a rlly interesting and cool single from turn; his shouting delivery over massive, loud 808 bass expands upon haunted mound's recent trap metal-adjacent sound, accompanied by some Gothik Ass choral vocals in the beat. turnabout pullin a schmoobin on em goin choral on choral? thats a joke only ppl who were on aoty in 2020 will get but i digress this shit rlly is sick. its not my fav turnabout track but its another great haunted mound banger, and i could definitely see it leading to some awesome ... read more

YALL DONT LIKE THIS?!?!?! i just stumbled upon this EP and i fuckin love it. i always complain abt how ppl dont make cloud rap like they used to from 2011-2016 but this guy totally NAILS that 2010's cloud rap sound. that production, man...they get it down to the pitch-shifted vocal samples, the nature sounds, the drum kits, it's all so perfect i just assume they were intentionally tryna capture that era of music. and thats EXACTLY what i want. i love drain and shed theory and esoteric ... read more

not so bad (leans gone cold) is the funniest song of 2023

i expect this score to fluctuate since my opinions are subject to change--i definitely think leap is gonna take a few more listens to fully digest, but i'm overall extremely happy with it. rav is one of my favorite rappers and i personally think his last album, 2020's i'm on to me, was a genuine masterpiece, so of course i was stoked for this. and while i didn't find it to be as immediate as i'm on to me was, leap is still quite phenomenal; typical personal lyrics from rav with some humorous, ... read more

you know how fucking excited i was for jakey's debut? jacob matthew christensen is probably one of my favorite people on the planet. love his youtube channel (who doesn't?) and adore his music, which i first discovered around 2019--that's four years ago now, jesus. his catalog of released material was extremely slim at the time, consisting only of a few loose singles, and it hasn't grown much since then. despite his painfully infrequent release schedule i fell in love with his unique style. ... read more

this is the best haunted mound music since hundred acre wrist. its the group's 2nd greatest musical achievement after that aforementioned 2020 mixtape and easily the best shit we've gotten in the post-ghost sem/buck/turn/hackle mound era . i loved screaming forest and i still think this is better by a decent margin. some of these cuts r gonna go down as sematary classics. babayaga, in tha field where i found u, suffer, hallowed be my wrist, hate & gasoline, smokin out da grave, we dont dial ... read more

PHENOMENAL

Perhaps the quintessential metal album. Like, when one thinks of the most METAL-ass metal albums, titles like Master of Puppets and Reign in Blood come to mind. Maybe you think of Vulgar Display of Power, maybe you're more old school and think of Black Sabbath and Paranoid--all of these are valid and very metal (a term I will continue to use as an adjective in this review). However, you simply can't have a conversation about the history of this music without invoking the name of ... read more

i wanna say this is my favorite joeyy song--its a pretty close three-or-four-way race depending on the day, but from is just so damn unique and hypnotizing and weird as fuck and i love it. in my review of glitz i said "i like the way he experiments with futuristic, pluggy/cloudy soundscapes on some of his more esoteric tracks" and this is pretty much what i meant by that. like, this is more of an ambient soundscape than a rap song. i guess its cloud rap by technicality but the ... read more

havent been active here for a few months but i wanted to talk about some new shit ive been loving before 2022 ends. hopped on the joeyy bandwagon over the summer, mostly because of this track. there were a handful of other songs i dug a lot (bubble bass in particular is kind of a masterpiece) but glitz was the catchiest to me. it has so many addictive qualities about it and innumerable quirky details that make it one of my favorite rap songs of the year. it looks like aoty hasnt quite caught ... read more

PHENOMENAL

Wormrot are one of my favorite grindcore bands. I haven't done a comprehensive ranking in a long time, but just based on Voices alone, I would've easily slotted them somewhere in my top 10 alongside bands like The Locust, Rotten Sound, Agoraphobic Nosebleed, Terrorizer, Pig Destroyer, Cattle Decapitation, and I guess Anaal Nathrakh if you consider them grind but I usually categorize them as primarily black metal despite the notable grind influence. They're simply one of the most ... read more

DECENT

I used to be really into Municipal Waste a few years ago, to the point where I gave my favorite album of theirs (which also happened to be most people's least favorite album of theirs lol) a 10 and called 'em one of my favorite current thrash bands. In fairness, I didn't listen to THAT much modern thrash back then, and I really never have. I've always been more into good ol' classic 20th century thrash metal, with few exceptions venturing into the 2000's and onward. Nowadays I listen to ... read more

PHENOMENAL

I'm usually faster to check out new Haunted Mound releases, especially ones I'm this excited for--Turnabout, for a moment, was probably the most intriguing member of the group when his first two singles dropped in late 2021 and early 2022, MY REAPER and BOLOS. They were some of the catchiest Haunted Mound tracks ever, as well as some of my favorites of this current era. It seemed to me like the mysterious melodic man hailing from Utah had the potential to be one of the very best ... read more

PHENOMENAL

Do you wanna guess the last time I wrote a full-length, formatted album review? October 29th, 2021, for the release of Sematary's SCREAMING FOREST mixtape. There are a number of reasons for that, and I think I've already briefly mentioned a few of them somewhere on AOTY, but I'll bring 'em up real quick for full clarity.

First of all, I've reached That Point. That Point is a point I've noticed most people on AOTY or RYM reach after a few years, and as I approach four (4) goddamn ... read more

i dont have tiktok and dont listen to pop radio, so i had never heard this song until yesterday when i saw it on the wikipedia page for most played songs on spotify and i said to myself "how interesting! i knew glass animals exploded in the past year or two but i didnt know they hit it this big, i know heat waves was massive so ill check that out" and i checked it out and it was cool. like im sure some of the hate for this song has to come from overexposure cuz honestly its a super ... read more

i forgot to rate/review this for a while but dude this song goes so insanely hard. turnabout is one of the most obviously glo-influenced artists of the largely glo gang inspired haunted mound movement which is why i presume his 2 singles have been a little love or hate for many listeners. ive recently notice people get even more on haunted mound's case for just "ripping off" chief keef (the influence is obviously there but if u rlly think ur average keef tape sounds JUST LIKE ur ... read more

reminds me of circles by post malone. like this song is to kid cudi as circles was to post. and if that's the case, this will probably grow on me and become pretty nostalgic in 2-3 years time like that song did. pleasant little pop ditty

am i the only one who thinks this sounds very much like an aminé song

that is actually a great thing cuz ive been bumping caroline and charmander a lot lately and i love those songs. and now i love this song! what a pleasant tune. cant believe there are people out there who are actually gonna shit on this. yall suck. love when zel spits aggressively for cathartic purposes like he does in the chorus here and in parts of walkin. this is one of the rare cases when an artist ... read more

breakbeats used to be the key to my heart and now im just kinda indifferent towards them. feels like theyre a dime a dozen and the sounds surrounding them are way more important to me. this isnt even a knock on this song cuz i fucking love it and ill get into that in a sec, i just feel like a lot of ppl went OOOOH OMG OMG BREAKBEAT DENZEL!!! THIS IS THE BEST SONG EVER!!! and thats cool if breakbeats are like, one of those things u hear and instantly love. they just dont do much for me anymore. ... read more

bumping this one slightly up to a 95 cuz i keep coming back to it and with the release of zatoichi and troubles i still think its gotta be his best of the three...although maybe (unpopular opinion) troubles could be tied? idk. either way these songs have been exactly what i needed and i might elaborate on that with future reviews. denzel is in peak form and dudes about to drop his best project and aoty 2022.

original rating (2/8/22): 93