The 50 best albums of 2024

Hawk Tuah. A general election. Euros. War. Dune 2. Hurricanes. A CEO assassination. The Eras Tour. An American election. The Olympics. Gary Barlow’s son. Aurora borealis. Riots. Co-op Live. A global IT outage. Births. Marriages. Deaths. A Scottish Oompa-Loompa…

If it seems like 2024 has been a whirlwind of stuff you can’t believe only happened in the past 12 months, it’s a feeling only doubled when you look back at the albums released. Anyone else feel like there were thousands more than usual? We saw already-heroic bands making the record of their careers, and newbies making grand starts on their own. There were unexpected comebacks. There were mad things. There were high flyers. There were misfires where there should have been gold, but there were also unexpected victories from way out of left field.

The sheer volume always makes it hard to gather 50 albums that give a picture of a year. But it seems in 2024, so many records did so much for their creators it was even harder. Some have seen bands ascend to new heights. Others will go on to find less big sales, but with a value that can be weighed in brilliant artistic expression. Some just made us want to dance.

It’s been hard work, and we could have run to a far greater number than this for albums that made being a rock fan so exciting and brilliant. Here, then, are the 50 albums which, for far more reasons than that, shaped this peculiar, packed year…

Burn out or fade away. Those were the ultimate outcomes open to punk’s first generation tearaways and, for the most part, those are the destinies that they have fulfilled. It’s typical, all the same, for Los Angeles legends X to buck the trend. Arriving 44 years after their seminal debut, this swansong might not mark the final finish line for its hard-touring authors, but it is both poignant parting shot and perfect example of the sparse, loose-slung sound they helped pioneer. There’s an irony, even, in how co-vocalists Exene Cervenka and John Doe wring bittersweet melody and harmony from their deconstructions of the glitz and glamour of Tinseltown to the very last – even here, we’re faced with 'The Hollywood letters falling down' – while delivering their own picture-perfect ride into the sunset. Then again, wringing scuffed romance and granite sparkle from the grittiest of underbellies was always their stock in trade. (SL)

• Album review: X – Smoke & Fiction

The careers of teenagers who go viral online tend to last about as long as the latest trend on mayfly TikTok, but The Linda Lindas are proving to be in it for the long haul. And their brilliant second album successfully upped the ante, full of bold experimentation and confident, classy alt.rock that still channels the band’s original exuberant punk rock spirit. No wonder they’re now in demand to open stadium shows for the legendary likes of Green Day and The Rolling Stones – No Obligation is the sound of a band growing up fast, and going places even faster. (MS)

• In the studio with The Linda Lindas: “We’ve grown exponentially since our first record”

Scene Queen’s debut arrived as a pink glitter bomb of sass, rage and sexuality in the middle of the summer, but it also afforded her the chance to flex just how much she was capable of. Ultimately, Hot Singles In Your Area was a journey from anger to empowerment. At the outset, she's holding her fists up to abusers, assaulters and even exclusionary band dudes, but later seizes back her power in boardrooms and bedrooms alike. By its conclusion, on the frenetic Oral Fixation and surprisingly sweet Climax, she was embracing love all over again. Whatever Scene Queen was doing, though, you could bet she was serving. (EW)

• Scene Queen: “It’s always been about being a conservative person’s worst nightmare”

Following their mother’s terminal cancer diagnosis, from which she passed away in April, Palaye Royale had every right to make 2024 a quiet one. Instead, they soldiered on, with their thirst to conquer undiminished. Death Or Glory was an opulent yet defiant piece of work, lavishly laden with groove, lust and razor-sharp lines about the path to surviving as a creative in the minefield of modern times. While the Las Vegas brothers have always had a passion for creating sounds that could be dug up from a decades-old time capsule, album five glowed with a more modern sheen – and it properly came alive for their Wembley Arena headliner in November. (EW)

• Remington Leith: “If I can still be playing music and touring with my brothers when I’m f*cking 80 years old, I would love that”

Whatever you think you might be getting into when you play The Home Team’s third album, you’re probably wrong. Because The Crucible Of Life shapeshifts and genre bends with every positive, exuberant musical twist its 12 songs take. Driven by frontman Brian Butcher’s earnest vocal delivery, The Home Team make what they call ‘heavy pop’, and one listen to this record and that description makes perfect sense. At the same time, these songs wrestle with their own existence, inspired by and written after a period of self-doubt Brian had about being in a band. Thankfully, he pushed through. The results are glorious. (MP)

• The Home Team: “Be true to yourself and your tastes. If you hone your art as much as possible, you will create something that is unique”

A notoriously busy fellow in terms of extracurricular interests, Bruce Dickinson hadn’t released a solo album for nearly two decades when he unleashed The Mandrake Project in March. Typically, though, he went all in, producing an hour bursting at the seams with massive riffs, instantly classic songs and a weighty concept revolving around science and the occult. Accompanied by a still-ongoing 12-issue graphic novel series – another string to add to Bruce’s bow – The Mandrake Project felt like an ambitious passion project rather than a way to kill time between Maiden commitments. And let’s face it, that voice remains one of the most spine-tingling sounds in heavy metal. (OT)

• Bruce Dickinson: “We’re all living longer and more effective lives, which is great – as long as you do something with it”

With GROWING UP ON THE INTERNET, NOAHFINNCE made a record we didn’t even realise we needed. It made a collective of adults who grew up lying to their parents that their Facebook account existed purely to play Farmville realise that, actually, early adolescent internet access did fuck up their impressionable growing brains. This album was brilliantly done, because it didn’t feel like one big plunge into gloomy regret, it rather felt like shared laughter in hindsight. Interweaving kooky guitar riffs with his signature stroppy vocal styling, Noah created a debut that was in-your-face with attitude. (RR)

• NOAHFINNCE: “There’s always going to be people that can’t see me as anything more than an influencer, but they’re not worth worrying about”

The best alternative music can often draw you in to listening to something truly harrowing without you even realising it. Traumatic Livelihood is a fine example, whereby the hooky, accessible pop-rock crafted by Jazmin Bean provides a surface sheen to the dark tales of abuse, addiction and toxicity that they have experienced. There’s some excellent songwriting here, from the massive, synth-driven anthem Favourite Toy to the subtle storytelling of the title-track. Jazmin has already demonstrated themselves to be a sonic shapeshifter capable of penning an array of thrilling alternative sounds, and on the evidence of Traumatic Livelihood, this young artist is destined for great things indeed. (JR)

• Jazmin Bean: “I don’t think this is a healed album, or a wounded one. It’s a healing album”
  

Growing older gracefully rarely sounded so groovy. While Kids In Glass Houses didn't quite take the title for most celebrated reunion of the year (hello, Linkin Park), Pink Flamingo is nevertheless a perfect lesson in how a band can tweak their sound to ensure reverence for the past while bringing refinement to the present. In practice, this fifth album found the Cardiff-based heroes unleashing another batch of undeniable anthems, embellished with greater lyrical sophistication and hat tips to the sounds of the 1980s, making the whole thing feel like returning to a beloved holiday destination from your youth for more grown up adventures. Slicker than a sea otter bathed in baby oil. Welcome back, boyos. (JH)

• Kids In Glass Houses: “This is a clean slate. It feels like a fresh start, rather than a fifth album”

When Zeal & Ardor dropped to my ilk, the short, plaintive lead single from their fourth album back in April, many misread the title of the then-upcoming LP as GRIEF, imagining an extended, melancholic reckoning on loss. To the contrary, GREIF is full of colour, mischief and life. Named after Der Vogel Greif (‘The Griffin’) from mainman Manuel Gagneux’s native Basel, it pulls together genres like the elements of snake, eagle and lion that make up its namesake, and draws from its unshackled spirit. Touching on elements from Queens Of The Stone Age and Tool to Gojira and Behemoth, it is staggering proof of Manuel’s range as a songwriter. Even more importantly, as the first record featuring his onstage bandmates in the studio, it is a waymarker for and resounding investment in the long-term future of one of heavy music’s most consistently thrilling bands. (SL)

A dozen albums and 33 years into a recording career, most bands – or rather, the few that get that far – follow the path of least resistance and settle into a comfortable groove. But Pearl Jam are not most bands, and album number 12 finds Eddie Vedder and company pushing hard to find new shapes to press their uniquely heartfelt music into. They managed it, too, compressing everything they’ve learned over those three-and-a-bit-decades into a record full of swagger and fury, but studded with whole-hearted emotion. Not many of their contemporaries have stayed the course, but Dark Matter shows why Pearl Jam still matter. (MS)

• Album review: Pearl Jam – Dark Matter

If her DEADGIRL mixtape had been Mimi Barks' introduction to the world, THIS IS DOOM TRAP was a definitive statement of who she is. More streamlined and slightly less abrasive it may have been, but the German rap-goth still served up a twisted gallery of agonising, suffocating darkness here. That's when she wasn't throwing out machine-gun flow in her native German (MONTANA), or enthusiastically giving a giant 'fuck off' on WORMGIRL ('Throw the fuckboy in my circle-pit / Check my socials I'm a psycho bitch'). There was also an expansion of Mimi's palette here, with MIRTZAPINE adding something slinky, and FADED and FINAL DESTINATION​/​DEATH WITHOUT SATISFACTION showing a far more fragile side than before. As Mimi explained to K! upon release, what's gone into this is, for both good and bad, her entire lifeforce. Troubled as it is, it's a perfect capsule of one of the ’00s most unique and exhilarating artists. (NR)

• Mimi Barks: “I already wasted half my life destroying myself. There’s not much time left”

Eighteen years in and with a litany of successes in their wake – not least their massive show at Alexandra Palace – there’s still a sense that While She Sleeps have more to give and even greater victories to earn. SELF HELL, the Sheffield heroes’ sixth album, certainly went some way to delivering on both. Always a band to tread their own path, this time around WSS pushed their metalcore in bold new directions, bringing electronic elements into the frantic fold. Whatever the reason for this evolution, it’s produced a thoroughly modern soundtrack about self-empowerment in a world seemingly hell bent on ruining our mental health. (JH)

• While She Sleeps: “We’ve been grinding for a long time, and we’re in a really good place”

How long should it take before you hear the first brilliant album of any given year? In 2024, the answer was five days. Impressively still, the album Sprints released in the frigid lull of early January was their debut. And a stunner it is. Opener Ticking is enticingly claustrophobic and Cathedral a chilling recollection of growing up queer in the church that wickedly you feel caged in, but the Irish quartet paint with lighter shades, too. Literary Mind is a moment of brightness as an ode to singer Karla Chubb’s girlfriend, while Up And Comer wears its wryness proudly. It might be early days for Sprints, but they already have the complete package. (EW)

• Sprints: “I’ve always wanted our music to matter and say something”

For reasons known only to themselves, Nightwish have quit touring for the time being. Hanging up the tour bus keys (and saying goodbye to longtime bassist Marko Heitala) did little to slow the creative machinations of keyboardist and leader Tuomas Holopainen's mind, however. In fact, after wading too far into the cheese on 2020's Human. :II: Nature., here the Finnish musical magician headed back into more banging territory, building on orchestral pomp and metallic muscle for a record that was as vast as its themes. Its first look, Perfume Of The Timeless, was nine minutes long, and took three just for the vocals to start, and things only got grander from there. On The Antikythera Mechanism, he examined the ancient Greek astral device, the world's first known computer, and pondered human innovation. The Children Of Ata, meanwhile, told the story of a group of children stranded on an island for 15 months in the 1960s. At other points, Tuomas proved he wasn't kidding when he told K! that, "The whole theme of the album is time, history, humanism, mortality..." And so, just as things from the outside looked troubled for Nightwish, inside Tuomas' head, the Imaginaerum remains in full working order. (NR)

• “I don’t understand music. It’s still a mystery to me…” Up close with Nightwish’s Tuomas Holopainen
  

It’s become a cliché to talk about mixing the personal and political. But clichés are clichés for a reason. In a time when wealth inequality is worse than pre-Revolutionary France, the damaging effects of the ruling class are in plain view – especially on a personal level in the USA. So it’s no surprise, then, that Mannequin Pussy’s fourth full-length combines both to devastating effect. On it, the Philadelphia band simultaneously celebrated the beauty of the world (and sexuality) while struggling to exist within capitalism. The result is a set of clever, nuanced punk songs that aren’t afraid to lean into beauty and vulnerability. (MP)

• Mannequin Pussy: “I was told you get less angry as you grow up, but I’ve not found that to be true… It grows deeper every year”

We already know Cassyette’s got a mighty gift for hammering out banger after banger, but on her long-awaited debut, she found a way with her songwriting to get from your ears into your head and stay there rent-free. But while the furious bounce of Ipecac, the fizzing Go! and the downtrodden Over It are all brilliantly catchy, when things get grittier, the Essex artist blossoms. As she excavates the grief of her father’s death on the devastating When She Told Me and Four Leaf Clover, she demonstrates how truly versatile – and raw – she can be. This girl’s a multifaceted powerhouse. (EW)

• Cassyette: “In order to evolve and for the scene to have culture, it has to have a bit of everything”

Boston Manor have been on quite the journey over the past 10 years. From pop-punk upstarts to alt.rock heavyweights, they’ve undergone a significant sonic transformation, something which has never been more evident than on Sundiver. The gritty emotion that vocalist Henry Cox has always displayed is still there, but tracks like the potent Container demonstrate the maturity and craft with which the five-piece are now forming their tunes. ’90s grunge throwback Sliding Doors, meanwhile, is another excellent moment that shows Boston Manor’s increasing ability to turn their hand to whatever sound they choose. (JR)

• Boston Manor: “It’s arrogant to think that you’re in control of everything, but lazy to think that you’re not in control of anything”

Very vampy, very Mothica. From the whispering alt.pop The Reaper, to the shoegaze-y goth of Doomed, Kissing Death enveloped all that makes Mothica unique and charismatic. Taking themes of mortality, mental health, and vulnerability, the Oklahoma creative provided an introspective look on having a connection to the macabre and dark. She pulled apart what that can truly mean, and how we sometimes romanticise such themes when we shouldn’t. Vocally, there’s a uniformed effortlessness throughout, with breezy tones cemented among moody instrumentation, making for her most sophisticated record thus far. (RR)

• Mothica: “When you’ve been through so much and gone through so many rock bottoms, you start to think, ‘Nothing can hurt me now’”

On first listen, before the chart-topping success and triumphant Other Stage headline slot at Glastonbury, TANGK sounded like a bit of a gamble. There’s always been more to IDLES than the rowdy, beer-spilling lairiness that lodged in the public consciousness, but even so, this fifth album moved in unexpected directions. Influences from soul to Radiohead drew them further from the mosh-pit, but allowed more space for tenderness and subtlety, while singles like Gift Horse and Dancer walloped with groove rather than grimace. And most radical of all, in these times of division and hatred, Joe Talbot maintained to K! that these were all love songs. (OT)

• IDLES’ track-by-track guide to new album TANGK

In the pre-social media olden days, ‘[Insert name] was here’ was what bored teenagers used to scrawl on walls, in order to let people know they existed. Stand Atlantic’s fourth LP certainly reminded everyone what a force the Aussie crew are, as they embrace their darker side and evolve from their pop-punk roots into a glossy-but-savage rock band, unafraid to confront life’s various traumas head on. The album may open with the question, ‘I’m feeling existential / Does it even matter at all?’, but this collection of bangers is so vital, it should have every fan scrawling another old-school graffiti classic: ‘Stand Atlantic rules OK’. (MS)

• Stand Atlantic: “I’m so glad I got myself back – this album literally saved me”

Div-e Sepid, chieftan of the Demons Of Mazandaran was an imposing, complex figure in Persian mythology. London’s Lowen do him justice with a brilliant, bewitching second album named largely in his honour. Singer Nina Saeidi and guitarist Shem Lucas have been an ever-present fixture on the Brit-metal underground over the past five years, but they shocked friends and fans alike with the earthquaking terror, shimmering beauty and sheer limitless grandiosity of these six songs. Key to that is not just the awesome, Bolt Thrower-alike riffage that powers Waging War Against God and Ghazal For The Embrace Of Fire, but how Nina’s mesmeric vocals integrate, beckoning listeners into their hot abyss like an irresistible mirage amongst the maelstrom. A force on the rise. (SL)

• Lowen: “It’s illegal to play metal in Iran. It’s illegal for women to sing. So this is defiance, it’s rebellion”

In terms of modern heavy supergroups, pedigree doesn’t get much better than combining key members of The Dillinger Escape Plan, Every Time I Die and Fit For An Autopsy. Refusing to buckle under the weight of their mighty songwriting chops, though, Better Lovers’ debut is rampant, unhinged and packed with all the chaos and glory that’s made their members such beloved figures. Be it Greg Puciato’s explosive cries or the firecracker riffs of Jordan Buckley and Will Putney, this 10-track collection thrills throughout. Highly Irresponsible it may be in name, but we know by now we can always rely on these boys to deliver the goods. (JR)

• Better Lovers: “This is one of the coolest, least expected trips I’ve been on”

The follow-up to his 2012 mixtape, King Of The Mischievous South Vol. 1, Vol. 2 saw Denzel Curry once again assume the form of his alter-ego Big Ultra. Simultaneously a mixtape and a new album, it blurs the lines between the two types of records via a slew of impressive guests, including 2 Chainz and Mike Dimes. The latter pair’s vocals on G’Z UP help make it one of the darkest and most compelling tracks the rapper has committed to tape in his career, but throughout this is an intense ride through the dark and unforgiving past and present of life. (MP)

• Album review: Denzel Curry – King Of The Mischievous South Vol. 2

Invincible is right. In the time since Judas Priest's last album, 2018's Firepower, the Metal Gods have had much to contend with. Alongside genuinely heroic guitarist Glenn Tipton continuing to live and play with Parkinson's, singer Rob Halford revealed that he'd had treatment for prostate cancer. This on top of none of the Brummie heavyweights getting any younger. But if Priest cowered away from life's challenges, the whole enterprise would be revealed as full of shit and we should all just pack up and go home. Instead, their 19th opus is a thrilling, defiant, charged-up declaration that you're only as beaten as you think you are. Which, in Priest's case, is not at all. From the raging thrust of belting opener Panic Attack, through the groovier Serpent And The King, and metal meltdowns of Gates Of Hell and Crown Of Thorns, it's Birmingham Steel at its strongest and most unbending. Moreover, Invincible Shield was the ferocious sound of hitting back and having the balls to continue to live as you want. Which, 50 years since their Rocka Rolla debut, is why Priest continue to be the last word in heavy metal. (NR)

• “When you’ve cheated death, it changes your outlook on life”: Rob Halford takes us inside Judas Priest’s powerful, emotionally real new album

Trauma can manifest itself in all manner of unhealthy and debilitating ways. But if you’re Harvey Freeman, frontman of Graphic Nature and the victim of an unprovoked attack that left him wrestling with a barrage of emotions, it’s an opportunity to harness that negativity for something good. And in the case of Who Are You When No One Is Watching?, it was very good indeed. The Kent band continue to be a fascinating reimagining of the heyday of nu-metal, albeit with a more molten execution, while displaying its predilection for lyrical soul-baring. The result was catharsis on a colossal scale. From a dark place, Graphic Nature continued to be one of Brit metal's brightest lights here. (JH)

• Graphic Nature: “We’re grateful for everything, because in a second it can be taken away”

On album number four, it seemed as if Pale Waves had emerged from a chrysalis as the most fully-formed version of themselves. The Manchester quartet landed on a dreamy alt.pop sound that felt like a natural fit for their starry-eyed tales of infatuation past and present, but also represented them at their most authentic and distinct. As gooey as it could be, it was also frank and delicately nuanced, with singer Heather Baron-Gracie distilling fantasy from reality (Imagination), breaking someone’s heart gently (Hate To Hurt You), and reflecting on the woman who chose the church over her (Gravity). Put together, these were the building blocks of a gorgeous soundtrack to the season of crisp, cold nights and falling leaves. (EW)

• Heather Baron-Gracie: “From day one I’ve had the grandest ambitions for Pale Waves, and I always will”

The eviscerating assault of 200 Stab Wounds easily justifies their almost comically outrageous moniker. Manual Manic Procedures might ease in with a slow build, but once opener Hands Of Eternity starts swinging fists 90 seconds in, a direct tunnel to mosh-pit hell is swiftly excavated. As this second album progresses, the Ohioans provide an onslaught of violence for death metal diehards, while proving they have tricks up their blood-drenched sleeves from the hardcore-adjacent bass intro of the title-track to the sinister synths of Led To The Chamber/Liquified. An absolute killer from the Cleveland crushers. (OT)

• 200 Stab Wounds: “We didn’t know how f*cked-up the album cover was going to be!”

Rock stardom in 2024 has a wildly broader remit than ever before. Punchy attitude and anti-establishment abandon are still prerequisites, but there’s room now for far more subtlety and adventure than in generations past. On audacious third album Songs For The Living // Songs For The Dead, Kid Bookie took advantage to the fullest extent, expanding his own musical identity and opening new avenues for those following in his wake. Previously, the London trailblazer had leaned heavily on the grimy hip-hop with which he first broke through then, naturally, into nu-metal-tinged rap-rock aggression. Here, he comes of age, finding the common ground between British rap and downtrodden alt.rock, emo, industrial, even glassy dreampop and cosy indie folk on songs of grief and celebration, desire and commiseration. It’s a wild, purposefully erratic statement, but thrilling in its vulnerability and bold, unapologetic innovation. (SL)

• Kid Bookie: “I’m challenging the status quo by prodding and making people think. This is the place to practise rebellion and influence change”

“If there’s one record that defines who we are, it’s this one,” Sum 41 leader Deryck Whibley said of their eighth and final album, Heaven :x: Hell, earlier this year. The Canadian pop-punks chose to go big before they go home for the last time, having called time on their near-30-year career, with a double album. In doing so, thematically, they traversed the light and (well-publicised) dark sides of Deryck’s life. Musically, they delivered something for all the quarters of their fanbase – from those who consider 2001’s All Killer No Filler the band’s creative peak (Heaven), to the ones who favour the later detours into heavier terrain (Hell). In doing so, Sum 41 provided a comprehensive sign-off that ensures they’re leaving us on a high. (JH)

• The rise of Sum 41, as told through their most important gigs

Though Crawlers’ Come Over (Again) went viral back in 2021, it found a perfect home in 2024 nestled in The Mess We Seem To Make. Just like its blurred cover art featuring the four members of the northern alt.rockers, the record itself felt like a journal put to music, documenting fuzzy heads and fuzzy feelings, and all the complexities of young adulthood. A pressure always lingers around bands who found their listeners via virality – will they really stick around? With TMWSTM, Crawlers answered back with a firm, “Fuck yes.” There’s a good reason as to why this album felt a long time coming, and it’s because it was made with diligence. (RR)

• Crawlers: “You give less of a f*ck as you get older… You start realising life’s too short”

“We feed the masses, but we also feed on what other people feed the masses,” The Warning's Pau Villarreal Vélez told K! back in June. “While we were touring and while we were writing, we were also feeding ourselves emotionally... It’s consumption in every area.” That it is. The fourth album from the Villarreal Vélez sisters landed as a modern rock feast this year, allowing us to gorge on full, FX-layered guitar work and controlled, swooning vocal belts. With MORE and Automatic Sun bringing the same grit as Royal Blood or Queens Of The Stone Age, it was a listen that was as strong-willed and commanding as its imperative title. It didn’t just feed us, it let us indulge. (RR)

• The Warning: “Rock makes me feel powerful… everyone connects in such a big way”

Spectres have been stirring in the shadows for years now. Dark eyes watching from pallid faces. Siren songs calling to lost souls. In the blackest corners of the UK underground, a name whispered relentlessly amongst the faithful, first with curiosity, then soul-shuddering awe: Zetra. If anyone was worried that the London-based duo might spoil their mystique with the arrival of this long awaited debut, such concerns were quickly cast aside. Much as the gruesome twosome themselves stood up to scrutiny when they stepped into the light (without actually illuminating themselves, even unmasked) for a fascinating K! cover feature back in September, so too their music proved even more intriguing and all-enveloping when expanded to long-form, weaving goth and metal, pop and shoegaze into something beguilingly beautiful and new. Cameos from the likes of Svalbard’s Serena Cherry and Unto Others’ Gabriel Franco only add to the fascination, building out not just a sound, but a whole new world for devotees to explore. (SL)

• Zetra: “We can have fun with this, but it’s never a joke. It’s not silly. We’re not f*cking about”

The vocal minority who objected to Slaves rebranding as SOFT PLAY were left with egg on their face when Isaac Holman and Laurie Vincent came roaring back with HEAVY JELLY. For one thing, killer tune Punk’s Dead saw the dynamic duo tackle the backlash with characteristic snark. But more importantly, this fourth album proved their best and heaviest to date. The cartoonish charm of their pretension-free geezer-punk remained fully in place, while Isaac Is Typing… and Mirror Muscles pushed into hard-riffing nu-metal. HEAVY JELLY hit the UK Top Three, giving the finger to the ‘Go woke, go broke’ brigade in the process. (OT)

• SOFT PLAY: “We need to do this together… the magic of our band is both of us”

It’s been another banner year for American death metal. Where so many of their peers were busy digging deep into viscera or getting swept up in the gory grind, however, Blood Incantation continued to diverge from the rampant pack, no longer just fascinated by cosmic mystery but actively pushing their sound to the stars. In our review of incredible fourth album Absolute Elsewhere, K! suggested that it was for fans of death metal icons Morbid Angel, modern classical composer Hans Zimmer and prog overlords Pink Floyd. And that’s just about the best in-a-nutshell summary you could give. Progressive flourishes seemed inevitable following 2022’s ambient, instrumental, ultimately divisive predecessor Timewave Zero, but the way in which the two ‘sides’ here – The Stargate and The Message – work constant atmospheric synths, proggy flute solos and truly educated sci-fi sensibilities into a forceful, fascinating whole feels utterly unprecedented. It’s a bridge between worlds; a time machine helping today’s extremists understand how bands like Yes and Genesis, Camel and King Crimson were blowing minds all those decades ago. (SL)

• Blood Incantation: “I’ve always been motivated by space since I was a little kid”

War, far-right riots, Donald Trump… 2024 was not a vintage year for Planet Earth. But, if there’s an upside to all those downers, it’s that Kid Kapichi have no shortage of material to get their teeth into. The Brit punks' brilliant third album administered a well-deserved, steel toe-capped boot into everything from Brexit to the police. But it also brought some much-needed LOLZ, plus plenty of grade-A electro-pop-punk bangers to the (small-p) political party. And Suggs from Madness. Which means it might help you forget about the absolute state of the world – before hopefully inspiring you to go out and do something about it. (MS)

• Kid Kapichi: “Things might get worse before they get better – but they will get better”
  

If British metal’s hottest property felt a weight of expectation to deliver on their debut, they certainly didn’t show it. Instead, as vocalist/guitarist Debbie Gough suggested to K! in September, Devoured By The Mouth Of Hell is Heriot’s biggest step to date in their mission to “bring a new style of metal, with the same values we started with, making heavy, abrasive, immersive music”. It’s certainly an ambitious objective, but one the Swindon lot emphatically fulfilled on this superb record. On an opus bubbling with qualities, one of the biggest is its level of invention. Heaviness needn’t just mean leadenness, as illustrated by tracks like Opaline and Lashed, which find startling new ways to harness heft. (JH)

• Heriot: “I want us to bring a new style of metal, with the same values we started with, making heavy, abrasive, immersive music”

Chelsea Wolfe simply doesn't make bad music. But even so, She Reaches Out To She Reaches Out To She was an exceptional work. Partly an account of the her path to sobriety, it's also a more broad examination of cutting ties, removing negative influence, closing chapters and moving on. Hence, the title is a reflection on previous, ultimately linked points of change in life. After the intimate acoustics of 2019's achingly isolated Birth Of Violence, here things were done in an industrial-edged swell, with loops and electronics bringing to mind the likes of Massive Attack, while the pantheon of guitar noises and riffs found her rivalling Nine Inch Nails, creating an atmosphere as warm as it is enigmatic. As ever, it was her stunning voice that made all this work, a frail element of human soul that once again proved impossible to not get pulled in by. Even with a track record as gilded as hers, here Chelsea proved what a truly formidable creative she is. (NR)

• Chelsea Wolfe: “This feels very much like what I was put here to do”

If following up 2022’s incredible …Presents The Price Of Life seemed a tall order, Bob Vylan made light work of it. Rather than double down on the intensely visceral energy of that record, the 10 songs on Humble As The Sun introduced some more mellow musical tones into the equation, though the duo’s righteous anger at the system remained intact. In fact, Bobbie and Bobby infuse the historical context of their rage into these songs better than ever before, all through a sharp, socially-minded lens. It makes for an album that not only makes you think, but also want to act. (MP)

• Bob Vylan: “Our work is never done – the job is never complete”

Neck Deep have always known you can’t kick up the roots. Self-titling their fifth album was a screaming declaration of their intentions – a reclamation of their identity, the prospect of which had them overflowing with energy. Returning to a sound more scuffed than shiny, they wove into their sonic tapestry a greater sense of maturity here. The Wrexham pop-punks touch on politics, bad mental health days and domestic squabbles (‘Fucking drank all my kombucha!’ Ben Barlow moans on Sort Yourself Out), but left room to goof around, such as on the playful alien-themed Take Me With You. A celebration of the sunshine and the showers – and it proved to be so much fun. (EW)

• Ben Barlow: “We’re going back to our roots and we’re really stoked. This feels like Neck Deep”

Long live ‘flutecore’. Speed frontman Jem Siow might cringe a little every time someone reduces the Aussie bruisers’ incredible debut down to his ear-catching flute trill in the bridge of THE FIRST TEST but, memes aside, in the context of everything else it tells you so much about what makes ONLY ONE MODE quite so great. Hardcore might be booming and busting boundaries in equal measure right now, but surely no other band could have gotten away with that headline-generating moment of playful delicacy. Because when Jem and his bandmates tell us that touches like that aren’t gimmicks – much as when they tell us anything else – they fucking mean it. Indeed, there are precious few other flourishes amongst the self-explanatory attack of DON’T NEED, I MEAN IT and NO LOVE BUT FOR OUR OWN, just brute-force bludgeon forged amongst the blood and bruises of the Sydney scene. “Speed’s attitude from the very beginning has been ‘minimum input, maximum impact’,” Jem told us at the beginning of the year. “I never thought we’d ever do anything more than a seven-inch. Because ‘Who the fuck wants to listen to a hardcore LP?’” Thank fuck they changed their minds. (SL)

• Speed: “The experience of hardcore – the scale of it, the enormity – is mind-boggling right now”

On Saviors’ epic title-track, Billie Joe Armstrong reckons that Green Day are ‘the last of the rockers making a commotion’. While a few rock stars on this very list will probably be having a word with the frontman, it’s hard to think of many bands who are still making such a vital noise, more than 30 years into their career. Joining back up with producer Rob Cavallo, album 14 hears the Oakland legends effortlessly flexing their songwriting powers, from the classic punk of Look Ma, No Brains! and 1981 to the infectious, explosive Coma City and brutally honest Dilemma. And yet, as killer as it all is, you wouldn’t put it past the trio to keep the commotion going for decades still to come… (EG)

• Green Day: “We’re not going anywhere… and we’re just getting better!”
  

In a year in which death metal threw up (read that either way you wish) plenty of reasons to be cheerful, Gatecreeper added not just expertise in the field, but an ambition to blow the roof off the whole thing. Thus, Dark Superstition found the Arizona crew adding an arena-sized stomp to proceedings, not to mention a touch of goth. Indeed, the enormous The Black Curtain sounds like HIM's Poison Girl in an Obituary shirt, while the riff to Superstitious Vision could be Wings Of A Butterfly through an HM-2. But nowhere did this sound like softening up: it's just bigger bangers. And the spine of Gatecreeper remained a joyous exercise in being in love with death metal, like on the chonk-tastic Caught In The Treads, Oblivion and Dead Star. With death metal's new wave getting bigger all the time, here it found a new height to aim for. (NR)

• Gatecreeper: “Death metal is sacred, and you’re passing it from generation to generation… a lot of genres don’t have that”

The emotional gut punch of Linkin Park’s return was accompanied by surprise at how fully stocked it was – heralding live shows, an excellent single (The Emptiness Machine), and even a full-length record. But what tact would LP take on From Zero, their first album in seven years? Perhaps sensibly, they eschewed the experimental impulses of their last few albums before Chester Bennington’s far-too-early death, in favour of something familiar yet fresh, awash with the sound that captivated the world in the first place. Meanwhile, new co-vocalist Emily Armstrong – a figure of intense scrutiny – let her love for the band and decades-long admiration of Chester flow through her, delivering performances of great intensity and passion. (JH)

• Album review: Linkin Park – From Zero

Poppy had a hell of a 2024. Collaborating with Bad Omens and Knocked Loose on two of the biggest songs of the year, there was a danger that her own album could end up overshadowed or underrated. But there’s something about Poppy that has always made her impossible to ignore. Her sense of subtle subversion, schizoid flourishes and chameleonic instinct for adapting to any environment are still present on these 15 songs, but they’re more measured and refined than we’ve seen before. It's all channelled with a focus and consistency that make it possible to forget that she was best known as a YouTube weirdo some viewers weren’t sure was even human less than a decade ago.

It’s telling, indeed, that the primary criticisms on release were that these Negative Spaces feel ‘occasionally erratic’ or indicative of some kind of ‘identity crisis’, highlighting the tension between the oddball Poppy of old and the mainstream-straddling superstar she could so easily become. Ultimately, it’s that tension, and the willingness to veer between the metal of the center’s falling out and the (mostly) undiluted synthpop of surviving on defiance with no sense of compromise, that makes this collection quite so thrilling. Plus, there’s no better collaborator to help walk that line than ex-Bring Me The Horizon maestro Jordan Fish, whose pitch-perfect production here is absolutely attuned to what she is trying to accomplish. Immediately, it's hard not to wonder where Poppy might head next on her skittish pop-metal odyssey, but aficionados absolutely must stop a while to luxuriate in what she has accomplished. (SL)

• Poppy: “There’s self-development, reflection, and messages that I have held close to me that have rung true”

Having spent the past eight years making a name for themselves – and many more in countless other bands – London punks High Vis officially solidified their status as British hardcore’s brightest lights with the sensational Guided Tour. Continuing (and perfecting) their foray into melding the worlds of jangly Britpop with antagonising punk, it’s a gritty expose into the minds and lives of working-class Britain and a disenfranchised generation. Frontman Graham Sayle stands as a veritable voice of the voiceless, raging against broken mental health services, landlords, toxic friendships and a public sector left to destitution in a system riddled with apathy. It’s vicious and it’s vital, painting a portrait of life in Grey Britain 2024, yet ultimately exists to bring people together with songs begging to be belted out by thousands in unison. (LM)

• High Vis: “You can’t judge someone because of the privileges they’ve been given. It’s how you deal with those privileges”

twenty one pilots may have welcomed fans ‘back to Trench’ in the opening line of their seventh record, but the Ohio icons did so much more than just treading old ground. In fact, Clancy took the very best of what’s come before and somehow upped it, with frontman Tyler Joseph peeling back gripping new layers to his musical make-up and drummer Josh Dun serving each of these genre-busting 13 songs like an ever-faithful Bishop of Dema. The band have reportedly now finished with the mesmerising lore that’s got them to this point, but at least Clancy is an incredibly fond farewell. (EG)

• Album review: twenty one pilots – Clancy

It is, as another great Australian rock band once noted, a long way to the top if you wanna rock’n’roll. And Amyl And The Sniffers have certainly put the miles in. 2024 was the year all that hard yakka paid off, as everyone’s favourite bar-band brawlers moved to LA, became arena-sized headliners and released this colossal-sounding record. That it landed in the Top 10 is tribute both to the irresistible quality of these 12 platinum-plated punk rock anthems and the sheer relentlessness with which Amy Taylor and co. go about their business. And the beauty is, their rock’n’roll journey is just getting started, with new peaks already on the horizon. (MS)

• Amyl And The Sniffers: “This music is about my whole life, and where it will take me. I’m still figuring it all the f*ck out”

Further proof – not that it was needed – that Bring Me The Horizon are UK rock’s leading creative force, POST HUMAN: NeX GEn is a thrilling ride that touches on all facets of the band’s sound, from fleeting moments of deathcore right through to the polished pop-rock that has made them a household name. Wrapped up in a nostalgic yet forward-thinking emo sound, the likes of LosT, sTraNgeRs and DiE4u are all up there with some of the biggest tunes Oli and the gang have penned so far, while the more experimental fare of cuts like Top 10 staTues tHat CriEd bloOd show their desire to push the envelope remains as steadfast as ever. POST HUMAN: NeX GEn is up there with the best of the Steel City natives’ stellar back catalogue. (JR)

• Bring Me The Horizon: “The way we’re doing stuff now, it feels like I’m making art again, for art’s sake”

2024 belonged to Knocked Loose. They received their first-ever GRAMMY nomination for their breathtaking single Suffocate with Poppy, they played one of the hardest sets that American TV has ever seen on Jimmy Kimmel, they announced their biggest-ever tour of the UK – including London’s O2 Academy Brixton – and released the best album of the year in You Won’t Go Before You’re Supposed To.

In a scene awash with incredible talent and boundary-breaking bands from all corners of the globe, the Kentucky crew stand firmly at the top of the hardcore mountain with their blistering, bruising, barbaric third album that hits like a breezeblock to the jaw.

Bucking the assumed trend that in order to grow you have to soften your edges, Knocked Loose’s heaviest outing to date is by far their most successful and the most accomplished, realised vision of just what they're capable of. Bryan Garris’ feral dog vocals tear through the onslaught of cacophonous percussion and chainsaw guitars, that – instead of surrendering themselves to senseless chaos – lock in to serious groove (as on Piece By Piece) and even drop in hints of nu-metal bounce (Take Me Home).

A seething, weaponised tension permeates the record, shrouded in a shadowy darkness, and yet it’s in no way dispiriting. There’s a catharsis and dare-we-say joy to the abyssal depths we find ourselves in – not just in the music and the lyrics, but for what this album means and what it stands for. It’s the product of a band on the fringes, defiantly doing things their own way, and never bowing down to sacrifice artistic integrity. Proof that following your own course and staying true to your message and an unbridled love for heaviness matters more than whatever is fashionable that week. It’s not just a record, it’s a statement of intent. No compromise, no mercy. (LM)

• Knocked Loose: “Sacrificing heaviness was never an option… As this band grows, it only gets more uncomfortable and extreme”