It is that time again. Here we take a look at the worst albums of the year. They come from varied polarities, some are very heavy, others are commercial pop, and there is even pop punk and folk thrown in the mix here. One of the things that made rap great in the 80s and 90s was rappers calling each other out for being whack. It provided a form of quality control. Now people have grown too sensitive for that kind of hard truth. Some would argue this is all subjective, but music is something that can be defined in technical terms, as well as artistic, and how it holds up over time. Chances are if it is hard is get through one listen it is not going to stand the test of time. For most of these albums, it was hard for me to write a full review as I could not listen to the album as a whole and had to skip around to try to find something worthwhile to listen to. Sure, some of these might have sold a ton of albums but the Fast and Furious movies are garbage in terms of storytelling, so the sheep are not a great barometer. So here are the top ten worst albums of 2024
10-Thou- "Umbilical"
Thou is one of those bands that gets so much hype and does not deliver much outside of what is expected that I lost interest in. A few songs work, and some of the punchy hardcore energy works but do not show up hoping for a sludge fest as things are more chaotic than that and is more about a temper tantrum of sound than worthwhile songs.
https://abysmalhymns.blogspot.com/2024/11/november-is-doom-thou-umbilical.html
9-Four Year Strong- "Analysis Paralysis'
This band crosses too far into pop punk for me to really be into it but I gave the album a shot. So when it sucked you guys know you can count on me to stand up and tell it like it is. They take the things I do not like about both Blink 182 and the Foo-fighters and combine them into their sound. It got to the point where I had to skim through the songs because even three minutes of this felt like I was wasting my time.
https://abysmalhymns.blogspot.com/2024/11/four-year-strong-analysis-paralysis.html
8-Merzbow/ Meat Beat Manifesto - 'Extinct"
I should have known this would be more sound-focused than song-focused because the first track is over twenty minutes long. The noise wrestles against the beats for dominance, putting them at the more extreme edge of industrial music. You could not put this on at a club and not close the place down. I would prefer a new Meat Beat Manifesto album not this experiment in performance art.
https://abysmalhymns.blogspot.com/2024/10/gothtober-meat-beat-manifesto-merzbow.html
7-Sonata Arctica -"Clear Cold Beyond"
It is really hard to even call these guys metal. There is nothing that comes close to feeling metal until "Dark Empath' which is four songs in. Even then most anime opening theme songs go harder. This takes what that band did and dilutes it with video game-like glee. There is such a lack of darkness to it that if you told me these guys were a Christian band I would believe you.
https://abysmalhymns.blogspot.com/2024/02/sonata-arctica-clear-cold-beyond.html
6-Fentanyl - "s/t"
Imagine the jangle of punk executed by a grindcore band. This is the sonic attack of this band that features members of Spiritual Cramp, SPY, and World Peace. I imagine what happened here is they wanted to be able to cut loose like back when they were teenagers and freed from the expectation that comes when they have to play the actual songs of their other bands. Before you say I just don't get the joke, my expectations for the music of any genre are the same, write songs worth listening to again, and that will stand the test of time. This is just indulging a youthful feeling to expulse this energy. But maybe that is what you want from punk.
https://abysmalhymns.blogspot.com/2024/08/fentanyl-st.html
5-Sheer Mag -"Playing Favorites"
It's like the Temu version of the Runaways. It typically feels like the singer was not involved in the songwriting process and she came in after the fact and went into the vocal booth just trying to come up with something that might fit. Decent guitar playing provides a sliver of legitimacy to what would otherwise be some of the worst songs coming from a professional band that I have heard in some time. The more biased hipster voices in music journalism might try to give this band some hype for purely narrative upkeep, that has nothing to do with what we focus on here which is music.
https://abysmalhymns.blogspot.com/2024/03/sheer-mag-playing-favorites.html
4-Bat for Lashes - "The Dream of Delphi"
My initial impression of the lead single and title track from Natasha Khan's first album in 5 years, was that it was a little too atmospheric, I wanted something with more bones to it. Sadly shocked to find it was the album's least meandering expanse of sound. An album of ambient folk music with songs that are barely there is not what I had hope for, as I like her previous work.
HTTPs://abysmalhymns.blogspot.com/2024/06/bat-for-lashes-dream-of-delphi.html
3-Zeal & Ardor- "Grief"
This was a close call for the number two spot, because of all the singers it took to make this piece of shit. I am not sure how idiots can still refer to this as a metal band, the last album was nu-metal and this has less aggression than that. Manuel Gagnuex decided to let the live band he's toured with for the past years play on the albums. You might think with a full band cranking it in the studio it would cause things to rock a little more, but the opposite is true. This feels like a product that is just as empty. It's like they asked AI what a rock band might sound like.
2-Iron Monkey- "Spleen and Goad"
While this was the lowest-scoring album of the year, they did not take the number one spot due to the fact, that they are at least playing their own instruments, and do not have a team of songwriters, they are just taking their chances and sucking their own .This might be the worst vocal performance I have heard on a metal album this year. In some ways, it works with the stomp of this neanderthal minded sludge they are bulldozing you with. It sounds as if a band asked a retarded teenager to scream into a microphone. It is truly difficult to get through each song, if the vocals were further back in the mix it might be more tolerable.
https://abysmalhymns.blogspot.com/2024/03/iron-monkey-spleen-and-goad.html
1-Beyonce- "Cowboy Carter"
The number 2 album is pretty terrible, but it did not take the number one spot since at least it's some poor fools playing actual instruments. It took a whole marketing team to put together this piece of trash. Given the state of the music press these days, the Press creates an echo chamber to willingly cuck for the music industry. They will undoubtedly sing the praises for this album since it supports the narrative they want to promote. Any idiot with half a brain should be aware of the fact Beyonce did not get to where she is today without being a puppet for the music industry. Who is at least trying to work off the press it got for Lil Nas X. If you think any of this was her idea, you are naive. It took 21 songwriters and 13 different producers to push this album off the assembly line. At the end of the day, it's the worst part of pop music trying to be the worst parts of pop country to equate to a mess. What is going to be funny is watching the press eat their own shit when Beyonce gets exposed as being complicit in the Diddy mess.
https://abysmalhymns.blogspot.com/2024/03/putting-cunt-in-country-beyonces-cowboy.html
pst639
No comments:
Post a Comment