Saturday, December 31, 2011

Top Albums 2011

2011 has really been a good year for new music. A handful of new releases (Doomtree, Panopticon, Ash Borer) completely blew me away and made the list without competition. But as I struggled to pare the list down to 20 I realized that this has been an exceptional year across the board. I'm still not entirely happy with some of the albums I had to leave off, but that's what top # lists are all about: sadness and regret. Anyway, like I said everything here comes highly recommended. There's obviously a lot of black metal here; that's just the style I keep up with the most now days.

Doomtree - No Kings
  • Minnesota hip-hop crew
Panopticon - Social Disservices
  • anarchist black metal
Ash Borer - Ash Borer
  • cascadian black metal
La Plebe - Brazo en Brazo
  • San Francisco-based mexican american punk
Primordial - Redemption at the Puritan's Hand
  • Irish folk metal
Welkin Dusk - Born Into a Dying World
  • blackened crust punk
Sims - Bad Time Zoo
  • rapper from Doomtree
Panopticon & When Bitter Spring Sleeps - split, Panopticon & Wheels Within Wheels - split 2
  • 2 more great splits
Homestuck - Vol. 8
  • electronica (it's the, uh, soundtrack to a web-comic...)
Blood Ceremony - Living With the Ancients
  • psychedelic rock with satanic lyrics for some reason
Deafest - Through Wood and Fog
  • depressive black metal
Falls of Rauros - The Light That Dwells In Rotten Wood
  • folk black metal
Dornenreich - Flammentriebe
  • German black metal
Cloud Rat - Cloud Rat
  • thrashcore
Star Fucking Hipsters - From the Dumpster to the Grave
  • trashy, pop-y punk (also features Boots Riley on a track)
Wolves in the Throne Room - Celestial Lineage
  • cascadian black metal
Space Arcadium - Personal Universe
  • psychedelic trance
Tombs - Path of Totality
  • atmospheric sludge
Trap Them - Darker Handcraft
  • grindcore
Team Teamwork - Super Nintendo Sega Genesis
  • hip-hop video-game-sountrack mashups