In many ways, this was one of the best years of my adult life. I successfully finished teaching and managing an English language program that I created for media professionals in Uzbekistan; I visited Athens, Greece, during my spring break*; and I spent the last three and a half months of the year essentially just hanging out in Thailand. What’s more, I checked off a bucket list item I’ve had since I was 15 years old: I attended a European metal festival. But I didn’t attend just one. I attended three: Obscene Extreme, Beyond the Gates, and Brutal Assault (I wrote about my experiences here, here, and here). Attending the festivals made me feel like I did when I dove headfirst into the genre as a teenager. I often found myself giddy with the same energy I had attending my metal and hardcore shows more than 20 years ago. While Frontierer was positively ripping eardrums apart at Brutal Assault, I was jumping up and down like a pogo stick. A young woman looked over at me with a condescending look. I didn’t care. At other points, I found myself almost overcome with emotion as I was as a teenager while listening to more heart-rending metal songs and albums. While Emperor was performing at Beyond the Gates, I almost started crying toward the end of “The Acclamation of Bonds”. Essentially, attending these festivals allowed me to reconnect with my teenage self, which in turn reinvigorated my love for the genre.
At the same time, attending these festivals also made me feel like an imposter. At each festival, I was surrounded by people who seemed to “live” the metal lifestyle a lot more than I do these days. In other words, the identities of the attendees around me seemed much more wrapped up in the genre than mine does now. Of course, I’m only viewing that through superficial signifiers like attire, tattoos, and hair length. But as someone who looks more like a mustachioed hipster than a typical metalhead, I often had the sense that I didn’t belong.
In the same way that I had imposter syndrome at the metal festivals, I have often had imposter syndrome professionally. With the mounting feeling of being burned out with my profession in general (and not just a particular job), I decided to take a long break from work for the rest of the year and take some time to choose another career. This next year will be a time of great transition as I move back to the States and start a new career, but I’m excited to see what 2023 brings!
Without further ado, here is Judge Dredd’s Dreaded Top 10 of 2022!
Metal
10. Ithaca – They Fear Us
This won’t be the first time I reference my own distaste for most metalcore in this post, but there are always bands that stand out from the pack. While Converge, Coalesce, and The Dillinger Escape Plan are some of my favorite bands of all time, I have never veered very far into listening to metalcore bands who play more melodic or straightforward iterations of the style. However, hearing They Fear Us for the first time made Ithaca one of those bands for me.
They Fear Us displays a balance between the pummeling bravado of most metalcore and the accessibility that garners crossover appeal. Look no further than the opening track “In the Way” to observe how the band strikes this balance between the crushing verses and the soaring choruses. Tracks like the wistful “Fluorescent” lean even further into an unabashedly heart-on-your-sleeve approach that could be a harbinger of things to come for this relatively new band.
9. Conjurer – Páthos
More than any other album in my top 10, I’ve been most surprised by the relative absence of Conjurer‘s Páthos on other AOTY 2022 lists. While Conjurer‘s unique mix of sludge, doom, and post-metal clearly draws upon identifiable influences, it has been a sound that has been wholly their own ever since at least their first full-length, 2018’s Mire, Páthos is a big level-up for the British band.
On Páthos, Conjurer displays a rich musical palette whose colors are used in effortless brushstrokes to create winding musical journeys that take the listener through peaks and valleys of light and darkness. But, far from being effortless songwriting, this collection sounds carefully and meticulously crafted as the band weaves soft and loud dynamics through sparse clean passages and thundering riffs without ever losing the drive or flow of the songs.
Whether it’s my short attention span or my incessant need for speed, sludge, doom, and post-metal are certainly not my favorite metal subgenres. But, just like Inter Arma seamlessly combines the three aforementioned (and more) subgenres to produce a spellbinding sound that is wholly their own, so does Conjurer. And there is no better realization of Conjurer’s own sound than on Páthos.
8. Voivod – Synchro Anarchy
It’s incredible to me that a band that has been together for forty years can still make quality albums (take note Metallica, Megadeth, and nearly every other band still together from the same era). Admittedly, I haven’t listened to Voivod much outside of their classic and highly influential run of Killing Technology (1987), Dimension Hatröss (1988), and Nothingface (1989), but Synchro Anarchy is certainly tempting me to check out their other post-Piggy material.
Vocalist Snake’s paranoid Philip K. Dick-inspired sci-fi lyrics are as palpable as ever as they are often uncomfortably relevant in our era dealing with the inevitable consequences of internet-influenced post-truth (“Paranormalium”) and contributing to the acceleration of the planet’s destruction (“Planet Eaters”).
While Chewy’s skronky guitar work recalls Piggy’s best performances, it’s the interplay between the rhythm section of bassist Rocky and drummer Away that really establishes the foundation of the music. One needs to look no further than the title track to hear how Rocky and Away establish the center of gravity of the song during the verses. But then, they allow that grasp to nearly spiral out of control during the rhythmically complex back-and-forth break before opening it up to a slow-burning ascent to space aided by Chewy’s nearly-ethereal staccato note patterns.
While many bands can lay claim to Voivod’s cult influence on the world of avant-garde and sci-fi-themed metal, there is still only one Voivod.
7. Defleshed – Grind over Matter
When people ask about underrated albums, 1997’s Under the Blade by Defleshed is usually the first one that comes to my mind. Coming a full year prior to The Haunted‘s influential self-titled debut, Under the Blade is the album that could have just as easily replaced The Haunted as the primary touchpoint for the late 90s and early 00s death thrash boom. Within the limitations of the subgenre, Under the Blade displayed everything that you would expect from death thrash perfection. To be perfectly honest, I never really listened to much Defleshed beyond Under the Blade, but Grind over Matter really comes close to capturing the magic of that album.
Arguably, the most important element that makes Grind over Matter (as well as the aforementioned Under the Blade) so successful as an otherwise straightforward death thrash album is the talent of drummer Matte Modin. It could very well be the magic of modern production, but Modin’s ability to selectively employ relentlessly precise blast beats is like a Gatling gun manned by a battle-hardened soldier: he has a keen intuition as to when and where to apply the deluge of bullets.
Far from being a “drummer’s album”, Lars Löfven really brings the riffs on songs like “Bent out of Shape”, “Dear Devil”, and “One Grave Fits Them All” and the succinct verse-chorus-verse structures, with relatively catchy choruses in songs like “Bent out of Shape”, make for a perfect death thrash album length of just under 35 minutes.
While Defleshed is not doing anything innovative with their tried and true sound, their reformation means that they have reclaimed the death thrash crown. Welcome back!
6. Sunrise Patriot Motion – Black Fellflower Stream
Certainly one of the most eccentric metal releases of 2022, Black Fellflower Stream represents an expertly integrated amalgam of influences including the post-punk of Killing Joke, the goth of Sisters of Mercy, and the black metal of, well…Yellow Eyes, the band whose two founding members, Will and Sam Skarstad, form the foundation of Sunrise Patriot Motion (along with vocalist Andy Chugg and drummer Blaze Betah of Nick Cave-inspired post-punk band Bambara).
Very few metal or metal-adjacent albums released in 2022 can compete with the idiosyncrasy and unpredictability of Black Fellflower Stream. Just as the listener gets a sense of the melodic direction of a particular song, the musical key is thrown down the garbage disposal to be gnarled and rendered useless as the guitarists Skarstad employ dissonant arpeggiations that wildly digress from the melodic center of the song’s previous measures.
If there is anything I need more of out of metal these days, it’s bands like Sunrise Patriot Motion pushing and blurring genre boundaries with some truly cracked music, but creating high-quality albums all the same.
5. Artificial Brain – Artificial Brain
In the years’ absence of the mighty Gorguts (slated to make their return to the stage in 2023), there is only one avant-garde death metal that I think lives up to the aforementioned band’s genius, and that band is Artificial Brain. And, no surprises there — Luc Lemay lent his vokills to “Insects and Android Eyes” on Artificial Brain’s self-titled 2022 release. That might as well be a stamp of approval from the man himself.
What makes Artificial Brain different from the swath of Gorguts-inspired dissonant death metal is their use of angular melodies (inspired by the likes of Voivod and Dysrhythmia), otherworldly atmosphere, and a strong sense of fluid songwriting that strikes a perfect balance between complexity and cohesion. Album highlight “Celestial Cyst” is a quintessential example of these elements. The repeated melodic 7/8 motif ties the song together while emanating a strong sense of “embracing the unknown” while the arpeggiations add a strong sense of ethereality and the muscular chords pummel the listener in between it all like a spaceship pelted by meteorites.
No other death metal band is doing sci-fi quite like Artificial Brain. In fact, no other sci-fi death metal band is even in the same galaxy.
4. Hangman’s Chair – A Loner
I first discovered Hangman’s Chair during the early days of the pandemic. Their 2018 release Banlieue triste was an album that I poured my quarantine depression into after I had been plucked out of my life abroad and suddenly had to return to the United States without having been prepared emotionally or mentally. The album’s dark tales of depression and alienation spoke volumes to me at that time. It wasn’t until this year that the band followed up Banlieue triste with A Loner.
Hangman’s Chair is nominally a gothic/doom metal band, but the band dispenses with the melodrama of the former and the impenetrability of the latter. There are no lush symphonic arrangments, no operatic vocals, and no lyrics about black roses and vampiric love. But the music here is often plodding and muscular, yet not without a prevalent sense of emotional fragility.
The heavily reverbed instrumentation and vocals, equally awash in chorus effects, create a “cold and distant” (to reference a track title) space from which the listener is viewing the dark tales told here from a removed, voyeuristic perspective, much like the camera lens is viewing the distraught man in the photograph that makes up the album cover. And much like most people view and then ignore mendicants, we don’t acknowledge their humanity with empathy because we can’t acknowledge that their reality is just as possible for us.
Much like Hangman Chair’s fellow countryman Victor Hugo explored the lives of society’s most unfortunate members in Les Miserables, Hangman Chair‘s tales of depression and alienation are close-up images of those struggling — seemingly including the band members themselves.
3. Dying Wish – Fragments of a Broken Memory
I am breaking an unspoken policy by including a 2021 album on my 2022 AOTY year list. But I’m making an executive exception because I didn’t hear it until 2022 and it was in my top 10 most-listened-to albums in 2022, including albums that were not released in 2022. As much as I say that I’m not a metalcore fan, this is the second metalcore album in my top 10 this year, and it won’t be the last!
I was never huge on the NWOSDM-inspired melodic metalcore bands of the late 90s and early 00s such as Killswitch Engage, Shadows Fall, and Darkest Hour, but I would be lying if Fragments of a Broken Memory doesn’t arouse some nostalgia for those halcyon days. Far from being solely an exercise in sentimentality for me, Dying Wish’s 2021 effort, though not innovative, is a tour de force within the genre confines of melodic metalcore.
“Cowards Feed, Cowards Bleed” sets the tone with absolute crushing riff after crushing riff with vocalist Emma Boster indicting the second-person subject of the song with her powerful range. But the devastating breakdowns of that song as well as others aren’t the main feature of this album. Just as Ithaca included clean singing and other melodic elements on They Fear Us, so too does Dying Wish on Fragments of a Broken Memory on songs such as “Severing the Senses”, “Until Mourning Comes”, and the title track. And they do this with great success.
Again, there is nothing too innovative on Fragments of a Broken Memory, but this is one of the best-written collections of songs within the confines of this well-established genre in quite some time.
2. Cloud Rat – Threshold
In my opinion, not only is Cloud Rat one of the most consistent grindcore bands out there but they are also one of the best. Cloud Rat deftly displays artistry and emotional depth that is practically unparalleled in the world of grindcore today. Including Threshold, their last three albums have each made my annual top 10. And if I had known about the band in 2013, I’m sure Moksha would have made my top 10 that year.
Integral to the band’s emotional resonance is Madison Marshall’s impressionistic lyrics. Her style is reminiscent of the work of Jon Chang and JR Hayes as collages of disparate images pieced together. The connections are so obtuse that any listener would have different interpretations of the intended meaning, although that’s not to say that the lyrics are so obtuse as to lack any meaning at all. Many pieces of Madison’s lyrical jigsaw puzzles seem like they could fit together to portray various existential struggles, especially found in the mundane. Reading the lyrics to “Porcelain Boat” easily conjures images of the listless and quotidian quarantine life despondently staring off into space while in the bathtub or looking into the mirror wondering when “normal” life will resume.
The album’s songs are punctuated by some of the most memorable riffs in grindcore at the hands of guitarist Rorik Brooks. Rorik and drummer Brandon Hill are as lockstep as ever as these carefully crafted songs feature dramatic dynamic shifts, including stop-on-a-dime pauses leading into rhythm and tempo changes, without ever losing the fluidity or drive of the song – a true accomplishment for any grindcore band. Track “12-22-09” is a perfect example of this as it moves from the doleful to the berzerk in just a couple of minutes, all while dredging up murky emotional depths rarely accessed by most grindcore bands.
Cloud Rat has only gone from strength to strength over the course of their career, and seemingly nothing can stop their ascent to the highest echelons of grindcore aristocracy.
1. Counterparts – A Eulogy for Those Still Here
I first discovered Counterparts through their excellent 2017 release You’re Not You Anymore, which was one of my honorable mentions that year. However, as time went on, it has become the album that I listen to the most from that year. Their follow-up to that album, 2019’s Nothing Left to Love, was my #1 album from that year. And now, their A Eulogy for Those Still Here is my #1 for this year.
What’s funny is that I wouldn’t even call myself a metalcore fan, but this is hilariously the third metalcore album in my top 10 this year (maybe I should just finally admit it?). As illustrated above, there is the odd metalcore band here and there that really speaks to me. Of those few bands, Counterparts is the best in my book. On A Eulogy for Those Still Here, like most of the band’s releases, they take the best aspects of early 2000s melodic metalcore bands like Hopesfall, Taken, 7 Angels 7 Plagues, and Misery Signals (all bands I, uh…like), but makes them their own. Most notably, the distinct guitar stylings of Alex Re and Jesse Doreen add progressive metal flourishes that few modern metalcore bands display while nonetheless keeping the songwriting succinct. While I would say that there are certainly some tracks that seem underdeveloped and essentially function as fillers (namely, “Soil II” and “Skin Beneath a Scar”), the fully-formed songs are some of their best material to date. Most of the songs, when combined with the emotionally captivating vocal performance of Brendan Murphy, demonstrate how the band is truly set apart from the crowd.
On A Eulogy for Those Still Here, Counterparts solidify for me that the others don’t even come close.
Honorable Mentions
Ashenspire – Hostile Architecture
Come to Grief – When the World Dies
Cult of Luna – The Long Road North
Daeva – Through Sheer Will and Black Magic…
Days of Desolation – Circles
Doldrum – The Knocking, Or the Story of the Sound that Preceded their Disappearance
Extinction AD – Culture of Violence
Fugitive – Maniac
Gospel – Loser
Helpless – Caged in Gold
Human Cull – To Weep for Unconquered Worlds
Implore – Burden of Existence
KEN Mode – NULL
Lorelai- Concealed Ovulation
Miscreance – Convergence
Morrow – The Quiet Earth
Perdition Temple – Merciless Upheaval
Meshuggah – Immutable
p.s.you’redead – Sugar Rot
Reverb on Repeat – demos 1-5
Sawtooth Grin – Good.
Slaegt – Goddess
Stangarigel – Na Severe Srdca
Wake – Thought Form Descent
The Wind in the Trees – Architects of Light
Non-Metal
Overall Top 10 Non-Metal (in no order)
40 Watt Sun – Perfect Light
Alvvays – Blue Rev
Bambara – Love on my Mind
California Cousins – Secret Footage
Chat Pile – God’s Country
Deepchord – Functional Design
Pinegrove – 11:11
Real Lies – Lad Ash
Tony Molina – In the Fade
Skullcrusher – Quiet the Room
Indie Rock/Emo/Pop-Punk
Anxious – Little Green Houses
Cliffdiver – Exercise Your Demons
Empath – Visitor
Joyce Manor – 40 oz. to Fresno
Sweet Pill – Where the Heart Is
Their / They’re / There – Their / They’re / Three
Thousandaire – Ideal Conditions
Electronic
Jeigo – Cerulean
Space Ghost – Private Paradise
The Soft Pink Truth – Is It Going to Get Any Deeper Than This?
Smoke Point – Smoke Point
Pontiac Streator – Sone Glo
Paperclip Minimiser – Paperclip Minimiser
Ron Trent – What do the stars say to you
Whatever the Weather – Whatever the Weather
Harvey Sutherland – Boy
Fennec – a couple of good days
Dusky – Pressure
Long Island Sound – Lost Connection
Daphni – Cherry
Purelink – Puredub
Picnic – creaky little branch
Ulla – foam
Bodysync – Radio Active
The Ephemeron Loop – Psychonautic Escapism
Macroblank – 至福を通じた平和
Avant-Garde/Other
Eric Chenaux – Say Laura
Guerilla Toss – Famously Alive
Horse Lords – Comradely Objects
Brothertiger – Brothertiger
Palm – Nicks and Grazes
King Hannah – I’m Not Sorry, I Was Just Being Me
Nu Genea – Bar Mediterraneo
Babeheaven – Sink Into Me
* If you ever visit Athens, I highly suggest you listen to medieval black metal as you walk around the ancient ruins. Véhémence, Grylle, and Obsequiae were great choices. Also, atmospheric and epic black metal like Eldamar, Caladan Brood, and Cân Bardd were also primo choices. And who could forget the Hellenic black metal of Rotting Christ?