Astral Noize Albums of the year 2018
I was instrumental in organising, editing and writing this top 100 albums of 2018 for Astral Noize. Find my written contributions inside. Originally published here: https://astralnoizeuk.com/2018/12/20/the-astral-noize-albums-of-the-year-2018-49-26/ https://astralnoizeuk.com/2018/12/21/the-astral-noize-albums-of-the-year-2018-25-1/ https://astralnoizeuk.com/2018/12/19/the-astral-noize-albums-of-the-year-2018-74-50/ https://astralnoizeuk.com/2018/12/18/the-astral-noize-albums-of-the-year-2018-100-75/
82: Thou/Ragana – Let Our Names Be Forgotten
Ranked again lower down on this list – and quite rightly so, given the absolute belter of an album that was Magus – are Thou. But in the wider picture beyond Magus, Thou have this year set a bar unlikely to ever be topped with a string of releases, unparalleled in their consistency by anything in living memory.
Most notable amidst this year’s Summer of Thou is the Baton Rogue band’s September split with anarcho-feminist witch doom duo Ragana. Ragana have been on the scene for a while, making an impact through their distinctively feminist power, and here topped off an already great year for heavy music with a split with an in-form Thou. What Thou and Ragana have created here is exemplary of what makes both artists great – their sounds intersecting amidst a flurry of righteous fury.
Whilst Ragana’s refined songwriting chops are brought into their own through a much sharper production ethos, undoubtedly enabled by collaboration with Thou, Thou’s sound acknowledges Ragana’s, taking a far more trebly, rawer approach. Let Our Names Be Forgotten cements Thou’s place as 2018’s untouched victors, and Ragana as their soon-to-be equals.
60. Divide And Dissolve – Abomination
If there’s one thing that sucks about doom, it’s the genre’s proclivity toward bearded white men singing on and on about gloom. But Melbourne duo Divide And Dissolve’s Abomination reclaimed this trope this year, through haunting melodies and dissonant atmospherics, unspokenly speaking of the alienation and degradation colonised people of colour experience in our society on a daily basis. There’s something almost dreamlike about the release’s sound – a combination of restless, shuffling doom with uneasily mournful woodwind melodies, only once allowing for any kind of vocal contribution on ‘Reversal’.
Abomination does not speak for any one person, rather it’s uncomfortable minimalism paints a bold picture of the inner turmoil so many experience on a daily basis. Abomination does not rage against the white supremacist, colonialist structures – at least not conventionally – rather it paints a picture of the inner turmoil so many are forced to feel by the white supremacist, patriarchal society enabled by the colonial ruin of the last few hundred years. An essential, if sometimes uncomfortable listen amidst the current political climate.
59. Sloth Hammer – Part 1 – The Tease
In recent years, with the current trend of genre-bending synergy abound, every sludge artist and their mum is purporting to incorporate noise into their punishing, riff-laden sewage, but to date, the quality pickings have been slim (Shout out Aerosol Jesus for actually pulling it off too).
The wonderfully entitled Sloth Hammer have this year bucked this trend with their unhinged debut, Part 1: The Tease. Whilst the off-kilter grind of their more recent output is just as accomplished and absurd, The Tease makes Primitive Man’s efforts at noisey integration look like My Bloody Valentine in comparison. The group’s approach is at first a fairly standard one – sinister vocal samples and anguish abound – but the beauty of The Tease is in its embrace of total distortion, which turns the group’s basis in Iron Monkey worship up to eleven.
Filled with seething, harsh electronics, discordant walls of riff and anguished dual vocals, and topped off by some of the most oddly endearing album artwork this side of the anti-fascist black metal scene – Part 1: The Tease has bought new meaning to the art of noise-fuelled sludge anguish in 2018.
41. From The Bogs of Aughiska – Mineral Bearing Veins
Despite it being a heavily spiritual nether-realm (at least in the eyes of its denizens), rural Ireland, and it’s rich folk-mythology are a criminally under-venerated arena for folk-laden black metal.
With their latest instalment Mineral Bearing Veins, From The Bogs Of Aughiska have not only brought the nether-realm of the Irish countryside into a fully black metal context (compared with the blackened ambience of their previous discography), but have also crafted what is arguably one of the year’s most interesting black metal listens. Combining pummelling, minimalist black metal beats with their trademark futurist use of folk tales – straight from the mouths of the tellers – super-imposed over rumbling atmospherics, Mineral Bearing Veins is an engrossing and varied listen. It’s still definably From The Bogs’.
14. Bismuth – The Slow Dying of The Great Barrier Reef
Bismuth are one of 2018’s breakout acts. The duo have been making waves in the UK scene through a prolific live schedule (it’s essential to catch ‘The Slow Dying of The Great Barrier Reef’ – which makes up most of its namesake release – live) and stacks of releases and collaborations (with Legion Of Andromeda and Gnaw Their Tongues) since their formation six years ago, and The Slow Dying Of The Great Barrier Reef is perhaps the apex of their ethereal drone-doom mastery.
2018 has also been a year in which extreme artists supporting real-life causes through their music has become far more prominent. The Great Barrier Reef really is dying, and it’s because of the environmental destruction hundreds of years of capitalism has wrought upon our earth. Through celestial vocals, a mastery of crawling, droning atmospherics, and a total lack of six-string guitar, Bismuth have successfully captured, as many artists have this year, the voice of our dying world. The Slow Dying… is an immeasurably powerful record, and one imbued with a crushing form of melancholy no record has topped this year.
Side note: If/when high as fuck, open this album’s Bandcamp twice and play the record on top of itself for 10x the fun.
9. Infernal Coil – Within A World Forgotten
As we all know by now, death metal of the early ‘90s flavour has had a prominent resurgence over the last twelve months. But to those who grew up worshipping at the maddened altars of extreme metal’s genesis, the new wave of the old school (keep up) risks – ironically – falling into the same cesspool of pointless emulation the death metal scene of the ‘90s died amidst.
Taking a Full Of Hell-esque approach to their subtly noise-imbued sonic whirlwinds, and lashing this fury to a primal storm of OSDM fuzz indicative of the most vicious recesses of the ‘90s Swedish scene, Within A World Forgotten has helped Infernal Coil stand out amidst a sea of bands who really really like Incantation this year. The release’s more experimental flourishes, of obfuscated stabs of noise, or of melancholic breaks that wouldn’t be out of place on a Wolves In The Throne Room release, fit perfectly amidst the release’s primal, blasting walls of distorted death.
Anyone privy to the HM-2’d out, d-beating rackets that emanated from Scandinavia in the early ‘90s will be familiar with a spirit, a twisted strain of noise integral to the flavours of both old school death metal and black metal (and one largely absent from today’s squeaky clean OSDM rackets) – and that’s what has landed Infernal Coil their place in the Top Ten. The band’s emphasis on the importance of environmentalism, communicated through vicious, blasting deathgrind, gives voice to the primal spirit of a planet burdened by its own slow death.
