list yr favorite albums of 2018
I feel so weird starting this thread since I’ve felt numb to modern music since 2010 or so.
geld - perfect texture
hank wood and the hammerheads - s/t
high on fire - electric messiah
sleep - the sciences
uncle acid & the deadbeats - wasteland
wiegedood - de dodden hebben het goed
windhand - eternal return
I don’t really listen to new music…I always stick with new favorites…so my only favorite album this year is…
Fight the Good Fight - The Interrupters
New releases from Alkaline Trio and Thrice have been decent. Absolutely cannot wait for Architects to drop their new album. That’ll be the one for me this year.
That Hank Wood album is a runaway #1 pick for 2018 for me. So good.
Couple old favorites did some good stuff this year too:
Hot Snakes - Jericho Sirens
NIN - Bad Witch
I really don’t listen to new music either. In my opinion, music (at least rock) is in the sort of doldrums at the moment, has been for quite a few years. I listen to hundreds of bands but they’re all from like 1965 - 2005. The last decent albums I believe I’ve heard were Dark Funeral’s 2016 release Where Shadows Forever Reign. But it’s fucking Dark Funeral, so not a newer band by any means. Probably the best newer band I’ve heard is the French Canadian metal band Couchemar. Their 2016 album Chapelle ardente is quite good compared to the piles of soulless garbage being pumped out in the last 10-15 years, but I wouldn’t say they’re great. The vocals are kind of yawn. Surprisingly killer riffs though. Otherwise, Darkthrone was supposedly dropping a new album this month, but it looks like that’s not going to happen until sometime next year. That’s the only “new” music I can say I’m the least bit interested in.
Vein - Errorzone
Fucked Up - Dose Your Dreams
Alkaline Trio - Is This Thing Cursed?
Pennywise - Never Gonna Die
Turnstile - Time & Space
Tribulation - Down Below
Visigoth - Conqueror’s Oath
Gouge Away - Burnt Sugar
Seventh Wonder - Tiara
Night Birds - Roll Credits
None of the bands I love put out any music this year lol
I did really like Year of the Snitch by Death Grips though
same here. I mostly listen to my parents’ music. They are baby boomers, and I was born in the 80s, so their taste encompasses the golden age of American radio.
What happened in '05 to cut you off? I felt cut off when there was a major takedown of p2p-sharing blogs, which happened around '11-'12? I did the torrent thing and that, but blogs seemed to have a much more personal feeling. That 40000holyshit blag was responsible for most of my current taste in music.
I don’t want to admit that I’m getting old, but there’s something that happened that made me not care about new things. I think the rise of spotify and takedown of these sharing blogs absolutely startled positive growth in music. There is still good music and good scenes, they’ve just become more difficult to find, once again.
that came out this year so it counts. best 2018 albums!
Nothing really definitive happened in 2005, it’s just that it was the year when I realized that all the contemporary bands just weren’t all that great or interesting, and a lot of older bands had begun to decline as well. I blame this a lot on the internet and social media and its influence over people and what they listen to, the types of music that get attention and the way its made. It’s just different, and not in a good way.
I’m a huge metal fan, and as of right now the one band that I can think of who as of 2018 hasn’t disappointed is 1349. For the most part up until now they’ve kept it real, mainly courtesy of Frost (legendary black metal drummer of Satyricon, ex-Gorgoroth, many others) and they’re the only live act I’ve been really dying to see over the last several years. Metal in my opinion isn’t in as bad of a shape as a lot of other genres of music - at least the ones that actually require musicianship and feature real humans playing real instruments - because there are still influential bands in Europe, but I feel in North America we’re just stuck with (pardon me) indie hipster drivel and electronic computer-generated garbage, and really not much else.
I believe the best music was made somewhere between the early 70s - late 90s, or if we want to separate by genre, perhaps the best hard rock or punk rock in the 70s, and the best metal from around 1982 - 1997 or so. I don’t care about new things either; I’m not so sure it’s really much to do with getting old, at least for me, as it is that I share very little in common with this generation. I personally despise the plastic sounding, ultra-compressed, over-produced mess that is almost every single album recorded in the last decade. I want to hear the guitar(s) and the bass and the drums all separately, not a garbled wall of sound with 50 different tracks layered on top of the whole damn thing.
I don’t know what music you might like or if you have any affinity for metal at all, but if you might be interested, you might want to give Fenriz (Darkthrone’s drummer if you’re unfamiliar) a listen. He does a podcast on Sound Cloud I think once a month, and he plays a lot of contemporary underground stuff, mostly newer European metal but sometimes other stuff as well. I still can’t say anything I’ve heard comes even near to the old 80s and 90s metal bands I listen to regularly in terms of quality or originality, but you might hear something you like. That, and Fenriz himself is always entertaining.
Any indie pop fans on here? What are your favs of the year?
The Pale Waves debut is probably my album of the year 
Oh, also really into the new Kero Kero Bonito and Blossoms
I’m so out of the loop this year on new music. I’ve purchased about half as many albums as I did last year. I need to check the ones you mentioned.
I did enjoy the new Blossoms though. Also liked The Gloomies, Geowulf, Mating Ritual, and St. Lucia. Franz Ferdinand put out a good one too. I’m just a casual fan after all these years, but their new album has gotten quite a few spins this year. My favorite album of the year is Franc Moody. I’m obsessed with their nu-disco/funk sound. I keep it on repeat. Too bad they didn’t release their album on vinyl though.
I also don’t keep up with new music. I always put favorites on repeat. As I got older I lost the attention span to give new stuff a proper listen.
The most recent album I really got into was Royal Headache - High but that came our in 2015. Such a solid record, wish they didn’t break up last year.
I should give some of the ones mentioned here a chance.
I keep meaning to properly listen to blossoms. They’ve been on my radar for a few years now, but never really gone further than their singles, which I enjoyed a fair bit
Blossoms is great for synth-pop fans. Both of their albums are solid.
Listening to Pale Waves now. I like what I’ve heard so far. Thanks @Slinch.
Also, can’t forget to mention other great 2018 pop albums from Robyn, Now, Now, and Lykke Li.
The late 00’s were a golden age for me. The sharing blogs opened up worlds I’d never been exposed to. The blogs were largely shut down and I don’t think reddit or the invitation torrent sites have quite made up for it.
I love metal, but that’s a whole world of its own. My taste ebbs and flows by the season and my feeling. Year-round, I mostly like old school heavy metal, drone, doom, and sludge. Death metal intrudes around late-September/early-October. Black metal settles in during October and stays through the winter. I know about Darkthrone and Fenriz. I didn’t know about his podcast but I’ll tune into it.
that Robyn album came out already? And Lykke Li has a new album? I’ve lost the pulse on the pop music.
I caught my dad listening to Lykke Li last Christmas.
Gonna add some more albums from October that I just got around to listening to recently:
Rüfüs
Roosevelt
Parcels (I feel cheated that I only just discovered them)
October was a good month for music. Some good stuff released.