SLIS’s 18 Best Albums of 2018: celebrating the best in rock, metal, alternative, electronica and alternative hip-hop amidst a chaotic year.
We’re just a few weeks away from saying goodbye to 2018. It was a year that rattled nerves, tested our mettle, and raised questions about where we’re heading. Luckily we had a great soundtrack to get us through it, and in many instances, seeing artists confronting our state of angst head on.
So here’s our list off the best and brightest of the year. As always, our list dips heaviest into rock (there are enough pop music sites to cover the other stuff), the experimental, and the oft overlooked. If you’d like to own any of these on Amazon, simply click the album cover to peruse and purchase. We’ve also included honorable mentions also worth being celebrated.
18.Holygram Modern Cults
This German outfit’s début album seamlessly marries shoegaze, goth and post-punk into a bewitching brew that sounds like the unholy fusion of Joy Division and My Bloody Valentine. They cast a beautiful gloom on tracks like A Faction, Signals, and Still There.
17. Beauty in Chaos Finding Beauty In Chaos
Guitarist Michael Ciravolo’s project features an insanely impressive amount of guest performers including Al Jourgensen (more on him shortly), Simon Gallup, Wayne Hussey, Robin Zander, Michael Aston, Ashton Nyte, Ice-T and more, for a mix of dream-pop, New Wave, glam and hard rock.
16. Dean Ween Rock 2
On his second solo album, Dean Ween continues to follow his quirky muse, from raunchy tunes like Fingerbangin’ to alt-country (Don’t Let The Moon Catch You Cryin’), and party jams (Yellow Pontiac). We may never get a new Ween album, but Rock 2 keeps the Boognish spirit afloat.
Click here for my (hilarious) podcast interview with Dean discussing the album.
15. Ministry Amerikkkant
When I interviewed Al Jourgensen in 2016 and asked if Trump would become his anger-inducing muse (like George W. Bush and his father before him) if elected, he responded by saying that’s really low-hanging fruit. I mean I wasted my time on three albums of Bush and I’m going to waste my time on an album about Trump? I don’t think so man. I even have some kind of dignity left!
But rise to the challenge he did, with Amerikkkant, Ministry’s most experimental album since their 1988 classic The Land of Rape and Honey. While it falls short of his best work, it’s his most accomplished in years, a weird sonic collage, fever dream that encapsulates just hot surreal political theater has become on songs like I Know Words, Wargasm and Twilight Zone.
I was initially muted on my response to Amerikkant, but it has grown on me throughout the year, making for an interesting aural counterpoint to the 24/7 news cycle.
14. Venus Flytrap Icon
This cult UK act’s long-awaited return is gloriously eclectic. Icon is totally engaging throughout, and despite the band’s gothic lineage, never takes itself too seriously, from the Dr. Who The Genesis of the Daleks to Deadly Nightshade, a disco-beat propelled gem that warns of femme fatale’s and carnal delights. It also showcases Alex Novak’s quavering, bassy vocals, which further distinguishes the group from their competitors.
13. Nine Inch Nail’s Bad Witch
Trent Reznor continues his prolific streak of EP’s with Bad Witch, encompassing his patented blend of scalpel sharp industrial (Shit Mirror), and more experimental elements, like the Bowie inspired oddity God Break Down The Door.
12. Uncle Acid and The Deadbeats Wasteland
Wasteland is a dystopian concept album that’s as lyrically compelling as it is packed with psych-rock stompers like I See Through You, Stranger Tonight as Exodus. These stoner iconoclasts are far from mainstream, but their crazy-quilt sound has never been more accessible.
11.The Black Queen Infinite Games
Electronic trio fronted by former The Dillinger Escape Plan vocalist Greg Puciato expand their darkwave/synth-pop palette on this stylish sophomore effort.
There is a pronounced cinematic quality to The Black Queen’s sound, and in many ways, Infinite Games sounds like a soundtrack to a film that doesn’t exist on tracks like the percolating No Accusations and noir-ambient soundscapes of Your Move, while Lies About You, Impossible Condition and Porcelain Veins wouldn’t be out-of-place in a John Hughes film.
10. Dr. Octagon Moosebumps: An Exploration Into Modern Day Horripilation
It’s been 22 years since 1996’s Dr. Octagonecologyst, an instant bizarro-hip-hop classic, mixing sci-fi and pornographic imagery. But the trio of Kool Keith, Dan The Automator, and DJ Q-bert haven’t lost a step on this mind-melting sophomore release as evidenced on warped tracks like Polka Dots, Area 54, and Flying Waterbed.
9. Aphex Twin Collapse
When Richard D. James emerged from isolation a few years back, it was greeted with rabid anticipation. But then his output proved so prolific that it became overwhelming, and a little too much of a good thing. The Collapse EP is the best of his 21st century releases, however, and might be his most essential work since his 90’s reign.
8. Suede The Blue Hour
Suede don’t add anything new to their sound on The Blue Hour, but with tracks as melodramatically gorgeous as Life is Golden, Flytipping and The Invisibles, why mess up a good thing? Growing older suits their melancholy sound, and certainly moves middle-age geezers like myself.
7. John Carpenter’s Halloween Original Soundtrack
The new Halloween entry marks Carpenter’s first Halloween franchise score since 1982’s Halloween III: Season of the Witch, and follows close on the heels of his recent spate of solo albums including Anthology, Lost Themes and Lost Themes II.
Like those albums, the new soundtrack was co-written with Carpenter’s son Cody and godson Daniel Davies, and it offers a musical complexity that sets it apart from earlier Halloween scores, mixing original elements with entirely new compositions and modern production techniques.
Click here for my John Carpenter interview
It’s also his most aggressive soundtrack, approximating industrial metal, making it an album you can bang your head whilst being terrified.
6. Spiritualized And Nothing Hurt
If this indeed the last Spiritualized release, it sees Jason Pierce going out on top, with one of the most emotionally effecting albums of his career. Songs like I’m You Man, A Perfect Miracle, and Let’s Dance are graceful, soulful concoctions that rival the band’s 1998 masterpiece Ladies and Gentlemen, We Are Floating Through Space.
5. A Perfect Circle Eat The Elephant
The last time A Perfect Circle released an album, it was 2004’s Emotive, a political protest album railing against an unpopular republican president and a divided electorate…so what better time for them to resurface with tunes that examine our current perilous present?
Eat The Elephant also sees the group embrace their more gothic elements than ever before on 80’s era throwbacks like So Long, and Thanks For All The Fish, Hourglass and Get The Led Out, but rockers like Talk Talk and The Doomed prove they haven’t mellowed with age.
4.Daughters You Won’t Get What You Want
Full disclosure: I didn’t know what to think of this album when it hit me like an atom bomb. It was during a particularly stressful week and its battering ram delivery made me feel more freaked out than I already was.
But after allowing several weeks for this to sink in, I now share the general consensus that this is one of the most compelling, disturbing, and original albums of the year, covering everything from industrial noise rock (City Song, The Lords Song), electronic trance (Less Sex), and cinematic soundscapes (Daughter).
Alexis S.F. Marshall’s vocals are a potent mix of Michael Gira, Nick Cave, and Todd A (Cop Shoot Cop), acting like a deranged narrator guiding listeners across the album’s nightmarish sonics.
3. Sleep The Sciences
What more can one say about the glorious return of these stoner metal pioneers? It’s a 6 song workout of epic proportions, a scorched earth onslaught thanks to rippers like Marijuanaut’s Theme, Sonic Titan, and Giza Butler. I’m just mad at myself for not listening to its doom majesty sooner.
2. Failure In The Future Your Body Will Be The Furthest Thing From Your Mind
It’s been a true pleasure getting to hear new Failure material all year-long in the form of 3 Ep’s (check out my reviews for In The Future, Your Body Will Be and The Furthest Thing), but hearing them compiled in the final product was another revelation, an intricately layered musical puzzle coming together with expert precision, anchored by lyrics reflecting how social media is changing society in unprecedented and worrying ways.
In The Future Your Body Will Be The Furthest Thing From Your Mind contained four additional tracks that were equally ambitious, including the haunting ballad Another Post Human Dream, and The Pineal Electric, a Beatles-esque stunner that feels like a companion piece to Mulholland Drive (off their 2015 album The Heart is a Monster).
Of all the recent band reunions, Failure’s has been one of the most rewarding, showing them at the top of their game, and In The Future Your Body Will Be The Furthest Thing From Your Mind is just as ambitious, expansive, and thought-provoking, as its sprawling title.
Click here for my recent podcast episode with drummer Kellii Scott discussing the new album.
1. Yob Our Raw Heart
After a harrowing bout with diverticulitis, Yob vocalist and guitarist Mike Scheidt heavy soul-searching resulted in the most challenging and moving album of the band’s career.
While their pummeling stoner angst was on full display, it was the more gentle, soulful, and dare we say uplifting moments, on songs like Beauty in Falling Leaves and the title track that resonated most. Our Raw Heart wasn’t just therapy for its creators, but listeners as well, bringing much-needed meditation and healing during trying times.
That’s our list of the best rock albums of 2018! I also want to give shoutouts to Poptone’s self-titled release , Echo and The Bunnymen’s The Stars, The Oceans & The Moon, and Spotlights Hanging By Faith, all of which presented previously recorded material in a whole new light.
Which 2018 albums were your favorites? Tell us in the comments and check out our honorable mentions below.
Honorable mentions: Judas Priest Firepower, Monster Magnet Mindfucker, Low Double Negative, Night Club Scary World, Naked Giants Sluff, Kaada Closing Statements, Ed Schrader’s Music Beat Riddles, Jóhann Jóhannsson Mandy Soundtrack.