writing — Blog - Crushtor.net

Oh, lists. My mind works in lists, I think. I dream in lists. Lists form in my mind’s eye even when I don’t want them, let alone need them. 2024 seemed like a long year to me - this time last year feels like an eternity ago. If I ever cried poor at any point last year - it was because I spent a whole bunch of money on gigs and albums (about 90 of them combined) because I brace myself in quixotic defiance against Big Streaming who will never ever get a cent of my money.

I’m going to limit myself to ten albums - in no particular order - with a couple of honourable mentions to boot. As for what constitutes “metal” these days is a matter for keyboard warriors in comments sections. It is what it is.

Caligula’s Horse - Charcoal Grace

From my review at HysteriaMag.com:

The centrepiece of the album is the Rush by way of Dream Theater-esque Charcoal Grace suite, spanning four distinct movements. It opens with cinematic fret runs, leads into pensive piano, and finishes on guitar heroism worthy of the highest honours. Prey floats over the top of our senses, seguing effortlessly into A World Without, inspired by knotted technically ecstatic guitar as much as it is old school 70s prog-headedness like Camel or King Crimson…
Akin to the bombast and ceremony of their genre cousins in Wilderun or Scardust, Charcoal Grace marinates in sumptious grooves, a constant tension between the sublime and aggressive, and centrepiece instrumental and vocal performances. It all adds up to a cohesive, spellbinding whole. This is their landmark opus, the Caligula’s Horse album that will steal the crown from all that has come before. Progheads, rejoice!

High On Fire - Cometh the Storm

I couldn’t believe that the Shirtless One (Matt Pike) hadn’t released a High on Fire album for six years. I suppose Pike’s been preoccupied with Sleep. The band, not the nocturnal restorative. Cometh the Storm’s freaks and geeks gallery is rounded out by Coady Willis (Melvins, Big Business, et. al.) and as a result, it sounds massive. Summoning Motörheaded riffage belted on to Pike’s apocalytpic caterwauling makes for a fine outing by the river Styx in the title track, and there’s more artyfacts and nuggets hidden in this record than your cardigan-wearing Greens voter aunty’s granny flat. There really aren’t any lulls on this album. It’s burning at every end, and makes a case for a new genre: functional stoner metal - the kinda guy that can choke down two or three billys before clock on and still operate heavy machinery for eight hours straight. Woof.

Black Sites - The Promised Land?

Think of an American prog band. Is it Dream Theater? Of course it is. (Could be Symphony X or Fates Warning, if you’re super duper special.) Odd today almost no one mentions Queensryche. No, they don’t use eight-string basses and fourteen different keyboards in 22/7 time, but are (were?) as high-concept as any given Rush album with a hard rocking musicianship to match. Dry of guitar wank instead of say, Scenes from a Memory, The Promised Land? is one of the best American prog concept records since Operation: Mindcrime. Mark Sugar and co. effortlessly blend thrash headbangers (Descent) and proto-metal gallopers (World on Fire) with the confidence and bombast of a decades-seasoned stadium-filler act. Gideon eases off the gas, plunging depths of despair and turmoil evoking Mindcrime protagonist Nikki’s fall from grace at the hands of Sister Mary. Their dynamic twelve-minute title track culminates in the triumph of journeying - and perhaps never finding - that promised land. It’s an enthralling listen from beginning to end. If you sleep on this, you’re crazy.

Flaming Wrekage - Terra Inferna

From my review, again:

Each track could be considered its own mini-symphony, seguing between sections seamlessly and creating their own unique and urgent textures and moods. Paralysis catches one off guard since it begins like a standard riffy boi but halts midway to play around with a crunchy, solitary motif; drums and bass nowhere to be heard. Leadwork explodes like fireworks amid Enduring Decay, culminating in the 80s denim-and-leather throwback Our Own Blood, tremelos a-go-go and quick-time percussion smacking headlong into towering walls of guitar. There’s so many holy shit moments in this record upon first blush, one only wonders how many we’ll pick up during subsequent listens.
Terra Inferna is as much as a celebration of the rich chainmail tapestries metal can weave as it is a testament to their blossoming as an incredible death metal force not to be wreked with. There’s only one way to play this record: loud and on repeat.

Evergrey - Theories of Emptiness

This album blows me away every time I listen to it. Evergrey have achieved pop-prog apotheosis on Theories of Emptiness, right from bombastic opener Falling from the Sun, sadboi arena rocker Misfortune, and the duet we’ve all wanted (well, I have) since forever, Cold Dreams featuring Jonas Renkse (Katatonia). It lends off 80s power ballad vibes while maintaining an icy grip on bleak, barren soundscapes. Everything they approach, they nail; Queensryche-ian crunch, Pink Floyd-like leadwork, and soulful gospel choirs. It’s Evergrey done up to 11, much like their breakout Recreation Day. Outstanding work.

Suldusk - Anthesis

After being blown away by their set prior to Katatonia this year (was it this year?) and sacrificing a meal or two to buy their prior album Lunar Falls, these Aussies knock it out of the gloomy moor with Anthesis. Plucking bits of the darker end of metal, neo-folk, and atmospherics, carried on the back of vocalist (and multi-instrumentalist) Emily Highfield’s sublime voice. It’s like the reincarnation of The Gathering rinsed in black, a majestic and ethereal follow-up to Green Carnation’s Light of Day, Day of Darkness in tone and musicianship. Album of the year contender, for sure.

And here it is!

Devenial Verdict - Blessing of Despair

This album begins with a big gulp of air, as if vocalist Riku Saressalo is about to plunge into fathomless icy depths - and it’s kind of the feeling one gets spinning up Blessing of Despair, blasting along spidery crawls of guitar and guttural lamentations that all seems to luminescence around the fringes. That’s just in first track I Have Become the Sun. This furious melancholy slithers through the entire album, sewn up with ear-melting musicianship, engineered to shift moods on a whim through the slightest suggestion. You’ll hear dervish-like Arabesques (The Quietus), bloodthirsty death marches (Solus), mouthwatering lashings of groove (Garden of Eyes), and epic dissonant takes on the genre that give (and gave) Ulcerate a run for their jandals (Moon-Starved). Death metal rarely has “it all” - but this disc definitely does.

Amiensus - Reclamation Parts I and II

Progressive black metal (if that’s what we’re calling it) over these two ambitious discs is for want of a better word, beautiful. Yeah, it’s brutal as fuck at times but Reclamation Parts I and II (which should be taken as a whole) feels vibrant, resplendent, triumphant. Just like Wilderun or Disillusion before them, it’s a grand opus that takes in the wondrous spectrum of human emotion while retaining an overwhelming joy. It’s a joy evoked by the simple pleasure of listening to these sounds, as a haze between one’s internal world and the external settles in. A crowning achievement in the genre as it spans so many - folk, neo-classical, thrash, prog - because it will leave you in pure awe.

Unto Others - Never, Neverland

From the hard yet jangly chords of opener Butterfly, Gabe Franco’s baritone croon, rich with metaphor comparing a difficult lover to a butterfly (I could win your heart with a melody / I could comfort you with a sweet serenade (I made) / Or I could lash my tongue in a criticism, yeah / Or put you down and pray for the tears in your eyes / I want you to die) you can just feel that this is album is dark magic pressed into thin perspex. It shifts from goth to crossover Suicidal Tendencies thrash (Momma Likes the Door Closed) to ironic post-punk meets Steinman pop (Angel of the Night) with such self-assuredness it’s almost criminal. This all occurs over three consecutive tracks, by the way. What’s even more incredible is that some of these mouthwatering cuts clock in at 7” 45 lengths: a punchy Fame, a punky Flatline, or a satisfying morsel of Blue Oyster Cult worship Hoops. It all feels like Lt. Tuck Pendleton’s bittersweet lament in Innerspace: “When things are at their darkest pal, it’s a brave man who can kick back and party.” So Unto Others did. And we reaped the benefits.

Cemetery Skyline - Nordic Gothic

In a way, it was inevitable. We should be grateful for its inevitability. Spearheaded by Mikael Stanne (Dark Tranquillity, Grand Cadaver, The Halo Effect) and featuring members of Insomnium, The Man-Eating Tree, Dimmu Borgir, and Amorphis both past and present, this is like the Nordic (and gothic) Power Station, featuring Robert Palmer plus Chic and Duran Duran members in. Ever since 1999’s Projector, Dark Tranquillity embraced goth wholesale via Martin Brandstrom’s Depeche Mode electronics. Freed from shackles of melodic death, Nordic Gothic is pure pale light reflected in nightime clouds electro-goth beating with a blue and yellow Scandinavian heart. A yearning despondence throbs through this disc, whether it’s inviting absent-minded swaying about chessboard dancefloors (Torn Away) or whiskey-and-regret drowned metal and synthpop after midnight (Violent Storm). Thanks to hindsight and maturity, cribbing bits of a-ha (yeah, they were kinda goth) and Lacrimosa and varnishing it all over with an unmistakeable 1980s Scandi-pop sheen (c.f. Never Look Back) sounds fresh, moody, and forever enticing. If you’re even goth-curious, it’s a must listen.

TEN HONOURABLE MENTIONS 2024

Iotunn - Kinship

Hamferð - Men Guðs hond er sterk

Vale of Pnath - Between The Worlds Of Life And Death

Sworn - A Journey Told Through Fire

Carnosus - Wormtales

Gaerea - Coma

Blood Incantation - Absolute Elsewhere

Oficium Triste - Hortus Veneum

Oceans of Slumber - Where Gods Fear to Speak

In Vain - Solemn

Collage by Brooke DorrattIn 2011, I completed my thesis on music journalism in Australia, titled Rock Sells Out? Cultural creation, industry influence and electronic evolution. I resigned as Digital Editor of Hysteria Mag last month. So I'm FREE AT LAST to dump my bargain basement opinions on whether my thesis holds any water, five years on.

“The counter-culture was a mistake”

Legendary rock writer Robert Christgau said the counter-culture’s “gospel of sexual liberation and generational identity became a smug ritual” in the 60s and 70s, and that’s no less true now. Dancing around state troopers and placing flowers in gun barrels isn’t a thing any more. However, we do have tweets and blogs and blogs about tweets about how someone or something is “problematic” because it disagrees with their world view. This is now called “virtue-signalling,” or expressing an opinion to get a pat on the back for it. Adulthood, at least to me, is the feeling you got as a kid as you cleaned your room unprompted, without your parents even noticing. You do shit because you have to, not for external validation.

Cultural capital is bullshit

I argued that cultural capital builds up around rock journalists who have access to certain artists or bands. This is only true…for other rock writers. In my experience, the public couldn’t give a shit. Only other scribes scramble for the top of the rock writing pile, reaching out for that crown of cool. Like any niche in the marketplace, achievement in the niche is self-congratulatory. Of course, the output benefits almost no one outside the niche.

Reviewer as self-entitled brat, not “tastemaker”

The rock reviewer in this day and age is not a tastemaker. You cannot tell people what they should and should not listen to. I think Emmure is complete shit, but people will fight and die for Frankie Palmieri’s right to pollute the atmosphere with his slack-jawed internet rants disguised as songs. Reviewers, especially who haven’t grown up with glossy mags are doing it for the cultural kudos (which as I said before, no one gives a shit about.) I’ve encountered many doing it for those cool points. Which are redeemable for an amount south of zero. I cannot pay the rent with cool points, so here we are.

Authenticity, schmauthenticity

Every band has a schtick. If they don’t have one, they should probably go out and find one. Authenticity is easy to emulate and filtered through PR and communications specialists. A band is authentic predicated on the fact their PR says they are. The mere act of declaration invalidates true authenticity, so nothing is authentic. The rampant amount of back room fiddling with articles and copy lays that theory to rest.

The irony of critical rock journalism 2: Electric Ironyloo

In Australia at least, every major rock publication is held at gunpoint by record labels or PR. That’s not to say it’s the friendliest mugging in the world. Because it sort of is.

Without access to labels, managers, PRs (the roles of which get so confusing after a while), you do not have a publication. Worse still, many of these labels advertise in these publications so that true “criticism” is near impossible. During the Soundwave era, before Soundwave put everything on the credit card and cried “oopsie!” when they couldn’t pay it back, Soundwave had a near monopoly on supplying content (not the content itself, but the material or access to create it). If you upset your only supplier, it meant you had no publication.

Publications that can diversify their income may have a chance. Even so, if you upset a PR, you don’t get content. So nothing has changed in this regard.

Media playing catch up – the gates are crushed and burning

The kids with their Snapchat, Instagram and Facebook are creating their own communities – they seldom need mags or publications to tell them anything. People can connect to their favourite artists or bands using social media. In many cases, a band will make an announcement themselves, leaving the media to play catch up. By the time the media does, it’s already old news.

So as depressing as that is – my thesis still holds water. In some ways, even more so. Now give me some money so I can finish paying my HECS debt off.

As for writing about rock n' roll again? I'm good...for the moment.

The Best Metal Albums of 2024