Frank Zappa – Waka/Wazoo
This box set of alternate takes, alternate mixes, and basic tracks for Zappa’s excellent jazz fusion period makes me want to smoke seven blunts and kick back, but I don’t even LIKE blunts. :[

Gaerea – Mirage
Proggy black metal has never sounded so good, and that’s a huge exaggeration, but, nevertheless, Mirage is one of the better examples of proggy black metal that I’ve heard all year.

Goatwhore – Angels Hung from the Arches of Heaven
TRY DOING SOMETHING NEW ONCE IN A WHILE, GOATWHORE.

Grand Harvest – Consummatum Est
A crushing heft of death/doom metal that’s just a tad too slow for my PEDAL TO THE METAL tastes!

HO99O9 – SKIN
Hardcore hip hop that’s hardcore in the truest sense of the term, and it’s wild fun for 33 cool-ass minutes, dogg.

Horse Lords – Comradely Objects
Four-piece plays noodly music that toes the line between math rock and avant-prog; it also toes the line between interesting and dull as shit.

Horsegirl – Versions of Modern Performance
Jaunty indie rock that combines elements of shoegaze and ’90s hipster rock into something that can be considered original!

Hot Chip – Freakout/Release
See, the thing about Freakout/Release is that, first there’s the freak out, then there’s the release, and both are underwhelming.

Hurray for the Riff Raff – LIFE ON EARTH
I’m not typically into this kind of country-tinged folk blues singer-songwriter stuff, but there’s a certain indescribable charm that drew me in that I’m not going to elaborate upon here because you’re not reading this anyway!

Ibibio Sound Machine – Electricity
I wanted to like this so badly, but all the funkiness sounds so sterile and lifeless to me.

IceBoy Violet – The Vanity Project
For a vanity project, this experimental hip hop album sounds like a turd filtered through garbage.

Idol of Fear – Trespasser
Dreadfully boring “black metal” that lacks vitality, urgency, general scariness, emotionality, and anything else that’s supposed to fun about black metal.

In Aphelion – Moribund
This snarly blackened thrash album is an excellent example of how not to be boring!

Inexorum – Equinox Vigil
Beefy melodic death metal that really kicks my ass, and your ass, and everyone’s ass within a two-mile vicinity of your mobile listening device.

Imperial Triumphant – Spirit of Ecstacy
I hope you like your black metal all weird and twisty and, literally, featuring Kenny G.

The Interrupters – In the Wild
Female-fronted melodic ska punk that bangs when it bangs, but some of the material and presentation are a little too juvenile for my liking.

Jockstrap – I Love You Jennifer B
This was a contender for my Top 25 until I realized that the only song I really fell in love with was “Debra”, but it’s solid and original and deserves all the praise it got.

Kali Malone – Living Torch
Hey, I can make music like this too, watch: *presses D and D♭ simultaneously on the synthesizer for 34 minutes*

Kardashev – Liminal Rite
Opethian metal is the shiz, ’nuff said.

Karfagen – Land of Green and Gold
The thirteenth studio album by a band I’ve never heard of before is full of smarmy prog rock with smarmy jazz fusion and a guy with a smarmy voice.

Kavinsky – Reborn
People waited nine years for Kavinsky’s second synthwave album, and after listening to it in October I waited four months to write this very reductive sentence!

Kelly Lee Owens – LP.8
Ethereal, lovely, ambient, otherworldly, kinda boring.

Kikagaku Moyo – Kumoyo Island
Japanese psych rock that sounds just like the good ol’ psych rock bands of the ’60s and better than about half of the King Gizz discography.

King Buffalo – Regenerator
King Buffalo goes full-on krautrock and space rock and it’s fucking fantastic.

KMFDM – HYËNA
I haven’t listened to anything KMFDM put out since the early ’00s so I wasn’t expecting much, but this album is way more diverse than anything they released back then; it was a pleasant surprise.

Knifeplay – Animal Drowning
Basically My Bloody Valentine ver. 2.0 without any real updates.

Krallice – Crystalline Exhaustion
Krallice is always good, and “Crystalline Exhaustion” is a really neat way of describing the cold, harsh synths and the mind-bending riffs with ELOQUENCE, I daresay.

Kurt Vile – (watch my moves)
(watch me snooze)

Kvaen – The Great Below
Kvaen throws in a smorgasbord (almost literally, they’re Swedish) of various metal genres and makes a very cohesive and rather exciting end product that you can really sink your teeth into, much like the various fishes and cheeses of an actual literal smorgasbord!

Lathe – Tongue of Silver
Generic instrumental hard blues/doom metal hybrid that doesn’t satisfy or inspire.

Laura Cannell – Antiphony of the Trees
Sometimes this modern classical music has some cool pan-flutey parts, and sometimes it has some boring and drone-y NON-pan-flutey parts!

LiveWire – Under Attack!
I’ve never had so much fun this year with a traditional heavy metal album as I did with Under Attack! and I’ve listen to at least… two.

Loop – Sonancy
Drony, psychedelic, and delightful.

Lorna Shore – Pain Remains
There’s something to be said for theatrical, over-the-top deathcore, and as soon as you find someone to actually say that something I’ll be waiting here ambivalent about Pain Remains.

Makaya McCraven – In These Times
A Top 25 contender, this album runs the gamut of Coltrane-style spiritual free jazz, Zorn-style klezmer-adjacent music, and even some Flying Lotus-style instrumental hip hop.

Mamaleek – Diner Coffee
Mamaleek’s experimental mixture of hardcore punk, post-punk, black metal, and a bunch of other disparate styles never ceases to entertain and delight… but there are too many lulls on this record for me to be all in on it.

Marci – Marci
I tried really hard to like this, I really did, but this soft pop middle-of-the-road music just infuriates me and makes me feel like I’m wasting time listening to it.

Marrasmieli – Martaiden Mailta
Black metal with carnivalesque accordion? Here, have all my money!

Melody’s Echo Chamber – Emotional Eternal
This is some really pleasant French-flavored ethereal dream pop with plenty of fuzzy psychedelic garage guitar thrown in for good measure — me likely.

Melt Yourself Down – Pray for Me I Don’t Fit In
Groovy and funky and swampy and exciting music to really get your fat ass off the couch and then dancing on top of another couch.

Methyl Ethyl – Are You Haunted?
Kinda like a poor man’s of Montreal with less eccentricity and creativity.

Midnight – Let There Be Witchery
If you’re looking for some of the most lively speed metal — blackened speed metal, at that — then look no further than <END OF SENTENCE>!

Misery Index – Complete Control
Twenty years and seven studio albums haven’t dulled the edge of the speedy, riff-laden death metal smorgasbord you always get with Misery Index.

Moin – Paste
Bizarre Slint-like mellow post-hardcare punk that has very interesting samples and distortions within a matrix of somewhat unengaging minimalism.

Moonshade – As We Set the Skies Ablaze
Melodeath that doesn’t really do anything like make me pump my fist and go “hell yeah” or anything like that, you know?

Morrow – The Quiet Earth
Fucking excellent aggressive and unrelenting sludgy metal with alternative male/female harsh vocals that crushes my fucking skull right into my stupid, mushy brain!

Mortuous – Upon Desolution
Good old-fashioned chunky death metal with doomy slow-downs, these really cool occasional string arrangements, and wicked clean guitar solos.

Moundabout – Flowers Rot, Bring Me Stones
This album is a complete snooze of ambient, meandering “folk” that proves that anyone can record anything and publications like The Quietus will eat it up.

The Mountain Goats – Bleed Out
If John Darnielle ever stops being John Darnielle, I will drag him out to the parking lot and kick his ass.

MUNA – MUNA
MUNA is like a queer version of HAIM, and I mean that with highest compliments.

Nechochwen – Kanawha Black
Mix speed metal with melodic black metal, add in some Native American folk traditions, and you got yourself a really cool band.

Necrophagous – In Chaos Ascend
Simple hard-hitting no-frills death metal, not bad but nothing special.

Negative Plane – The Pact
This riff-heavy, diverse album of blackened thrash metal is one of the most underrated gems of the year, and you shouldn’t sleep on this one if you hate real music like I do.

Nik Colk Void – Bucked Up Space
I’ve been a fan of Nik Volk Void’s projects and collaborations since the first Factory Floor album, and her solo debut is a fun, interesting mix of post-industrial IDM and techno that you shouldn’t sleep on if you like, you know, good music.

Non Est Deus – Impious
By the book black metal with predictable melodies, generic riffs, and overall just good enough — like this sentence.

Northlane – Obsidian
A healthy mix of synthwave IDM, industrial EDM, emo-ish post-hardcore, alternative metal, and banality.

Obsidious – Iconic
Gimme some of dat fine-ass melodic death metal with speedy riffs, slow riffs, clean vocals, harsh vocals, thick and meaty grooves, soaring solos, and even some occasional synthy, gothy arpeggios!

Oceans of Slumber – Starlight and Ash
Usually heavy metal, the fifth album by Oceans of Slumber takes on a more gloomy, gospel rock-oriented style and it still kicks plenty of ass.

of Montreal – Freewave Lucifer f<ck f^ck f>ck
Kevin Barnes is still doing this thing after all these years, huh?

The Offering – Seeing the Elephant
Tons of musical ideas, maybe too many that aren’t fully realized or fleshed out enough for me to know what this heavy metal band actually wants to be.

Open Mike Eagle – Component System with the Auto Reverse
I will always appreciate how nerdy this dude is, but a lot of this album isn’t as compelling or memorable as his previous stuff.

Osees – A Foul Form
Thee Oh Sees makes another album under their fifteenth name change, and good thing it’s 22 minutes because this sucks.

Otoboke Beaver – Super Champion
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Female Japanese punks are Earth’s truest punks.

Palm – Nicks and Grazes
Weird, colorful, clangy experimental psychedelic rock sounding like some of the stuff Pitchfork loved back in the ’00s, which isn’t a complaint.

Pattern-Seeking Animals – Only Passing Through
Quirky neo-progressive rock featuring Spock’s Beard alumni without all the Neal Morse religious bullshit cluttering up the music.

Perfume Genius – Ugly Season
Perfume Genius continues to bore the shit out of me, and it looks like that’s not going to change anytime soon.