meri's listianity - The top 10 albums from 2024

meri says ''less quantity, more quality'', I will let you be the judge

As it is now time to officially begin on 2025, it seems a perfect time to close out the books on 2024 and reflect on the year that was. I took a different approach this year, which was to focus more on quality than quantity. To achieve this, I primarily explored music in the top of the sheet and prioritised relistens more than ever before. The result:

• my average ended up being the highest it has in years - 5.13.
• I had two 9s and five 8s, which is unprecedented in a year for me.
• At the end of the year, the prestigious top column ended up being 335 albums, which out of a total of 695 albums makes up 48.2% of my total listening.
• I’m sure that a decent portion of the remaining 51.8% of listens were once gaps as well that didn’t deserve their place.

I have enjoyed the yearly grind much more in 2024 than in previous years, perhaps due to my approach or perhaps due to an actual increase in the quality of music. Nonetheless, I shall shift my approach for 2025 as well. The further down the column you go to fill gaps, the more likely you are to dunk an album out of the column anyway. This indicates serious diminishing returns outside the top 100 or so. I do retain the belief that obtaining a solid top column is a worthwhile goal, something that people here would benefit from trying a bit more - I commend those who achieved a solid top 50 (Scoop, Goldi, Ferd, Strawbs, and Plan) and condemn the rest - seriously K2M, get your shit together mate. I’m instead going to prioritise finding albums in the sheet, likely from the single 6 wildlands where 629 2024 albums currently graze in peace. Here comes my list.

HM1 - Poppy - Negative Spaces (freaking adorable, catchy as hell, and heavier than most modern metalcore)

HM2 - Job For a Cowboy - Moon Healer (It has riffs for days and vocal cadences that bounce around the music in excellent ways)

HM3 - Scarcity - The Promise of Rain (Ecstatic black metal that would have made the list proper if not for the harshness of the siren noises)

10 - Ulcerate - Cutting the Throat of God - 7/10

I admit I haven’t given Ulcerate’s 2024 outing the love that it deserves, in part due to it being a refinement of Stare Into Death and Be Still which I have played to absolute death. I acknowledge that the refinements make Cutting the Throat of God a better album objectively, but I have yet to decide that for myself. Ulcerate’s return is more of their hallmark dissogroove that is technically exemplar and maintains moments of brutality.

9 - Inter Arma - New Heaven - 8/10

Would have been higher on the list if not for some grievances I have with the album, like fading a song out, then back in to end at a volume significantly higher than anything else on the album. Regardless, for the most part, Inter Arma showcase talents spanning multiple genres, from dissoshit to folk rock. Definitely an album worth listening to.

8 - Cosmic Putrefaction - Emerald Fires Atop The Farewell Mountains - 8/10

Cosmic Putrefaction, one of Gabriele Gramaglia’s one-man projects (see also Vertebra Atlantis who I list when required), returns with more progressive dissoshit. The tone of the guitar is straight up nasty, it riffs hard and often, creating dank and claustrophobic atmospheres that are supported through the good use of synths.

7 - Akhlys - House of the Black Geminus - 8/10

From the first listen I was hooked, the 4 minute build-up in the first song to the vocal pay off is just superb, the album barely relents after that with the exception of the 6 minute ambient interlude. I wasn’t sure about the interlude in the beginning, but I have since come to recognise it as necessary for the album’s structure. This album constantly feels like someone is breathing down the back of your neck and it’s creepy as hell.

6 - Veilburner - The Duality of Decapitation and Wisdom - 8/10

Veilburner pare back the raw aggression from their previous outing and opt instead to take a progressive approach. Songs twist and contort around chaotic structures. Vocals range from haunting wails and twisted spoken word, to guttural screeches. Yet there is always something keeping the album moving forward. Veilburner have demonstrated on Duality that they are leaders in the dissoshit genre, they aren’t dissoshitting for the sake of it, they use the dissoshit to achieve their goals. They also teach us that to attain true wisdom, we must lose our heads - which explains the increase in quality of takes around the vortex during tarb’s 6 month weakness break.

5 - Julie Christmas - Ridiculous and Full of Blood - 8/10

Julie’s angry child vocals are as always divisive, but I quite like them. Ridiculous doesn’t quite live up to her highs on the Cult of Luna collab Mariner, but we do get a little taste of it here on “End of the World” which is just superb. There are few lowlights on Ridiculous, a beautiful noise/alt rock album where Julie progressively defiles herself as it goes on. Or at least I’m pretty sure that’s what happens, I don’t know, Ferd just said he’d hurt my family if I didn’t put Julie on my list and I don’t want anything bad to happen to Abso.

4 - Pyrrhon - Exhaust - 8/10

There isn’t much more to say about this than has been said in other corners of the internet. Pyrrhon take their brand of dissoshit to noise rock instead of death metal, create an accessible yet complex 30 minute record of short bangers, and call it a day. This album showcased to me that Pyrrhon aren’t all that bad and my opinion of What Passes for Survival has improved as a result, which I think people around here will count as a win.

3 - Schammasch - The Maldoror Chants: Old Ocean - 8/10

A hypnotic and melodic epic juxtaposing man and the ocean. As per the source material for the album, a misanthropic approach to the quality of man is taken, conveyed through the lyrics which take the fore. Schammasch chant, sing, and shout their poetic lines with venom and oftentimes beauty, especially the female guest vocalist, which leaves me hitting the play button again and again. This is an album I’ll chuck on in the background while doing something else or in the foreground to let the true experience wash over me. I had previously enjoyed Schammasch but their albums are generally overlong, so this is the first one that has truly enraptured me.

2 - Convulsing - Perdurance - 9/10

Sometimes an album just hits you at the right time. Perdurance is a lesson about facing and overcoming your internal struggles and adversity packaged up as a progressive dissoshit album. Sure, it’s light on the dissoshit, and some may whinge about the choice of “perdurance” as the album title when the album isn’t really about that, but to them I say “stick with Cindy Lee”. Perdurance succeeds not through technicality of individual elements but through a stellar composition that takes solid riffs and patterns and weaves them into the album’s theme. The album begins by discussing how we accumulate burden as each year passes, moves into a chapter on hurting ourselves internally and experiencing pointlessness, and then finishes by acknowledging that it is the little things in life that give us purpose and for those we should endure. Each riff throughout the first part of closer “Endurance” has a harsh stop - a finality that almost threatens to end the song, yet the song continues and by the end the tone has changed to one of hope. “I’ll endure a while longer” Brendan Sloan ends, and it is advice we could all use at different times in our lives.

1 - Ingurgitating Oblivion - Ontology of Nought - 9/10

Avant - yes. Complex - yes. Impenetrable - no. It takes a few listens to get into the groove of Ontology of Nought, to peel back its multitudes of layers, but once you find the thread that connects the seemingly disparate sections, it’s not a difficult listen. IO have crafted a truly gorgeous, sprawling, brutal, beautiful, and mesmerising piece of art - a meditation on the process of life and inevitability of death. The complexity of the music juxtaposing the simplicity of the meaning of death for the individual - to cease to be and become nought. I could wax poetic about the riffs, the blistering solos, the gorgeous vocal harmonies, the brutal death growls, and the incredible drumming from Lille Gruber (who finally gets a chance to shine in a decent band). But I won’t, others have done this in better words. Just take the time to soak it in and be free and nothing and all at once. Recognise Ontology of Nought for the piece of art that it is, soon to be hung in the reliquary forevermore.