Every year since the lang cat started I have done one of these lists, not because anyone’s interested in them but because music is one of the ways we mark out our lives, or it is for me anyway. I spent a happy 15 minutes looking back over the last thirteen years a moment ago, and each list transported me straight back to that year, what the lang cat was doing then, and what was happening in my poor excuse for a life.
These days – apart from the Update – the stuff we put out is much more planned and professional than my often whisky-fuelled nonsense back in the day, but once a year I wrest control of the back end of the website off of its Guardians, set a course for the heart of the sun and refuse to be stopped. This is the result for 2024, posted in its dying hours and I hope you enjoy it while being entirely unmoved if you don’t.
10. KINSHIP – IOTUNN
This just snuck in after I heard it in November. I hadn’t bothered with Iotunn before but I do like Hamferð and this is the same guy. None of us have enough Faroese bands in our lives, don’t you agree? Anyway, this is heavy but melodic and great.
9. TRAVERSE THE BEALACH – SGAILE
One-man Scottish folk-black-metal powerhouse Tony Dunn (a name more suited to a 1970s kids’ TV presenter) is legendary round these parts having done stuff for Cnoc An Tursa and previous list-dwellers Saor, but this is just him and it’s a wonderful way to spend an hour. There’s heavy stuff on it but it’s by no means all br00tal and even non-metalheads will find lots to love here. There’s even some proper singing.
8. ENSOULMENT – THE THE
Two titans released new music for the first time in yonks this year – guess the pension funds need topping up – but I’ll take whatever I can get and you’ll have to read on to see where The Cure turn up. Anyway, this is no Dusk or Mind Bomb, but it’s still great with moments of absolute liquid Matt Johnson genius on it, so that’s good enough for me.
7. COMA – GAEREA
I only discovered this lot of Portuguese mask-wearing blackened metal lunatics this year but I’m very glad I did. Heavy and intense but with a brain and lots going on, plus Gaerea is one of the very few bands in the scene to have an Actual Woman playing an instrument which is progress of a sort I suppose.
6. COLD WAVES DIVIDE US – MIDAS FALL
I’ve Listed Midas Fall before but inexplicably that hasn’t helped them challenge Charli XCX or Taylor Swift at the top of the charts. This is not a cheery record – not many of mine are – but Elizabeth Heaton’s voice has never sounded better and it’s basically a reverb-drenched hour of loveliness and who doesn’t want that? Plus she’s from Edinburgh.
5. SONGS OF A LOST WORLD – THE CURE
Here. This is where they turn up. This is a really decent Cure record, which means it’s better than most other bands’ best records. It mainly makes me want to listen to Disintegration, but then so do most things, and so it seems churlish to mark them down on that. If this is the last one then it’s by no means a bad way to finish up. We have been too far apart…
4. ÉTRANGE HIVER – TOM MCRAE
The cheeriness continues with Tom McRae’s French record. This is – unlike pretty much everything else in this list – a small, late-night intimate record, sort of big enough for two and no more. It’s really beautiful and very sad in parts; I don’t think the room will ever not get dusty when Lover’s Souvenir comes on. Good gigs this year too.
3. THEORIES OF EMPTINESS – EVERGREY
Swedish veterans and legends who have never let surely one of the least pre-possessing band names stop them making records chock full of melodeath bangers. Tom Englund is a towering figure in every way, and watching him sing his way past flu in Glasgow earlier this month was quite a thing. This is a great, great record and was never far away from me this year. Watch the video all the way through to the end – what a way to say goodbye to a band member. Top 3 and no mistake, and please note this is the only Scandiwegian metal in the top 5. I am growing.
2. WILD GOD – NICK CAVE AND THE BAD SEEDS
Oh wow, oh wow, where to start with this. As long as you understand that The Mercy Seat and Papa Won’t Leave You Henry are from another time, this version of NCATBS has so much going for it, sort of a cross between Lyre of Orpheus-era and Nick and Warren’s solo stuff. Much more full-on than Ghosteen or even Skeleton Tree, this reveals itself in chunks as you repeat listen, and when it lets itself go with the gospel singers and the Bad Seeds at full roar there is very little like it. Touched by the spirit and touched by the flame. Incredible. And one of the gigs of the year too.
1. LES CHANTS D’AURORE – ALCEST
It took a lot to keep Nick Cave off the top this year, and any record that managed had to hit hard and just right; it was that sort of year. French black-ish metallers Alcest just set a homing missile right into the middle of me and then refused to leave. What a record. If you think you don’t like heavier music try this – it’s got a brain and a heart and proper singing with the harsh screaming stuff used as colour, and good lyrics and everything. Where else are you going to hear lyrics like “Ta main contre la mienne/Les mémoires incandescentes/De ton visage rieur/Et tout pour pouvoir les revivre”? Nowhere, that’s where. Go do yourself a favour and try it out.
So there you have it. I could have included so much more – Dark Tranquillity, Swallow The Sun, Devin Townsend, Cemetery Skyline, Dödsrit, God Is An Astronaut and loads more were all great.
Gig of the year – had to be Kreator, or Insomnium, or Soen or Gutalax (in-joke) at the Hellsinki metal festival in, er, Helsinki for my 50th birthday with my best pal Alsy.
It is done. Same time next year whether you like it or not.
