My top 25 albums of 2024

Hi guys, 2024 has been a massive year for metal and music in general. Just wanted to share my top albums of this year and why.

  1. Night Verses - Every Sound has a Color in the Valley of Night

This is art and I’ve been HOOKED. As a drummer myself I never heard such creative drum parts in an album. Every song is a banger and emanates a different vibe, from explosive to chill. Just never ever heard such musicianship and expertise well mixed with incredibly catchy and melodic motivs without sounding too demanding and exhausting.

  1. Opeth - The Last Will and Testament

That was a surprise. I’ve never expected to be so pleased and it gradually became my favourite Opeth album. It’s not about the growls nor the heaviness, it’s about using knowledge and craftmanship and mashing everything in an album, and it FLOWS without giving you breaks til The Last song. Just wow.

  1. Fit for an Autopsy - The Nothing that Is

Okay guys, wanted to add a little bit of spice. This album is as proggy as I wanted and has its incredibly intense parts (Red Horizon’s last section in particular) and melodic sections with the mixed clean vocals that I love. It lies on the same level of Oh What The Future Holds, that was a masterpiece indeed.

  1. Pure Reason Revolution - Coming Up To Consciousness

Although the songs are not as long as the ones on the previous albums, this one is even proggier and one of the most emotionally intense albums I’ve ever heard. It even made me cry and I think that’s ENOUGH.

  1. Wheel - Charismatic Leaders

An enormous breath of fresh air, unexpectedly better than Resident Human, This albums confirms the cut of ties with their frequent association to Tool. Original, catchy, proggy and HEADBANGING.

  1. Darko US - Starfire

Okay this was literally FIRE, a long “Alienic Deathcore” (as I like to call it) record that encapsulates how well can electronic be used to make an album heavy and explosive.

  1. Ulcerate - Cutting the Throat of God

Masterpiece, demonstrates how can brutal dissonat death metal be subtly melodic and proggy to the core.

  1. Ubiquity - The Ascendant Travels Among the Stars

Very similar to Opeth, but not tedious for this, on the contrary, every song is well crafted and has original jazzy parts in it.

  1. Caligula’s Horse - Charcoal Grace

Wanted to put this higher but realised how many good albums were out this year. Just a perfect sequel to their previous albums that keeps the bar really high.

  1. Ihsahn - Ihsahn

Orchestral, dark, Disney-esuqe, magical, cathartic. This man just keeps delivering outstanding albums and everyone is really different from the other.

  1. Job For a Cowboy - Moon Healer

Incredibile musicianship.

  1. Frost - Life in the Wires

Proggy as hell.

  1. Blood Incantation - Absolute Elsewhere

Obviously needed a place here.

  1. Knocked Loose - You Won’t Go Before You’re Supposed To

  2. Leprous - Melodies of Atonement

  3. Vola - Friend of a Phantom

  4. Oranssi Pazuzu - Muuntautuja

  5. Thy Catafalque - XII

  6. Múr - Múr

  7. Kingcrow - Hopium

  8. Dvne - Voidkind

  9. Anciients - Beyond the Reach of the Sun

  10. Borknagar - Fall

  11. Dååth - The Deceivers

  12. Allt - From the New World

Bonus: Kendrick Lamar - GNX (didn’t know I could like hip hop that much)

Edit: Forgot to add Hippotraktor’s Stasis. It belongs somewhere between Frost and Leprous. Same goes for Resuscitate - Immortality Complex, that goes between Caligula’s and Ihsahn