Faye had just finished dredging up and emptying the remainder of the crab traps from the ocean floor and was securing them to the deck of the Ginny when she heard the call come over the horn. The rainfall had worsened in the past hour, growing from an occasional tap to the drumming of fingers on the crown of her head. She finished tossing the female crabs overboard, wiped the sea slime onto her bibs, and plodded up the stairs to the wheelhouse. Beneath her the engine of the boat she’d called home for the past six months grumbled to life.
“Yeah, I don’t like it either,” she grunted, patting the side of the boat before hawking a loogie into the frothy waters. From the other side of the fogged window she heard a series of frantic, muffled words, followed by an indiscernible response from the captain. A gust of wind blew spray over the bow of the boat, ripping her hat from her head. It tumbled and spun through the air, carried off into a sea that rose and fell like the coils of a giant serpent. Faye cursed, and then entered the warmth of the main cabin.
“Ten-four. The Ginny’s on her way,” Captain Shepp responded through a mouthful of sunflower seeds. He slammed the microphone of the transceiver onto the dashboard.
“Traps are pulled.” Faye grabbed her long braid and wrung it out onto the floor.
Shepp said nothing. The ship shuttered, and Faye shifted her footing as it propelled them forward.
“It’s not good captain. If you pissed on an old woman’s grave on the way home from the pub, now’s the time to tell me.” Again, silence filled only by the steady chugging of the engine and haunted seagull cry of the gale outside. Faye rolled her eyes and sniffed. “We’re gonna have to sell her Shepp. The gas we got will get us home but… ” Her eyes shifted from the compass to the barometer, to the captain’s unwavering gaze. Something was off. “You listening to me?”
The old captain nodded. He picked up the mouth piece from the dash and put it back on the receiver. He shifted a seed from the clump on the left side of his mouth, cracked it with his teeth, and spat the shell.
“Yeah. I heard ya.”
“Then you’ll forgive me for wondering just where the hell we’re going when it’s blowing harder than a dockhand’s sister out there, because it sure as shit doesn’t sound like we’re making for the harbor.” The captain’s gaze was set ahead of him, where the bow of the ship was baptized by sea spray as it fell.
“The Sea Cow’s in trouble-”
“The Sea Cow’s always in trouble Shepp. It’s a hunk of shit, just like our hunk of shit. And we need to cut our losses while we can to get…” she stared out through the frosted glass, “…home.”
“Those boys said they’re already taking on water. Too much weight in the hull. Engine won’t turn over neither.” His voice, normally coarse as salt was oddly calm. Faye waved a gloved hand and shook her head.
“Because of their own damn pride. Tell them to ditch the cargo and call the Coast Gua-“
“Already did, but we’re closer.”
“And we’ll be closer to the harbor if we ju-”
“They said they’d give us their haul.”
Even the Ginny’s engine took a second to process the news. The boat rose and fell, the beating of the bow against the surf, the steady plodding pulse of a funeral march. Faye’s own heart beat with it. Their live tank was an empty stomach, a constant reminder that every hunch Faye had this season hadn’t paid off. Captain Shepp frequently insisted that luck came with the tide, but Faye knew it was bullshit.
“It ain’t worth it,” Faye tried to reason, absentmindedly rubbing the tattoo on her forearm, through the thick rain slicker. Beneath the rubberized polyester was the image of a poorly drawn dog and two stick figure girls walking it. A tattoo drawn by a little girl who missed her mother. Shepp glanced at this action out of the corner of his eye.
“Your sister’s watchin’ her, right? Might be nice to buy her something other than top ram-“
“Don’t,” Faye growled and the captain dropped it. “Fuck… how much?”
“Enough.”
“How much?”
The old crustacean spit shells to his feet.
“50 grand each.” The boat rocked in the growing torrent. Wind whipped the sock at the bow.
“How far out?” she asked. Her gaze was lost in the glass, where a reoccurring image haunted her.
“Two miles. We’ll be there and back before the storm even hits.”
Thunder rumbled overhead in disagreement.
“We’re not going to get there in time. It’s not possible.”
“Aye… maybe. But if we do…” The radio squealed with feedback and then quieted.
“Dom and his boys are righteous cunts,” she said.
“Yeah…” the captain tossed another fistful of seeds into his mouth, “but so are we.”
***
Outside the tiny main cabin, the wind howled its duet with the soft hum of Faye’s harmonica. Angry with the Ginny’s defiance, the surf grew more violent, drawing the bow of the boat down before walloping it with a rising wave. The captain’s gaze never left the hazy front window, stoically focused on the task at hand. It was a quality that had drawn Faye to be part of his small operation in the first place. She supposed they were both gamblers at heart: him with the sea, she with her money… her marriage… and her happiness. She wondered what he saw when he stared out into the growing darkness beyond the warmth of the cabin. Did it mirror the recurring nightmare that she found herself trapped in when she stared out into the gloom.
The biting cold of a December storm. The whip of her thin plastic coat. The soft glow of her sister’s living room, where through a similarly fogged window she saw Sydney and her aunt playing a board game on the carpet. And the knowledge that once again, as she climbed the shoveled steps, she had nothing to bring, not even a cheap, pathetic gift, for Christmas.
“There she is,” the captain growled and the image in the glass faded in Faye’s eyes. There, floating like a drowned man in the dark-grey surf, was the Sea Cow. A wave rose between them and the red hull disappeared. The motor protested as it fought against the current and Faye watched as the view of the sea through the window became a view of the churning grey-green sky. She removed the harmonica from her lips and stuffed it into the pocket of her bibs. Rain beat against the glass. Silence flooded into the cabin.
The Ginny crested the spine of the wave and Faye’s stomach dropped as they descended. The Sea Cow was still there, and standing on her deck one could make out the forms of three orange crew members, each gripping a part of the railing that wasn’t already submerged. The ship was going down, dragging her loot with her.
Faye cursed. Captain Shepp pushed the throttle onward.
By the time they reached the ship it resembled a beached whale. The stern was beneath the surf, the crew each hanging on as the rain lashed their drooping shoulders. Faye exited the main cabin and, tying one end of rope to the Ginny’s side, tossed the other end to Dom. She hurled a second rope over to one of his two brothers, a patchy bearded greenhorn that was either named Torren or Warren. She couldn’t remember which was which. Once the boats were drawn and lashed together, Dom and his brothers dragged themselves over the rail and onto the deck of the Ginny.
Faye grabbed a five gallon bucket and hopped to the other craft. The live pot was already submerged. Crabs floated in the knee deep surf around it. Faye scooped up a bucket of water and crustaceans, and made her way back to the Ginny.
“The hell are you doing?” Dom shouted over the gale, water spraying from his lips. Faye dumped the water and crabs into the Ginny’s live tank and went back over the rail for another bucket.
“Think we came all this way just to save your skinny dicks?” she shouted over her shoulder, taking in another draw of salt water and crab. “Grab a bucket and help.”
Their hunched forms hadn’t moved as Faye made the return journey to their boat, nor had they moved when she went back a third and a fourth time. The water was getting close to the level of her hips. She had to move quicker.
“It’s fucking impossible,” Dom shouted at her as she prepared to make her sixth trip. “You’re talking about moving thousands of crabs. The Cow doesn’t have that long. We need to cut our losses now!”
She hopped back off the rail and took in a hefty scoop of crab. Each one worth eight dollars. A hundred dollars in her bucket.
“Don’t fuck me on this Dom. Grab a bucket or I-“
“FAYE!” her name sounded over the loud speaker. Turning towards the wheelhouse, Faye struggled to keep her heart out of her throat.
Looming above the vessel, drawing them infinitely upwards, was a massive swell, a wave that rose up into the low hanging clouds. Water tugged at her legs, and her boots slipped against the metal deck. Wrapping her left arm around the railing, she held onto the forty pound bucket with her right. The rain fell in sheets, and Faye felt a chill that permeated her skin, her muscles, her blood. Staring up into the sky was like staring into the maw of some ancient horror, a sea beast rising from the depths to entangle them in its clutches and drag them down. The craft reached the top of the wave. The bow sank and they were careening downward riding the pitch of the wave into the open gullet of the ocean. Faye had time to scream an obscenity before the boats slammed into a wall of water. It came over the bows and swept around the men. Off balance from the weight of the bucket, and unable to keep her grip on the wet metal, Faye was thrown forward and into the cold waters of the Pacific.
Beneath the waves the sea was surprisingly peaceful. Faye drifted suspended in the foaming surf, her body encompassed by an icy chill. Her left hand beat for the surface. Her right still clutched the bucket, an anchor dragging her downward. In the darkness a window bloomed. Its warm yellow light illuminated silhouettes of two figures sitting on a carpet. A familiar scene. Somewhere near and somehow distant, a shape plunged into the water behind her. Arms wrapped around her chest underneath her arm pits. The window remained, and a third figure entered the frame.
Faye opened her right hand and let the bucket go.
With her free hands she undid her coveralls and kicked off her boots. Then, together with her savior, she made her way up to the surface. When she inhaled the air was fire, and it stung her lungs. Rain and sea water ran down her face and she spat out a mouthful of salt. A second pair of hands reached down and grabbed her, and she allowed them to help her up into the rocking fishing vessel. A figure squatted down next to her. “Syd’ll appreciate her mother. Not a new pair of shoes.” Shepp growled into her ear. Faye spat, turning to watch as the brothers hauled Dom into the boat. Beyond them, freed and floundering off into the distance, was the gradually sinking, cash-filled corpse of the Sea Cow.
Genre: Suspense Event: Impossible Character: A Deckhand
So it came to be that, following the refreshments and tour of McKinnon Manor, but before the mingling with the local upper echelon at the annual Lily Society Community Charity Event, the gaggle of elderly ladies and Lewis found themselves standing in front of a fireplace where the portrait and urn of the late Terrance McKinnon rested. If Lewis felt any sort of way about being courted to public events by his Nona, he didn’t express it. He knew better than to speak out of turn.
“I would have liked to acquire some of his charity,” Dorris winked to the circle straggling behind the main group. Two other women giggled and reprimanded their friend. Lewis’ grandmother was silent. She had told him in the car ride over that her fat friend was as loose as her tongue and that’s why she never could hold down a man. “Oh… don’t look at me that way Agnes. He was a handsome man.”
Lewis felt the warmth of a presence crouch behind him.
Wouldn’t have fucked her… the wind carried the dead man’s voice. Too fat.
“If you’d been around fifty years earlier you might have had your chance,” the skinny lady Lewis’ grandmother referred to as “that dying bitch” said. “He never remarried after all the health problems of his wife Elizabeth, poor thing.”
…Drop of arsenic… daily in her tea… A hiss. Nothing more.
“Nona,” Lewis asked, “what’s arsenic?” Her hand clutching the collar of his shirt tightened. The cloth pulled against his neck. The unseen presence remained behind him.
“At least he took care of her sister Bethany after,” Dorris nodded.
…Took care of her most nights…
“-and adopted his nephews when her husband abandoned them…”
…Three blows to the back of the head… Buried him beneath the willow…
“-raised himself up from nothing.”
“Nothing my behind. You know he inherited both sisters’ money after Elizabeth died and Bethany was institutionalized . You don’t suppose he…”
…I did… a brothel of a family…
“Nona, what’s a brothel?” Lewis asked. The cluster of hens around him went silent. The cloth collar choked his neck. Without glancing at him, Nona spoke.
“It’s where your father was seduced by your mother. Lewis, do you need to use the bathroom before we join the rest of the party?”
Head drooping, Lewis nodded. Nona offered a smile to the others who, clucking and shaking their heads, finished their drinks and exited the room. After they disappeared Lewis was rocked forward by a slap to the back of the head. Tottering off balance, a heeled shoe kicked his behind and sent him sprawling. His chin hit the hardwood floor. Crawling away from the woman, he curled up next to an armchair by the empty hearth.
The full warmth of an invisible hand fell upon his shoulder.
The figure of his Nona loomed between him and the door. A chill ran up Lewis’ spine.
“A good little boy is…” she said, clutching her purse in front of her.
“Seen… not h-h-h-eard,” he stammered.
“Good. Now do you need to go to the bathroom again before we leave here?” Lewis shook his head. And although he still didn’t know what the word “arsenic” meant, he wished he had some, just enough to make his grandmother stop.
After she exited the parlor Lewis picked himself up and shuffled after her. The stinging in his knees quickly abated, as did his tears. The weight of the hand on his shoulder, however, did not.
***
The night progressed as the Lily Society had planned. One by one, boys from the McKinnon program took to the outdoor stage and talked about how the funds from the program had swept them off the streets and into the McKinnon Home for Boys.
“It is because of your generosity that young men, like myself, are given a second chance,” said a dark skinned boy with tight dreads, “and your actions serve as a reminder of Mr. McKinnon’s words: ‘I give, for I see in their faces a reflection of my own. Thank you.”
He dismounted the stage to the muffled applause of gloved hands. Lewis clapped. His grandmother did not. Instead, she removed a cloth from her purse and wiped her forehead. The night was cool, but Lewis noted her growing discomfort. She shifted in her seat, as if sitting on something sharp.
“Pour me some water Lewis.”
Eyes downcast he reached over to the glass pitcher at the center of the round table. There was a thump and the empty glass to his right toppled onto its side. Sharp nails pinched his leg under the table. Grimacing, he righted and filled the glass. The bony fingers imparted one last pinch. Nona picked up the chalice and brought it to her red lips. The rim touched them. There was a pop.
Shards of glass tinkled against her china plate. Nona stared dumbfounded at the stem in her hand before drawing in a sucking breath. Her other hand rose and wrapped around her withered and bleeding thumb. The women from the table turned to her and she offered them a polite nod before turning to her grandson.
“Look what YOU did,” she growled, letting go of the hand that still held the stem to point at him. “You-“ she inhaled sharply and clutched her breast. Scrunching her face in pain, she turned from him and exhaled.
“Agnes, are you alright?” one of her friends whispered as the next speaker took the stage.
“Just a spot of indigestion. I think I’ll take a walk.” Nona rose. There was a crack and the back left leg of her chair snapped. Gasps bloomed in the crowd as she sprawled out onto the lawn and the speaker paused to glance in her direction. A young man from the next table rose and came to her aid, placing his hands under her arms to right her. She said nothing, turning instead to the brown-haired boy next to her.
“Lewis, I think you need to use the bathroom.”
There was no use protesting. The boy pushed his chair away from the table and followed the sickly scent of roses wafting from the old woman in front of him until, once again, he found himself in the dimly lit parlor of Terrance McKinnon.
Her fist pummeled his gut. Clutching his stomach, he collapsed.
“You ungrateful shit.” Nona snarled, towering over Lewis. A curtain billowed. The smell of fresh pipe filled the room.
Fat… old… bitch… came the rasping voice of the wind.
“I take you out of that shithole of a shack for a day. I put you in fresh clothes. I comb that nappy hair you get from your mother-”
The toe of her shoes found his bottom.
… get up… lad…
“And all I ask is that you shut your ugly, fat-lipped mouth and stand by my side like the good little boy your good-for-nothing father could’ve been.”
She crouched down.
“But you can’t. even. do. that.” She punctuated each word with a slap and, cocking her fist back, prepared for one final blow.
The door behind her slammed shut. The lights faded from a warm yellow to a burnt orange and wood groaned as if the room was drawing in on itself, on them.
It was then that he heard the tapping of feet, crossing the room to where he lay. A thickness filled the parlor, a warmth like the inside of a car on a hot summer day. It was hard to breathe. Lewis kept his eyes on the woman hunched over him. The footsteps stopped next to the boy. The room inhaled.
With a bang, Lewis’ grandmother was shoved backwards. Her head hit the mantle with a sickening crack. She collapsed forward onto her hands and knees and, through tendrils of sweat-soaked, grey hair, regarded her grandson. Blood flowed from the base of her skull to pool in the collar of her pink dress.
“Lewis, you cowardly shit. Get help you useless…” her eyes widened and her gaze rose to something behind the boy, something that he felt draw the hairs from the backs of his arms. “Useless” was her final word, and then with a shutter the large plaster urn on the mantle rocked back and forth before falling upon her head. The sound of the impact was a squelching thud, accompanied by a plume of ashes that billowed from the shattered urn. Nona’s eyes rolled back into her head and, encapsulated in a cloud of human remains, she collapsed.
The dust filled the room, floating through the air like bits of pyrite in an autumn river. It landed on Nona, whose face swam in a quickly growing pool of blood. It landed on Lewis, who could do nothing but sit and stare.
It did not fall on the man who stood in front of him, who remained watching the scared little boy until the staff of the McKinnon house found him, and ushered him to safety.
Genre: Ghost Story Event: Fundraising Event Character: Chaperone
As anyone who’s grown up in (and subsequently left) the midwest might tell you, memories, even happy ones, are often muddled with a thin layer of gloom, a sort of melancholy that seems to permeate from the nearby lakefront or the damp chill of autumn frost. It’s there in the quiet of the summer nights, as the fireflies rise and fall like embers from the meadow, or lingering in the rumble of thunder as it makes its way over the rolling hills. It’s felt most prevalently not in the city, even the plains, but in the quiet suburban towns, the ones that are big enough not to be considered small, but small enough to warrant everyone knowing your business. To return to these spaces is to almost find yourself suspended in time. Here the storefronts may change slightly, and the townhall may get a facelift every twenty years, but in many ways it’s almost the pause in between breaths. In this space I find myself increasingly nostalgic.
Nostalgia comes in two waves. There’s the first that is a panging sadness when one finds that the place they grew up in is no longer the same. The small restaurants and empty fields have been smudged from the record to make way for fast food chains, office buildings, and supermarkets. The people who made the location feel like a home are gone or dead, or no longer the same as you remember them.
Then there’s the other kind, the sort one experiences with a lilting half-smile, that hits like a southbound train when you realize that nothing has changed, except you. There’s the realization that the people and places are all the same, but you aren’t. Oh, you might be a little older, donning a different haircut, or perhaps a new style, but the person that people see in front of them as they greet you and welcome you back isn’t the same that THEY remember. And how could you be the same, seeing a different world than the small one you once considered so large, especially after acquiring a new sense of self? It’s this lingering space of loss, memory, and broken heartedness that Kevin Atwater explores on Downers Grove, his latest EP.
If 2022’s retriever was a coming out party for Atwater, an EP that introduced the world to Atwater as an artist with a penchant for smart storytelling and a whimsical delivery, then Downers Grove is the aftermath, a comedown that feels part honest reflection, and part artistic expansion. It’s strange to say that Atwater has matured in a year’s time, but it’s an accurate assessment. Downers Grove very much finds him not entirely abandoning the qualities of his songwriting that make him a familiar voice for listeners of indie folk, but rather settling into his own, crafting lush soundscapes that pair well with his gentle voice, falsetto croons, and layered guitar playing. It’s within this richly constructed space that he revisits memories of toxic masculinity (“jacob killed a cat”), loss of innocence (“tattletale”), and unreciprocated love (“christopher street”), recounting the gut wrenching details like a boy sitting in the backseat of a car, watching small town storefronts roll past through the haze of a midwestern afternoon.
Ultimately, Downer’s Grove is a success that experiences few missteps. Even with the occasional tone shifts (the poppy “KEEP IT COOL!” or Taylor Swift inspired “star tripping”) the songwriting and textures remain consistent. This is the EP of someone who, despite this only being their second outing, sounds cozied up among some of their more veteran contemporaries. It’s an EP that explores this forgotten space, this suspension of time and memory. And even though it’s too short and sometimes painful, this is a trip you’re going to want to take with him again and again.
The origin behind the man who would become known as “The Cockroach King”.
Introduction:
Welcome to my interpretation of Haken’s phenomenal double album Vector/Virus. I have used music videos, liner notes, lyrics, and my own imagination to help me piece together what each song means within the context of the story. Note that anything in italics has been provided to me lyrically, while my own interpretations are in bold. Although it’s not necessary, I would highly encourage you to read the lyrics alongside the song as it plays, as the tone and themes that pop up may help you visualize/ understand the story.
The concept for this album stems from a song titled “The Cockroach King” on Haken’s 2013 release titled The Mountain. The song tells the tale of a man who, through populist politics, rises to power and then whose own hubris is his downfall. These two albums are intended to tell the whole story, his creation, rise to power, and eventual demise. Is he an actual cockroach? Is it all just a metaphor? I’ll let you decide.
There are two definitions for the term “vector”. One being that of a bug that transmits a disease, the other being a quantity that has both “magnitude (value of seismic energy) and direction”. The title of the album is a reference to both of these. The main character, Patient #21, is both an insect that transmits a disease, for he believes himself to be a cockroach, as well as a force of weight and purpose. His “bite” sets off a chain of events that changes the world and, thus, he is this quantity of magnitude and direction. Confused? Good. Let’s dig in.
The stage is set. The date is October 26th, 1958. A storm rolls above the roof of a large, ominous building named Mountainview Institution. Thunder shakes the walls as patients wrapped in white straightjackets press against the windows of their cells and beg for release. In the dark of night an alarm sounds, and red light flashes through the hallways. Meanwhile, in the Crystal Wing, nurses walk about a room with a single chair in the middle, ensuring straps are bound tightly to the armrests. Electrodes and other instruments are washed and set aside in preparation for Dr. E.C. Tobius Rex’s treatment plan. The camera moves down a long corridor until coming upon a room where a man sits, blank faced and placid.
The song is titled “Clear” in reference to what a doctor would say before administering a shock. In this case, it is the shock that begins our story. Lightning flashes. A monster is created.
Chapter Two: “The Good Doctor”
Calling Dr. Rex to Cell block 2
The nurses cry
20 inmates scream in their beds, but one
One is silent
An unusual case this one deluded
Psychotic then catatonic
The good doctor looks him up and down and smiles
It’s time for a game
An introduction to our characters. Dr. E.C. Tobius Rex (a reference to a large species of cockroach), is the head of Mountain View Institution, a facility treating (abusing) “mentally ill” patients. All around the facility men and women scream in fear and pain except for one, our main character Patient #21. Noted as “psychotic then catatonic”, Patient #21 has suffered from hallucinations and delusions (possibly of grandeur), before being forced into a catatonic state through medication. Dr. Rex believes that he can destroy this psychotic side of the patient, but does so in a cruel and tortuous way.
Electricity is the prescription he needs
Bring him back to society
Electricity is the cure that he really needs
Bring an empire to its knees
He plans to use electro-shock therapy in an attempt to fix him, and also to destroy this “empire”, this world of delusion that the patient has lived in.
Inside his mind, sparks fly
Vague memories of a caved in broken life
Inside his mind, sparks fly
Vague memories of a caved in broken life
Patient #21 is trapped inside his own mind, perceiving fragments of his life as this electroshock therapy cooks his mind. It’s heavily implied that something has happened in this man’s life before the events of the album that he does not want to remember and he has placed himself in a catatonic state as a result of it. We see in later songs a tendency for violence, and it’s my belief that he may have attempted to rise to power through social or political standings, but did so in a violent way. It’s important to note that, as the patient delves deeper into his subconscious he sees things from the outside world differently. One of those changes being whenever he is electrocuted he sees lightning in the “sky”.
Make sure his arms are bound
And all his pills go down
Make all his secrets drown
Render his mind unsound
Dr. Rex pins him to the table and begins his horrendous “treatment”. Patient #21 is being sedated heavily to keep his violent behavior at bay and to essentially turn his brain off (think of the purpose of lobotomies). The destruction of his past identity is the doctor’s purpose.
Chapter Three: “Puzzle Box”
No escape, I navigate through my cave
(Latent memories forming deep inside of me)
Beneath the skin, they keep us in night and day
(Dormant barren visceral senses now subdued)
The album shifts to the perspective of Patient #21. It is my impression that the reason for his comatose existence is because he is schizophrenic. His mind contains two personalities, Patient #21 and the Beast (later referred to as the Cockroach), the latter being the personality that made him act violently. Here we see the main character, locked inside his own head, imagining his mind as a series of caves and spends his time exploring them and the fragmented memories that lurk within.
Parasite, leech upon the guilt from all my wrongs
Lead me on the pathway to the core
Paralyzed, staring through the shadows on the wall
Unable to solve this puzzle box
As he walks in the caves of his mind he feels a presence with him, whispering in his ear, guiding him further and further. This entity reminds Patient #21 of all the horrible things he did when “he” was in control. He continues deeper and deeper, believing that the center of this maze holds the answers for him. While doing so he sees shadows on the wall, (a reference to Plato’s Allegory of the Cave) and he understands that the life he lived, and is currently “living” inside of his mind is not reality. He is given glimpses of his previous existence, and the things happening around him, before they are ripped away.
The journey’s long, the shadows dance around
The answer lies beyond the fourth wall
My future days are etched into my skull
Hanging ever by a tethered body, mind and soul
Patient #21 knows that to find the truth he must leave this reality, this fourth wall. He must take control of the narrative. He sees drawings on the walls, premonitions he believes he is set upon some predetermined path, that something will lead him out if only he can find the truth buried within the maze. There is some sort of destiny for him, some sort of purpose binding his being to its predetermined path.
Truth or deception?
I lose all perception inside
The Patient continues to lose grip on reality. Everything he thought he knew about himself is shattered as he reflects on more of his past wrong-doings and shortcomings. Inside the caverns of his mind he begins to slip into madness.
A fleeting sense of self-worth (self-worth)
Evaporates into nothingness
A tepid grip on myself (myself)
Melts away to oblivion
The Patient has a brief moment of clarity of who he was and what he has left behind since his mental breakdown. He sees a family, and particularly a daughter. He sees a job, and the power tied to it. He believes he is worth something, that he can still achieve something great. This is then interrupted by a string of thoughts, skittering across his consciousness. It’s important to note that these words are repeated to show their falsehood. His self-worth is non-existent because he has no identity. He has no grip on himself because he is, and maybe has been, controlled by this darker personality the whole time.
A string of revelations come to him (this section is also a fun slew of throwbacks to previous albums).
Shadows on the wall dance around
Reflections in the amber to be found
A reference to Rorschach ink blots, memories he interprets freely despite their intended meaning. He sees himself as encased in amber, as he has been forced to see the world from this static existence.
A puppet on a string soon unwound
The truth inside the cave soon to be unbound
Some part of him knows he is being used by the entity that came before him, but he hopes that by loosening this entity within himself he might also find freedom.
The path beyond the mountain led me here
The answer crystallized in history
“The Mountain” referring to their 2013 album about life. It addresses the truths of our existence, the rise of man and the ego that can cause him to fall. He sees himself as having surpassed “The Mountain” in some ways, growing above and beyond the capacity of what it means to be human. The answer to his escape has been experienced by many in history strong enough to grasp the means to do so. He must learn from his past mistakes in order to grow into who he is destined to be.
But now the cracks of time begin to show
We lift the veil on what the future holds
Premonitions of the future shine through the cracks in his mind. His wants and desires are laid before him.
The torture of entrapment ever grows
And now I’m waiting for the afterglow
He seems to have many regrets in life, and is tortured by feelings of lost time caused by this entrapment. Another string of electroshocks jolt through his system. It gets worse as the doctor increases the amount of voltage and the duration to which he must endure it. It seems that he gains “clarity” from these electroshocks, from this pain. By enduring pain, he sees what he has to do.
A beast inside of me awakening
Alas the consequences of my sins
Something awful is growing inside him. It seems to be his body’s natural reaction to this pain, a defense mechanism to protect him. Again, this other persona seems to have arisen from past events, sins of his. This further suggests that whatever he has done is a darker, more violent, personality of his.
(Parasites as thick as thieves
Paralyzed my golden wings)
The Beast talks to him, referring to everyone in his past life as parasites. Family, friends, business partners, everyone turned against him when he went psychotic/ became corrupt/ hungered for power. This stopped his ascent to greatness, and this is where we begin to see the extent of his madness.
Bouncing off the walls
Latent memories (erupting)
Pulling at the cord
Earth beneath my feet (is trembling)
Lightning cracks the sky
Wakening the beast (inside me)
Rawness in his eyes
Reeking stench of fear (and regret)
Patient #21 takes off running through the caverns within his mind as the kaleidoscope of shadows, voices, pain, and memories grows and grows. Something is awakening inside of him, a power or a consciousness he has not felt in a long time. It is a beast, ravenous and hungry for revenge. The lightning in the sky (electroshock therapy) is what he sees in his mind every time the pain returns (he doesn’t see his actual torture). It is something that triggers his metamorphosis and his need to develop a new, violent personality. Think of it almost as a werewolf’s reaction to the moon.
(Cause and consequence
Show me reverence) -The Beast
(Fate or circumstance?
I feel severance
Lightning cracks the sky
Eyes intensify)-Patient #21
(I will stay trapped inside
Until the cells divide)-The Beast
This is where the song gets bonkers, because these lines are spoken UNDERNEATH the bridge repeated, giving us an idea of the subliminal messaging going on in Patient #21’s mind. This split personality of his grows as he endures more and more pain (think of it as a psychological defense mechanism). It demands his subservience and relinquishment of control and as lightning rolls above and pain jolts through his body Patient #21 understands that he will never be able to escape this maze unless he fully gives control to this being.
How can truth set us free when lies are all we have?
How can time heal us when our days are running out?
How can truth set us free when lies are all we have?
How can time heal us when our days are running out?
His final questions rise to the Beast stalking him from the shadows. In a world of lies, after a life left unfulfilled, how can he escape this maze to come back to reality before it’s too late?
Chapter Four: “Veil”
Save me
Lift the veil that shades this somber sleep
Patient #21 submits himself to whatever this being is. He begs it to help him escape from this comatose state he has been placed in, and the medication used to suppress his psychosis.
I disintegrate with all the things you say
A blame I can not take
Neither can you
This second personality tells Patient #21 that its power comes from strength and confidence. If Patient #21 tries to blame himself or this entity for his past problems (lacking compassion and general human traits) it will cease to be as powerful as it is. It feeds on his narcissism.
Digging through the dirt
Crawling on my knees
Lying by my grave of self-esteem
Our hero reaches the center of the maze where the core of his psyche can be found. It is truly a grave, as the man does not believe in himself or who he is anymore. He searches for what remains of his past self, but it isn’t there.
From your beams of light
There’s no place to hide
In the witching hour I’ll stay
Patient #21 feels vulnerable and truly exposed, but awaits the commands of this mysterious voice that has guided him to the very center of his being. In the moonlight of his mind, he remains in this grave, understanding that this being sees him for who he truly is.
Now there’s a glint within the darkness
A tainted ancient auras grave
Concealed, the remnants of a carcass
I hear your voice and I lose control again
The moonlight shifts, and he finds himself standing in front of a large tomb. He knows that, within it lies the remains of his second personality, a massive cockroach, and when the entity speaks he feels this dominating personality trying to take the reins after years of sedation.
So many years behind
So many times I lied
There are many things I regret-Patient #21
So many years will pass
So many times you’ll lie
There are many things you’ll regret-The Cockroach
This stanza is repeated twice, the first time from the perspective of Patient #21, reflecting back on the terrible person he was in life. The second is the Cockroach taunting him, telling Patient #21 that he has wasted his life, while also informing him that, if it is going to help him, he will hurt many more people in the future.
Save me
Take away the pain inside and
Teach me
How to keep those stone cold eyes
Hold me
Tell me how the phantoms die
Guide me
Lift the veil that shades this somber sleep
Patient #21 submits himself to this being, this ancient cockroach, begging him to help him take away the pain of his past, to help him learn how to see things cold and calculated, and how to get rid of his past regrets that force him into this catatonic state he had self-imposed.
Keep our tainted kingdom flawless
(Tried to deny what I always confined
I have to be frank
To be looked in the eye
I must try to defy what once made me fright
And I cannot comply
The greed needs supplies
And I tried to rely on who I left behind
The stakes were too high)
There are two voices in this section. The first one is the voice of the Cockroach, informing him that, if he wishes to escape, he must not try to subdue their “tainted kingdom”, their violent and narcissistic personality. Let this horrible thing be horrible. While this mantra is repeated over and over a second voice, Patient #21’s thoughts are heard underneath it. He acknowledges that he had attempted to subdue this part of his personality in the past but that, facing it now in his mind, he is not as frightened by it as he once was. He acknowledges that this personality is hungry for power, and if he is to allow it to take control this time he can’t allow family or friends to hold him back. Nothing must stop him on his ascent to power.
Stay under my cozy wings
There’s no danger sleeping next to me
Foe, or maybe a loyal friend?
Let desire set the course to take
The Cockroach seduces him. He acknowledges that he could be seen as a foe, in a certain light, but if the patient wishes to escape he must trust it completely, and that the man might hate the things he does, but that The Cockroach will ultimately help him achieve his goals. .
Save me
Take away the pain inside
Heal me
Tell me if I’ve gone completely blind
Patient #21 puts his full trust in the voice and begs the Voice, should he ever lose his course in this, that it will set him on the correct path.
Save me
Take away the pain inside and
Teach me
How to use those compound eyes
Compound eyes are referred to often in this concept album. There are many ways to interpret it, but the way I see it is the ability to see all outcomes of an event, and to see the world for what it really is/ to know what must be done to take control.
Hold me
Tell me how the phantoms die and
Guide me
Lift the veil that shades this somber sleep
Patient #21 begs the Voice one last time to show him the way out. And he does.
Note: On this page in the notes in the liner notes it says “Toxicity levels high, trial affinity study”. Affinity is a reference to the strength of the bond between an antigen and an antibody. This could possibly be alluding to the growing relationship between the Cockroach personality (the antigen) and Patient #21’s last defense against it, his human self.
Author’s Note:
Patient #21’s second personality is a cockroach because it is a creature that cannot be killed. Dr. Rex has tried to subdue (kill) this persona, but it persists. We will also see later, once Patient #21 is reincarnated as The Cockroach, how this comes into play with his future actions.
Chapter Five: “Nil by Mouth”
In medical speak this is a reference to not eating or drinking anything before a surgery. Although completely instrumental, the music seems to represent many different sounds: the hum of a machine as it charges for electro-shock therapy, the insectile noises (found on the song “The Cockroach King”), among other things. My thinking is that this song is the beginning of the patient’s transformation into the Cockroach. He secretly stops taking his meds for his psychosis (nil by mouth as per the Cockroach’s instructions) and, as his electro-shock therapy intensifies, his transition into his violent, narcissistic, psychopathic personality grows.
Chapter Six: “Host”
Through the fog
The scent of myrrh prevails
Cleansing all our sins
Still trapped within the confines of his mind, Patient #21 realizes that in order to truly complete this transformation, to give complete control to the Cockroach, he must “die”. He allows himself to be bitten by the Vector. Encompassed by the scent of myrrh, an ointment used to heal bites and to draw on “protective energy” (again, tying into the fact that he sees the Cockroach as a protective entity). It is also an ointment used for the anointing of kings…
Through the clod
The worms caress my head
Take me to the fifth sun
Lying on the ground, he prepares for his death, “Take me to the fifth sun” in reference to ancient Aztec myth. In it, Quetzacoatl went to the underworld to save his people from destruction and, dipping their blood in his own, was able to resurrect them. The Aztecs believed that the 5th sun, our current sun, would disappear if it was not nourished with human sacrifice. He very much believes that his own “life” (existance outside his catatonic state) will end if he does not sacrifice himself to The Cockroach. There are also two ways that this relates to later events in the story, one being that when Patient #21 becomes The Cockroach he believes that the only way to save the human race is to immerse them in immense pain (his blood) to make them stronger (and this ties into his cult beliefs in later songs). The other being that, as he rises to power, thousands of humans must be sacrificed/ die in his war.
Curtain call
My scene is ending
All I hear is silence
Patient#21 understands that he is “dying” (a figurative death as the new persona takes control).
Where I end you’ll begin
When I fall you will stand
But in dying, he will be giving birth to something else. It’s important to note this mantra, as it gives us an idea that he and his dual identity, the Cockroach, are very much linked. Where Patient #21’s human nature (empathy, love, etc.) ends, The Cockroach personality (narcissism, power, sociopathic tendencies) begins. And vice-versa. When he (Patient #21) is gone, the only personality that will remain is that of the Cockroach.
Sail away, goodbye
I’ve been left down here to die
Never mind what’s near
There’s nothing left to fear
I’m fading, I dissolve into the ghost
I’m waiting for the earth to be my host
Save me, teach me
Hold me, guide me
Leave me fading, dying
Pretty self-explanatory. Patient #21 is “dying”, and welcomes it.
Elevate
Transcend
Leave my grasping human bones
Every vein yields rain
Satiates the ground below
Elevate
Transcend
I disperse into the loam
Every vein yields pain
I’ve been left out here to rot
It’s important to note that, when he dies he thinks he will literally be reborn as a cockroach. This transformation tears him apart, and as he “dies” (in his mind) his blood spills from his human form and into the dirt. Whatever remains of Patient #21 will be left laying in the maze, to rot for all eternity.
Curtain call
My scene is ending
All I hear is silence
Where I end you’ll begin
When I fall you will stand
Chapter Seven: “A Cell Divides”
Preserved in time
The insect comes alive
The amber falls away
The vector strikes
How can such a tiny wound
Cause me so much pain?
Patient #21 awakens fully five years later in 1963 (established in the liner notes). The first line “preserved in time” is sung using the same phrasing as the first line of the song “The Cockroach King”. This symbolizes that he has completed his transformation, and has become the Cockroach. This preserving agent, his comatose state (the amber), dissolves and he becomes complete.
It’s the beauty in the flaw
The grace of imperfection
Now I’m twisted out of form
By unnatural selection
A horrifying violation
Of a human form
A cell divides and multiplies
A strange mutation overrides
And carbon-copies into four
When the Cockroach looks in the mirror he sees a man-sized cockroach that walks on two legs. If you want to get more grotesque, imagine a human that has been frankensteined together with the parts of a large cockroach. It’s key to understand that he no longer sees himself as human, although my interpretation of the events that follow is that, despite his delusion, he is still a man.
“Alien impostor
Pretender
I’ll keep you safe now
Close to my heart”- The Cockroach
The Cockroach refers to Patient #21 as the true infestation, a leach of a personality designed to hinder his power and arrogance. He will keep the personality around, but locked insidewithout full control.
Author Note: At this point that I don’t believe that The Cockroach character is actually a giant cockroach walking around among humans. Rather this is how the character SEES himself. I know there are a lot of Haken fans who want to believe that an actual Cockroach started a nuclear war and rose to power that way, but if we see their initial song, “The Cockroach King” as an allegory and a metaphor for populist politicians/cult leaders, than it makes more sense to me that you have an actual human doing monstrous things because he doesn’t see himself as man anymore.
To Be Continued…
What do you think? Am I close? Do you have a different take? Leave your comments below!
On I Let It In and It Took Everything we see an album that’s biggest struggle is its identity crisis, an overall composition torn between the shoegaze inspired riffs of the Deftones and skull-pulverizing metalcore breakdowns of acts like Car Bomb. It’s an interesting concept when put to paper, but too often this album feels like it doesn’t know what it wants to be, which is frustrating because all of it is good. Songs like “Two-Way Mirror” and “Is It Really You?” sound like Saturday Night Wrist b-sides while others like “New Faces in the Dark” are pummeling enough to give you blunt force trauma. And while I’m no stranger to heavy music, often times where I find this album comes up lacking is in its heavier moments. In many ways it feels like the band was trying to finish a puzzle, but when they realized they didn’t have all the pieces rather than leave it incomplete they tried to fill in the gaps with pieces from a different one. Rather than commit to one idea the band seems torn in two directions, unable to commit to being a brutally heavy band with some moments of atmosphere or a Deftones-core band that utilizes metalcore riffs.
This critique isn’t meant to condemn the album completely, because for what it might lack in cohesion and originality it makes up for with energy, but instead it is meant to express my disappointment. Because while I think this album is good, I also think this band has a lot more potential, and the ability to create something in the future that not only sounds more cohesive but sounds more… them. The ideas are there. The songwriting is there (well… except for the fact that they have a song called “theme” and it isn’t utilized, as far as I can tell, anywhere else on the album). All they need to do is have the courage to open up, and let it really take everything.
Welcome back folks! Another year has passed and, subsequently, so has another venture into some of this year’s best albums. Once again, you’ll see there is a little bit of a leaning (according to Spotify, my most listened to genre was hip-hop) but as always there’s a little something on here for everyone.
Except pop… man, I really don’t listen to a lot of pop. Someone make a note to force me to listen to more pop next year.
A strange thing happened to me this year. I’m not sure if it was the stress of starting a new job, or if the past couple years of pandemic blues caught up with me, but upon reflecting on my list I have come to observe that there are a lot of albums that made a lasting impression on me because they were fun. Sure, there are plenty of serious cuts on here, but as you dig into these you’ll find a handful of ones that aren’t necessarily genre defining albums, but rather ones that I just couldn’t stop listening to. So if you’re in the same headspace as I find myself in you might just find a few gems to take away from the year.
Something else we’re going to try this year is breaking the albums up into chunks of ten. These are roughly organized in order of favorability, but that doesn’t mean that I wouldn’t recommend the ones in the bottom third! After listening to over 150 albums this year, if you made it into the top thirty, you’re in pretty good shape. I’ll be adding a write-up each week, so if you are confused as to why you keep seeing the start of the same post it’s because the albums are being added as they go!Without further ado, let’s jump into my favorite albums from 2022!
Honorable Mentions:
Here Comes the Devil Smidley (Indie Rock) – Emo/ indie rock with some sad boy vibes.
Hostile Architecture Ashenspire (Experimental Black Metal) – Black metal with saxophones, vivid spoken word, and epic in form.
King’s Disease III Nas (Hip-hop)- Nas proves why he’s still one of the greatest to do it with a slew of hip-hop bangers.
Pawns and Kings Alter Bridge (Hard Rock) – Alter Bridge’s heaviest and most energetic album in years. The fact that these guys haven’t completely taken metal/ rock radio stations hostage is a mystery.
Metanoia Persephone (Progressive Metal) – Symphonic death metal with quite a few sections that almost sound like they belong in a soundtrack.
30. HIS HAPPINESS SHALL COME FIRST EVEN THOUGH WE ARE SUFFERING Backxwash (Metal/Hip-hop)
If you’ve been following my write-ups for the past couple years, you may remember that one of my favorite releases was Backxwash’s I Lie Here Buried With My Rings and Dresses, a volatile hip-hop record that infused elements of trap and metal to create a piece of art that was disturbing, saddening, and absolutely electrifying. This year Ashanti Mutinta a.k.a. Backxwash is back with another slew of dark tracks, wrapping up her trilogy of albums that explored the painful emotions and memories associated with her childhood, this one in particular about growing up in a religious community that didn’t accept her identity. And while this one is still as heavy as her previous release, there’s a sense of empowerment in her songs this time. Instead of burying herself in drug abuse and self-harm, she seems to be facing her demons head-on, accepting and finding love for herself. The real surprise comes with the last track, where she abandons heavy metal riffs for a soul sample, providing the listener with a feeling of hope that maybe, just maybe, there’s a light at the end of life’s darkest moments.
For fans of… JPEGMAFIA
29. Vaxis II: Window of the Waking Mind Coheed and Cambria (Progressive Rock)
I’ll be honest, I’ve put this album on my list and taken it off at least a half a dozen times over the past couple days. My initial impression of it was that it was one of Coheed’s weaker releases. Coming off the coattails of Vaxis I, an album that very much felt like a return to form after the intimate but ultimately lackluster The Color Before the Sun, I couldn’t help feeling like this album was missing something. It was pop-y. The songs felt more obvious and less… conceptual. It very much sounds like an album that a father wrote for his son and then… shoehorned a concept into. But dammit, you just can’t separate me from this band for too long. And while this is the band’s most accessible release, and I still attest that the concept doesn’t feel like it’s quite there, I can’t help but be drawn to the energy of it. Songs like “Comatose” and “The Liar’s Club” gallop along with a punk rock vibrancy, while opener “Beautiful Losers” and “Shoulders” are massive enough to fill entire stadiums with their grandiose riffs. Maybe I’m becoming sentimental as I approach fatherhood, as the album thematically tackles what it means to be a parent, but there’s no denying that this a fun album from one of progressive rock’s most consistent acts.
For fans of… My Chemical Romance.
28. Pain Remains Lorna Shore (Deathcore)
It’s not often that I find myself delving into deathcore as a genre. Much like its tamer cousin, it’s hard for me to truly become invested in the music because of the sheer bombardment of intensity. But this album is absolutely wild. I can always appreciate the energy a band puts into an album when they’re hungry, and in search of something. This album has this hunger. It’s violent and will tear out your throat if you let it, but holy shit is it a thrilling experience. Mixing symphonic passages that sound like something straight out of a fantasy movie with blistering riffs and pulverizing breakdowns, this is a release that any metal fan is not going to want to miss. The icing on the cake is vocalist Will Ramos, who I’m not convinced is actually human. I wouldn’t recommend this album to the casual listener, but if you’re looking for an album to lift heavy objects to, this is going to get your blood boiling.
For fans of… fighting grizzly bears.
27. You Belong There Daniel Rossen (Folk)
Death is an ending and a time for new beginnings. It’s a time for reflection and grief, for remembrance and pained smiles. On “You Belong There”, Daniel Rossen (previously of Grizzly Bear fame), explores themes of new beginnings and loss over a collection of pleasant folksy riffs and jazzy drumming. It’s an album that feels like wandering through the woods at the end of autumn. The leaves have fallen, the sun is low, the colors are gray and muted, and yet even in the strangeness of this time between seasons there is beauty. There is life. Rossen’s album very much lives in the same space that so many 70’s folk acts like Bread and Simon and Garfunkel lived in. There is a whimsy amid the heaviness, a playfulness to Rossen’s soulful singing. That, combined with the growling of Rossen on the upright and the jazz drumming of Christopher Bear, seems to suggest that even though this is a period of transition, this is also a period of rebirth. After all, it’s only a passage.
For fans of… Jethro Tull.
26. NO THANK YOU Little Simz (Hip-hop)
If last year’s Sometimes I Might Be Introvert was a bombastic, theatrical album, this is it’s more grounded sister. While some might suggest that this album feels like a collection of b-sides, to me this feels more intimate, and in a way a little more personal. Simz still has an absolutely incredible flow and loves to infuse strings and brass into her beats, this album feels like it belongs more in the club than in a stadium. This, nor my comments on her previous album, are meant to suggest one is better than the other, as each album creates its own atmosphere incredibly well. Simz continues to demonstrate why she is one of the most exciting MCs to be listening to with a swagger to her flow that compliments the grandiose nature of her beats, and if you haven’t caught the previous release maybe this is the one for you. And if you enjoyed last year’s album, chances are you are going to enjoy this album just as much.
For fans of… Stormzy.
25. Component Systems with Auto Reverse Open Mike Eagle (Hip-hop)
I think one of the things kids nowadays are missing out on most are mixtapes. Yeah, so many of my students craft hundred song playlists on their preferred streaming services, but there’s something about only having a specific amount of time to force the creator to be intentional about the songs they choose. It’s a lost art form, something that even artists seem to be struggling with as they fight companies in the current streaming war, but for Open Mike Eagle it was a part of his childhood, pulling songs and rants off the radio to create mixtapes that he could listen to as he grew up in Chicago’s South Side.
2020 was a rough time for all of us, but for Open Mike Eagle it was exceptionally brutal, hitting him with a divorce, the loss of a television contract, and many friends. His album addressing this, Anime, Trauma, and Divorce was an absolutely gut-wrenching dig into his psyche, a raw account of the events from his perspective. In many ways it felt like an ending, but with Component Systems… Open Mike steps back into the ring, proving that despite the losses in previous years he still has his razor sharp wit, his unique flow, and an ear for strong beats. When all was lost he returned to the music that shaped his past, crafting songs that are a mix between the boom bap music of the 90’s and some of the more experimental beats he’s toyed with on recent releases. The result is an album that can feel a little disjointed given its “mixtape” concept, but it’s also a portrait of one of underground hip-hop’s greatest MCs.
For fans of… MF Doom.
24. Parrhesia Animals as Leaders (Progressive Metal)
There’s no denying that Tosin Abasi, Javier Reyes, and Matt Gartska are three of the most talented musicians of their respective instruments. Abasi and Reyes’ riffs are mind-bending compositions, so complex and textured that it’s hard to believe that they’re only being played by two musicians, and Gartska’s drumming is so mathematically complex that trying to figure out just what time-signature he’s playing in is likely to make someone want to bash their head against a wall if they think about it too much. This has been a blessing and a curse for the band. At their best (2014’s Joy of Motion) their music is lush soundscapes of heady, groovy metal. At their least appealing (2016’s The Madness of Many) their music comes across as combinations of exercises, lacking any melody or emotion. It’s dazzling to listen to, sure, but afterwards you’re left with no real lasting impressions.
I say this all to illustrate that I completely understand why some are turned off by this band, but also to assure you that this album is very much one of their stronger releases. Yes, there are songs that are completely crushing under the weight of their headiness (“Monomyth”) but even those are exciting listens, building in multi-textured complex rhythms until its frantic, and pummeling ending. Listening to songs like “Micro-Aggressions” and “Gordian Nought” are thrill rides from start to finish, rewarding the listener for their patience with new musical nuggets with each listen. And don’t even get me started on that wonky breakdown at the end of “Red Miso”. If you enjoy an album that makes you feel bad about your ability to play an instrument, you definitely need to give this a spin.
For fans of… Periphery.
23. Epigone Wilderun (Symphonic Metal)
Every year I feel like I go through the same pattern. January rolls around, I do my music write-up, and then I just feel burnt out for a bit. Music doesn’t stick with me and I find myself just sort of drifting from album to album. But every year, without fail, there’s an album that saves me, that captures my attention, excites me, and draws me back into my music listening journey with a renewed sense of passion. This year’s album is Wilderun’s Epigone. The follow up to 2019’s Veil of Imagination, the album’s title suggests something repetitive, a band continuing a sound to give the fans what they want. This also couldn’t be further from the truth. While all the elements of this and its predecessor are the same (the massive choral sections, the orchestra accenting the band’s riffs, the folksy guitars that crescendo to massive metal riffs) one of the things I appreciate that this album does is it bucks expectations (looking at you, “Distraction II”). There were a few moments where I thought I knew where a song was going only to have the rug drawn from under my feet, or the song to simply do what is least expected. With its folk guitar, Evan Berry’s bard-like singing, and the symphonic aspects, it’s hard not to listen to this album as if it’s a fantasy epic. I know I said this about Veil of Imagination, but this album very much feels like some sort of quest. By the end of it you feel like you’ve been on an adventure, slaying orcs, fighting alongside elves, and saving the world from an ancient evil. This is a journey you’re not going to want to miss.
For fans of… Yes.
22. Aethiopes Billy Woods (Spoken Word/ Hip-hop)
I don’t know how he does it, but holy shit Billy Woods is nothing but prolific. His flow is so densely packed with literary and historical references that I don’t feel embarrassed admitting that half the stuff he says goes over my head. I think that’s why 2019’s Hiding Places made such an impact on me. The beats were some of his most straightforward, which allowed me to gradually wade into the music instead of plummeting headfirst into an album with stranger beats and crammed with Wood’s rich flow. Aethiopes is, in many ways, the opposite of this, and yet I find myself drawn into the sinister stories he weaves through each track. The beats are stark and haunted. On songs like “Sauvage” Woods raps through jittering bones and banging piano chords, and the result is an album that very feels like finding Woods in the middle of the forest, sitting stoic in front of a fire, wreathed in smoke and shadows. Aethiopes is not an accessible album by any means, but like all of Woods’ releases it rewards the listener for their attention and dissection.
For fans of… Aesop Rock.
21. Closure / Continuation Porcupine Tree (Progressive Rock)
If you’ve been keeping up with me at all, you know that progressive rock is something near and dear to my heart. Brought to it through my father’s favorites from the 70’s, I continue to find appreciation in it, both the bands that look forward and experiment with what rock truly can be, and those that look backwards, paying homage to the sounds of some of history’s greatest bands like Pink Floyd and Yes. Steven Wilson has always had a love for the genre, first employing the sound in his music, then digging into remastering some of the best progressive albums. On Closure/ Continuation, Wilson reunites with Porcupine Tree drummer Gavin Harrison and keyboardist Richard Barbieri to craft an album that is very much what the title suggests, a moment to reflect on what the legendary band has been, and a window into what it might look like, should it continue.
I’m not going to lie, Wilson had me worried about the future of his musical output with the poorly constructed The Future Bites, but this album proves that he still has it. The songs on Closure/ Continuation are very much Wilson’s brand of progressive rock, but they’re done well and are filled with catchy choruses, groovy riffs, and an energy that we haven’t heard from him since 2017’s To The Bone. “Chimera’s Wreck” is a slow-burn whose riff could have been taken from Coheed and Cambria. “Harridan” is a bass-heavy galloping groove that is very much like something off Yes’ Fragile. This album is a fun listen from start to finish, and hopefully a sign to Wilson and company that there is still an audience for bands who can write smart, infectious songs.
For fans of…The Moody Blues.
20. Cheat Codes Danger Mouse/ Black Thought (Hip-hop)
Man, when you’re good at something you really don’t need to do anything groundbreaking with it, you just need to show up and do what you do best. Cheat Codes is the perfect example of this. Danger Mouse’s soulful beats compliment Black Thought’s poetry tastefully, adding color to the MC’s reflective storytelling. And, as in peak form as these two are, this album is made even more impressive by the list of features on it. “Saltwater” is a creeping head bobber featuring Conway the Machine, one of the sickest artists to blow up over the past couple years while “Belize” features a posthumous performance from the late, great MF Doom. The majority of this album is a collection of laidback hip-hop pieces, sounding like a room full of Hip-hop Heads passing the mic back and forth instead of a club of kids moshing and grinding. It’s a heady release, but one that I would highly recommend for both old and new connoisseurs of the genre.
For fans of… Biggie Smalls.
19. Where Myth Becomes Memory Rolo Tomassi (Hardcore)
Serving as the finale to a trilogy of albums, Where Myth Becomes Memory is a culmination of sounds, a worthy capstone that encompasses the seething hardcore of 2015’s Grievances and 2018’s emotive, post-rock/ black metal-tinged Time Will Die and Love Will Bury it. Rolo Tomassi is a band caught in a balancing act, crafting songs that swing back and forth between crushing hardcore riffs and Eva Korman’s floating vocal performance. Opening tracks “Almost Always” and “Cloaked” are a perfect example of this, lifting the listener up in a golden haze of warm fuzz and delicate piano notes, before sending them smashing down with the pummeling metalcore riffs. “Drip” has by far one of the best opening build-ups this year, getting the blood pumping with waves of guitar distortion over the steady but growing beat of a snare drum. Rolo Tomassi have always been good at taking their listener on a journey, and this album is a continued example of this, building intensity over the second half until releasing it with the meditative closer “The End of Eternity”. If you’re someone who enjoys the intensity of hardcore music, but also appreciates the use of atmosphere to cleanse the palette, this is the album for you.
For fans of… Glassjaw.
18. We Broke the Weather We Broke the Weather (Progressive Rock)
I always like to give bands props for just going for it on their debut album. To me, it means a helluva lot more to see a group take a risk, even if there are some misses (fixing them is what their sophomore album is for, right?). On their self-titled debut, We Broke the Weather do just that, crafting a slew of Coheed, Genesis, and other prog act influenced songs that are infused with a heavy dose of youthful energy. Whether they are channeling musical-esq energy (“Rot King”) or epic King Crimson vibes (“The Fog”) the album rarely loses steam or missteps. This is a band to definitely keep on your radar over the next couple of years.
For fans of… The Dear Hunter.
17. It’s Almost Dry Pusha T (Hip-hop)
There are some albums that are written for deeper reasons, artistic compositions to share social commentary, advance the genre, or serve as a figurative guide into the artist’s psyche. There are some albums about selling cocaine. This is the latter. If you’re looking for music to bump with the windows down on a summer night, It’s Almost Dry is the one for you. Pusha T flexes his way through 35 minutes of memorable beats, rapping about life in the streets, his various monetary successes, and slinging bricks. There’s something effortless about Pusha’s flow, a swagger with which he constructs his rhymes that commands attention from the listener. Songs like “Hear Me Clearly” slink through the shadows like a panther while Kanye produced “Dreamin’ of the Past” rocks back and forth in the sunlight, basking in the nostalgic yellow light of the past. Push is one of the coldest MCs out there, and this album is a hard reminder of that.
For fans of… Jay-Z.
16. The Fundamental Slimes and Humours Nekrogoblikon (Power Metal)
I’d initially started this write-up with a glowing review for this album: “Don’t listen to it.” I was convinced that this album was more for me than a recommendation for the average music listener. But as I sat down with it today and crafted my thoughts on it, I couldn’t help but find myself growing more and more fond of it until… screw it. You should definitely check out this album. It’s probably some of the most fun you’ll have listening to music this year. Moving away from their death metal roots into power metal territory, The Fundamental Slimes and Humours is probably the goofiest album on this list. Combining metalcore riffs, blistering double bass drumbeats, the shrieked vocal performance from Nichloas Calonne…er… a real goblin, tubas, accordions, massive pop choruses, and some incredibly dry tongue and cheek lyrics, this album has continually put a smile on my face as I’ve navigated one of the more difficult years in recent memory. Songs like “Going to Die” prance along with nihilistic glee, narrating the tale of John Goblikon as he dances between trying to live a better life before realizing that he is, one day, in fact going to die, and that no amount of happiness will change that fact. The ending, in particular, is absolutely hilarious as John commits to leading a better life (albeit in a very tongue and cheek way) and decides to lead the crowd in a chant of “hey” until the song deteriorates into the ramblings of a madman. The entire album, much like that particular song, revels in a maniacal insanity, an embodiment of the idea that I’m going to force myself to laugh and smile until it fucking kills me.
Over the course of the year, there have been a handful of songs that have made a lasting impact on me, and even though it’s not the deepest songs with the most poignant lyrics or musically challenging performances, the closer “There is No Such Thing As a Key” is a song that has stuck with me over the past six months. It seems strange to end a review for an album that doesn’t take itself too seriously by being too serious, but this in itself is also a key to understanding this album. On a more personal note, I think I, like many people, have been searching for a key, something to instantly solve our problems or fix things. And while The Fundamental Slimes and Humours has its moments, the final song really sums up the theme of the album. Sometimes we take life too seriously. Sometimes we forget that the answers to our problems are to cut ourselves a damn break. There isn’t such a thing as a key. So, give yourself the grace to have a little fun with the time you have.
For fans of… Andrew W.K.
15. Incident on 3rd The Physics House Band (Math Rock/ Jazz Fusion)
Before anyone says it, yes, I am aware that this album came out in 2021. That being said, it dropped in December of last year, so a) I missed it in my single minded focus to put together last year’s list b) I wouldn’t have had enough time to truly appreciate it and c) if you think for a second I’m going to pass up an opportunity to talk about one of the most exciting rock/ jazz bands of the past decade you’re out of your damn mind. Coming off the heels of their high energy (and IMO one of the best live albums of all time) release of their live album Metropolis and reeling from powerhouse bassist Adam Hutchison leaving the band, The Physics House Band have crafted an album that feels true to their sound, while progressing into a style that leans more heavily on jazz and atmosphere instead of the rock and metal of their past releases. Don’t get me wrong, songs like “Incident on 3rd” still absolutely rock and erupt into an explosive energy only PHB are capable of, but there are also plenty of songs that create space and atmosphere. “Melting Through Midtown” ruminates on melancholy keys while Miles Spilsbury’s saxophone flutters in and out of focus. Once again, these gentlemen have crafted an album full of music that pulsates with energy and excitement. Each song is a multi-layered treat of smart compositions and incredible playing. There’s a great chance you’ll continue to see these guys on my lists, and I’m so excited to hear what they concoct next.
For fans of… Chic Corea.
14. Mr. Morale and the Big Steppers Kendrick Lamar (Hip-hop)
If you were to ask any music connoisseur what their top five anticipated albums of this year were, chances are pretty good Kendrick’s new album would make it on that list. With a stacked discography that explores the psyche of a people, a culture, and a genre it’s understandable. So, when Kendrick announced the release of a double album, hyped by a single that wasn’t on the album, you can imagine the waves that rippled through the hip-hop community and larger music world. The big question was: how would Kendrick address the global pandemic, the current political climate, and the subsequent shift in consciousness affecting the youth of the nation?
The answer: an album about therapy. Mr. Morale and the Big Steppers is Kendrick at his most vulnerable, exploring the pressures of being placed on a pedestal by his fans, the way his own trauma has impacted his life choices and the way that those choices have affect those around him. And much like therapy, this album is sometimes a mess. The narrative is not linear like Good Kid m.a.a.d. City nor does it have a strong underlying theme like To Pimp a Butterfly. Still, there’s something bold about Kendrick airing out his skeletons on wax, something important about an album that is as much a confession and acceptance as it is a means to explore his psyche.
If you’re looking for bangers, I’m not sure you’re going to find them here. With the exception of “N95”, the album is a lot more experimental and laidback, exploring R&B samples and jazz over 808s. And for all its inaccessibility, there are still plenty of standout moments. “We Cry Together” is a production more than a song that, with the incredible acting of Taylour Paige, explores a toxic relationship. “Mother I Sober” is a confessional of Kendrick’s various traumas (the beating of his mother, the treatment of his gay cousin, his own infidelity) and his reflections of those incidents. It’s a powerful album, and one that for certain has staying power in the conversation of hip-hop for years to come.
For fans of… James Baldwin
13. In Stasis Monuments (Metalcore)
Monuments have been on my radar since their absolutely brilliant 2014 release Amanuensis, one of my favorite metal releases of the 2010s (and possibly ever). On the surface there’s a lot they do that mirrors the efforts of other metalcore bands from the djent era: their music is an amalgamation of harsh vocals and rhythmically complex grooves and soaring pop-esq choruses. And while on paper there really isn’t much that sets them apart from their contemporaries, the boys just do it so much better. This was largely, in my opinion, due to the truly gifted ear that (ex)vocalist Chris Baretto had for a catchy hook and a powerful vocal line. So when he and guitarist Olly Steele announced their departure from the band, I’ll admit that I had my doubts that their big shoes could be filled.
But holy hell, a slew of one-off singles, a pandemic, and an absolutely violent first single later and call me a believer. I think there’s something to be said about a band having a fire lit under their asses, a hunger to accompany their love of writing music, that can transform a collection of songs into something crackling with electricity. In Stasis is one of those albums. Accompanying the massive grooves of John Browne and company is young gun Andy Cizek, a vocalist whose rise to fame doing vocal covers on YouTube quickly led to him being scooped up and he does not disappoint. His range is immaculate, coupling soaring highs with guttural screams, and it transforms music that is already devastatingly heavy into a true force of nature. First cover “Lavos” is a perfect example of this (and a song that easily earned its spot on my top ten songs this year). An already brutal metalcore song is made even more epic with the accompanying strings from composer Mick Gordon (of Doom soundtrack fame). Monuments are only going to continue their upward trajectory from here, and I can’t wait to hear what this latest iteration of the band is capable of.
For fans of…All That Remains.
12. Chaos Now Jean Dawson (Pop Punk/Hip-Hop/Alternative)
This is a minor rant, but a lot of the old pop punk bands putting out records now are missing the “punk”. Blink-182’s latest single is such a sugary sweet pop song that I feel like I have to floss after it, and don’t even get me started on Green Day’s most recent output. I suppose there’s always been a bit of a disconnect between the idea of something being “punk” and something being “pop”, but perhaps what I really feel is missing is not necessarily that the catchy aspect of the music, but the attitude of it. It’s hard to be a punk when you’re 50 and selling out stadiums I suppose.
All this is to say that, of all the pop punk artists I’ve heard recently, Jean Dawson is one of the most authentic young bucks to step into the ring, a true embodiment of doing whatever the hell what you want, genre be damned. Through his various music videos and promotional videos this kid has a vision, the result of which has crafted one of the most inspired and engaging young artists rising up this decade.
Of all the albums on this list, this is definitely the youngest. Sure, there’s a lot of young talent on this list, but this is the biggest album on this list that felt like something my students would listen to, and in a very exciting way the future of music. Incorporating a slew of genres, from pop punk to hip-hop and even folk, this album is an exciting glimpse into what music could be if people just got the hell over a label. Opener “THREE HEADS*” is a stomping punk/ hip-hop romp that shifts immediately into the indie rock heavy “GLORY*”. “POSITIVE ONE NEGATIVE ONE*” starts off like a pop punk song you might have heard on channel 93.3 in the late 00s before shifting into a 90’s inspired house beat. If this sounds like a mess, sometimes it can be, but for me that’s part of the excitement. And while not everything that Dawson throws at the wall sticks, the majority of it does and it’s an exciting mess to observe.
For fans of… 90’s alternative.
11. XI: Bleed Here Now And You Will Know Us By the Trail of Dead (Indie Rock)
Long albums are always a mixed bag for me (as I’m sure they are for many people). At their best they can be an actual journey, a musical exploration that by the end of it, leaves the listener feeling exhausted but elated. At their worst they can be a slog, a collection of filler songs that serve as auditory fluff to exaggerate the few moments of strong writing. Coming in at an hour and fourteen minutes, XI: Bleed Here Now is very much the former, an album that weaves motifs and lyrical themes beautifully over its hour and fourteen minute run time. Establishing its “Calm As the Valley” musical motif among others in the first few songs, the album tackles themes of aging and failure in a way that feels intimate and personal but epic. The first half of the album very much feels filled with youthful energy and ideas, painting the world in a light of what it could be, whereas the second half is more of a reflection on what it looks like after the years have whittled away at your will and inspiration. The centerpiece of this album “Contra Mundum” is a perfect example of this, reflecting on who the narrator was before, who they are now, and how this person is one and the same, and yet entirely different.
This is one of those albums where repeat listens are essential to appreciating its subtler nuances. But, is it very possible to appreciate it upon first listen? Absolutely. On a personal note, it’s really hard for me to give an album that second chance if I don’t see some merit in it. In many ways this album, at least philosophically, lives in the same space as many progressive rock albums from the past. It takes you on a journey and then returns you to where you began, changed, renewed, impassioned. Opener “Our Epic Attempts” and closer “Calm as a Valley” are mirrors of each other, the same song seen in a different light, the first more somber the second more epic with strings, a choir, and a brass chorale. This is an album for the album lover, and well worth the time the listener invests in it.
For fans of… Modest Mouse.
10. Phototroph Moon Tooth (Metal)
It was understandable that, especially in 2020 and 2021, we saw many artists releasing some of their angriest, grimmest, and darkest music. Art, as we all know, is a reflection of the world we live in, and that reflection during those tumultuous years looked pretty bleak. And while we still saw a little bit of carryover from those years in the music of 2022, Moon Tooth decided to compose a different album, one reverberating with positivity and hope, choosing to look forward instead of back. One only needs to listen to the lyrics to catch this optimism, as narrated in opener “I Revere” where vocalist John Carbone croons “Tomorrow’s woe is a grave/ But I ain’t in it yet/ So I won’t go, I won’t bend/ I ain’t givin’ in”. The lyrics are definitely a highlight on this one, each song a battle cry for the listener to rise and make the day better than the gloom from the night before. And while the riffs are still groovy and heavy, at times like a more modern Lynyrd Skynyrd, but unlike 2019’s Crux, they often resolve in a major key.
A phototroph is an organism that gains energy from the sun or the light, and the band’s message on this album is not subtle. This is an album for those still feeling the looming shadow of our political and social climate, an album that offers you its hand and guides you towards the light at the end of the tunnel. As Carbone sings on “Phototroph”, one of my favorites songs from the year and a composition that lifted my spirits when I needed it, “Oh, then it came to me/ That the shadows I’d seen/ Only meant to reveal/ That the light was right behind me/ The whole time.” Damn, this album is beautiful.
For fans of… Volbeat.
9. Cult Classic Dog Fashion Disco (Avant Garde Metal)
Ignore the album art for a second. Yeah, I know, it’s my fault for making it the first thing you encounter when working through this list, but try to put it out of your mind for a moment because beyond the heathenish imagery and the cartoon medium, there’s a message. It’s not entirely what you think.
I’ve had my eye on this band for a while, digging the one off single here and there but not really sinking my teeth into a whole album until this year’s release. To an extent I got what I expected: this is an album that lives in a very similar space to Mr. Bungle. It’s goofy one moment and punishingly heavy the next. It skanks about with ghoulish glee, playing out like a demented circus before descending into a metal breakdown. What surprises me (and maybe it shouldn’t) is how much I absolutely love this. Sure, I thought it would serve up a couple laughs every once in a while, but I didn’t anticipate how much I would return to it.
At its core, Cult Classic is a scathing review of our current world, our dependence on vices (“Spider Fang”) and organized religion (“If I Only Had a Brain”). It lambasts our inability to think for ourselves. Over a slew of songs that bounce back and forth between genres, it’s an album that manages to deliver its message without coming across as too serious. It lives in the same space as Nekrogoblikon’s but the tongue isn’t in the cheek. It’s been bitten off and spat out on the floor.
In a world where politicians are worshipped and featured in household effigies, celebrities are followed with fevered obsession, and Instagram influencers shift the tides of consumers with the snap of a picture, it’s not too far off to believe we’re living in a cult of personality. Dog Fashion Disco are just here to remind you of it, and help you dance along in spite of yourself.
For fans of… Mr. Bungle
8. DEATHFAME Quelle Chris (Experimental Hip-hop)
It was around twenty minutes into his set when Quelle Chris stopped the beats and let out a heavy sigh. His concert up until that point had been a mix of comedy and hip-hop, both of which Quelle excelled at. But as he was standing on stage there was something about his demeanor that changed. The self-assured bravado he’d carried himself with all performance deflated a little, and he bore his soul. He talked about how this year had been one of the hardest of his life, how he hadn’t wanted to do this anymore, but it was crowds and moments like this that made the struggles of being an incredible artist that hasn’t gained the recognition of the mainstream worth it. And he asked us to do something. He had us envision our “spirit animal”, and when he said “Go” he wanted us to make the noise of that animal at the top of our lungs.
And everyone did it. The Ogden Theater filled with the sounds of animals crying out and letting go of whatever it was that was weighing down. I think it was what we all needed.
This, in a nutshell, is what DEATHFAME is about, the concept that the recognition artists crave only comes in the months after their deaths, when fans and critics band together to mourn the loss of a great talent instead of praising them and giving them the recognition they deserve when they’re alive. The album is a mix of Quelle’s best songs, a statement to prove how damn good he is (“DEATHFAME”), and a slew of lo-fi, downbeat songs contemplating his place in the hip-hop hall of fame (“The Sky Is Blue Because the Sunset is Red”). There are moments of self-help (“Alive Ain’t Always Living”), moments of creeping dread (“How Could They Love Something Like Me?”), and even moments of levity (“PS1 (Pontiac Sunfire 1)”), but over all this album is a portrait of a struggling artist, a man who knows he’s great but will never gain the accolades he desires until it’s too late.
For fans of… Earl Sweatshirt
7. God’s Country Chat Pile (Sludge/Hardcore)
I feel really bad for this band. On their debut album, Chat Pile have managed to create an unreal amount of hype, producing an album that is terrifying, poignant, slightly funny, slightly teeth gritting. It’s the kind of album that you expect a band to put together once in their career, the kind that they make before disbanding and disappearing altogether. It’s almost legendary in status, and there’s a good reason why. Over a slew of Korn-esq, sludgy riffs, vocalist Raygun Busch drunkenly slurs and shrieks his way through commentary that ranges from critique of religion (“Wicked Puppet Dance”) to the treatment of the homeless population (“Why?”). He’s a one-of-a-kind vocalist, his performance akin to the poetry of a madman pacing around his blackened room. It’s his delivery that transforms songs that should be goofy into truly horrifying experiences. “Grimace_smoking_weed.jpg”, one of the best songs to come out this year, is a fantastic example of this, a presumably autobiographical tale of extensive drug use that leads to him hallucinating about a demented version of the McDonalds mascot Grimace and, subsequently, trying to kill himself. This album is absolutely insane and shocking, but simultaneously memorable. Listening to it, I find myself completely mesmerized by the band’s commitment to the aesthetic. There’s really not much I need to say about this album except if you’re looking for music that will shock, surprise, and even make you uneasy, you need to put this on your short list. It may not be the prettiest album, even the most mature, but man is it something you won’t soon forget.
For fans of…Dillinger Escape Plan.
6. A Light for Attracting Attention The Smile (Alternative Rock)
As many of you have probably noticed, the unintended musical theme of 2022 was “Kevin Listens to Radiohead’s Discography” and while I was subjected to three of their albums through my exploration of RYM’s “Highest Rated Albums of All Time”, it was through The Smile’s debut album that I actually encountered Thom Yorke and Jonny Greenwood’s music for the first time. Sure, I’d heard one off singles here and there, but as I’ve come to learn over the course of the year, the music of Radiohead’s members is anything but something you can pigeonhole.
Joined by Sons of Kemet drummer Tom Skinner, A Light for Attracting Attention is very much a Radiohead album that wasn’t. Combining ambient electronics (“The Same”), groovy afrobeat rhythms (“The Opposite”), and even a touch of post-punk (“You Will Never Work in Television Again”), this album is everything you’d expect from Yorke and company. Songs are consistently composed and produced, allowing for all the subtle textures to blend and swirl, creating an auditory kaleidoscope of sound and color. As to be expected, there are songs that are haunting (shout out to Peaky Blinders for using “Pana-Vision” in the final scene of their show), and songs that will make you want to groove and bob (“A Hairdryer”). In many ways this album incorporates some of the best parts of both Greenwood and Yorke’s band, and Skinner’s. There’s a little something for everyone here, and a solid reason why it’s climbed so high on my end of the year list.
And so we come to the part of this review that I’ve been dreading for all the right reasons. Because it would be impossible for me to talk about 2022 and its music without touching on the song that made the largest impact on me and the song that, if you listen to nothing else, you need to check out. The best song (and music video) of 2022 is The Smile’s “Free in the Knowledge”.
It’s funny how music (much like any artform I suppose) can take on unintended meanings. A song about coming together and unifying as a people against the struggles of the world found me alone one night in April. Standing in my backyard, I stared out into the darkness, lost in memories and tears, seeing the ghost of my family dog as she bounded around my yard. In many ways this song, for me, represents loss and the inevitability of said loss, a call to live and love what you have while you can. It’s a song that breaks your heart only to lift you up, something I’ve found myself needing as I navigate the curveballs the past year has thrown my way. It’s a song that forces you to reflect on yourself and, subsequently, ask better of yourself. And that alone is a reason to give this album a listen.
For fans of…R.E.M.
5. Tiktaalik Charlie Griffiths (Progressive Metal)
I don’t know why I have this prejudice, but I’ve always been reluctant to check out the material of a solo artist when they break away from their band. It’s really stupid, because one would think that if I enjoy the music they make as a part of a collective, then I should enjoy their solo material. Oftentimes, however, I find that the thing that makes a band great is the balances and checks that go into making their songs, their ability to assimilate each other’s strengths into their music while reigning in some of their more self-indulgent tendencies. Even worse, the release might just sounds like a weaker release from the artist. So, when I heard that the guitarist of one of my favorite bands of the past ten years (Haken) was releasing a collection of his own music, I was curious but also hesitant. Would it just be a watered-down Haken release?
The answer is, excitedly, no. Tiktaalik is, to be sure, more straightforward than a Haken album, but what it loses in some of the zany quality that makes the band’s music so memorable, it makes up for by exploring metal as a genre. This is definitely not an album that Griffiths’ band would have wanted to make. “Crawl, Walk, Run” is a thrash/ death metal ripper. “Luminous Beings” is a progressive metal slow burn that builds to a Gentle Giant inspired breakdown (OK, Haken probably would have made a song like that). “In Alluvium” is a power metal inspired piece that sounds like it could easily fit on the next Symphony X album. There’s a little something for every metal fan on this one, and a strong reason why it’s my favorite progressive metal album of the year.
The thing that I appreciate about it most is Griffiths compositional intelligence. Songs transition from one to the next without pause. Motifs and lyrics repeat across songs. All of this creates a sense of cohesiveness. This is something that can be listened to song by song but is truly appreciated when sat down with. Unlike some solo projects, this is not a collection of B-sides that the band rejected. This is one piece that the artists decisively created on their own and man, I really appreciate that he did.
For fans of… Dream Theater.
4. SO. MUCH. too. much. Destrage (Metalcore)
There’s something to be said about the art of crafting an album title. Sure, you could just choose a song from the tracklist and have that stand as the title, but I have a lot of respect for a band that recognizes an overall theme or tone and is able to capture that accurately as a statement to represent the whole album. I’m sure many of you see where I’m going with this, but with Destrage’s latest album you’re getting exactly what the title suggests. This album is so much. It’s too much.
I always find myself frustrated with metalcore as a genre. In many ways it feels stagnant, one of those genres where apologists will tell you a product is strong because it’s just a good example of the genre. Any artist that dares to venture too far away from the breakdown laden formula is labeled as “progressive” and as a result it grows stagnant and bland. But along come Destrage, injecting life and energy into a genre that desperately needs it. And how do they do that you might ask? By clipping cables to its nipples and turning the dial to eleven.
Destrage have never really been a band that’s played by the rules, but I will say that their most recent outputs (2019’s The Chosen One and 2016’s A Means to No End) felt safe, like a band settling. Gone were the EDM dance breaks, the tempo shifts, the goofy subject matter. With a lot of respect to the boys, it felt like they weren’t having fun anymore, and that sucks. But jump forward three years and something’s shifted because holy hell, these guys are back at it to create a ruckus. Openers “A Commercial Break that Lasts Forever” and “Everything Sucks and I Think I’m a Part of It” are rippers that sound like Meshuggah after a snort of cocaine. “Italian Boi” and “Private Party” stumble drunkenly through bouncing, nu-metal/ carnival riffs. There’s even a cover of Stone Temple Pilots’ “Vasoline” that takes the original and lights a bottle rocket under its ass. If this sounds like fun, that’s because it is.
All of this is to say that, yes, this album is a lot, a metal album that has few moments of reprieve but is ultimately unrelenting. To someone not used to the noise, this album will probably be too much. But to someone ready to have a good time, well it might just encourage you to dive into their back catalog. It might not be enough.
WARNING: This music video includes lots of strobing images. Please watch at your own risk.
For fans of… Enter Shikari.
3. Few Good Things Saba (Hip-hop)
I think it says a lot that this is my favorite hip-hop album of the year, given that hip-hop (according to Spotify Wrapped) was the genre I listened to most. There were so many phenomenal albums that didn’t even make my list, and yet this was the album that resonated with me the most. Maybe it’s because I discovered it during the season when it was most accentuated. I often found myself listening to this when I was sitting on my porch, a beer in hand, my dog prancing around the yard, the sun setting over the rooftops. It’s not a collection of bangers (although there are some such as “Survivor’s Guilty”) but rather a collection of reflective bops as Chicago native Saba reflects on where he came from and the memories that have made him.
I think this album caught me by surprise because of how thoughtful it is. A year into my 30s, staring down the barrel of a new career environment, and contemplating fatherhood, this album found me in the quiet moments as I contemplated my role in this world: my role as a son, as a father, as a friend. And this album tackles all those as if Saba is viewing a collection of old family videos in the golden haze of the setting sun. There’s some laughter, there’s a few tears, but ultimately there’s a sense of longing, of nostalgia.
Saba doesn’t rely on trends to sell an album that can be enjoyed by old heads, teens (the first suggestion I’ve ever given a class that my students actually came back to me and told me they enjoyed), and the casual listener. The beats are clean and creative, Saba’s flow is relaxed and conversational, the features are fantastic, and the message in this album is relevant whether you live in your head like I do or not. Whether you’re on the cusp of some new great adventure, or enjoying the comforts of life, this is an album that welcomes meditation on the few good things we have.
For fans of… J. Cole.
2. Fear of the Dawn Jack White (Rock)
This is not an album that says anything deep. It doesn’t do anything you haven’t heard before. It doesn’t dazzle with a stunning vocal performance or with long-winded solos. It just unapologetically, unrepentantly, kicks your ass. It shotguns a beer at your private wedding, flips off the party, revs its snowmobile in the gravel parking lot, and does a backflip through the gazebo. It starts a fight with your great aunt Bertha over what would win in a fight between a gorilla and a grizzly bear. It takes shots of sour apple schnapps with your nephew Derek until he passes out. Then it dances with his limp body ala Weekend at Bernie’s. It’s the guy who wins a dance off against you during your first dance with your wife, and the crowd loves it. It doesn’t give a shit. And neither should you.
In the number two spot of my list is a record I would dub Ski Album of the Year. This is a nitrous-fueled romp from start to finish, an album made by an artist who doesn’t really care to do anything other than make blues rock riffs that get your headbanging and your foot stomping. Jack White has nothing left to prove at this point in his career, having fronted some of the most successful rock groups of our time, and the only thing left is to make the music that he wants to make. Most of the instruments are performed and produced by him, and the album is put out through his record label Third Man Records, so there was nothing to stop him from making the most asinine rock record he could. Sure, there are plenty of straight forward rockers (Opener “Taking Me Back” was my most listened to song this year) but there are plenty of surprises throughout. “Hi-De-Ho” features Q-Tip of A Tribe Called Quest fame as he raps over a swampy rock beat (it also features scatting from White and samples of Cab Calloway). “Eosophobia” features a Santana like riff/solo over a creeping, Latin inspired beat. “That Was Then, This is Now” bounces between rock and funk before blasting off in the second half with a crushing riff that sounds like the grungy cousin of “Seven Nation Army”.
It was clear to me from the first listen that this was an album that was going to stick with me. It kicked the hinges off my eardrums and commanded my attention with its bravado and take-no-prisoners attitude. Sure, there are albums that came out this year that have more to say, but none of them say it with the same swagger than this one has saying nothing. And to me, that’s worth a helluva lot of something.
For fans of… The Black Keys.
Hellfire Black Midi (Progressive Rock)
I knew it. I knew these young men had it in them, it was just a matter of time. 2019’s Schlagenheim was a fun but scattered release, and 2021’s Cavalcade had quite a few great moments of experimentation, but some songwriting that didn’t quite develop songs to their full potential. But here we are in 2022 and, finally, Black Midi have crafted an album that feels chaotic and yet cohesive, on the edge of losing control and yet composed. This is the potential I’ve been waiting for them to reach.
Whether you’ve only listened to this band or you’ve watched their live performances, you know this is a group creating art that emanates a life and energy. They’re an act that thrives when they’re teetering between improvisation and composition, and this album leans into this strength, a collection of songs that is bursting with an energy only a band live tracking can really capture. Accompanying Greep’s Talking Head’s-esq rambling vocals, drummer Morgan Simpson’s fill-heavy drumming, and Cameron Picton’s funkadelic bass are a slew of horns and the addition of keyboardist Seth Evans and saxophonist Kaidi Akinnibi, and the layers are a welcome addition to the madness ensuing across this ten-track album. The result is an album short enough not to out stay its welcome but packed full enough to keep you wanting to return for more.
Hellfire is truly deserving of its number one spot on my list, an album that I would recommend to anyone who enjoys music, an album that revels in its own zany energy but has the compositional maturity to recognize when to pull back, and when to breathe. It’s an album that finally sees a young act not only breaking into the music scene but breaking into a sense of themselves. Whether you’re a fan of post punk, 70’s rock, psychedelic music, jazz, even metal, this album is going to sit well with you. And if you aren’t but you just enjoy listening to music that is hungry, volatile, and chomping at the bit, this album is also for you. Don’t trust me? Look up a live performance of this band. This is the one album you don’t want to miss.
It’s unfortunate that I’m approaching this album in the manner that I am. When something is touted to me as “the Greatest of All Time” it skews my perception. I over analyze things. I dig into the details to try to hear or see what others have seen. I think too much about why it’s considered “great”. This is certainly a flaw of mine when approaching music, because the sad reality is that no album can possibly live up to the expectations of that title. It will inevitably let you down, because what you believe a great album should sound like might not align with the actual music itself. And that’s where I find myself with this album.
It’s a good rock album.
Maybe I had to be there when it dropped in 1997 to appreciate it more. Maybe I should just dig into what it is instead of what I think it should be. Whatever the flaw is with this album I find myself appreciating the well-composed rock songs but feeling no desire to return to it. Sure, songs like “Paranoid Android” and “Karma Police” are great, but especially after hearing its younger sibling “Kid A” first I feel let down. The album is not as conceptual as others have praised it to be, nor genre defining as some of the others on this list. Can I hear how it influenced some artists like Muse and some of the other rock to come out in the early 00’s? Absolutely. Does it feel as inspired or as hungry as some of the other great music on this list? I’m not so convinced.
I suppose all this makes it seem like I dislike the album; that’s not true. But if you’re going to put something on the pedestal of being one of the most praised and critically received albums of all time, I guess I expect something more out of it. Would I recommend this album to someone? Perhaps, but not before stating that I appreciate the atmosphere and songwriting on “Kid A” better.
I’ve already confessed it earlier along this musical adventure, but hip-hop wasn’t a genre I encountered often in my youth. Sure I heard songs at high school dances or college parties, but it wasn’t until after college that I really ventured it into a genre. My education really began when I started frequenting music forums and engaging in the online music community. I saw my interactions with this community as a way to expand my musical palette, and it was in the year 2015 that I listened to my first hip-hop album.
That album was Kendrick Lamar’s “To Pimp a Butterfly”, possibly the worst album to introduce someone to hip-hop with.
I say that with all the compliments in the world. This album is absolutely phenomenal, but I didn’t GET it at the time. I wasn’t ready for the political and social commentary, the self-reflection, the depth of musical knowledge that Kendrick portrayed across this album’s mammoth hour and eighteen minute run time. I distinctly remember turning it on, seeing the George Clinton and Thundercat credit on the first song and thinking “what the hell are these two doing on a hip-hop album?” Subsequently I was even more thrown for a loop when I reached the second track, a skit/poem that relates a couple’s argument about materialism and the complicated role it can play in the relationships of a successful artist’s life. Was this album taking itself seriously? Was I supposed to laugh or was I supposed to THINK when I heard this interlude? But that’s one of the reasons why I WOULD recommend someone who has never listened to hip-hop check this album. In many ways it’s a love letter to the genre and the communities that helped build it, an album that incorporates funk, soul, R&B, jazz, and even elements of Blaxploitation. Much like Kendrick’s other album on this list, “Good Kid, m.a.a.d. City”, this album feels like a score, a composition that tells a complex story of what happens to a young black artist when they’ve made it out.
Between the release of his previous album and the writing of material for this album, Kendrick traveled to South Africa where he witnessed the many horrors of Apartheid, the historical places that played roles in the war to abolish it, and found himself reflecting on how the experience of black people in Africa related to those in the United States. This led him to write an album that truly is about the black experience (one that, yes, I am very aware I am not a part of). This is an honest album about empowerment, self-love (and, tragically, hate), about culture, and about the path forward. If “Good Kid m.a.a.d. City” is a cautionary tale with a happy ending, this album is the sequel of what happens after that. When you have all the money in the world, when you can have any woman you want, when you can drink or smoke or do whatever your appetite desires, when record label executives are telling you what to do or say, what do you decide to do with your life? How can you empower those you left behind? How can you provide hope for those who are hopeless? How can you challenge the powers that have, for so long, kept your community down? That’s what this album is about.
Kendrick is brilliant as always on this, his flow unparalleled by any of the greats in the game, his story-telling even more urgent with his newly acquired worldview. Over a slew of jazz and funk beats he relates what fame has done to him, and the journey he has gone on to retain his sanity in an industry that only gives a shit about the next single, the next dollar. There are times where the album almost veers into the experimental, as Kendrick pulls beats from jazz legends Kamasi Washington and Thundercat. But at its heart this is a hip-hop album that covers all ranges of the spectrum, from the R&B heavy “These Walls”, the gospel infused “Alright”, and the violent, boom bap beat of “The Blacker the Berry”.
It’s fun to return to this album after having spent seven years exploring all sorts of hip-hop and educating myself on the culture that is heavily infused with the genre. There are times when the album loses steam towards the end, and even a song or two trimmed might aid in this. But Kendrick’s third album truly is a testament to his love for music and his community. This album will continue to go down in history as one of the greatest pieces of art and hip-hop of all time. So if you’ve never listened to hip-hop, and you want to understand what the CULTURE of it is about… this just might be the craziest, and realest, place to start.
Loss is a strange shadow. It finds you at the most unexpected time, engulfing you in its shadow and gloom, consuming your thoughts with memories or desires or wonderings of what could have been. Loss lingers with you, contorting into many shapes: loss of faith, loss of a loved one, loss of innocence. It haunts you until you confront it and even then it never truly leaves. A lingering phantom, its quiet hands guide you forward in life, shaping what you are, distorting your perspective of what you could have been.
I start with all of this because, at its core, “Wish You Were Here” is an album saturated with loss. It can be found within the blues riffs woven into each song, and within the soulful singing of both Roger Waters and David Gilmore. It can be found in the lyrics that very much revolve around feelings of isolation, the absence of a friend, and the disillusionment that comes from the vulture-like tendencies of our capitalistic society. To understand this album is to see the world with more jaded eyes, away from the multi-colored spectrum of the rainbow.
I won’t waste too much time waxing poetically about Syd Barrett. If you aren’t deep into the Pink Floyd lore then chances are good you haven’t encountered the name of their previous guitarist, or heard of his eventual mental health decline after (or resulting in) the abuse of LSD. What you do need to know is that after seven years and the release of “Dark Side of the Moon”, he wandered into the studio where Pink Floyd was struggling to begin their next album, and shook the group to the core. To see an old friend so lost, distorted, and vacant crushed the group, and the result of that earth shattering event is the album we have in front of us. It is an album that only a group that is tired and disillusioned could make. If “Dark Side of the Moon” is the album that sent them shooting on a rocket into the cosmos, “Wish You Were Here” is the return to Earth, the realization that everything has changed since you left, and that the world is a little colder in the time you lost out in the stratosphere.
While both it and its predecessor are obviously Floyd albums, there is something that feels stripped back about this album. With the exception of the chorus on “Shine On You Crazy Diamond”, this album almost feels like an acoustic outing. The arrangements feel simpler, sharper, colder. There’s a lot of breathing room on this album, despite the fact that it is only two minutes longer than its warmer, more accessible older sibling. There’s seemingly more improvisation, less clear direction, especially when it comes to the albums bookends, which account for over half the album’s run time (something that would be expanded on even further on their next album “Animals”). And while there were many uplifting moments on “Dark Side…”, almost every song on this album, including the two singles (“Have a Cigar” and “Wish You Were Here”) were still incredibly bitter, cynical songs lacking any of the warmth from their previous effort. This is not the album you smoke a joint to and float off into the stratosphere while listening to. This is the one you listen to alone, on a cold winter’s night, with a scotch and a dark room.
None of these are criticisms mind you, merely observations and comparisons to help one navigate their thoughts on the album, and to bridge my thoughts between the context of the album and how I feel about “Wish You Were Here”. Whenever one of the great bands of our time comes up, the inevitable conversation of “which album is their best?” occurs. Many will point towards “Dark Side…” and with good reason. It’s experimental but still grounded in blues, funk, and rock. Some will push towards “Animals” with its elongated, improvisational passages and its scathing political commentary and concept. Others may look backwards into their more psychedelic, free-spirited Syd Barrett years instead of the indulgent, heady music they would produce after his departure. If you ask me, my vote goes to either this or their last “real” album: “The Wall”. In many ways, this album feels like a prequel to that one. It feels like one of their darker releases, and I enjoy that the album is very much a response to their almost over-night propulsion into rock stardom. I’m drawn to their darker, more melancholy material (I’m sensing a theme here, even as I write this) and tracks like “Welcome to the Machine” and “Wish You Were Here” speak to me now even more than they did as an angsty teenager. So if there was a Floyd album I had to recommend to someone who had never listened to the band I would recommend “Dark Side…”. But if someone came to me feeling lost, or feeling loss, I would point them in this direction. Because maybe they’d see that the thing they were looking for was never really gone, but still here.
There were a handful of records that, approaching this list, I already knew where I stood on them. They were ones that I had already established through my music listening career as ones that I loved, and even found to be perfect albums. Yet, as I listened to two of my favorite albums today (this and the soon to be reviewed “Wish You Were Here”) I challenged myself to ask the big, hard “WHY?” question. Is this really a perfect album, or have you just put it on a pedestal but upon applying critical gaze there are some major flaws with it? And while it’s been fun to apply this sort of lens, the answer for this particular album is a resounding “no, it is indeed perfect.”
“In the Court of the Crimson King” is a masterpiece, one of the first great progressive rock albums that completely pulverized the music world when it was released in 1969. Recorded within the first nine months of their conception as a band, completely self-produced, and catapulted to instant buzz by the glowing praise of Jimi Hendrix and their opening gig for the Rolling Stones (July 5th at Hyde Park), this album is legendary from within its own historical perspective. Add onto that the fact that it literally helped define the genre, and you have an album that is destined to hold a mainstay not only in the hallowed histories of its perspective genre, but in music history itself.
Still, an album shouldn’t be considered perfect just because of its context, as I’ve stated before. Most music on this list is considered as highly regarded as it is because of its experimentation, its willingness to look ahead to the future, and because of this we still see the ripples of it echoing out into the music of our present time. “In the Court…” is no exception. Infusing the improvisation of jazz, the use of recurring motif and multiple movements of classical, instrumentation of folk, and even blistering tempos and aggressive riffs of metal into their songs they created a new sound along with bands like Pink Floyd and Moody Blues that ushered in a new era of music. “21st Century Schizoid Man” is a continually referenced prog staple, a song that alludes to jazz fusion and even punk with its blistering tempo and jittering melodies. “Epitaph” is a haunting composition that feels like it should be performed in a concert hall instead of a rock venue. And even by today’s standards, this album continues to push the envelope (looking at you, the second half of “Moonchild” titled “The Illusion”).
In many ways, this journey is an adventure, an experience that one cannot jump into lightly (yes, I’m alluding to Venture Brothers reference). To step into the Court of the Crimson King is a life changing event, one that broadens your idea of what music can be. It feels in many ways like watching a movie, grandiose at times while subdued and quiet at others, and by the end of it you feel like you’ve gone somewhere and seen something different. This album is one I hold in high regard, not only for its historical context, but its continuing ability to draw me in and captivate my attention. Every song is a master class in experimentation, improvisation, and how taking a risk and having a vision can pay off in creating a timeless piece of art.
The Word and The Song 
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