Hi guys I love lists and with 2022 well and behind us. I would love to know everyone’s favorite albums of the last year it doesn’t need to be music released in the past year as not everyone listens to current music I for one am still catching up to many albums I missed last year. I would also love to read up on why those particular albums hold such a placement.
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Can’t believe we didn’t do this earlier!
Good morning rice, buddy.
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New music:
- Silk Sonic - An Evening with Silk Sonic (11/2021)
- Eric Clapton - The Lady in the Balcony (11/2021)
- Toshiki Soejima - Duet (2022)
Late discoveries by me:
- Trentmoller - The Last Resort (2006)
- Black Pumas - Black Pumas (2019)
- Ottmar Liebert - Dune (2012)
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1 . Dragon New Warm Mountain I believe in you by Big Thief (indie rock, Folk) 2022
As a indie rock lover this album really restarted my love for indie rock this album is fun, melancholic, and personal. In it’s 20 track run you get a lot of style changes, great song writing, and pretty great production. it is certainly long and not for everyone but with the variety in this one album there is for sure at least one song in this album for everybody .
2. Melt My Eyez See Your Future by Denzel Curry ( Hip Hop, Rap) 2022
This album is incredible and confidently say it’s my favorite Denzel Curry project. Sonic-ally more mature than his previous projects and well improved lyrics and production it finishes a little weak but the start and middle is so strong that I put in second place due to the sheer replay-ability and presence in all my playlists the I made this year.
3. The forever story by JID (Hip Hop, Rap) 2022
another rapper that has shown off his maturity this year JID shows off is ability to craft a great album something most rappers lack. Not only has he made a great album he has undoubtedly made the best hip hop album of the year.I don’t say that lightly as this is a year where we get a NEW kendrick lamar, Nas album , and danger mouse coming back from the depths of hell to produce another great album. This album is great form start to finish no matter how much the track seems to be losing it JID immediately saves it with his incredible rapping and writing. the production of the most part is very good. JID has really cemented his position on this album as one of the best modern rappers give him a few more albums on this level and we may be talking about him like we talk about Kendrick.
4. Juno By Remi Wolf (Alt-pop, contemporary R and B) 2021
Remi Wolf a former American Idol contestant and Ski racer shows the world how to craft a modern pop album. Remi wolfs writing is quirky, full of eccentricities,occasionally unapologetically crude at times. her sound is bouncy , groovy , and present a very unique aesthetic while undeniably sounding like pop. the replay value of this album is actually insane. It’s an incredible debut album by this young artist.
5. Mr. Morale and the Big Steppers (Hip Hop, Rap) 2022
Kendrick Lamar cannot be stopped with his incredible discography he keeps building up. This is the album he has the most to say in. one of his more experimental full of style changes. It is not the best hip hop album of the year and not even his best . but seeing him experiment, and outright saying things on his mind even if i don’t agree with a lot of his rants in his music in this album it never ceases to stop entertaining me with the incredible instrumentals, production, and even the odd adlib that just catches me off guard. I love listening to aging rappers and see perspective changes overtime through their discographies.
Honorable mentions
I know this is cheating a little bit but these albums deserved just as much as any other albums on this list to be on the list but for one reason or another i just didn’t put them on top 5
Mahal by toro y moi ( Psychedelic funk/soul ) 2022
This is a incredible album taking inspiration from aesthetics of the past and is a oddly refreshing album to listen to .
Gemini rights by Steve Lacy ( neo soul, Bedroom pop) 2022
This is a very short concise album does what it needs to and doesnt do more than that. it’s not ground breaking and doesn’t do a lot that’s special I love this album. not only did blow up one of the best upcoming young artists to the mainstream it is just a nice album and doesn’t try too hard. Just nice short and sweet.
Love 4 rent Smino (pop rap)2022
smooth and horny as fuck rap music
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People really be liking whole ass albums out here?
In my entire life I can think of only three albums that I’ve loved, and then it’s just most songs, not all. Two of which I still enjoy greatly:
Very different genres interestingly, but they’re great and I’m happily re-dedicating them my top albums every year.
Can’t believe I completely forgot about
- Lord Huron - Strange Trails (2015), Qobuz
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lmao I used think like this but have come around the last couple years
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i kind of grew up listening to whole ass albums. in the mid 2000’s - 2018 before I actually started using streaming services i would find an artist i liked listen to their whole discography an album at a time/. so i kind of got into the habit and learned to really appreciate the craft of building a cohexive album beyond just taking a bunch of singles and putting it into one album
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How did you change? Was there a catalyst?
That’s a really interesting point to bring up. I do try to listen to full albums when I really like one or two songs of it. But I often find the songs so… jumbled? Like, the order doesn’t actually make sense to me. Do you perhaps have an example of how an album is pieced together well?
I’ve often found to be quite difficult to rank one by one albums, since they fit different purposes based on their own unique style, as such I can’t just pick one single album per spot. Instead, I’ll pick multiple ones and divide them in groups. I’ve also picked a couple 2021 releases since I’ve only started in 2022 to really go out and expand my music collection.
First/second spot contenders for AOTY
A Wake In Providence - Eternity (Symphonic Deathcore) (2022)
After an IMO OK album in 2019, AWIP really got to work to create something truly great and they pulled it off: nicely chunky, with a good balance between brutality and the more symphonic parts. The best I could define it is “well blended”, every song is really solid on it’s own but as a whole the flow pretty nicely, making a really great album.
Favorite song: Siamo Legati Dal Terrore
Tallah - The Generation of Danger (Nu-Metal) (2022)
This is arguably the best nu-metal release of this year, and for good reasons. It’s an absolutely chaotic album, all over the place but really cohesive at the same time, with a nice flow between songs, it’s unhinged but with purpose.
Favorite song: Stomping Grounds
Signs of The Swarm - Absolvere (Deathcore) (2021)
This is their IMO best album to date. It’s as dense as concrete, everything hits and it hits hard.
The vocals, while not having much variety or range, have something to them that I really, really like. It may be the almost slurred way in which he sings, as well as all the energy he puts in them.
It’s not the most creative album, but I often come back to this and it’s never a boring listen.
Favorite song: Totem
Dream Unending - Songs of Salvation (Atmospheric Doom/Death Metal) (2022)
One of the most peaceful albums of 2022. The atmosphere of serenity reigns supreme, and the doom/death elements only give a nice bite to break things up, to keep things fresh, but without impacting the overall atmosphere. Also, excellent guitarwork on here.
Favorite song: Secret Grief
Third/fourth spot contenders for AOTY
Absent In Body - Plague God (Slude/Post-metal) (2022)
Made up by members of Sepultura, Neurosis, and Amenra this was bound to be at least a good album, but they actually did much more.
The best way I can describe it (as well as how others have desribed it) is that this is a miserable album, in the best way possible mind you. It’s buzzing, rough sounds and animalistic vocals only adds to the atmosphere of absolute bleakness that this album provides, in a uniquely beautiful way.
Favorite song: The Half Rising Man
Obvurt - Triumph Beyond Adversity (Technical Death Metal) (2022)
For a debut album, this is pretty great. Although the flow from one track to another is not the silkiest, it’s still pretty good with a nice amount of coherence.
The guitarwork on here I think it’s the standout part of this album, never boring and with some great melodies. Very solid album overall.
Favorite song: Renverser l’Adversité
Chat Pile - God’s Country (Sludge-Metal/Noise Rock) (2022)
A really interesting and unique album, surprisingly smooth in it’s flow. Incredible atmosphere, all thanks to the sludgy guitar and the incredibly raw vocals, which are IMO this album’s greatest strenght: full of emotions and often very distressing.
Favorite song: grimace_smoking_weed.jpeg
Sensory Amusia - Breed Death (Technical Death Metal / Deathcore) (2022)
While not as good as their 2020 EP “Bereavement”, this is still a damn solid album.
While songs don’t flow as good as I would like them to, and they might not have the most variety in them, just like with “Absolvere” there are still some interesting elements in there. The vocal performance is really good IMO, and the instruments are nicely slamming and chunky, and also pretty energetic. It’s a rarely boring album, one of my favourites for working out.
Favorite song: Bind, Torture, Kill
Mostly fifth spot contenders, but some, depending on the occasion, could rise to fourth
Author & Punisher - Kruller (Industrial Metal) (2022)
A different take to the usual A&P sound: this is a less droney, more melanchonic and mellower sounding album. It still has it’s rougher, industrial sounds but it’s a more “rounded” producition overall, like it feels less raw, compared to something like “Beastland” or “Melk En Honing”.
Still, a really great album, ideal for some more chill late night listenings.
Favorite song: Centurion
Blood Red Throne - Imperial Congregation (Death Metal) (2021)
Probably their best album to date, this is one slab of an album, from the punding of the drums to the weight of the bass, it’s a really weighy album, like the sound has a tangible mass to it.
Vocals are fine, songwriting is good, but it’s the overall sound composition that really makes this album stand out IMO. Just a really solid death metal album.
Favorite song: We All Bleed
KEYGEN CHURCH - ░█░█░░█░█░█░ (Synth/Baroque/Goth Metal?) (2021)
Synths? Pipe Organ? Piano? Drums? This album has it all, it’s a weird and complicated mix of various genres and styles, definitely a very unique sound you don’t often hear.
The relentless drumming, the background organ blasting while the synths and the piano bind everything together. A really well put album.
Favorite song: H A R E K L A V I T
Spiritworld - Deathwestern (Death/Trash Metal) (2022)
I’ve recently coming back a lot to this album, and it gets better after every listen.
It’s a very energetic album, everything sounds very lively and dynamic (not in a dynamic range sense though). I don’t know exactly why, but I really like the vocal performance here. Could be because of the rawer/more unhinged performance. Also it has some killer guitarwork.
Favorite song: Heretic Butcher
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Started listening to bands that knew how to tell a coherent story across the entire runtime lol
TesseracT’s first two albums have multi-part songs (that were probably segmented to make the tracklist longer if you think about it) that showcase this well.
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Hmm that’s interesting, but I can kinda see it?. It’s difficult to explain.
When I say that an album is well put together or that it’s coherent, it can mean two different things:
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The theme in the albums are put in a somewhat coherent order, like for example “Plague God” by Absent in Body kinda feels like an experience, going through different emotions, all similar but presented in different ways, only to then culminate into something greater, which is the final track “The Half Rising Man”.
Another example of a journey is A&P “Kruller”, where you go through different soundscapes, using similar sounds in the whole album, but presenting them and arranging them in a different way, this way it forms a kind of “thematic leitmotif” that is what binds together the various songs. -
It flows well from a music standpoint. This “flow” is difficult for me to describe, since I don’t really know how to express it, but it’s the natural progression of the various songs in an album that makes me think “yes this makes sense, it is following some sort of path and it’s sticking to it”. An example of a good flowing album is Exocrine’s “The Hybrid Suns”, where the overall “vibe” of the songs is similar, following some kind of path. Also, going from one song to another not in order doesn’t feel as natural as going in the correct order.
An example of something that doesn’t flow well is Behemoth’s latest album “Opvs Contra Natvram”. Whether you listen to it in order or not, it doesn’t change that much, it’s lacking something that makes the song unable to bind between themselves to form a cohesive album. They mostly feel like singles that have been released in an album form, it lacks that flow.
An album that can do the first thing will usually have no problem in also doing the second, although to a lesser extent IMO, like with “Plague God” the flow of songs feels a bit disjointed to me, and it’s the overall theme that binds everything: because the album needs to create certain sounds to evoke certain emotions, it must stick to it’s formula, and thematically it does that really really well, while from a song perspective there are some gaps between them.
Kruller, on the other hand, I feel follows everything both thematically/emotionally and from a sound standpoint. Does this make it better though? Nope, I actually prefer Plague God to it.
As for the second point, this usually goes to more “traditional” heavy music like death metal, deathcore, techdeath, ecc…where themes vary greatly based on genre and styles, and are often not that deep, hence they must rely on their songwriting to pull everything together, following some sort of common thread between songs.
It’s very hard to describe why something flows so well, it’s something that also changes from person to person, there are a lot of variables that come into play and for me a lot of those are based on some sort of “instict” that I can’t describe, but that I know they are there, and there may be some straight up unknown variables that I have no idea if they exists or not, but that I subconsciously and unkowingly put into the overall equation that gives me the idea for an album to have cohesion or not.
It may also be because I have developed a habit of almost never listening to a single song that I like, but the whole album. If I want to listen to it, I’l need to go through the whole album in order, and sometimes I’ll be like “but I’m not really in the mood to listen to 7 songs before the one I want”. The solution? I either get down to it and accept to listening to it as a whole, or I’ll just pick a different album altogether. At the end of the day, 95% of the time both solutions are equally as good and I always manage to have a great time regardless of what I choose.
I hope this makes at least some sense lol.
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What genres are you open to listening to and how many years back?
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In the aeroplane over the sea by neutral milk hotel is a incredibly well made album with tracks that flow together and a great concept the ties all the songs together I like to bring up this album as much as I can just cause it’s my favorite but also a bit of a meme as it’s a very important album to the current music lover scene.
When discussing great albums as a whole there is a term concept album that gets thrown around where artists will take concepts and craft a album around it. Modern examples of these albums are to pimp a butterfly by Kendrick Lamar or new pop classic Igor by tyler the creator a older example would be the wall or the the dark side of the moon by pink Floyd
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Black Keys! 
These are seriously fun albums!
@DDT @Alb @rice Thank you guys! Very excited about this topic and will definitely listen, will take a bit though.
Omg, all? Hit me with the new stuff
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A lot prog rock/metal albums tend to be concept albums with songs organized around a story/concept. Pink Floyd was a prime example but their albums are perhaps too old. I’ll still recommend “Wish You Were Here” and “The Wall” as great examples of albums that should be listened to in order and in one sitting (especially Wish You Were Here), if possible. There is a youtube channel Polyphonic where the guy does song analysis and he did the whole album for Wish You Were Here
Some of the newer music examples that I know and like of the top of my head are BTBAM’s Colors I and II, Dream Theater’s “Six Degrees of Inner Turbulence”.
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Delta kream was a game changer for me… I loved that sound and it led me to discover about a dozen other albums of older source material that influenced that Album. That Mississippi delta sound is right up my alley.
The Jeremiah Johnson album I posted is quite a bit of fun too if you like the sound.
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I absolutely love Black Keys, especially El Camino and Delta Kream. I’ll check out the Jeremiah Johnson album you posted but do you have any other recommendations for a fellow Black Keys fan?
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Listen to side two of “Abbey Road” by The Beatles. Starts with the song “You Never Give Me Your Money.” This album would not work if sequenced in any other order.
Another example: Side one of “2112” by Rush. A concept album that HAD to be sequenced in that order. Same with side one of “Wish You Were Here” by Pink Floyd.
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