This is an album about death, and what happens next. It purports to be a concept record telling the tale of an immortal being, the dreamer, about to die. Using that jumping-off point it cultivates a rich and diverse set of tracks that explore transcendence and the whole mythology of the afterlife.

It is dark, melancholic and insular. It funnels the listener down an ever-spiralling chamber of taut riffs and contorted claustrophobic music. But it is magnificent in that morose maudlin nature, A deep and affecting album that is beautiful in its haunting facade.

Mr Townsend is no stranger to these lists. I adore his bombastic and often irreverent output. He is a prolific musical creator, churning out albums that exist right across our music’s wide spectrum. This is studio album number twenty-two. It was envisaged as his party metal album, a quickly recorded serenade to loud hedonism. Unfortunately, life, as it does, got in the way.

A quick succession of personal tragedies waylaid the creative gestation of this record and pivoted it towards being about resilience and self-reflection. What we get is a dialled-back version of Devin. Lots of his technical acrobatics of the past are conspicuous by their absence. It is still a rich and intricately layered album, but it has forgone his usual madcap race around a dozen genres.

To say it is straight forward is to do “Powernerd” an injustice, but the time signature swaps and tempo realignments are few and far between. Instead, Devin uses the rich diversity of Prog to paint an evocative and deeply personal account of his state of mind. Devin Townsend doesn’t do simple albums, but this is certainly his most uncomplicated for a long time. Still wonderfully arousing, the eccentricity is kept to the bare minimum allowing vulnerability and self-doubt to take centre stage. “Powernerd” is the sound of a complex soul laid bare and is all the more enjoyable for it.

Talking of eccentric souls, Julie Christmas is a Brooklyn born noise rock auteur.  The former lead vocalist Made Out Of Babies, she has made a name for herself on the New York art scene for being an evocative and challenging performance artist. She crossed over into our world in 2016 when she collaborated with Cult Of Luna on the universally lauded “Mariner”. This is her first solo record in 13 years, and you can tell she has taken plenty of learning from her time with the Swedish post-metal titans (as well as coxing their lead guitarist Johannes Persson into her solo band).

“Ridiculous and Full of Blood” is filled to the brim with rhythmic intensity. While song structures fluctuate all over its 42 minutes, at heart of it a never-changing marriage of bass and drums that spur the whole thing forward. Over that consistent foundation, Julie and her band lay out a sprawling tapestry of wears that continually fluctuates in shape and structure. It is simultaneously fragile and vociferous. There is rage and indignation but then it morphs into tenderness and resignation.

It is an emotionally bruising record, literate in his pain and sorrow but also able to hang onto shards of redemption. At the centre is Julie Christmas herself with her distinctive vocal style and fantastically vivid delivery. At times it is more like she’s reciting poetry than singing lyrics and that shifting wordplay makes the album an ever-changing treasure trove of succulent nuggets. Bewildering and equally befuddling this is a unique album that illustrates the power of individuality.

Rotting Christ have become an incredibly reliable commodity. They have been producing a distinctly rhythmic form of black metal for over 30 years. However, it has only been in the last decade where they have truly surpassed themselves creatively. Starting with 2016 “Rituals” they have singularly cultivated a version of black metal that is highly unique and atmospheric. It leans in on the use of chants and looped refrains to create a version of the genre that is heavy in symbolism and dense in sound.

“Pro Xristou” continues that mystic exploration. It is a vast, majestic piece of work that shimmers with grandeur and opulence. Rather than gnarled nastiness, the strident dominating force of black metal is used to create a widescreen cinematic endeavour. It all feels euphoric and uplifting. A stunning record that brims with potent power.

We have very much over quota this year with our oddities. This is yet another distinctly strange album that plays with musical structure and defined concepts. It is utterly enthralling and hypnotically seductive. It is quite hard to discern what it is doing because it tries to do everything. It is a melting pot of competing sounds and rhythmic endeavours that interlace together to become a simultaneously nightmarish but also adulatory whole.

This is the non-linear soundtrack to a discombobulated bad dream. It operates in an off kilter universe where nothing exists in an orderly fashion. There is no such thing as sequence or structure. Instead notes and melodic implants float by and then disappear into the ether. To call what we have here a collection of songs is to playing fast and loose with the whole definition of a song. They are loose collections of sonic reverberations which sometimes align, and other times operate fiercely independent. But whatever it is, is absorbing and fascinating. A wild ride into the unknown that reveals more and more on each listen.

I have a very clear doctrine, Millionaire rockstars over a certain age and a certain level of bank balance should not be allowed to make any more records. The main reason being that they have very little left to say. There are of course some exceptions, (Bruce Springsteen and Nick Cave) but they are becoming few and far between.

Everything The Cure has produced in the last thirty years team has indicated that Robert Smith and his compatriots were going down that self-indulgent rabbit hole. There have been some snatches of brilliance (2004 self-titled dirge fest has some nuggets of delectable darkness) but the rest of their endeavours smack greatly of diminishing returns and creative plateau.

“Songs of a Lost World” is a perfect late career resurgence. It shares a considerable amount of DNA with their masterpiece “disintegration”, in that it perfectly balances the darkness with the light. The Cure are always at their best when there is streaks of positivity to offset the opulent negativity. They create fields of despair and delusion but interspersed with shots of redemption.

“Songs Of A Lost World” immaculately walks that fine line between sadness and joy. It is overflowing with personal emotion, but it isn’t all channelled down a depressive angst-ridden route (though there is quite a lot of soul searching darkness). This is The Cure once again doing their perfect balancing act of pleasure and pain, despair and hope and most importantly of pop and goth. He may well now be of pensionable age, but Robert Smith has suddenly got new things to say.

This is a beautifully brooding album that magnificently illustrates the wonderful fragility and emotional breadth of modern metal. Sólstafir hail from Iceland and combine panoramic Americana with a delicate and distinctly insular version of metal.

After having dabbled with the English language in previous releases, they are back singing in Icelandic. Their use of their mother tongue gives the songs an ethereal and otherworldly quality. It is like you are hearing these songs being transmitted from another dimension.

The songs are quaint and unsettling but also minimal and majestic. They float out of the speakers full of charged emotion and penetrating pathos. They are like metallic torch songs, drenched in despair and longing but also poignant and evocative. Stunningly sparse and wistfully wonderful.

We are now in a rather splendid little run of bands that specialise in atmospheric and emotive metal. Our last entry, Solstafir, hail from the icy North but pepper their sound with arid Americana. Pallbearer in juxtaposition come from the desert climbs of Little Rock, Arkansas but have a remarkably European sensibility to their music. This is delicate and tender doom. All the malevolence and malice have been stripped away, leaving a fragile and vulnerable sound is full of pathos and regret.

This is yet another astonishing album in a long run of astonishing albums. It’s slow, glacially slow but that is indeed its beauty. Songs gestate and develop before your very ears. It is a sparse and brooding album that uses silent as a fifth member of the band. The bits that exists between the notes are the most important bits in this album. It uses that absence of noise to exonerate and escalate the note that do exist.

Its heaviness exists in its emotional weight. It is an album that stays with you long after you have listened to it, continually triggering thoughts, regrets and comprehension. An outstanding piece of work that shows once again that less is very much more and it’s what you don’t say and don’t do and don’t play that has the biggest impact.

Here we have yet more emotionally literate metal. Those of you who still think that heavy metal is a Neanderthal, knuckle-dragging male toxicity drenched preserve then I’m hoping that the three albums we have just had will make you think again. With Swallow The Sun we head back to those desolate icy plains of the North. They hail from Finland and over the last few years have produced some of the best and most intelligent doom metal. 2019’s “When A Shadow Is Forced Into The Light” was my album of the year and 2021’s “Moonflowers” came incredibly close to being the first band to claim my album of the year accolade twice.

“Shining” continues their utterly incredible run of form. As with the previous two albums it is a deeply personal piece of work that retains its focus on band leader Juha Raivio state of mind since the loss of his life partner Aleah Stanbridge in 2016. It is the third part of this makeshift trilogy and fittingly brings it to an end by being very much the light at the end of the tunnel. It is much more positive and life affirming album than its two predecessors. It finds Juha starting to find joy in life again.

Now this is a Finnish doom metal band so don't expect high-energy euphoric dance. The tracks are shorter, slicker and far more polished than usual and I would go so far as to say it is the most radio-friendly of all the albums they have produced. It retains its mellow melancholic charm but does so in Technicolor rather than monochrome. Another stunning release from the band that in my eyes can do no wrong.

With all the melancholy and moroseness of the music I listen to, it is very easy to forget that rock music is potentially at its heart about fun. You get caught up in all the soul-searching, navel-gazing and emotional wroughtness that you lose your perspective that this is about jumping around and just wallowing in the sheer enjoyment of music. Thankfully the American goth n’ roll pioneers Unto Others are at hand to rekindle our love of joyful music.

They have been promising to make a masterpiece since they emerged in 2017 as Idle Hands. This is it, this is their magnum opus. It is a brilliant treaty on the blissful brilliance of Goth rock. It is a jubilant ecstatic album that essentially answers what if Iron Maiden made a goth record or conversely what would a proper The Cure metal album would  sound like. Everything is big and anthemic, larger-than-life. So, for those just wanting to forget about everything and let brilliantly made songs foster a skip into their step, this is the album for you.

OK! After a shot of wondrous dumb arse rock n’ roll, we are back to our much vaunted and rather oversubscribed subcategory of Scandinavians doing really interesting things with metal. Leprous hail from Notodden in South Central Norway, they have been doing this for over 20 years and have gained a real reputation as being pioneers of a poppier and more accessible form of progressive metal. In fact it can be argued that their last two records “Aphelion” and “Pitfalls” contained very little metal at all and saw them move into a very interesting plane of existence combining A-ha with Radiohead.

“Melodies of Atonement” sees the return of the riff to their musical palette. Whilst I wouldn’t necessarily say it’s a much heavier album than they’ve made for a while, is certainly gruffer and more granular than their previous releases. The last two albums felt like blissfully produced immaculate studio compositions, this is a much more alive album, that feels like it has been organically induced rather than synthetically replicated. It still contains Leprous’ immaculate musicality, but everything feels a little rougher around the edges. It is like they have stopped worrying about perfection and instead follow their hearts rather than their heads. A brilliant testimony to the utter brilliance of this band.

For the second time on this run through, I am breaking a cardinal sin of this list. Rules are important because without rules there is no meaning. There is no structure, just an infinite void in which everything falls in with everything else.

In the almost 20 years of me doing this list, I have stuck rigidly to the rules: no E.P’s, no live albums and no compilations of any kind. The latter includes the most heinous of commercial get-outs, the re-record of past material. I usually view it as a creatively bankrupt and backwards-looking move, deserving of nothing but contempt and cantankerous statements.

Then this turns up. Crippled Black Phoenix have changed beyond recognition from when they first emerged twenty years ago. This is therefore (and I’m trying to justify myself here) not a re-record but a complete reimagining of their very early material. They take the bones of the songs as they were in the noughties and then mould them into completely different beasts. It is a wondrous album. Full of haunting ethereal beauty and liberally doused in the anthemic but also simultaneously restrained school of songwriting that Crippled Black Phoenix absolutely excel in. For once I can look beyond the rules because this album is just so so good.

More innovative Norwegians. In fact, more innovative Norwegians from Notodden, not quite sure what they are putting in the water there, but any ways. Ihsahn is a visionary, innovator and all-round renaissance man. In his teens, he formed Emperor, perhaps the most important and certainly the most influential of the second-wave of Nordic black metal acts. They refined the initially raw and under-produced sound and developed it into something much more orchestral and widescreen.

When Emperor dissolved at the turn of the century he put his considerable creative energy into a solo career that has produced some really rather special records indeed. For the eighth entry into his lexicon, he has gone down the self-titled route. In many ways, it is really fitting to simply call it Ihsahn as it is a fantastic amalgamation of all he has achieved over his immense 35-year career.

This is a luxuriously prerogative album that is heavily symphonically orchestrated. It is a lush musical forest of sumptuous sound and multiple layered aural appreciations. Its utter magic is in its density, there is just so much going on here and in many ways you are spoilt for choice of where to put your attention.

It fluctuates in visceral waves, continually shifting tempo and  composure. It feels like he’s taken every inventive idea that it ever had and amalgamated that into one single collection of songs. An absolute masterpiece of innovative songwriting that transgresses any particular genre or style.

I’m sure you’re beginning to think by now that the more twisted and evocative music is, the more I am going to superlatively splurge about it. This is a genius of a record. It is off-kilter, it is challenging and it deftly defies any known formats or templates. It exists within a netherworld that I can only describe as avant-garde indie. It grabs inspiration from all over the shop (blues, grunge, alt-pop) but it definitely doesn’t exist in any of those worlds.

What you have then is a sprawling stream of consciousness that remorselessly explores the dark underbelly of life. It is a bleak, non-linear record that mischievously plays with form and function. It is inconsistent in style but that is very much both its calling card and its chief virtue. Over a kaleidoscope of often disturbing and regularly inconsequential noise, we have Tony Castrato's spoken word delivery.

He is reminiscent of the late great and very much lamented Mark Lanigan in his lethargic drawl. His delivery is slow and acidic and it just adds to the aura of decay and faded grandeur. An absolutely astonishing record that challenges every preconception about what music should or could be.

The concept of Gaerea has always outweighed the execution. They have a singular look that is stark and highly unique. Live, they are sensory overload encapsulated. A brain-befuddling cacophony of white noise and kinetic energy. On record, they have never really managed to bottle that lightning and capture their true unrepentant selves. Until Now. “Coma” is astonishing. It’s not as much astonishing as nearly downright perfect. It is one of the greatest examples of emotive euphoric black metal that I have ever been lucky enough to encounter.

It is a stridently upbeat and uplifting album. Everything reaches for the sky in a catapulting terminal velocity that just batters the senses. It is certainly the most cinematic and accessible that I think I have ever seen black metal be. It just sounds glorious. The component instruments combine together to create this beautiful cacophony of heavenly noise. It is exhilarating, it is exulting, and it feels transcendental in the way that it assaults the senses. A passionate, pulsating suite of songs that enraptures the listener. Pure pure joy.

It was way way back on January 5th when this album first appeared. It is usually a hindrance in the compiling of my lists for an album to be released that early on in the year but for Sprints it has actually worked to their advantage. My compulsive listening when I’m out and about, is completely restricted to new releases and for a good three weeks in early January 2024  I had very little to work with so this got played again and again and again.

It is brilliant, absolutely brilliant. It is the sound of a bunch of youngsters taking numerous diverse genres and completely disregarding any of the walls that may exist between them. It is a frantic mismatch of alt-rock, grunge and the more metallic outposts of indie. It is stripped back, using it superlative riffs sparingly. It is full of emotional bile and feels raw and unfiltered. It is not a polished or overly produced album, instead, it gives the impression that they set up their instruments, started playing and just pressed record.

It just recaptures the excitement of young people playing rock music. They are steadfastly refusing to play by anybody’s rules and instead are just enjoying what they do. It is an angry and at times political album, but it doesn’t come across as self-righteous or preachy. Instead, the indignity and rage that they feel is channelled into the energetic portent of the music as opposed to chanting cut-and-paste slogans.

Karla Chubb’s vocal delivery is astonishing. It is sardonic, slurred and massively irreverent. The words nonchalantly slide out rather than being bellowed and she comes across as equally self-assured and unassuming. An absolutely magnificent album that, together with the aforementioned Last Dinner party and one more to come, has absolutely reaffirmed my love of indie this year.

It has been decades since my distinct musical tastes in any way aligned with those occurring at the much-maligned Mercury Prize. However, in September, I found myself in a very bizarre situation where an album that I adored was picked to hold aloof this year's Mercury. “This could be Texas” is a absolutely brilliant, faultless and peerless album. For the sake of this write up, I will describe it as indie, but it sounds like no other indie album that I’ve ever heard before.

This is an unconditionally quirky album counterbalanced with some of the most assured songwriting I have come across. It wears its social ineptness on its sleeve and the last time I heard the pains of not fitting in described so well was back with prime-time Pulp. This is an album packed full of intelligent off-kilter pop. It blissfully plays with form and tempo and whilst it does bring with it commerciality you have to work to find it accessible. The songs within are not immediate but they are immaculate bundles of nerd angst and misfit chic.

It is one of those albums that reveals another level to you every time you hear it. It is just so you typically rendered, it may feel in places slight and minimal but actually, it has eons of sumptuous hidden depths. A brilliant testimony to the power of the margins and, in my eyes, the best indie album in decades.

In many ways, you don’t need any more records this year than this one. It is a veritable melting pot of contrasting styles and vastly different musical personas. It is extraordinarily well versed in the diverse nature of our world but it is also flagrantly and unapologetically disregarding any of the walls that may exist between them. It is happily trying to be everything, anywhere, all at once and it very much succeeds in doing so.

Slift hail from Toulouse and continue that current French tradition of playing very hard and loose with metal’s traditional boundaries. “Ilion” is a sprawling psychedelic infinite mess of an album. It is an out-of-body experience captured on vinyl. It is exhilarating and expansive and for eighty incredible minutes just wanders off in an infinite loop of flights of fancy.

There’s nothing as mundane as repeated verses or choruses. Instead, over eight tracks it just lounges out in a million different directions happily moving from one off-kilter non-linear expanse to another. It is defiantly unrelenting, and it magnificently offsets the light with the shade.

 The key here is the musical abilities of the three members. In less skilled hand this could have turned into an utter unlistenable muddle. But they frequently pilot the ship to the point that the inconsequential flow together to create this astonishing musical stream of consciousness. An utter and unashamed triumph.

I do a lot of my listening on my bike, albums come and albums go. It takes a very rare find to make me stop, take out my phone and work out what the hell am listening to. At the very first listen, “An Empire” absolutely floored me. Instead of carrying on with my infinite playlist I very carefully found somewhere to pull in and restarted it and then restarted again and then restarted again.

This is a slow, lo-fi album that is magnificent in its minimal beauty. There is so much here but it takes a long time for it to fully reveal its splendour, and that very much is its magic. It builds in momentum over its four distinct movements. Everything is glacially gradual with the pace slowly but steadily increasing. It is a gloriously beautiful album big in scope but still incredibly insular.

It is stunning, no note is wasted, and no refrain or passage is surplus to requirements. What you get is an exquisitely constructed continuous stream of music, expansive in scope but very much slight in touch. An absolute masterpiece.

Here we are, my favourite album of the year. Blood Incantation are no communal garden death metal act. They have always shown promise to create something rather spectacular and finally this year they have fulfilled that. “Absolute Elsewhere” is astonishing. Astonishing in its scope, astonishing in its scale, astonishing in its creativity and astonishing in its virtuosity. It is the sound of rich 70’s prog crashing up against early 90’s technical death metal. The two entwine together create a holy matrimony that is creatively far more than the sum of the two parts.

It consists of two tracks (with a combined run length of 43 minutes), with the tracks divided into three sections entitled “Tablets”. It is a freefall psychedelic journey into the unknown. There are points where it sounds like a million supernovas happening simultaneously, then it instantaneously scales itself back down to a point where it feels like a pin dropping in a silent room

It’s two integral styles are both delivered perfectly. The death metal components are by far some of the finest and most technically proficient death metal I have heard in absolutely years. The prog is warm, enveloping and immersive. Together they blend spectacularly and the switch from one diametrically opposed genre to the other never feels forced or synthetic. Instead, everything exists in a naturally flowing form, continually folding in on itself.

This is a majestic masterpiece of an album that shows the widescreen cosmic possibilities of heavy metal. It is ambitious and fearless. It continually changes direction with every new musical form more audacious and more spatially challenging than the last. It takes extreme metal in a whole different direction pushing boundaries with self-assured ease. It is fantastic and very much my album of the year. Thank you.