Top albums of 2022...and more!

 TOP ALBUMS OF 2022...

...and more!

I was asked to do a top 10 list of 2022 for Lambgoat.  Here is the same list but with some context.  And after those 10 albums is a few other things I also liked that didn't make it into the round number list or maybe aren't heavy, or whatever else.

40 Watt Sun - Perfect Light

Perfect Light continues the trajectory Patrick Walker has been on since dissolving Warning and creating 40 Watt Sun in 2009. Each release has been a step away from not only doom metal, but heavy music in general, dropping the loud, distorted guitars, yet maintaining the same singer-songwriter foundation that made the final Warning album, Watching From A Distance an immediate classic. On Perfect Light, Walker sticks mainly to an acoustic guitar with sparse accompaniment, leaving his unwavering voice as the focal point. Nods to artists like Jason Molina and Mark Kozelek are easy to spot, but done in a way that remains distinctly Walker. If you loved his Songs: Ohia and Damien Jurado covers, this is the album you’ve been waiting for him to make.

Age of Apocalypse - Grim Wisdom

The Life of Agony comparison here is a little too easy, but it’s also accurate. This is groove-oriented hardcore with deep gothic vocals that call to mind a time in the 90s when a lot of vocalists were trying to sound like Peter Steele and Mina Caputo, especially in upstate NY where these guys reside. I don’t know if the Age of Apocalypse members are aware of old Albany bands like Section 8 or Withstand, but aside from LOA, that is exactly what they make me think of. The riffs are strong and memorable, and the drummer plays smart, snappy rhythms with plenty of berating double kick. 90s throwbacks are en vogue right now but these guys actually seem to be authentic about it.

Cave In - Heavy Pendulum

This is everything you want it to be. On Heavy Pendulum, Cave In mourn the loss of longtime bassist Caleb Scofield while pulling all of the best qualities out of their 25 years of shape-shifting and genre-bending. It’s heavy, it’s spacey, it’s catchy and it even has some full-blown arena rock moments. Picture Perfect Pitch Black mixed with Final Transmission and a little Mutoid Man and Soundgarden thrown in for good measure.  Nate Newton does a great job filling Scofield’s massive shoes, opting to be himself rather than try to mimic his predecessor.  And as reflective as Heavy Pendulum may be, there’s also a clear look to the future for the group; a new chapter in an already impressive career.

Cinderblock - Breathe The Fire

I think the best way to describe Cinderblock’s sound would be to call it Quicksand filtered through Buffalo hardcore, but that probably doesn’t even do it justice. This is a lost gem of an early 90s band that featured guys who would later go on to change hardcore forever.  With Scott Vogel (Terror, Buried Alive) and Tim Redmond (Snapcase) sharing vocal duty and Dennis Merrick (Earth Crisis) on drums, this EP is a collision of hardcore, metal, emo and post-whatever-you-want to-call-it.  What’s even cooler is that this is the band’s original songs re-recorded — 4 of the 6 are from their poorly recorded ‘91 demo tape. These songs could have been released on Revelation Records in the early 90s and no one would have batted an eye.

Conjurer - Páthos

Conjurer’s first album, Mire, really impressed me with their potpourri approach to metal. The band threw death, doom, black, sludge, grind and everything else into the mix, creating an oddly cohesive sound for its diversity. I was eagerly awaiting the follow up and Páthos does not disappoint. They seem to have pulled back a bit on the reigns, but in a good way. Things seem tighter and more dialed in, but still diverse and creative as hell.  The group will throw a brutal, dissonant riff at you and follow that up with a powerful ringing chord before dropping into post-metal atmospherics.  And they can sing, too.  There’s a lot going on, and Páthos demands a few listens to truly grasp it all.

Dream Unending - Song of Salvation

Dream Unending’s first album, Tide Turns Eternal was a head-turner, injecting elements of psychedelia and prog-rock into a death doom base. What’s even more impressive is that their second album, Song of Salvation, is just as good, and came out only a year after. It’s a lengthy five-song full-length with two long pieces bookending a washed out, tranquil mid-section. It’s heavy, it’s beautiful and, as guitarist/bassist Derrick Vella put it in my interview with him, it’s dreamy.  Dream Unending excel at both the somber, clean guitar moments and the crushing, glacial heavy sections.  I think they are one of the best current doom bands and I already can’t wait to hear what’s next.

Ether Coven - The Relationship Between the Hammer and the Nail

The Relationship… finds Ether Coven exploring more extreme territories outside of their gothic doom metal roots. The slow-churning gloom is certainly still there, but there’s a much more immediate, intense side to the band now. Hints of bands like Converge and Zao and are sprinkled throughout, and with an all star cast contributing guest spots (Integrity’s Dwid Hellion, Zao’s Dan Weyandt and Bird of Ill-Omen’s Shane Post amongst others), the vocal attack is as diverse as the musical approach.  The drumming on this incredible—Justin Gianotsos shines in both the minimalist and the more turbulent parts. Musically, it traverses similar territory to Conjurer, but stands firmly on its own.  I think it’s safe to say this is the best material from the band yet.

Ode and Elegy - Ode and Elegy

Thanks to Rennie Resmini for sharing this on Instagram, otherwise I would have missed it.  Led by former Pax Cecelia member Kent Fairman Wilson, Ode and Elegy is a nearly hour long composition that is as deep and ambitious as it long.  Post-metal is most likely the tag it would receive, but this piece traverses so much more territory; heavily influenced by Estonian composer Arvo Part, it touches on classical music and minimalist composition as much as it does hardcore.  The track opens with a crash of brass instruments and operatic vocals, slowly easing its way into heavier realms along acoustic guitar and piano.  In addition to the orchestra, there’s an entire choir and a string quartet and it is all worked in masterfully.  For the heavier, louder, screamed vocal parts, the band will no doubt be associated with metal, but this is a modern classical composition through and through.  They also mail you the CD in a beautiful book-like package for simply the cost of shipping, so just go ahead and order this.

Oxbow & Peter Brötzmann - An Eternal Reminder of Not Today / Live at Moers

Oxbow’s music has always defied classification.  While existing within the general metal and hardcore communities, their music branches out far beyond the scope of heavy music, incorporating elements of blues, jazz and chamber music. So somehow their collaboration with pioneering free-jazz saxophonist Peter Brötzmann actually makes some sort of sense.  The five musicians played together at Moers Festival in 2018, Brötzmann improvising to a set of material spanning Oxbow’s entire career. There are some truly amazing moments here, the collective all playing off each other to take the songs into an entirely different world.  It’s great to see forward-thinking artists cross generational and genre boundaries to create something unique and memorable.

Take Life - You Are Nowhere

This was one of the first records I listened to in 2022 and I knew immediately it would end up a favorite.  Take Life are essentially a two-piece — guitarist Rafe Holmes (Insvrgence) and vocalist Rob Fusco (One King Down, Most Precious Blood) — and with the help a few studio musicians, they turned in one of the most brutal and indignant metallic hardcore releases of the year.  Holmes’ riffs bounce from blistering chaos to mid-tempo chugs and even into slow, plodding doom metal, particularly in the lengthy closing track.  As far as lyrics, Fusco touches on topics like existential dread, isolation, mental instability and depression, which he delivers in an intensity that approaches his early OKD days.  This is a heavy, dark and extremely impressive record.

And now for the more....

Medicine Singers – Medicine Singers

Yonatan Gat has truly been a gift to the music world.  First making waves with his wild, frenzied punk band Monotonix, the Israeli guitarist’s solo work has taken his abilities above and beyond what anyone could have expected.  Gat is a student of the world — he actually has a Master’s degree in anthropology — and he has managed to harness his understanding of different cultures and sounds to create some incredibly beautiful music.  Gat teamed up with the Eastern Medicine Singers, a New England based Algonquin drum group, to create Medicine Singers, a cross-cultural ensemble that takes traditional Native American songs into a modern setting.  Along with members of Swans, new age composer Laaraji and eclectic trumpeter Jaimie Branch (RIP), the collective put together this fantastic record of truly unique music.  I was lucky enough to see them live, and it’s not a show I will soon forget.

Drowningman – Later Day Saints

The first thing I thought upon hearing “Navigating Grief and Loss in a Pre-Apocalyptic Landscape” was, this sounds like Drowningman.  An impressive feat, given that the main songwriting trio of Javin Leonard, Matt Roy and Simon Brody hadn’t played together since the band’s 2001 EP, Still Loves You.  Here, the five-piece has tapped into everything that made the Vermont group a key player in the development of whatever-core (math? metal? chaos?) in the late 90s.  There are the jagged, off-time riffs, the dissonant chords, and of course, the meloldic ‘emo’ sections that helped set the band apart in their original run.  Looking forward to hearing more from the resurrected band.

Björk – Fossora

Admittedly, I haven’t followed Björk’s output in quite some time.  I got to a point where I felt Verspertine and Debut were really enough to scratch that itch, but I heard “Fungal City” on Vermont’s WEQX (shout-out to cool, independent radio stations that somehow still exist) in the car one night and was stunned. It had been so long since I’ve heard something that sounded “new” to me, it led me to immediately check out the rest of Fossora when I got home.  The album is based around her vocals, of course, but the underlying accompaniment consists of bass clarinets, oboe, strings and the occasional programmed percussion, which push and pull the songs from warm melodies to jagged pauses.  Granted, Fossora isn’t Vespertine, and not every song is a winner, but there’s enough to make this album wholly listenable.  It’s also pretty impressive that Björk can make a record this interesting and this original this deep into her career.  It makes me wonder what I’ve been missing all these years I tuned out.

Shabaka Hutchings – Afrikan Culture

I won’t claim to be an expert on the modern jazz world, but I tend to keep an ear just close enough to catch wind of a few fantastic albums each year, and in recent times that has often included the London musician and composer Shabaka Hutchings.  I first encountered him when I caught his electro-psychedelic-jazz-funk trio The Comet Is Coming at Austin City Limits in 2019 and that mind-blowing performance led me to check out his work with Sons of Kemet and The Ancestors.  Afrikan Culture is of an entirely different world.  On it, Hutchings fuses eastern and western instruments and modalities to create a unique atmosphere of sound.  He trades his saxophone for a Japanese flute, accompanied by twinkling bells and airy harp, sounding more like the background music to a new age hippie shop than a modern jazz ensemble.  It’s calm and meditative, subdued and spacey; an album best experienced in an exercise of deep listening.

Envision - And Still...

Envision's 2019 full-length, In Desperation... blew me away.  It took on a blend of sounds from 90s hardcore bands like Unbroken, Strife and Strongarm, and although the influences were clear and easy to pick out, the way they mixed them together made for an original sound.  And Still... is a brief — perhaps too brief — EP but shows a lot of maturing and growth for the band.  All those elements are still there, but Envision seem to be carving out their own little niche and finding their distinct style.  Worked into the metallic hardcore riffs are sweet little Randy Rhoads guitar leads and the song "Beyond" even features a full blown ripper of a solo.  The vocals are reminiscent of early Earth Crisis and the lyrics lean heavily on the straight edge theme.  If you told me this came out in '96, I'd believe you.