TOP TEN ALBUMS OF 2024

It’s that time of the year, folks, where we reflect on the very best that was! In this feature, we’ll be looking strictly at full-length records. Most of the inclusions you’ll find on this list I’ve already reviewed in one form or another this year, so in those cases I’ll be excerpting from those reviews and linking to the original, but also adding any additional thoughts, notes, or context where relevant as well. We’ll start the list with a record that was not previously reviewed, however, and that is…

10. Contention-Artillery From Heaven

Savage, visceral debut from the Tampa straight edge metallic hardcore outfit. If you took the best of the bands Mother of Mercy and Bitter End and combined them, you’d have Contention.

9. Ski Mask the Slump God-11th Dimension

The rap album of the year for me. Some excerpts of what I said in my review of it in June (full text here):

A kaleidoscopic vision of dark trap-adjacent tracks that reach out tentacle-like across the modern rap landscape and beyond. There’s "Headrush" with a kind of "Crazy Train"-sounding riff in it, the heavily distorted trap beat of "Hulk," the unique, house fly buzz beat of "Tuk Tuk," the beat on "KillStreak" that sounds like a Nintendo console gone homicidal, and The Weeknd-like "Go!" featuring Corbin…With hardcore band brevity—only two of the twenty-one tracks even hit three minutes, and barely at that when they do—Ski Mask the Slump God rips through high energy bangers like "Full Moon" or the dripping with menace "Part the Sea" in a pretty short drive from there to a full-on mosh pit, and yet he proves he can throttle it back where necessary, too, such as on the first verse of the chilled-out ballad "WDYM," or, in moves which really evidence his talent and versatility, in showcasing his strong singing voice on that track and "Go!"—two of the best cuts on the record.

8. With Sails Ahead-Infinite Void

The New Jersey progressive/post-hardcore heavyweights come in here at the number eight spot; excerpting from my April review of the record (full text here):

One of the first things that stood out to me about this band is that they can seriously write hooks. What’s more, while there’s a clear instrumental proficiency, this never overwhelms the songs themselves. The songwriting and songcraft is clearly prioritized over showiness, and it shows. "Honey," for example, follows the playbook of most pop songwriting where the vocals drive the melody of the chorus, which pays major replayability dividends; the appearance of pulses. later in the track signals a climactic burst of aggression that has as an interesting darkness-and-light kind of interplay and is a surprising but effective resolution to the song. Another surprising and intriguing moment occurs on "Lemongrab," where the band fairly abruptly fades out and from what sounds like another room a lone acoustic guitar accompanies [Sierra] Binondo’s ethereal vocals to haunting but beautiful effect. I don’t want to spoil all of the surprises here, though.

7. Knocked Loose-You Won’t Go Before You’re Supposed To

This band does not miss. Every record is somehow more urgent, more comically heavy, and has just enough little wrinkles to keep things interesting. Knocked Loose have gotten bigger than anyone could have ever expected for a band this preposterously heavy. For a relatively young band, they’re also already becoming massively influential—indeed, even their recording style on this album, with its hyper-compressed sound, is proving to be so. I don’t know how it’s possible for them to continue to up the ante moving forward, but they’ve managed so far!

6. Charli xcx-Brat

I’m channeling my inner teenage girl with this one, and I don’t care: what Charli xcx has done here is take Y2K-style pop and dance music and hybridize, modernize, and elevate it to pure perfection. Songs like "360," "Rewind," and "Apple" are among the catchiest tracks of the year (I’d submit "360" is the single catchiest song of the year, in fact), and bookending the record with "360" and its sonic re-interpretation in "365" was a stroke of genius. Everything about the rollout of the record and its remixed cousin Brat and It's Completely Different but Also Still Brat has been maximally effective and has caught the attention of everyone from the mainstream to the alternative.

5. Diamond Construct-Angel Killer Zero

The Australian "metal trap" monsters Diamond Construct come in for me here at the five spot; excerpting my review of the record from May (full text here):

There’s a scene in one of the Matrix films, I can’t recall which, when Neo jacks back into the Matrix to find the Agent Smith virus running amok and the entire simulation essentially coming apart at the seams. From when the opening track of Angel Killer Zero "Hashira" hits, the experience is roughly analogous (underscored by moments such as the "system malfunction" outro on the ludicrously-heavily "Delirium"), and we’re not let off this glitchy, skronky ride until the "Angel Killer Zero program [is] complete…terminating simulation" at the end of the final track "You Want That Scene Shit," itself an anguished roar that feels like it could rip the sky asunder. It's only just hyperbolic when I say my speakers can barely handle this record; there are breakdowns on this album that played at proper volume (loud) could conceivably make city skylines collapse.

4. Twin Atlantic-Meltdown

The Glaswegian alternative rock/power pop outfit Twin Atlantic sound energized and razor-sharp on Meltdown, their best album in over a decade and a half in existence. As I said in my August Shout-Outs entry:

Glasgow’s Twin Atlantic may lead off Meltdown with a riff that sounds an awful lot like Incubus’s "Privilege," but the heart and soul, if you’ll pardon the pun, of the album lies much closer to that of bands like You Me At Six. Twin Atlantic have written a number of legitimately great rock songs throughout their career, but Meltdown is their most complete offering to date, with the songs falling roughly into one of two camps: the buoyant, arena-worthy pop-rock numbers like "Get Out" and the more pensive—but no less impressive in their careful crafting—ones like "Sorry." Beyond the top-tier songwriting, the album is lyrically strong and often deeply resonated with me. Meltdown is one of my favorite releases of the year so far…

…and it has remained so!

3. Bring Me the Horizon-Post Human: NeX GEn

Bring Me the Horizon are The Clash of modern metalcore, insofar as they can be called metalcore. As I said in my Top Five Albums of the 20s (So Far) about this album:

Whereas Survival Horror was more of the global apocalypse/dystopia, NeX GEn is more of the internal one. Granted a song like "YOUtopia" carries in it a more hopeful note, but the album is mostly predominated by struggling with and looking at the dark side of mental health and addiction. That beauty and pain—often inextricably intertwined—is part of what makes NeX GEn such a resonant record, along with the exceptional songwriting that mines some hyperpop and post-hardcore, but especially emo. Indeed, frontman Oli Sykes has talked about songs like "Die4U" as part of his vision for "future emo," and that definitely comes through. A cohesive project packed with standout singles as well, songs like "Die4U" and "R.i.p. (duskCOre Remix)" evidence, to quote Tom Ewing talking about Azealia Banks’s "212," "details and decisions that suggest a scary degree of pop talent." Indeed, this band’s ability to write what are fundamentally Top 40 pop hits (or should be hits) with this degree of consistency and with this strike rate—not just on this album but across multiple records—is rare and impressive enough in its own right, but to have said songs hybridized in the fashion they have with other genres and influences while constantly evolving their sound puts Bring Me the Horizon in a truly elite, all-time tier.

2. Four Year Strong-Analysis Paralysis

For a band that already belongs on the Mount Rushmore of easycore, Four Year Strong could have easily rested on their laurels rather than spending the last decade of their career consistently evolving their sound. Like Bring Me the Horizon, for a band this far into their career to be this innovative and to sound this fresh and vital is remarkable. As I said in my August review of the record (full text here):

analysis paralysis is the logical progression from Brain Pain, building on the band’s full embrace of the decade of pastel colors and Clintonian extramarital affairs with an increased willingness to experiment and combine influences in a way that is both nostalgic and fresh…It’s also their most overtly hardcore/metalcore record so far, yet they’ve lost none of the catchiness of their career to date, nor have they punted on modernizing their foundational influences, instead incorporating yet more of them and in a combination that sounds fresh and vibrant. I’m not sure any other band could’ve pulled off a track like "bad habit": pop punk meets Third Eye Blind with a big breakdown and an anthemic chorus that reminds me strongly of—and I’m sure is intentionally meant to evoke—Steve Miller Band’s "Abracadabra," with a Bilmuri-esque "hoouh!" It’s really quite impressive. Speaking of breakdowns, the band’s decision to drop in the "Rollercoaster of Love" sample before the breakdown in "rollercoaster" is extremely advanced, on the Bilmuri/Kevin James sample tier.

1. Bilmuri-American Motor Sports (420CC Edition)

…And speaking of Bilmuri, here we are at the top spot of 2024’s best albums! Having former Attack Attack! members going 2/2 on albums of the year over the last two years (Beartooth’s The Surface was my top pick last year) was not on my bingo card, but this clearly speaks to the talent of that much-maligned group who, it must be said, literally created their own subgenre of metalcore. Hated at the time, like Limp Bizkit I do believe they’ll eventually become—are already in the process of becoming—beloved. At any rate, American Motor Sports, which was already in my Honorable Mentions for my Top Five Albums of the 20s (So Far) when I published it in July only continued to climb my rankings as the year progressed and I couldn’t stop listening to it; the 420CC Edition put it over the top with four additional tracks rounding out the (as I described it in that article) "hook-laden…bleeding edge of pop- and emo-infused country-core" proceedings, complete with a healthy dose of 80s-style saxophone, humor and self-awareness but also real depth and emotion. It’s a great record that, as previously stated, has already only matured into an even better one with the combination of time and appreciation on my end and the new track additions.