actual Top 5 Albums of 2015
Entry posted by Laughing Man
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was gonna do a top 10 but I haven't actually gotten to listen to all of the albums I wanted to from last year, so I'm just gonna do the top 5 instead which I'm pretty sure of at this point. even if I did listen to the rest, the top 5 isn't likely to change.
5. Sorni Nai by Kauan
This one took me completely by surprise this year, not having been familiar with this band prior and only hearing about the album through some positive buzz and word-of-mouth. Sorni Nai is a concept album based upon the Dyatlov Pass Incident in which a group of hikers perished under mysterious and bizarre circumstances on the mountain of Kholat Syakhl - some of you may be familiar with this story as the basis of the indie survival horror game KHOLAT that was released last year.
The lyrics are almost entirely in Finnish, but even without understanding the words, the subject matter really sets the tone for this album: a blend of post-rock, doom metal, and folk that is cold and bleak, yet also extremely cinematic in its approach to atmosphere. It's pretty much the soundtrack to dying slowly on a mountain, and it's absolutely beautiful.
4. The Plague Within by Paradise Lost
Not much to be said about this one - after over 20 years, the gothic/doom metal stalwarts in Paradise Lost have returned to the sound they pioneered, fusing the melancholy dirge of doom metal with the raw intensity of death metal once again to fantastic results. Vocalist Nick Holmes is utilizing his death growls for the first time on a Paradise Lost album since 1992's Shades of God, and it's never sounded better. Paired with some of the heaviest riffs of their career (along with some of the most mesmerizing melodies) the resulting album stands up against their early classics as one of the best in their long and storied career.
3. Holographic Violence by Grave Babies
Another left field album for me, Holographic Violence is the sound of a former noise-punk outfit fully embracing 80s gothic rock with some industrial, shoegaze, and even grunge influences thrown in. This may sound like an unusual mixture, but against all odds the band makes it work incredibly well. icy post-punk basslines clash with distorted riffs and skittering electronics to create an album that is simultaneously dark, catchy, and at times unsettling - as I've described it to numerous people already, this sounds like if The Cure and My Bloody Valentine had a baby, gave it up for adoption, and it was raised by Nine Inch Nails and Alice in Chains. It's weird, atmospheric, kind of scary, and just plain fun.
2. The Ride Majestic by Soilwork
Anyone who knows me would know that this would be on here. Soilwork are one of my all-time favorite bands, and The Ride Majestic is without a doubt one of the best and most focused records they've ever released. After a string of albums of declining quality during the mid-2000s, the band rebounded hard with 2013's fantastic double album The Living Infinite, seeing them refine their melodic death metal sound whilst pitting the old against the new and throwing in some newfound progressive elements to boot. The Ride Majestic largely expands on this, focusing it even more while upping the heaviness, intensity, and atmosphere perhaps farther than they ever have before. All in all, The Ride Majestic is the newest peak on their continued upswing and a potential new classic for the melodic death metal genre as a whole.
1. Abyss by Chelsea Wolfe
Here it is - my favorite album of the year, and one of my new favorite albums of all-time. This album not only met my lofty expectations but blew them away. Although singer-songwriter Chelsea Wolfe's 2011 album Ἀποκάλυψις has been one of my all-time favorite albums for 4 years now, Abyss easily managed to surpass it in every possible way.
While Ἀποκάλυψις dabbled in an experimental mixture of folk, noise rock, and doom metal and 2013's Pain Is Beauty was largely an industrial/electronic affair, Abyss seeks to unite all of it together into a work of art loosely based around the concept of sleep paralysis, something that Wolfe has had personal experience with throughout her life. The songs range from lush and gentle to dense and panicked with Wolfe's gorgeous vocals weaving through them like an ethereal fog, not only complimenting but enhancing the unique atmosphere created by each one. The result is an album that can be described variously as haunting, suffocating, terrifying, beautiful, dreamlike, nightmarish, otherworldly - truly a descent into the titular abyss that explores the emotions, worries, vulnerabilities, and darkness of the human mind.
bonus: the names of some other albums I enjoyed last year, in no particular order
- Permanence by No Devotion
- Dreamcrash by Grave Pleasures
- Opacities by Sikth
- A Dream in Static by Earthside
- Psychic Warfare by Clutch
- The Children of the Night by Tribulation
- Cold Inferno by Disarmonia Mundi
- Untitled by The Armed
- Beyond the Red Mirror by Blind Guardian
- The Mindsweep by Enter Shikari
- Feel the Misery by My Dying Bride
- Purple by Baroness
- Fugue by Rest Among Ruins
- Under the Red Cloud by Amorphis
- Luminiferous by High on Fire
- Every Open Eye by Chvrches
- Exhausting Fire by Kylesa
- Extinct by Moonspell
- Meliora by Ghost
- Art Angels by Grimes
- The Powers That B by Death Grips
- Ours Is Chrome by Superheaven
- Enki by Melechesh
- Restarter by Torche
- Better Nature by Silversun Pickups
- VII: Sturm und Drang by Lamb of God
- Time and Trauma by 36 Crazyfists
- End vs. Beginning by Rise to Fall
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