My AOTY 2019. The songwriting here is on a higher level than any other pop record I heard last year. The production is innovative, fun, and light as a feather. Really just inspired. I think the brilliance of this record will become more apparent as time goes on. I'll be shocked if Gecs can top it, but I hope they do.

What an emotionally sad album. For the most part not the Lips' best songs (although I like "Mother I've Taken LSD"), the tunes don't really stick with me so much as the devastating loneliness and dejection of the thing. That's perhaps a success in itself, but this is nothing I can listen to often.

Relentlessly interesting and experimental. It's a pleasant listen at almost every point. Don't worry about consuming it all at once. Honestly just fun quirky music with amazing imagination and boldness.

FINALLY, a new Autechre record that isn't completely impenetrable. AE's past couple have been so difficult and disinterested with the listener's enjoyment that I thought these guys were just going to disappear into the void. The decision to use chords and melody on this one was a huge step in the right direction, because these songs have shape and color in a way that their lengthy sonic wastelands of recent years just have not. The opener is in my top 5 Autechre songs ever.

I'm a King Gizzard fan and this just feels like their most uninspired album in a minute. With only a couple of exceptions, you can get better versions of every one of these songs on earlier records. I'm hoping the boys haven't peaked.

Repetitive to the extreme, half of the riffs on this thing sound exactly the same. Even for atmospheric black metal that obviously doesn't care if you're listening closely, these songs are irritatingly similar to one another. I don't mind black metal functioning as ambient music, but this just isn't good. It's a shame. I thought I would've loved this thing.

Well made atmospheric black metal wallpaper. If you like the whole shoegaze-by-way-of-black-metal thing, you'll like this. I find it a little boring if I try to listen closely, but it does what it sets out to do and does it well.

Bog Body > Primitive Warfare, if you ask me, but I didn't hate anything on here. "Bog Body" has to be one of the best metal names of recent memory, and I really dig their bass-driven death sludge thing. The music sounds exactly like what you'd want a band called Bog Body to sound like, so it can't be bad.

Just 3 songs, but the best death metal moments I've heard all year. Inspired writing, tight playing, and nice nasty production that still lets you hear everything. And honestly catchy. If they can make a full album this good, this'll be one of the best death metal bands anywhere.

Interesting and sophisticated work! I love how one instrument will regularly transform into another, how musically solid the chord progressions are, and how this has its feet equally in classic songwriting and avant garde electronic music production. I'll follow this act with interest.

Not doing a single thing you haven't heard 10000 other death metal bands do, but doing it exceptionally well. If you listen to one death metal record today, it might as well be this one.

Just wow. Some of the densest and most thoughtful composition I've ever heard in metal. Pure imagination. Takes me to some of the same places as Gorguts and various Colin Marston projects, but honestly I think I might like it better than any of that. It sounds pretentious to say, but I believe IT to be true thought leaders in the metal space. What other band could write and perform this? I can't think of anyone.

My AOTY. This record demonstrates an appreciation for the full history of metal, all while sounding like nothing but itself. Colorful and even uplifting, it's a sound you won't hear elsewhere in black metal. Each song is distinct and useful in expressing Havukruunu's concept. Something I'll come back to again and again for years to come.

Dark and savage even by blackened death metal standards, this thing really just ripped my face off. I love when death metal sounds like it's being played in a room, not just pieced together in a studio. Well-written thoughtful stuff with an absolutely hellish vibe.

The beats are basic, the lyrics are basic and stupid, and the vocal performances are obnoxious and less interesting than what you can find elsewhere. Just a pile of crappy songs without any real composition or vision or direction. Not good.

Weak sauce. Expensive and sumptuously recorded, but weak.

My favorite metal record of 2019.

Xoth nails this pleasing blend of death, thrash, and traditional heavy metal, with a refreshing ear for hooks and crystal clear recording/performances. It's a rare death metal song that can get a guitar hook stuck in your head after a single listen, but "Mountain Machines" and others will do just that. Great work from a criminally underrated band.

Not my favorite. Sure, "Violence" is a banger, but no other song hits that high mark. We're left with extremely reverby 90's trance pop, with a little bit of Avril ("Delete Forever") thrown in for good measure. I'd be OK with it if the songs were better. One of the biggest problems here is that Grimes isn't a strong singer, but she goes for broke anyway. There are several times where she breaks into this, like...Middle Eastern vocal riffing that's, at best, rough around the ... read more

I've been into Moses Sumney for several years now, but I haven't felt like he's been ALL good in ONE place. With Grae Pt 1, he's finally made a masterpiece. This is vital, imaginative stuff, and when I listen I get the strong impression that Moses tried to make each second as exciting and interesting as possible. Pure ear candy.

If you think of where Bjork was on Post, the scope of Prince's Sign o' the Times, the elegant arrangements of Radiohead's In Rainbows, or the spectral headtrip of ... read more