Onto the third week of /Countdown/2024 on amodelofcontrol.com, and this week I’m looking at the best albums of the year. As I’m sure I’ve explained before, I treat the “year” as 01-December to 30-November, to allow me a cut-off point, and to allow this to be done and dusted before Christmas so that I can take the usual break from writing over most of the holiday period..

2024 has been a stressful year away from my writing, and trying to keep attention on music at times this year has been very hard. But it turned out, once I started looking at what music I wanted to celebrate in 2024, it actually wasn’t so difficult.

As well as the fifty albums featured here, there were more that didn’t quite make the cut. Those included – but are by no means all of them – albums from Amnistia, Blood Incantation, Brittany Bindrim, Einstürzende Neubauten, Full of Hell & Andrew Nolan, High Parasite, HORSKH, Kim Deal, S.I.N.A., S.K.E.T., The Body and Zeal & Ardor.

A few intriguing statistics. Firstly, once again, forty-two of the fifty albums here are available on Bandcamp this year (the same as last year), and there are artists from twelve countries: Australia, Belgium, Canada, Finland, Germany, Iceland, Norway, Poland, Republic of Ireland, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and the United States of America. Women and non-binary people are not greatly represented again, though (18 out of 131 band members), which is a lesser proportion than last year. As I note every year, I do not aim for any bias in my choices – everything here is on merit – and the stats continue to confirm that much of the music that we listen to in the “alternative” side of things is still biased in favour of men. That said, I do wonder if my /Tracks post had a better split.

While I still try and keep the broad focus of the music covered here to the wider sphere of industrial music, I also listen to other music and thus the spread here is perhaps a bit wider than you might otherwise expect. You know what, though? Try some of this music. Especially the stuff you don’t recognise or don’t know. Go for it – I love hearing new music that someone else has enthused about, trying to understand what’s so awesome about it. Sometimes it is obvious, sometimes it will take days or weeks to click, and hopefully, something here will do that to you.

Time to cue the music. You can listen along on Spotify or YouTube. Links above.

/50-/41 – /40-/31 – /30-/21 – /20-/11 – /10-/01

/5F-X
/Robby Road
/Hands Productions

After fourteen years away, interstellar voyagers 5F-X returned this year, and their irreverent, noisy electric experimentation has evolved and been upgraded in the meantime. The rhythms are perhaps less alien, some of the tracks here aren’t quite as dense, but with various references in the titles (Autechre and Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy are immediately obvious, and indeed Hitchhiker’s Groove to the Galaxy has a distinct Underworld nod in that beat), it points to where 5F-X are thinking in their compositions. This is noise Jim, but not as we know it (and is all the more fun for it, too), and as one of the highlights of the album tells us, “There Will Be No Android Messiah” – we need to sort out this mess for ourselves.

/MORTAL REALM
/Stab In The Dark
/Negative Gain Records

The first solo work from Adam V. Jones since the release of his work as part of HAEX sees him explore something of a side-quest. HAEX was very much into esoteric concepts, with a distinctly ritualistic feel to much of the heavy industrial/rock sound. Here, he delves into electro-industrial and vaguely aggrotech influences (just listen to those synth stabs on the battering rhythmic power of Trash), with fascinating results. Nostrum Nepenthe has a roiling, swirling core that stomps along like a long-lost Psyclon Nine track from twenty years ago (which I mean as the highest compliment), and then there are melodic elements that surprise – Death Debt is clean vocals, melodic synths and a clear jump towards the dancefloor. A much more direct release than I was expecting, and one that tells me a lot about Jones’ influences, and lays some interesting potential routes for the future.

/Ihsahn
/Ihsahn
/Candlelight Records

It’s now well beyond twenty years since the last statement from Emperor – the astounding Prometheus: The Discipline of Fire and Demise – graced our ears. Since then they’ve intermittently reformed for shows and festivals to remind just how far ahead they were of their peers in Black Metal, while Ihsahn has continued his solo work that has explored more proggier, experimental realms in the main. But there have always been reminders of his storied past, and this album brings those back into full focus: just don’t expect it to be another Emperor album. Sure, there are moments where tracks head full-on into symphonic black metal, but with orchestral accompaniment and some interesting diversions, it is so much more than that. In addition, unlike those early Black Metal releases, the production here is absolutely astounding. As the second CD proves, too, the fully-orchestral versions are quite something, too…

/Tides From Nebula
/Instant Reward
/Nebula Records

This Polish band came to my attention sometime before COVID, and their proggy post-rock, electronically assisted by judicious use of synths, has been on regular rotation since. They began releasing new tracks a couple of years back, and all four of those songs made it onto this album. Unlike previous album From Voodoo To Zen, then there mostly a more contemplative feel here, as if the band have decided to dial things back a bit, and that certainly makes the louder tracks hit that bit harder. The rumbling, drum-heavy power of The Haunting is one such track, which bursts out of the speakers after a period of relative peace. Post-rock seems to be slipping from fashion again in these times of instant musical gratification, but in the shadows are excellent releases like this just waiting to be heard.

/Warm Gadget
/Sorrows
/Remission Entertainment

Regular readers of /amodelofcontrol.com will know full well that I’m very much rooted in 90s alternative music for the most part: it was the period when I was a teenager, and spent a whole lot of time devouring new music (to me!) from every source I could. Warm Gadget takes me back to those times in a number of ways. This album reminds me of the times watching 120 Minutes on MTV Europe on a Sunday night, where obscure bands would often be played just once, leaving me scratching around trying to find releases by them later (something rather easier nowadays, I can tell you). There’s something of 90s Industrial Rock here, a bit of alt-rock, the odd tinge of breakbeats in the dense mix, but also what feels like a deliberate attempt with the production to make it sound like a product of the time. It even features Helmet frontman Paige Hamilton on the excellent Debutante. An enjoyable throwback.

/LEATHERS
/ULTRAVIOLET
/Artoffact Records

It’s three years or so since Shannon Hemmett’s first solo tracks as LEATHERS first appeared, and this album collects various of the singles into one album, at last. As I first noted when I reviewed an early track, my thoughts that this is 80s-influenced, neon-drenched synthpop, soundtracking a cyberpunk film, still stands. Being produced by Jason Corbett, Shannon’s bandmate in darkwave powerhouse ACTORS, gives the album a modern, glistening sheen (and there are touches of the ACTORS sound here, but it doesn’t dominate). Shannon’s vocals have a sultry, restrained delivery, and float over the synths elegantly. An album to luxuriate in – especially when on the lush ballad Day for Night, there are nods to Bryan Ferry…

/Interface
/Zero Sum Equation
/Distortion Productions

New Yorkers Interface are veterans of the scene these days – the band were formed as far back as 1993, and this year marks twenty-five years since their first album (at least that’s what’s recorded on Discogs!). Unlike many of their peers, Interface have long-since stuck to what they are so good at – (mostly) dancefloor-aimed, melodic electro-industrial, with a great line in big hooks and even bigger choruses. But here, the weight of the world and current events weigh heavily on an album that is introspective, angry, and more concentrated on getting ready for the fight to come, than it is getting fists raised on the dancefloor. That’s no bad thing – christ knows we need more political engagement than apathy to fight far-right politics – especially when that fight is coupled to those big hooks. The song titles tell you all you need to know, really: (Living in the) 21st Century, No Cause For Celebration, Full Circle… It might not be a happy listen, but it is good to hear someone is paying attention.

/Cell Zero
/The Color Drains Out
/self-released

Cell Zero – a new name to me this year – is another modern-day industrial artist harking back to a past time, and like Warm Gadget, they are clearly influenced by 90s industrial. But here, there is a distinct sense of an artist that grew up on Nine Inch Nails and Machine Rock (most notably 16Volt), with tracks dominated by fuzzy, processed guitars and taut rhythms, and of course angsty vocals. None of this is a bad thing: indeed this is a hugely enjoyable album for those of us that were there in the first place, reminded of formative material and a perhaps more innocent time than now. The production is impeccable, the songs are great, what’s not to like?

/Desperate Journalist
/No Hero
/Fierce Panda

Londoners Desperate Journalist have now been an active band for twelve years – and it’s nearly a decade since their striking debut album. Their gloomy, thoughtful indie rock has evolved carefully over that time, though, with the band uninterested in retreading the same ground for each release, with that being something that makes them stand out immediately. For their fifth album, they’ve incorporated synths in a way they’ve never tried before, and the result is a chilly, detached sound – which at points, such as on Underwater, leans into mid-90s Warp sounds – that suits Jo Bevan’s dramatic vocals well. Not for the first time, it takes a few listens to get under the skin of the album, as there is a feeling that there is a deliberate obscurity to the lyrics, but the effort is well worth it. A fierce live presence, I’m going to be fascinated to see how these songs sound in that environment.

/Ulver
/Liminal Animals
/House of Mythology

Are Ulver a genuinely genre-free band? They certainly have no peers, and indeed little or no connection to their Black Metal roots in the nineties any longer. Since, they’ve moved through styles effortlessly, and have settled in more recent times on a chilly, distant synthpop-based sound, with Kristoffer Rygg having adapted his vocals to a rich, soulful croon that suits him amazingly well. Last album Flowers of Evil was one of the best synthpop albums I’ve ever heard, and while Liminal Animals doesn’t quite hit the same marks, it’s also an album that is less concentrating on hooks and songcraft. There are intricate, extended instrumental pieces, there are jazzy blasts of trumpet, but then there are sublime electronic ballads like Locusts, and then the spirit of skyscraping eighties pop bursts through on the staggering Hollywood Babylon (which also contains what appear to be cynical lyrics about American hegemony). The final track – and the only genuinely new track, the remainder were released as individual tracks over the past year – is eleven minutes of stately electronics, with Rigg’s gruff spoken word in Norwegian providing an oppressive, threatening sound to close out another excellent release.

/50-/41 – /40-/31 – /30-/21 – /20-/11 – /10-/01

/Pink Suits
/Dystopian Hellscape
/self-released

pink suits are a duo based these days in Margate, and for their second album, they titled it Dystopian Hellscape, which frankly could describe 2024 in its entirety. The duo are avowedly political, pro-LGBTIQ+, pro-choice, anti-fascist and their songs cover every possible base on what is a sprawling, sixteen-track album. They even manage to equal Napalm Death’s legendary You Suffer on the fabulous A comprehensive breakdown of how trickle-down economics works (a song that comprises a count-in, a noisy riff and two words – best appreciated through the video or live). But elsewhere, there are songs decrying the politics of our time, the steady erosion of trans rights, crypto-bros, and some unusually introspective songs about therapy and things their parents told them. There’s an awful lot to take in, but it is never allowed to descend simply into proselytising and they have fun while covering difficult subjects. That difficult second album? No such problem.

/Underworld
/Strawberry Hotel
/Smith Hyde Productions

Underworld began drip-feeding a handful of singles last year – the exceptional and the colour red and denver luna, both the kind of techno odysseys they made their name with back in the nineties, and it feels kind of appropriate that both tracks should appear on their eleventh album, thirty years on from the majesty of dubnobasswithmyheadman.

In some ways, this is a return to form: the first half of the album is mostly comprised of upbeat tracks. As well as the above, Techno Shinkansen is a sleek rush through neon nightscapes, and Lewis in Pomona builds into a thundering, juddering techno freakout. Hilo Sky has Karl Hyde’s vocals soaring over the top of a pulsing beat, while Burst of Laughter feels like a pretty, electronic sunburst.

The more downbeat, gentle thud of King of Haarlem heralds the second half of the album, one that’s more experimental and quieter – the comedown after the relentlessness of the first half. There’s poetry, there’s ambient passages, there’s gentle guitar work. It’s not unexpected: Underworld have always been travellers that have experimented, but splitting this album in the way they have is a first. It’s a solid return: not their best, but with more than enough enjoyable moments to cherish.

/Collide
/The Darkness Forever
/Noiseplus Music

Fifteen years ago, Collide released These Eyes Before, which in retrospect was a covers album that was very much concentrating on their early, formative influences. So for them to return to the subject of covers again makes a lot of sense, as this time around they are concentrating on (mostly!) more contemporary artists, and for me, this fascinating mix of songs is a much more interesting selection than last time around. We go from Portishead to Fiona Apple, Sam Smith & Kim Petras to Peter Gabriel, among others, and while Collide make each of the songs recognisably theirs, it still feels a gutsy call to try and take on a Björk song (there are reasons why there are so few covers of her work). But remarkably, Karin and Statik do an impressive job with Human Behaviour, wisely not pushing the vocals too far, and it certainly makes it clear that, unexpectedly, Björk is a key influence. These are relatively sensitive covers, all told, the band making careful changes to ensure that their covers work, rather than just stamping all over them. Other bands doing covers albums, take note…

/Scene Queen
/Hot Singles In Your Area
/Hopeless Records

Watching the sneering comments from men online about Scene Queen rather proves Hannah Collins (for she is Scene Queen) right. A “bimbocore” (metalcore meets trap, hip-hop and upfront feminism) project that takes on the all-too-often blatant misogyny of the scene, Scene Queen hits the bullseye more than she doesn’t. OK, so the album tails off somewhat, but with belting tracks like 18+ (taking on the endless allegations of emo bands liking underage girls), MILF (metalcore meets country with surprisingly entertaining results), Pink Push-Up Bra (ripping into the epidemic of rape and abuse) and Finger (“If God hated gays, the sex wouldn’t be so good“), there’s more than enough to enjoy here. There will be lyrics that make you spit your tea across the room, moments to have you mosh like crazy, and some thought-provoking moments among them. Scene Queen is right, things have to change, and being so upfront is probably the best way.

/Marika Hackman
/Big Sigh
/Chrysalis Records

Like a number of other artists, I was left with the impression that COVID and the associated lockdowns hit Marika Hackman hard. She’d been on a fast rise beforehand – her last album Any Human Friend had done well, and a busy, noisy show at the Forum was one of the last shows I saw before lockdown hit. Other than a covers album, there was then silence for some time, and it was around four years before new material arrived. Big Sigh is an album darker in tone, and considerably more restrained than before. Interviews around the release of this album suggested that Hackman had suffered from crippling writer’s block during lockdown, partly explaining the delay, but relationship troubles also become clear as you listen to this album.

Hackman is bruised and miserable at times – the first single No Caffeine is about ways to deal with the onset of panic attacks, while Blood feels crushed amid the dying embers of a relationship. Her reputation for oversharing continues, too, with Slime detailing the somewhat loveless desire in a hook-up. If you’re not familiar with Hackman’s previous work, this might be a bit of a trudge, but this listener has been a fan for a while, and with the good times must come the bad, and anyone who’s had a messy break-up will find echoes of their own lives, I suspect.

/Sacred Skin
/Born In Fire
/Artoffact Records

Sacred Skin are hardly the only band in darker spheres to be in thrall to the eighties, but they are perhaps closer in concept to Nuovo Testamento than synthwave. In that, rather than endless, neon-drenched synth soundtracks in thrall to the era, they are instead mining eighties pop for a jump-off point. The results aren’t as euphoric as NT, but that’s perhaps a good thing: instead they’ve found a way to weave in those big hooks and eighties synths into ostensibly gloomy darkwave, but particularly when watching their videos, there’s a clear sense that they are having great fun doing so. Too much of post-punk/darkwave is po-faced bores at the moment, so concentrated on getting their image right that the songs suffer. No such problem here, with songs stuffed full of hooks, grooves and even guitar solos (particularly on the glorious Surrender), and the result is a textbook example of a band who have a clear vision and the ways and means to realise it in some style.

/Thou
/Umbilical
/Sacred Bones

Thou are an anomaly: a Louisiana Sludge Metal band that have barely a presence online, are devotees of grunge, and have – by last count – released six of their own albums, five more as collaborations with other artists, and twenty or thirty singles/EPs/split releases as well as various compilations, all within twenty years. Their sound is so, so heavy – bringing in elements of stoner metal and doom as well, an enormous, chugging force that grinds the listener down. Happy music for happy people this is not, instead this crushing release is one where the band explore what happens when you step beyond the bounds of your own morality. It’s a dark, forbidding place, and Thou are the perfect band to guide us through it.

/Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds
/Wild God
/PIAS

The last couple of Bad Seeds albums have, to put it mildly, been difficult listens. After the sudden death of Nick Cave’s teenage son Arthur, the already written Skeleton Tree took on a whole new dimension, while with deaths and health issues in our own family and friends, neither my wife or I could bear to listen to Ghosteen at all. But a few more years on, and with the Bad Seeds at least partly able to record together as a band again (bassist Martyn P. Casey was unable to make most of the sessions from Australia, so Colin Greenwood assisted in London, becoming the latest addition to the Bad Seeds), Wild God sounds like a band rejuvenated and finding ways to enjoy life again. Like the way the title track explodes into an ecstatic, choir-assisted coda, and the big, brash arrangements across the album that return the band to a larger collective, than the much-smaller core that has dominated in recent years.

The most arresting moment of the album, though, is O Wow O Wow (How Wonderful She Is), which rather than a memorial for Anita Lane, is an affirming celebration of a life well lived (and comes complete with Lane’s voice telling fascinating stories amid laughs from an old telephone call, I understand with the full permission of her family). A loving tribute that fits well with the ethos of the album: love life while you can, you may not get another chance.

/Autoclav1.1
/diamondblackviper
/Audiophob

Tony Young’s main musical outlet marks twenty years active this year – especially when you consider that he has released sixteen albums in that period. Over that time, he’s gradually expanded his sonic palette, widening the influences and sounds that he’s working with, so for this album it is perhaps notable to see a return to his roots, at least in some way. The inspiration for the songs here is an interesting one here, too, as Young looks back over memories of his childhood with evocative, downcast pieces that for me recall the loneliness and sadness that childhood can bring, particularly if you experience family upheaval or are different to your peers (something that both this writer and Tony Young experienced in different ways, I suspect). That uniform theme really helps to bring the album together as a cohesive whole, too, as there is a tinge – I’m sure deliberate – of retro electronic music here, rooting us into a specific place, but it’s still clearly Autoclav1.1. A reminder that instrumental music can have gravitas and an emotional hit.

/Buffalo Tom
/Jump Rope
/Scrawny Records

Boston, MA based alt-rockers Buffalo Tom have been a band for nearly forty years, and in more recent times, have released albums when it suits, no longer beholden to timescales other than their own (they self-release on their own label these days). Happily, they’ve seen no need to radically change their sound, either: happy with the style they long since perfected – and I fell in love with when I first heard songs from 1992’s Let Me Come Over – coming back to the band again is like hearing the voice of an old friend after so long. Bill Janovitz’s voice always sounded older before his time, and now it’s a rich voice of life’s experience, with Chris Colbourn’s voice offering light amid the shade. There are more acoustic guitars, a perhaps more relaxed tone generally, but make no mistake: this is an album accepting of getting older, and being comfortable doing so, and as such as quite marvellous.

/50-/41 – /40-/31 – /30-/21 – /20-/11 – /10-/01

/Neuroticfish
/The Demystification of the Human Heart
/Non Ordinary Records

Neuroticfish always felt like outsiders to the futurepop party. While they were initially around at the right time, a more leisurely release schedule and sporadic touring meant that they never quite reached the audience that many felt they deserved, and when they fell silent after the excellent Gelb, it was considered that it was an artist that had not fulfilled their potential. A little short of a decade later, they returned to live performance (including a fondly remembered headline slot at Resistanz in 2013), and the excellent A Sign of Life wryly heralded their return.

Another album since, and we’re up to date with The Demystification of the Human Heart. If you’re familiar with the work of Sascha Mario Klein and Henning Verlage, this album won’t perhaps surprise particularly: it’s what Neuroticfish have always done so well. A scattering of slick, trance-infused electro-industrial bangers, and a number of bleak electronic ballads dominate the album, with Klein’s trademark lyrics about rejection, relationship treachery and failure: but what makes them so affecting is Klein’s delivery, that always sounds like he’s not quite feeling that he can get through it. A quality return.

/Arab Strap
/I’m totally fine with it 👍 don’t give a fuck anymore 👍
/Rock Action

The new material since Arab Strap reformed (As Days Get Dark) was a remarkable album, where Aidan Moffat turned his attention, at least in part, to the wider world, rather than the preoccupations of him, his friends, drinking, drugs and sex. It revealed him to be an extraordinary, empathetic observer, and the new album (what a title!) takes him further down that road. That title – and the stylising of the cover so that it looks like a social media message – is a pointer to the main theme of the album, which is around our contact and interaction with and within the digital world: which here includes love, loss, radicalisation, conspiracy theories and even loneliness and death (the extraordinary Safe & Well, seemingly inspired by the shocking discovery of Sheila Seleoane, two years after she’d died alone in her flat). Summer Season is about the loss of contact, and how trying to pick up that thread again can be so hard. It’s Aidan Moffatt continuing as one of the great chroniclers of modern life, never sugarcoating, but still finding both the humour and darkness that resides in these interconnected lives that we now lead.

/Ben Frost
/Scope Neglect
/Mute Records

The experimental work of Ben Frost is minimalist in scope, but often maximalist in volume: as Scope Neglect proves in spades. In some ways a dismantling of metal musical norms, it removes any rhythmic elements and leaves shattered and looped guitars like they are floating, accompanied only by washes of synths. There are sharp edges – and at points it sounds like it might devour the listener whole – and it sounds better the louder you turn the volume dial. At points the riffs sound vaguely familiar, but that’s likely the thirty-five years or so of my listening to metal of various genres, as otherwise this album sounds like an entirely new concept – reinventing the work of Glenn Branca and other avant-garde artists with even more volume and generations worth of heavy music to draw from. Strangely enough, not an album for everyone…

/Frank Turner
/Undefeated
/Xtra Mile Recordings

Ten albums in, and we know what to expect from Frank Turner now, but he does it so well. There will be nods to his punk roots, there will be the thoughtful ballads, there will be songs that I’ll be bellowing along to with everyone else at future shows. There are discussions of mental health and atoning for past mistakes, there are songs about doing better, there are songs about music (and here, fancying a girl in a record shop, one of the joyous highlights of this album). Obviously, he’s always best enjoyed at one of his raucous shows (I’ll be next doing show at his 3000th show in the new year), but on record, you get to appreciate the subtle intricacies and details that flesh out so many of the songs. A solid release.

/Bill Leeb
/Model Kollapse
/Metropolis Records

An unexpected release this year was the first official solo work from Bill Leeb – since he first started releasing music back in the 1980s, he’s always had collaborators (within Front Line Assembly, Delerium, Cyberaktif and other projects), and his work has always had a distinctive style, so I was intrigued to see what was really different. Especially as recent FLA albums in particular have felt a little lacklustre; the band hit a peak with the astounding Echogenetic a decade ago, and since the death of Jeremy Inkel, something has definitely been missing.

So colour me surprised with this release. Written and produced with the mysterious Dream Bullet (since revealed that one member of them is Jared Slingerland, who worked on FLA a decade ago), with Rhys Fulber and Greg Reely still involved with production and engineering, it’s still FLA… kind of. It is very much more song-based, and much of the album is built around rhythm and melody (the latter not always such a factor in Leeb’s work): but there is also a tinge of melancholy and trepidation, which perhaps comes from the core concept of the album. “Model collapse” is where AI models degrade over time (“garbage in, garbage out”), and as we increasingly rely on them, what happens when they give us the wrong information? The most satisfying work from Leeb in many years.

/Oranssi Pazuzu
/Muuntautuja
/Nuclear Blast Records

Listening to Oranssi Pazuzu is akin to listening through a portal to another dimension. It sounds completely alien, as if they’ve found ways to make sounds that other humans cannot. Calling them Black Metal is probably only because no-one has any idea of what to categorise them as otherwise, especially as calling them psychedelic runs into issues too: this is one hell of a bad trip, in black and grey. Their sound on this album is oppressive and terrifying, with vocalist Jun-His (or at least, they are credited with the lead vocals) apparently sending his missives from the very depths of hell, and the dense, heavy grooves roll out of the speakers like an unstoppable, slow lava flow, with synths used to supercharge the deep bass and to fill every possible gap in the mix. A unique, unmistakable band who have no peers whatsoever.

/Then Comes Silence
/Trickery
/Metropolis Records

I think one of the reasons I like Then Comes Silence so much is that they have an energy about them that, frankly, is somewhat lacking from many of the peers. Their songs buzz with life, mostly at a faster tempo, and the bright production means that songs crackle with power, too. Sure, they occasionally lean on a formula (brooding verses, soaring chorus, later on a dramatic key change in a bridge) but when it works so well, why the fuck not? The opening one-two punch of Ride or Die and Like A Hammer – both sterling examples of exactly that formula – are worth the admission alone, but the unexpected, sub-two minute deathpunk hit of Dead Friend is also quite fantastic. A great live band, too, they are evidence of life in the goth scene yet.

/Cardinal Noire
/Vitriol
/Artoffact Records

Every year, there’s one album released just after the cut-off of 30-November that blows me away, and this year, it came from Finnish industrial duo Cardinal Noire. They’ve been around for a while, and their earlier material saw them sticking closely to a template that took more than a few pages from Skinny Puppy’s book – dense, sample-heavy industrial that was rarely for dancefloors, and indeed was best listened to on headphones, so much was going on in the mix. Six years on from second album Deluge, though – and with Kalle Lindberg’s own Protectorate project, whose electro-industrial targets the dancefloor, having been prominent in the meantime – CN have evolved, a lot. There’s still a lot of Puppy in the mix, but the production here is laser-focused, and has an impressive low-end thump that makes every single track hit that much harder. The best Cardinal Noire album yet.

/The Cure
/Songs of a Lost World
/Fiction Records

It was promised for ages, and in the end it was sixteen years since the release of their last new material. Perhaps surprisingly, though – particularly after the lacklustre albums across the late-90s and 2000s – this album is something of a triumph. Robert Smith is in a reflective mood for the most part, musing on ageing and loss, over a stately, mostly slow-paced backing that could only be The Cure. Simon Gallup’s basslines have the same heft and power as they always did, propelling songs forward, while Reeves Gabrels – guitarist with David Bowie for so long – adds texture and something a little different to the sound, although it should be said that he’s not trying to reinvent the wheel here. The epic opener Alone sets the scene – nearly seven minutes long, it takes almost half that time before you even hear Smith sing – and takes us back to the era of Disintegration, and we never really leave it. The most intriguing song for me, though, is Drone:Nodrone – where the band edge into industrial-rock territory with a grinding monster of a track that also features a rare thing in a Cure song – an epic guitar solo. In dark and depressing times, perhaps an album equally gloomy in outlook was just what we needed.

/Poppy
/Negative Spaces
/Sumerian Records

Early Poppy material left me somewhat cold – I wasn’t particularly interested in the so-called hyperpop arena – but more recently, when she started covering Kittie (last year’s rampaging cover of Spit), making sacrilegious industrial (the jaw-dropping Church Outfit) and working with metalcore bands, things got really interesting. And, it turns out, Negative Space is a wild riot. There are still moments where the old electronic pop bursts through, but working with Jordan Fish (once of Bring Me The Horizon) has resulted in some dramatic tracks.

The center’s falling out is not far off the intensity of recent Napalm Death, while album highlight push go starts all saccharine electro-pop, before dropping into a thrilling nu-metal free-for-all with the kind of fist-raising chorus her influences would kill for. the cost of giving up is soaring electronic rock (those riffs!), and opener have you had enough? sets the scene with an industrial stomp that could be Nine Inch Nails at their peak. I get the impression from others that the change has been more gradual that I’d noticed, but this is a fantastic album that is fairly clearly going to get Poppy a much wider audience.

/50-/41 – /40-/31 – /30-/21 – /20-/11 – /10-/01

/Chat Pile
/Cool World
/The Flenser

Chat Pile name themselves after the looming piles of zinc and lead mining waste that literally poisoned a town out of existence in their home state of Oklahoma. Their music is a modern take on sludgy metal that is vastly more open-minded in terms of influences than you might think – taking in alternative rock, melodic post-punk and even the odd industrial touch, particularly in the dense, electronically-assisted production – and the result, like the exceptional God’s Country from a couple of years back, is another hugely listenable album. That first album was a trip through the personal anguish of Raygun Busch – and more than once it did cross my mind that he might have benefited from an intervention at some point, particularly the epic closer grimace_smoking_weed.jpeg, and it’s probably for the best that the band have widened their lyrical output this time around.

Don’t expect flowers and happiness, though: this time it’s the sound of the planet dying. By way of war, pollution, demagogues, oh yes, this is anything but fucking joyous. I Am Dog Now is the sound of the earth consuming itself as humans poison it, while Frownland – underpinned by a heavy-as-fuck rhythm that Godflesh would be proud of – is comprised of the blackest heart. Funny Man could be an allegory for Trump, it might not, but it lurches forward with a fury that’s difficult to ignore. This is ugly music for an ugly time, then, but perversely, hugely enjoyable…

/Godspeed You! Black Emperor
/“NO​ ​TITLE AS OF 13 FEBRUARY 2024 28​,​340 DEAD”
/Constellation Records

It is sometimes difficult to know what to say about GY!BE albums. This one arrived with a weighty title – referencing the number of dead in Gaza as of that day, a number now considerably higher, never mind those injured or homeless as a result too – and at points has a subdued, almost resigned feel. Sure, GY!BE usually sound somewhat mournful, but the sheer weight of world events at the moment appears to loom heavily over this album, with equally downbeat track titles too. There are the expected orchestral swells, the epic builds to crashing climaxes, that collective sense of a band who truly work as one to create on a giant, overbearing canvas. It’s beautiful, there remains no-one quite like them, and somehow, despite being entirely instrumental, find lots to say and think about.

/Chelsea Wolfe
/She Reaches Out To She Reaches Out To She
/Loma Vista

After a long time associated with label Sargeant House, Chelsea Wolfe moved onto Loma Vista following the unpleasant allegations that broke a couple of years back (one of a number of artists to leave the label at the time), and this album is her first at her new home. There’s no drastic changes here: instead a continuation of the gradual evolution of Wolfe’s sound that has been happening since her very first album.

Gradually, there have been more electronics, and less of the scorching extremity – but the doom-laden, pitch-black heart of her songs remains. Interestingly, there are points on this album were she doesn’t sound a million miles from the depths of despair that Beth Gibbons of Portishead made her own (the marvellous Tunnel Lights, and the brooding Dusk in particular). Eyes Like Nightshade is entirely electronic, a gradually decaying synth pulse that feels like it is rotting from the inside out. There’s been a few imitators in recent years, but Wolfe is still in a class of her own.

/Shellac
/To All Trains
/Touch and Go Records

The members of Shellac always saw their band as a project apart from their dayjobs as recording engineers (or in the case of drummer Todd Trainer, one of the best drumming instructors in the business), recording and touring when they saw fit. To All Trains, as the liner notes state, began to be recorded as long ago as 2017, and mixing on it was completed last year. It was then released just ten days after the death of frontman Steve Albini – an event that shocked the alternative music world, but also brought the curtain down on a trailblazing career as a musician and engineer (he famously hated the term producer) that has influenced an enormous number of artists, and also was a key part in a sea change in how alternative music was seen and made. Not that you’d know this from To All Trains. If you’ve been familiar with the music of Shellac over the past three decades or so, you’ll find much to like here – ten relatively short, terse songs that are perfectly, cleanly produced, made up of just guitar, bass, drums and voice, with that distinctive, dry and sparse mix that characterises everything Albini has ever put his hand to. It is a hell of a farewell, and is gone all too quickly in just twenty-nine minutes.

/Arð
/Untouched By Fire
/Prophecy Productions

I was never a particular fan of Winterfylleth, but Mark Deeks’ own project turns out to be far more interesting. Moving away from the folk-tinged Black Metal of that band, Arð describes itself as Monastic Northumbrian doom. First album Take Up My Bones was about St. Cuthbert, while this one is about Oswald, who was chiefly responsible for bringing together two local kingdoms as Northumbria and is venerated as a saint. But the really fascinating thing here is how this sounds. Sure, crushing doom coupled with mournful synths and strings is nothing new, but adding dramatic and devotional, choral vocals to this is for the most part, and it sounds absolutely remarkable. It sounds absolutely massive, and I’ve no doubt that – like he did for the last album in Huddersfield Town Hall, using the giant pipe organ – that live shows will sound dramatic, moving and very, very loud.

/Normal Bias
/Kingdom Come
/DKA Records

An intriguing project between Matt Weiner (TWINS) and Chris Campion (Multiple Man) resulted in a hugely listenable album this autumn. Campion’s work with his twin brother Sean is not as much as a touchpoint as I thought it might be – while the muscular EBM rhythms and chiming synths do make appearances, they are not the dominant force here: indeed those elements are in thrall to sweeping choruses and melodic pop songs not a million miles away from a certain Basildon band. Let’s make no bones about it – Weiner is doing his best Dave Gahan impression here, and pulls it off with such panache that I’m wondering whether I should start a campaign for DM to use his songwriting. This is eight songs of sleek, powerful dark funk-pop that is quite, quite brilliant from start to finish.

/Kontravoid
/Detachment
/Artoffact Records

Cameron Findlay’s Kontravoid project first came to my attention sometime before lockdown, and even with prior knowledge, the change that Detachment shows surprised me somewhat. The industrial-meets-minimal synth rhythmic workouts are still present and correct, but I can’t help but notice a variety of synthpop, and more particularly, futurepop, elements nudging in. Those minor key melodies, big hooks, and a lighter touch than before that makes his music vastly more accessible. Then there is the outstanding Losing Game, where Chelsey Crowley of current critical darlings Nuovo Testamento crashes the party with another effortless pop song, bringing some of her 80s stardust while Findlay brightens the synths around her. That it is followed by the breathless, out-of-control momentum of Reckoning is perhaps a sign of just how far this project has come, and how willing Findlay is to change up and experiment (and is that a cheeky nod to Head Like A Hole at the beginning of the thumping Spirit Walker?). Genuinely one of the most satisfying industrial albums of 2024.

/St. Vincent
/All Born Screaming
/Total Pleasure Records

There was a moment in the past decade where it looked like St. Vincent might be on the verge of mainstream success: big, brash pop songs like Digital Witness in particular starting the charge: but tabloid intrusion (particularly around the short-lived relationship with Cara Delevingne) appeared to change her mind, and while MASSEDUCTION was hugely entertaining, Daddy’s Home was mostly forgettable and self-indulgent, the louche 70s stylings grating an awful lot. So when the literally fiery Broken Man dropped, it was clear that Annie Clark was back in fighting mode (the scorching version from Jimmy Kimmel is also a reminder of just how brilliant a live performer she can be, too).

That said, the album begins in low-key mode, and it takes until the mechanics underpinning Reckless finally whirr into life before it drags itself into the foreground, and then it never lets go. Flea‘s industrial rock buzz uses a metaphor of a parasitic insect for obsession (and is utterly fabulous), while Big Time Nothing is a rolling, wonderful seventies-funk track that is everything that Daddy’s Home should have been.

It closes with the epic title track, a howl into a void that is unusually upbeat and is something of a message of hope in a time where that feels in short supply. It’s great to hear St. Vincent back on form.

/earthtone9
/In Resonance Nexus
/Candlelight Records

Nottingham metallers earthtone9 have clearly enjoyed their return – now a good fifteen years into their second life – but hadn’t released an new material in over a decade until In Resonance Nexus was announced. This album, their fifth, has been absolutely worth the wait. Pulverising lead single Oceanic Drift – apparently about unreliable storytellers and the slow passage of time – was a unmissable missive to return with, and amazingly the rest of the album is up to scratch too.

As has always been the way with the band, there are elements of technical metal, hardcore, melodic doom and a few other styles too, as if the ideas the band have were far too big to be confined to one style. But what they have retained, even after a quarter of a century since their debut, is that intensity. Vocalist Karl Middleton goes from melodic elegance to a terrifying roar, often in the same song, but always with a searing conviction, and carries the band with him (in particular the rip-roaring blast of The Etiquette of Distortion). A staggering return that is very nearly an equal to the classic Arc’tan’gent.

/Glass Apple Bonzai
/Brother Bones
/Distortion Productions

It’s an old adage that the best music can come from the worst of times, and here, Daniel Belasco responds to the recent death of his brother with an outstanding album that is easily the best of his career. Many UK listeners will have come across his band from their hugely enjoyable performance at Infest in 2022, and this takes what we heard there further. GAB now sounds much more like a full band, and while the eighties power-pop influence remains the overarching takeaway from the sound, the key difference is that Belasco’s songwriting is better than ever. Every song has hooks for days, impassioned performances, and the feeling that in another universe this would be a smash hit in the pop charts.

/50-/41 – /40-/31 – /30-/21 – /20-/11 – /10-/01

/KLACK
/Modern Production
/self-released

The latest missive from KLACK saw them jump a level or two, a seven-track release that pulled in a recent single Body2Body2Body and a bunch of new tracks. Tracks like Beat Unity and Calculated Risk are big, fun New Beat workouts for the dancefloor, while Eric Oehler takes the reigns on the glorious Weight of the World and Dot Dot Dot, the former sounded like a great lost Depeche Mode track (and I mean that as the highest compliment). The album is capped off, though, by the joyous Let’s Go To Berlin!, that borrows, I’m sure, from at least one classic dance track, but otherwise is a sweet, entertaining tip of the hat to Berlin’s techno scene with a hilarious Matt Fanale voiceover as he tries to navigate the city and hunt out the best clubs.

/Ultra Sunn
/US
/Artoffact Records

I’d missed the apparent buzz about this duo over the past few years, at least until they started appearing on festival bills and the run-up to the release of US. Apparently a huge hit on TikTok thanks to an older song, this debut album unleashes their full power, and it’s quite something. To these ears it is somewhere between the leather-clad kink of late-80s, imperial Depeche Mode and thumping, modern EBM, and a sparkling production truly lets the songs shine. Vocalist Sam has a big, booming voice that rightly dominates the songs (and he’s got one hell of a line in giant hooks, too), while Gaelle conjures up groovy, dancefloor-bound electronics on basically every song. In fact, with the exception of the downbeat, closing instrumental The House, there isn’t a song here that isn’t dancefloor ready. It’s tight, lean, and is yet more evidence of the excellent new generation of industrial/electronic artists that are offering renewal of a scene that had begun to get a bit stale around the edges.

/Heriot
/Devoured By The Mouth of Hell
/Century Media

Not many bands completely disown their earlier output as Heriot have done – but then, when you’ve changed your outlook and style, and indeed want to push forward instead, maybe it’s the nuclear option they needed. It has certainly paid off – this young metal band have stepped out of the shadows to a deal with Century Media, and have recorded a blistering thirty minute missive that has had many take notice. Aiming for an album of “no filler” meant songs were ruthlessly culled, too, and the end result is an album with enough sharp edges to fill a kitchen.

The opening songs are viciously heavy, full of sledgehammer riffage and snarling vocals, so it’s a bit of a shock to find the mediative Opaline, with sinuous clean vocals from Debbie Gough following them. Siege Lord showcases the sludgy nastiness that Heriot first introduced on that EP from a couple of years ago (and appear to have now perfected) – and elsewhere there are gloomy interludes, shredding classic thrash guitar solos, death metal growls…and the kind of imposing heaviness that seems to set them apart. They’ve worked very hard to get to this point, that much is obvious, and the result is the best metal album of this year, without a doubt.

/Urban Heat
/The Tower
/Artoffact Records

Even last year, I was getting bored with the avalanche of darkwave bands who dipped into post-punk, moped around onstage and pretty much all played the same songs. So thank everything for Urban Heat, a mixed-race trio from Austin, Texas who bring a whole host of different influences to an outstanding album that is full of anthems and songs that months on from first hearing, I still can’t get enough of. Jonathan Horstmann’s rich and emotionally powerful baritone vocals add a depth so sorely lacking in many of their peers’ songs, and even the ballads (such as the sublime Say the Words, and the yearning power of Addicted to the Sounds) are essential listening too.

But when they pick up the pace they get even better. The punchy Sanitizer is the first band I can recall leaning into a similar industrialised-hip hop sound to Stromkern, the rousing thrill of Savor Not The Thrill is fabulous anthem to inspire an uprising, while Seven Safe Places is the kind of monstrous anthem I want to sing ’til I’m hoarse in the middle of a crowd. A thrill from start-to-finish: and from an album that spends a fair proportion musing on the fear of failure and how we deal with that, it’s amazing just how brilliantly it works out.

/Houses of Heaven
/Within/Without
/Felte

One of the buzz albums in our scene in 2024 turned out to be well worth the hype. An unusual hybrid of sounds – think clubbound EBM meets melodic darkwave is the best way that I can describe it – that succeeds because the songs are great, with Keven Tecon (who at one point was part of The Soft Moon, I understand) delivering impassioned vocals that sell the whole sound.

The key track here is the title track, that accelerates from brooding verses into a dizzying rush of a chorus, and demonstrates just how brilliantly the band are crossing boundaries. The album features Doug McCarthy on The End of Me, too, interestingly a muscular ballad that sees him in crooning mode to great effect (and the opposite of what you might expect from him on the record, too). That said, the biggest surprise comes with the thundering breakbeats of marvellous closing track Sightline – listen on headphones for the full effect.

This album needs no selling by use of guest vocalists, though – the band are brilliant enough on their own. The best industrial album of 2024.

/Gavin Friday
/Ecce Homo
/BMG

In many ways, it is very him to return with an album that feels to be one of excess. One of grief, of rebirth, of return, of being Catholic, of his late dogs, of being Gavin Friday. It is an album with a surprising clubland thump to some songs (ever wondered what Friday would sound like fronting Underworld? The extraordinary opener lovesubzero is your answer), and in others a thrilling theatrical flourish. For longtime fans, the latter should be no surprise, but the former is perhaps thanks to Dave Ball being involved in the creation of the album, and he provides a skyscraping power to the music that suits Friday’s dramatic delivery perfectly.

This album reminds that he’s seen a lot over his life, and forty-five year plus musical career, and he covers a hell of a lot of ground in fifty-two minutes (get the deluxe cd/streaming version, not least for the wonderful celebration of Soho sleaze that is Caberotica), not a moment of which is wasted. Behold the Man indeed, this a fabulous return.

/Haujobb
/The Machine In The Ghost
/Dependent Records

The first new Haujobb album in nine years saw Daniel Myer and Dejan Samardzic return with yet another extraordinary collection of electronic music, as peerless as they’ve ever been. With over three decades of evolution – or perhaps, with their dedication to technology, upgrades – under their belts, there are perhaps unsuprisingly nods to their earlier versions, but they also take their sound forward once again, with extensive usage of otherworldly field recordings that punctuate the sounds here, including sampling everyday household items. Such elements provide the human edge that can sometimes get lost in the group’s compositions in the past, but also it’s notable this time around that Haujobb have provided their best collection of songs since career highlight Vertical Theory.

Uselessness is the most upfront, a punishingly hard-edged rhythmic attack that has a steel-tongued edge by way of Myers vocals, while the stately initial single Under The Headlights has revealed itself, after a few listens, to have a cold-hearted beauty. Opposition has Depeche Mode-in-bondage-gear style metallic clangs as part of a complex accompaniment to the basic rhythm, and is a remarkable piece as a result, especially when the unexpectedly soulful backing vocals drop into the mix. But like all Haujobb releases, this is about the whole rather than individual elements. If sentient machines could really make music that had an emotional core, they’d probably first sound like Haujobb, but they’d never sound as good as this, as Haujobb have the benefit of human experience to build from. An extraordinary return.

/The Jesus Lizard
/Rack
/Ipecac Recordings

There was something of neat timing when The Jesus Lizard announced their recorded return in the summer, just weeks after Steve Albini died – who of course worked with the band on their four greatest albums (i.e. the first four), and helped them realise that savage, bone-dry sound that became their signature. Interestingly, despite this album being written and produced over the past half-decade, they chose not to return to working with Albini for this, but you could be forgiven for thinking that they did. Particularly the rampaging lead track Hide & Seek, which for all the world sounds like it could have been recorded at the same time as tracks on Goat.

Everyone brings their A-game, too, resulting in a characteristically short, sharp album, where not a fucking second is wasted. While there are individual highlights – bassist David Wm. Sims is the beating heart of their sound, as ever, but on Alexis Feels Sick, his filthy bassline comes to the fore, appropriately for a song referencing their two-bass guitar friends and peers Girls Against Boys. Duane Denison provides every single song with imaginative guitar work, Mac McNeilly is like a real-life Animal on the drums, and talking of animals, David Yow’s imagination proves to be as out-there and plain fucking weird as ever. For a band whose members are now in their sixties, they sound more alive and thrilling than ever. An absolute fucking treat.

/Uniform
/American Standard
/Sacred Bones

Uniform have never exactly been easy listening – indeed the absolute opposite – but Michael Berdan, Ben Greenberg and their ever-expanding set of collaborators pushed beyond even their own extremes on this absolutely extraordinary album. Built around Berdan’s struggles with bulimia nervosa, the opening twenty-one minute title track begins with just Berdan’s voice, raging at himself and what he sees. It ebbs through a number of movements, ending in a punishing, drum-led coda that feels like an exorcism. This Is Not A Prayer was released as the lead single – a brave move, since it is seven minutes of two drummers pummelling your ears, Greenberg slashing his guitar like knives across the throat, and Berdan unleashing every demon from his body.

Remember when Swans were pure force and hate? This is much, much more, the subtle studio and electronic treatments adding what feels like lead weight to the sheer heaviness of the mix. Clemency then buries you in gigantic riffs, using bludgeoning repetition and hints of a digital version of tape decay that begins to do strange things to the mix. There’s only four songs here – in forty minutes – and closing track Permanent Embrace takes us into a sonic whirlwind not unlike symphonic Black Metal. This is a truly brilliant album, one borne of the kind of trauma and life I cannot begin to imagine, and is the band’s undoubted masterpiece.

/Nadine Shah
/Filthy Underneath
/EMI North

I’ve been a fan of Nadine Shah for a long time, and it was obvious during lockdown that things were not well. The exceptional Kitchen Sink was released in the early part of 2020, and having the rug pulled from under her in terms of touring, then her mother dying that summer, appeared to start a downward spiral that was only just stopped in time. A period in rehab followed, and as she’s sorted her life out, everything that happened seemed to light a creative fire that has resulted in an absolutely extraordinary album that is equal parts hilarious and harrowing.

The rhythmic force and word association of Topless Mother comes from sessions with her therapist, Sad Lads Anonymous drifts through a Kentish fog as she offers unfiltered opinions on living in Ramsgate with her ex (I mean, I like Ramsgate, but I take her point), and The Greatest Dancer is the best song to involve Strictly that has been released yet. This is a warts-and-all album about her – rather than the usual distance Shah puts between herself and the subjects of her songs – and is all the better for it, buzzing with life and the second chance she has given herself. Ignore the lazy comparisons to PJ Harvey and Nick Cave: Nadine Shah long since made her own sound and style, and it has never sounded better than this – indeed, it was better than everything else this year, as the /amodelofcontrol.com album of 2024.

/50-/41 – /40-/31 – /30-/21 – /20-/11 – /10-/01