The Top 10 Albums Most Mistaken for Metal in 2024

Once upon a time, the battle cry championed by metal bands was "Death to False Metal", it's a sentiment going back to the earliest beginnings of the genre when it drew lines to separate itself from the bands of the Sunset Strip who wanted the look but were making glammed out pop music. Today kids are thin-skinned and take offense screaming out that this is gatekeeping rather than seeing it as quality control standards. Most of those people just need to feel like they belong wherever they want to go and call those who actually belong there elitists as a projection of their own insecurities. 

I'm here to say fuck your feelings. In the interest of this blog's mission statement pledging to always tell it like it is easy even if you can't handle the truth. After seeing albums like those represented here appearing on metal top ten lists, I think it fair to set the record straight and have some truth in advertising to pick out the top ten offenders in this regard. Four of these entries are great albums, they just are not great metal albums. They are great rock, shoe-gaze, and trip-hop albums, just not metal. There are a few that are terrible, but they are also not metal so here we go setting the record straight for you.  

 10- Unto Others - "Never Neverland" 

These guys used to make cock rock dressed up as goth, but now they are applying that template to pop music, it's catchier than their previous work, Wish it was darker than it is. 

https://abysmalhymns.blogspot.com/2024/08/unto-others-never-neverland.html

9-Haunted Plasma -"I' 

This album features members of Oranassi Pazuzu, but that doesn't make it metal. It does carry a great dark throb to it and has Mat McNeary lending his voice to this album, so it sometimes sounds like Grave Pleasures on acid. Lots of metal comes from Finland, this project is not counted among that. 

https://abysmalhymns.blogspot.com/2024/04/haunted-plasma-i.html

8-Dool- "The Shape of Fluidity" 

There were once doom metal elements to what they did on their previous album. This more rock n roll approach to things works as they are appearing on more end-of-the-year lists, which means they are getting more recognition, which works for me, as they deserve it even if they are growing away from metal. 

https://abysmalhymns.blogspot.com/2024/05/dool-shape-of-fluidity.html

7-Bring me the Horizon - ""Post Human -NeX GEn" 

This is a fun pop album, Pierce the Veul might do it better, but kids seem to like this, though kids don't know any better as they are young and dumb, we know better, making it our job to set the record straight, distortion or the occasional scream does not make things metal, even pop bands throw temper tantrums from time to time. 

https://abysmalhymns.blogspot.com/2024/05/bring-me-horizon-post-human-nex-gen.html

6-Devin Townsend- "Powernerd" 

Here is a good case in point of an artist who was in a metal band (Strapping Young Lad) branching off to play other kinds of music, Sure the influence of their metal past is there, but that does not make their current project metal. What this album proves is Def Leppard would be fools for not asking Devy to produce their next album as he sounds more like them than they have in decades. If you are tempted to say Def Leppard is metal then you should keep your mouth shut before you embarrass yourself. 

https://abysmalhymns.blogspot.com/2024/11/devin-townsend-powernerd.html

5-Pallbearer - "Mind Burns Alive" 

It was not so long ago these guys were a doom-metal band. People change and artists grow out of genres and do other things, I can accept that. These guys made one of the year's best shoe-gaze albums, so at least if they are no longer a metal band they are good at what they are doing. 

https://abysmalhymns.blogspot.com/2024/04/pallbearer-mind-burns-alive.html

 

4-Zeal & Ardor-"Grief" 

This one made it onto my worst albums of 2024 list. This project has a long history of being mislabeled thanks to the wishful thinking of the music press. They were first called black metal when they had more in common with ni-metal, and now they are just a shitty rock band who might as well be Breaking Benjamin or some other radio shit. 

https://abysmalhymns.blogspot.com/2024/08/zeal-ardor-grief.html

3-Poppy-"Negative Spaces" 

I like this album, and while Poppy has appropriated metal in the past, this album kind of splits the difference between her flirtations with nu-metal and the pop of her previous album. There is a mainstream radio rock formula on most of these songs that she makes work thanks to her quirky charisma. I think the guest appearance she did with Knocked Loose this year has made people unable to compartmentalize her from her own career, but this is not a metal album, industrial-influenced pop at best. 

https://abysmalhymns.blogspot.com/2024/11/poppy-negative-spaces.html

2-Linkin Park -"From Zero"

Lumped in with nu-metal, but they have never been a metal band. This album brings that fact to the forefront. It's not a bad album though unable to live up to its hype, this is a fun lighthearted pop album that its fans are taking way too seriously. 

https://abysmalhymns.blogspot.com/2024/11/linkin-park-from-zero.html

1-Chelsea Wolfe -" She Reaches Out To She Reaches Out To She"

She's never made a metal album, there are albums where that is used as a dynamic in a few songs, but never throughout. This is more of a trip-hop album it is closer to Portishead than Motorhead, and yet it keeps appearing on metal lists because people are well ...stupid. I prefer the acoustic episode to this one , as it sounds more like her, but it continues to grow on me.  Regardless of how good it is, if you think this is metal, you clearly don't know what you are talking about. 

https://abysmalhymns.blogspot.com/2024/02/chelsea-wolfe-she-reaches-out-to-she.html

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The Top 10 Worst Albums of 2024

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. 

https://abysmalhymns.blogspot.com/2024/08/zeal-ardor-grief.html

 

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

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Zeal & Ardor : "GRIEF"

Do you remember back in 2017 when the music press was making a big deal about a person of color fronting a "black metal" band? The problem was that it did not feel like a black metal album at all.  Perhaps they wanted it to be so "black metal" would not be so "problematic". The hype was enough for this band to gain critical acclaim but has never scored higher than an 8.5 with me. In truth, their 2022 self-titled album was less impressive than "Stranger Fruit".  The last album was pretty much nu-metal, and now their fourth album is not metal at all. It sounds more like King's X than King Diamond.  However, we can now refer to this as a band since 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. 

If you told me the opening track was a new Sevendust song, I would believe you, though it is more of an intro for "Fend You Off". The vocals are soulful and performed well enough, but it's pretty generic modern rock. "Kilonova" is the first song that works, and perhaps the only song on this album that is worth a shit. Most of this is due to the fact the tightly syncopated tension of the guitar makes me think of Faith No More.  "are you the only one now" sounds as if King's X lost all of the down-tuned grunge heft that made their music work. Gagneux said this album was more personal, which I guess means lacks all the balls, even when the harsher vocals come in they are not convincing me and the thin mix of the instruments does not help their case.

"Go Home my Friend" has been done better by Algiers, who are the band that should be getting the hype this project has. On my second listen to the song it works better than the first time I heard it, but it does not go anywhere. "Clawing Out" sounds like Korn covering Pantera. Though lacking the heft of either band, the guitars could not sound any thinner. Much like King's X  there is a Beatles-like sound to "Disease" but is proof that not only are these guys not black metal, they are not metal at all despite their attempts to convince you otherwise on the previous song. "369" uses a more blues-like groove, though its stomp lacks direction. It's an interlude that is an idea that no longer can grow into a song. 

They are about as heavy as your average Muse radio hit on "Thrill", which pretty much works but feels like radio pandering, or an outright sell-out. "June ville vide" is another interlude, which makes it feel like this album is crammed with them because they had writer's block. They pretty much rip off Queens of the Stone Age on "Sugarcoat". If you ever wanted to hear what Queens of the Stone Age sounded like writing a nu-metal song this is your chance. The stripped-down ballad "Solace" reminds you that he can sing, but what do they really have to say? It's pretty boring. The build at the end is predictable. 

"Hide in the Shade" is another soulful foot stomper, that tries to recapture their earlier work, but this feels just an obligatory consolation prize, and lacks anything that makes it feel authentic. The breakdown in the song might be one of the album's most dynamic moments, but one song is not going to make this a metal album, metal is just a color they dabble with as there is no darkness in their hearts. "To My Ilk" is another ballad, that sounds like a Red Hot Chili Peppers b-side that never made the cut. I will give this album a 5.5 it's their worst moment yet, though that does not mean it won't outsell the other albums as the masses also buy Cardi B and Billie Eilish albums so their taste can not be trusted, if it could there would not be any Fast and Furious sequels. This feels like a product that is just as empty. It's like they asked AI what metal might sound like. 

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Zeal & Ardor : " s/t"

 

+The good news is this album moves in a more focused direction and finds Manuel conceding to the fact that this project has never been black metal, nor is just screaming "where is your fucking god " make it so hear as it holds more in common with Slipknot than Darkthrone no matter what era of Darkthrone you want to compare this to.     The almost tapped vocals of this "Death to the Holy " confirm this, though nu-metal was already a more diverse, here so this is where the hype sets in. To his credit the songwriting here which is nothing groundbreaking is certainly better than the previous albums.  What he was praised for in the past I have felt that the band Algiers always did better.  

Yes, there are brief period of blast beasts going into the more down tempo electronic of " Emersion" and did does at time come close to something Deafheaven would do, but news flash Deafheaven is also not a black metal band. If you are then questioning what black metal is hang tight as next month is Black Metal History month here and that will be cleared up for you. Once again to his credit the vocals are greatly improved. There is more of a Wovenhand vibe to "Golden Liar", it is more like Hozier here and I would say Eugene Edwards out gospels this guy every day of the week. "Erase" brings back the more stompy nu-metal, with touches of death in the vocals though, there were plenty of nu-metal albums with death metal growls, hell even System of a Down did that. Whose names bears repeating as the more I think of them the more this reminds me of them. 

"Bow" marries soulful rock industrial percussion. By the time we get to "Feed the Machine" we are back to less focused songwriting that tries to rely on jarring dynamic but does so in a manner than it much less effective that what say Faith No More does. If the fact this is nu metal does not catch your ear on "I Caught You" then you do not want to hear it. What is funny is all the hipster blogs who would never cover Slipknot because they are too cool for mainstream metal, will praise this to show how diverse their tastes are, and they do not just listen to Deafheaven and Iron & Wine all day.  The lack of focus and dynamic shifts from soulful Hozier like folk to heavier passages continues. By "Church Burns " it begins to become tiring. Metal core would also be a better definition of what they are doing here than black metal when the album reaches its heaviest, but metal core is pretty much nu-metal reaching its final form anyway.  There are some col sounds here and there and nuanced guitar playing they have grown into, but from where this album begins with a better sense of self to devolving back into chaotic denial of their strengths is a disappointment. The electronic piece it ends with is pretty pointless, but I will just write it off as an outro and not count it further again the final score of this album If I was to disregard all the hype and accept this as a new nu-metal album then I can around this to an 8, well produced and performed, but much like fast food it's empty calories. But if I am honest about does this accomplish what they set out to do the lack of self-awareness as song writers forces me to give it a 7.5

Zeal & Ardor : "Stranger Fruit"

This project's last album was met with a great deal of hype ridden fanfare. It was good , but did not blow me away like it did other members of the press.  The concept of this project is Manuel pondering what satanic gospel might sound like. Much like the previous album I find myself asking what is so different from what Algiers has already done? Manuel's more sung vocals have improved. There is also a thicker atmosphere at the edges of the album. When things get more intense on "Servants" its feels more like industrial than metal. There is a more black metal feel to "Don't You Dare". The black metal elements are juggled with the negro spiritual theme of the album which adheres to this projects mission statement. Then things stay more aggressive going into "Fire of Motion". While it's not black metal, it is a fun driven thrashing that might have more in common with Slipknot.

We are skipping over the atmospheric interludes like "the Hermit" and just focused on the actual songs. A palm muted guitar continues bringing an almost nu-metal groove to "Row Row". Perhaps blackened gospel nu-metal might be the sub-genre to rise up around their sound. As with this song and the one before it the nu metal elements tip the scales heavier than the black metal ones. By the time I get to "Ship On Fire" the novelty is beginning to wear off, though the songs on the front ned are certainly stronger than the previous album. The more rock elements of "Waste"that run under the attempts at black metal are more interesting. The black metal sections seem like they are being forced and don't always flow naturally.

"You Ain't Coming Back" could almost be Cold War Kids if you were doing a blind listen. This more rock n roll side seems more natural. When framed against their so called black metal moments, it makes me doubt if that darkness is in him to expel.   If you ever wondered what Sevendust would sound like if they gave black metal at stab the song "We Can't Be Found" answers that. The choked vocals don't convey anything I believe. The title track finds vocals falling over a more minimal and atmospheric back drop with a little bit of an industrial pound. The more melodic vocal melody reminds me of Satchel from the 90s. "Built on Ashes" in it's less soulful moments doesn't strike me as anything heavier than the last Deftones album. I'll give this album an 8.5. It's a great improvement over "the Devil is Fine" which I gave a 7. It's not as amazing as what other journalists are going to try to tell, but it's a more refined and better produced effort that lives up to the glimpses of potential shown on the previous album. Blackened Nu Metal is now a thing!