The Best Alternative Rock and Metal Albums of 2020: 13 of the best releases from a year that needed great music more than ever.
What more can be said about the shit-show that was 2020? It’s been awful, exhausting, demoralizing, harrowing, maddening and relentless. But despite that, we found ways to adapt, some by sidestepping personal responsibility entirely (i.e. assholes), while the rest of us battened down the hatches and tried to retain our sanity amidst cabin fever and worry.
One of the biggest aides to keeping us sane was music. Even in a year where going to live shows was impossible, enough new music leaked out into the atmosphere to make things just a little more bearable, reminding us of our humanity and our need for pleasure seeking and sonic solace, especially in times of crisis.
With this in mind, here are the 13 (an unlucky number seemed appropriate given this year) best alternative rock and metal albums of 2020, that lifted our spirits and channeled our angst. If any of these picks catch your fancy, just click on the album image to preview and purchase on Amazon.
Without further ado:
13. Jarvis Cocker Beyond The Pale
The erudite former Pulp frontman offers his usual witty repartee over numbers designed to make you shake your hips as you admire his humorous wordplay.
12. Body Count Carnivore
Body Count continues to prove they are one of the most venerable and versatile metal acts in the game, with frontman Ice-T effortlessly marrying his hiphop delivery with brutal guitar riffs and relentless thrash tempos. In addition to being one of their most satisfying releases to date, Carnivore also features one of the last performances from the late, great Riley Gale (Point The Finger) of Power Trip. RIP.
11. Killer Be Killed Reluctant Hero
The second album from the metal supergroup is an embarrassment of riches, featuring tracks both deeply emotional and seismically heavy. They may have been reluctant but they were the heroes we deeply deserved and needed in 2020.
10. Pearl Jam Gigaton
With Gigaton, Pearl Jam got out of their comfort zone, and the result was one of their most engaging efforts in ages, buoyed by tracks like the euphoric and ethereal electronic tinged Dance of The Clairvoyants.
9. Marilyn Manson We Are Chaos
Manson continues his revitalized winning streak that began with 2014’s The Pale Emperor. and 2017’s Heaven Coming Down. On Chaos, Manson teams up with alt-country artist Shooter Jennings and the unlikely pairing results in one of his most thoughtful, introspective and emotive releases to date.
8. Mr Bungle The Raging Wrath of the Easter Bunny
The Raging Wrath of the Easter Bunny is the reunited Mr. Bungle’s most straightforward album, which in Bungle land makes it their weirdest release. Recreating their original 1986 demo, the group teamed up with metal titans Scott Ian and Dave Lombardo, the result is a thrash and hardcore fueled affair that pays tribute to their past while also paving a path for their future.
7. Puscifer Existential Reckoning
2020 malaise was expertly dissected on Puscifer’s latest, with mastermind Maynard James Keenan waxing poetic on just how awful humanity can be in a crisis (Apocalyptical, The Underwhelming), while also offering small glints of hope (Bedlamite). Understated, yet emotive, Existential Reckoning is aural therapy for those of us at our wit’s end.
6 Psychedelic Furs Made of Rain
Their first release in nearly 30 years, Made of Rain is a triumphant return to form, neither slavishly nostalgic nor attempting to adopt current trends, it’s simply The Psychedelic Furs at their most stately and powerful, with Richard Butler’s serrated vocals still capable of glorious post-punk melodrama.
5. Steve Kilbey Eleven Women
The Church mastermind offers his reliably dazzling prose on his latest solo effort, a trippy and engaging series of sonic vignettes consumed with the allure and magic of the female mystique.
4. Greg Puciato Child Soldier-Creator of God
On his solo debut, Puciato splits the difference between the metal nihilism of his work with Dillinger Escape Plan and the emotive synth pop of The Black Queen. This stark dichotomy never sounds uneven or abrupt; instead it’s a distilled melting pot of all his various influences, and the end result is stirring and vibrantly alive.
3. Pallbearer Forgotten Days
The doom metal merchants rose to critical acclaim on their fourth and latest album, a layered, moving and melodic take on a normally blunt and unsubtle genre. The result is a gamechanger, both for the band and metal in general.
2. Hum Inlet
Inlet dropped out of nowhere, Hum’s first release since 1998, and it showed they haven’t lost a step, crafting everything from shimmering dream pop to surly doom metal, full of Technicolor bombast and and labyrinthine sonic textures that makes for sonic catnip for indie rockers and discerning headbangers. Please don’t take 22 years to put out the next one guys!
1. Deftones Ohms
Even though Ohms was conceived before the pandemic, Chino Moreno’s introspective lyrics and the band’s oppressive tone perfectly encapsulates the unease and disequilibrium of 2020. Pairing the band with producer Terry Date for the first time since 2003’s Deftones, the group deftly swing between sweet shoegaze (the title track), bludgeoning metal (This Link Is Dead) and a mixture of the two (Urantia, The Spell of Mathematics).
That concludes our list! A quick reminder that any Amazon purchase you make through our site gives us a little piece of the pie, so thanks in advance. Here’s to a happier and (hopefully) healthier 2021, because we deserve a goddamn break.