Petrol Girls – Baby
Vitrolic punk the way punk should be: politically charged and extremely British!

Porcupine Tree – CLOSURE/CONTINUATION
I mean, ok, it’s fine, but I’m largely over the whole Porcupine Tree thing and, honestly, so should Steven Wilson.

Porridge Radio – Waterslide, Diving Board, Ladder to the Sky
The desperate yelping of a depressed woman with no self-esteem or self-worth is, unfortunately, pretty relatable, and good for me for burying this minor cry for help within this bloated post about music!

Preoccupations – Arrangements
Yeah, I don’t know, I usually really like Preoccupations but I found Arrangements to be dull and lifeless.

Pure Wrath – Hymn to the Woeful Hearts
Doomy black metal as black and tasty as this licorice jelly bean that I’m currently eating, which is good because I like licorice jelly beans.

Psychonaut – Violate Concensus Reality
Noodly progressive post-metal with a stoner rock edge that’s a lot more interesting than the ugly guy on the album cover lead me believe.

Pure Reason Revolution – Above Cirrus
Neo-prog that’s more Porcupine Tree than Spock’s Beard, so it handily avoids a big fat red dot from me.

Pyrithe – Monuments to Impermanence
48-minutes of Earth-crushing, eardrum-destroying sludge metal unlike anything else you’ll find in the genre.

The Smile – A Light for Attracting Attention
This is basically a Radiohead album, and like all Radiohead albums, it’s a Radiohead album.

RanesTrane – Apocalypse Now
Italian prog rock that is always about movies, and it teeters too precariously over the lame side for my own personal enjoyment.

Real Lies – Lad Ash
This soft electronic Balearic beat stuff with a British guy talking softly at me gives me a literal stomachache, and this is probably my least favorite album of the entire year.

Retreat from Moscow – The World as We Knew It
Lots and lots of good ideas in the modern prog rock record, but you can go fuck your entire self with a 75-minute runtime.

Revocation – Netherheaven
I like me some good, lively, hard-hitting Revocation, and even though this is ultimately disposable it’s very fun in the moment (and isn’t that all that matters (yes!))?

Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever – Endless Rooms
Jangly pop that sure does a good job of scratching that hard-to-reach jangly pop itch!

Rosalía – MOTOMAMI
Rosalía’s music is totally not my thing — so a yellow is a high compliment — but there’s a lot of weird experimental shit on this record that at least gives me that “there’s something for everyone” feel.

Ryo Okumoto – The Myth of the Mostrophus
I don’t know who this Spock’s Beard alumnus motherfucker thinks he is, but this is literally everything that is atrocious about neo-prog rock wrapped up in one bloated, shitty package.

Saba – Few Good Things
Hip hop that leans more toward the R&B side of things, which is fine if it didn’t feel so sleepy.

Sacrilegion – From Which Nightmares Crawl
Good ol’ meat-and-potatoes death metal, which is a term I read once and now I’m using it here.

SAULT – Untitled (God)
Sometimes it sounds like hip hip, sometimes classical, sometimes soul, sometimes experimental ambience, but the music is all about God and that part is intolerable.

SAULT – Earth
The tribal percussion and chanting is sublime as fuck, and this would be Top 25 material if, again, it weren’t for all the overt Jesus-y stuff that makes me profoundly physically uncomfortable.

Scalpture – Feldwärts
Unrelenting hardcore death metal with addictive grooves, and I just pounded a beer even though I don’t even drink!

Schacke – Apocalyptic Decadence
To my untrained ears, this sounds like straight run-of-the-mill EDM and it’s both interesting AND uninteresting if you catch my oblique drift.

SCUDFM – INNIT
Politically charged indie surf post-punk stuff that’s pretty fresh and, like, not dour or angry at all and I hear hints of David Bowie!

Septicflesh – Modern Primitive
Symphonic death metal has never sounded so good — or has it? — maybe!

Sea Power – Everything Was Forever
Holy shit, I usually find (British) Sea Power’s output a little bit dull, but these are some of the strongest melodies I’ve heard all year.

Seven Kingdoms – Zenith
Totally bland singing over generic heavy metal, and here I am wasting my time listening to it again just to perfect this one sentence.

Sigh – Shiki
Sigh has been keeping it weird and eclectic for three decades now, and I’ll always be unconditionally grateful for that.

Shape of Despair – Return to the Void
Funeral doom metal is not my thing, but Return to the Void isn’t as completely dirgy and boring as you would expect from literally anything else in the genre — and I still hate it.

Širom – The Liquified Throne of Simplicity
This Slovenia trio plays freely improvised, untraditional “folk” music that’s cool as shit for long enough before there are still 30 minutes of the album left to go.

Soccer Mommy – Sometimes, Forever
I can’t get into Soccer Mommy, and I’m 99.9996% sure it’s because of the awful name.

Sochi Terada – Asakusa Light
Fluid and swirly electronic music from who I learned is a seasoned veteran of fluid and swirly electronic music, so accept nothing less than the best, I guess.

The Soft Pink Truth – Is It Going To Get Any Deeper Than This?
Vibrant, colorful, and jazzy electronic music with more twists and turns than a soft pink intestine.

Sonja – Loud Arriver
Melissa Moore got kicked out of Absu for coming out as transgender and then went to make a debut that is way better than anything Absu has ever released.

Sorry – Anywhere But Here
Indie rock that’s just good enough, but there are quite a bit of lackluster musical ideas to make it also just bad enough.

Soul Glo – Diaspora Problems
Really good stuff here, like every punk genre rolled into one and I think there’s only one white person in the band, which makes it much better.

Special Interest – Endure
A really good, volatile melting pot of styles that all seem to converge into one glorious display of vibrant noise rock.

Stars – From Capelton Hill
Stars is like New Pornographers lite, but I’ll never not love this kind of melody-laden indie rock music.

Steffi – The Red Hunter
Slick and glossy IDM that sounds like a very funky dance floor on the International Space Station.

Stella Donnelly – Flood
I loved Donnelly’s debut and I didn’t like this one nearly as much, which is disappointing, but life goes on.

Stereolab – Pulse of the Early Brain (Switched On Volume 5)
Another collection of old rarities, B-sides, demos, snippets, bitlets, and live tracks that continue to prove that Stereolab was (is?) one of the most consistent bands of all time.

Straw Man Army – SOS
I think I forgot to put this in my Top 25, because this is easily the best sophomore album titled “SOS” that came out this year… unless you like SZA.

Strigoi – Viscera
A nice slab of punishing death/doom metal with satisfyingly crunchy, grindy bits that you can chew on and spit out like tobacco for men.

Strychnos – A Mother’s Curse
By-the-book death/doom metal, not very memorable.

Sylvaine – Nova
Alternating between mellow ethereal gothiness and strangely beautiful screaming, Kathrine Shepard’s one-woman project is packed with raw emotion and cool vibes, man.

T – Pareidoliving
Trim this down by 30 minutes and you’ve got yourself a great, moody neo-prog album without all the repetitive musical ideas and filler.

Tanya Tagaq – Tongues
Eerie and unsettling old school industrial music from a Canadian Inuk throat singer that bashes oppression, social injustice, white people, and rapists!

Tegan and Sara – Still Jealous
Still disappointed in Tegan and Sara.

Tersival – To the Orphic Void
Sorry, I couldn’t hear you just then, I fell asleep listening to To the Orphic Void.

Them – Fear City
With some exceptions, theatrical heavy metal is usually not my bag… but I’ll be goddamned if this wasn’t the most fun I think I’ve ever had with the genre.

They Hate Change – Finally, New
Finally, New is a rather satisfying mix of acid house and hip-hop that ALSO doesn’t feature any cutesy grime English accents!

Ty Segall – “Hello, Hi”
Enjoyable enough, but when you’re as prolific as Ty Segall you can’t bring something new to the table every time.

Undeath – It’s Time…To Rise from the Grave
Burly death metal for tough guys and make-out kings like yours truly.

Urferd – Resan
Pleasant ambient neofolk that’s ultimately, after the moment, disposable.

Vanum – Legend
By-the-book black metal without enough interesting and disparate musical ideas for my own tastes.

Veilburner – VLBRNR
Minorly disappointing; it would have been impossible to top last year’s Lurkers in the Capsule of Skull, but this batch of songs is still enjoyable and you have to admit that they sure have nailed down a unique sound.

Voivod – Synchro Anarchy
A major disappointment after 2018’s excellent The Wake, but Voivod is Voivod and I expect them to keep on Voivoding to the end.

Vorga – Striving Toward Oblivion
The unfathomable, swirling vastness of the empty universe is captured perfectly in this raspy, aggressive, and surprisingly hooky black metal album.

Wachenfeldt – Faustian Reawakening
Yeah yeah, Tom, you like speedy blackened death/thrash, we’re all tired of hearing about it you hipster doofus.

Warforged – The Grove/Sundial
A little bit of progressive metal, a little bit of death metal, a little bit of metalcore, a lotta bit of entertainment!

Warpaint – Radiate Like This
This meditative and synthy dream pop has some interesting ideas, and I love the haunting vocals of Emily Kokal and Theresa Wayman, but it gets too sleepy too often.

Whatever the Weather – Whatever the Weather
Ambient Loraine James project with a clever temperature concept, but this kind of minimalist noodling can’t be elevated past background music for my tastes.

White Lung – Premonition
The final album by White Lung is proof that the band has lost a lot of their edge anyway.

Wild Pink – ILYSM
Very wimpy indie rock that sounds like if Sufjan Steven or Kurt Vile took extra wuss pills.

Woods of Desolation – The Falling Tide
Hoarse-voiced folky black metal is usually my thing, but I feel like I’ve heard this album 500 times before already.

Yeah Yeah Yeahs – Cool It Down
Yeah, I don’t think I like this toned-down synthpop version of Yeah Yeah Yeahs because I like it when Karen O screams more.

yeule – Glitch Princess
You can’t force me to listen to the nearly 5-hour final track even at gunpoint, but the rest of this off-kilter pop album by some Singaporean lady is weird and fun!