melodic clean singing with awful lyrics for me to not feel really stupid for listening to it.

We Hate You Please Die – Can’t Wait to Be Fine
Ultimately, it’s a rather uncreative and repetitive collection of pop punk tunes with infrequent, possibly accidental, bursts of inspiration (I Hate This Please Stop).

Wiki – Half God
Probably an unfair rating, but after many repeated listens with nothing much sticking, I have to go with my gut on this one.

Wode – Burn in Many Mirrors
This third effort by Wode explores the lighter side of black metal with decent energy and surprisingly irresistible melodic sensibilities.

Xenia Rubinos – Una Rosa
Rubinos’ delightful mix of salsa, soul, R’n’B, cheeky autotuned pop, hip hop, protest music, and early-20th century era classical music is really fucking cool here, and I look forward to diving into the rest of her catalogue.

Xiu Xiu – OH NO
Multiple listens didn’t make this abstruse album from a notoriously abstruse project any more enjoyable for me, but there are moments of prettiness that make the listening experience worth it in the right mood.