Best Music of 2020 (according to Tim)
As you may be well aware of, 2020 was a fucked up year in just about every way. I don’t really need to state the obvious. It’s literally all we talk about now. I think I saw one live show the entire year (Wovenhand & Om at the Space Ballroom in Hamden, CT on March 7 (less than a week before the world froze)). In the beginning of the pandemic, I actually found it hard to listen to a lot of the music I normally would. Things that were dark and challenging pricked the parts of my brain that were experiencing something dark and challenging. Luckily I got over that quickly and found plenty of new music from artists I had never heard before, as well as plenty of familiar ones. Since I was home, like, all the time, I got to spend some quality time with my record collection. Also, my wife. Also, I got married. So while 2020 had lots of terrible things happening in the world, it was overwhelmingly net-positive for me. Here are the things that soundtracked it.
Accompanying Spotify Playlist organized with more “accessible” songs up-front—starting with my favorite non-album single of the year: John K. Samson’s “Fantasy Baseball at the End of the World.” Also each album links to Bandcamp where available.
01. Sightless Pit - Grave of a Dog
Sightless Pit is a super-group of sorts—or, at least I find them super. The trio is made up of Dylan Walker of Full of Hell, Lee Buford of The Body and Kristen Hayter, aka Lingua Ignota. Those are three bands I love on their own, all of which aren’t afraid of experimentation, but Sightless Pit seems to be a great excuse to stretch the creative legs a bit more. Throbbing electronics, grindy screaming, operatic vocals. I got this record in the mail right around the time Covid shut everything down, and it seemed to capture the unease and impending doom.
02. Hum - Inlet
Hum gave us a surprise album—their first in 22 years. Downward is Heavenward had become a regular record in my rotation, and this is just as good. I guess they wanted to show all the emo bands that a few years ago collectively decided they wanted to sound like Hum that they were better. Respect.
03. Black Wing - No Moon
Black Wing’s debut album, …Is Doomed, was my favorite record of 2015. No Moon came out only a few weeks ago, but still slinks in my top 5. This is the electronic solo project from Dan Barrett of Have a Nice Life, who seems like he’s figuring out how to make cool music without being such a sad fuck all the time, so that’s good for him and still continues to be good for my ears, apparently.
04. Bell Witch & Aerial Ruin - Stygian Bough Vol. 1
Some of the best moments on any Bell Witch record is after a long dirge of glacially paced doom, the clouds open up and Aerial Ruin’s Erik Moggridge comes in and sings a little bit and doesn’t sound like bog monster for minute or two. So the gang got together and made an official collaboration and invert that formula, where Moggridge gets most of the vocal duties, brightening up the place with some guitar (vs Bell Witch’s bass-and-drum-only instrumentation). It’s not all rainbows though. Still heavy, dark and epic. Dubbing this “Vol. 1” implies more to come, so, yippie.
05. Thou & Emma Ruth Rundle - May Our Chambers Be Full
A lot of what I just said about the Bell Witch / Aerial Ruin albums could be said about this album—a collaboration between Doomers Thou and singer/songwriter Emma Ruth Rundle (formally of Red Sparowes and Marriages). Rundle has an amazing voice and is absolutely talented on guitar, paired with Thou’s tried and true sludgy doom, it makes for an interesting and unlikely pairing—something like Mazzy Star meets Eyehategod. Had the pleasure of seeing the ignagural performance of this meld at the Roadburn Festival in the Netherlands last year and am very glad they kept it going.
06. Midwife - Forever
Midwife, who’s debut was my favorite album on 2017, returns to my favorites list. Pretty, gloomy, reverby bedroom pop that leaves you wanting more. Seriously, I waited three years for this album and it’s not long enough. My only complaint.
07. Skeletal Remains - The Entombment of Chaos
I would say the majority of listening time was spent with stuff like this. Caveman-shit, old-school death metal, and, lucky for me, there’s an absolute ton of it out there right now, and, what’s more, a lot of it is really good. This record, though, I don’t see a lot of love for—at least not in circles I run in. They’re now on Century Media, which is pretty much a major label, so they must be pretty big. Nothing remarkably new in this record—very strong Morbid Angel/Obituary vibes. It’s well-executed and scratches the right itches for me. A sonic comfort food, like a grilled cheese sandwich…but, like, an evil one.
08. The Lawrence Arms - Skeleton Coast
Speaking of comfort food (but of the non-evil variety), The Lawrence Arms put out a new record and didn’t make a big to-do about it. I’m going to buy whatever The Lawrence Arms put out, which is few and far between these days (it’s been 6 years since their last album, and another 14 years from the one before that), but Metropole (which was good) fell out of rotation pretty soon after the excitement wore off. Skeleton Coast has the warm, fuzzy feeling of classic records like Apathy & Exhaustion and Greatest Story Ever Told while still feeling unique. Sad, clever Midwestern pop-punk that used to grow on trees. We’re lucky to get it in 2020 at all—even luckier to get it from some of the best at the game.
09. Duma - s/t
Ok, this one is really fucking cool. Absolutely crazy metal duo from Kenya that mixes grindcore, electronic, death metal, noise, drone, and maybe even some metalcore (?). Not sure I’ve much metal from anywhere in Africa, but if there’s other stuff out there that is this inventive and interesting, gimme.
10. Sweven - The Eternal Resonance
Proggy, dynamic death metal that builds on the house that Death built starting with Human. These guys strike me as a band that takes themselves really seriously and are probably insufferable dorks to be around at your local Guitar Center, but I help get pulled in. Seems like when people talk about this Finish band, they bring up Morbus Chron, which makes sense since it was the previous band of frontman Robert Andersson and their final album was called Sweven. I went back and listened to some of that, but I think this is way better.
11. MSW - Obliviosus (bandcamp)
12. MJ Guider - Sour Cherry Bell (bandcamp)
13. Anna von Hausswolff - All Thoughts Fly (bandcamp)
14. Undeath - Lesions of a Different Kind (bandcamp)
15. Dikembe - Muck (bandcamp)
16. Golden Retriever & Chuck Johnson - Rain Shadow (bandcamp)
17. Malokarpatan - Krupinske Ohne (bandcamp)
18. Of Feather and Bone - Sulfuric Disintegration (bandcamp)
19. Mare Contignum & Spectral Lore - Wanderers: Astrology of The Nine (bandcamp)
20. Necrot - Mortal (bandcamp)
21. Skeleton - s/t (bandcamp)
22. Touché Amore - Lament (bandcamp)
23. Ulthar - Providence (bandcamp)
24. Boris - No (bandcamp)
25. Liturgy - Origin of the Alimonies (bandcamp)
26. Faceless Burial - Speciation (bandcamp)
27. Bing & Ruth - Species (bandcamp)
28. Osees - Protean Threat / Panther Rotate (bandcamp)
29. Cosmic Putrefaction - The Horizons Towards Which Splendour Withers (bandcamp)
30. Sarah Davachi - Cantus, Descent (bandcamp)
31. Phoebe Bridgers - Punisher (bandcamp)
32. Damaged Bug - Bug on Yonkers (bandcamp)
33. Neputunian Maximalism - Eons (bandcamp)
34. Hailu Mergia - Yene Mircha (bandcamp)
35. Envy - The Fallen Crimson (bandcamp)
36. Wayfarer - A Romance With Violence (bandcamp)
37. Possessed By Paul James - As We Go Wandering (spotify)
38. Oneohtrix Point Never - Magic: Oneohtrix Point Never (bandcamp)
39. Austin Lucas - Alive In the Hot Zone (bandcamp)
40. Gulch - Impenetrable Cerebral Fortress (bandcamp)
41. Senyawa & Stephen O’Malley - Bima Sakti (bandcamp)
42. John Kolodij - First Fire / At Dawn & Split w/ Ezra Feinberg (bandcamp)
43. Blood From the Soul - DSM-5 (bandcamp)
44. Less Bells - Mourning Jewelry (bandcamp)
45. Void Rot - Descending Pillars (bandcamp)
46. Pharaoh Overlord - 6 (bandcamp)
47. William Basinski - Lamentations (bandcamp)
48. Mamaleek - Come & See (bandcamp)
49. Bedsore - Hypnagogic Hallucinations (bandcamp)
50. Esoctrilihum - Eternity of Shaog (bandcamp)
Other good ones that I haven’t gotten many listens in:
Oranssi Pazuzu - Mestarin kynsi
Ruin Lust - Choir of Babel
Krallice - Mass Cathexis
Atramentus - Stygian
Paranoid - Out Raising Hell
Pallbearer - Forgotten Days
Heretical Sect - Rapturous Flesh Consumed
Gorephilia - In the Eye of Nothing
Imperial Triumphant - Alphaville