#leprous

10. Bayside, There Are Worse Things Than Being Alive

I have the least to say about Bayside’s effort here than anything else in my top ten, and yet I couldn’t find a reason to replace it with another. Not even Foxing’s self-titled (more on that below). The New York scene veterans are the definition of a blue collar pop punk band: they tour constantly, and every few years they see fit to release a perfect melodic album. It’s the kind of album where you can’t ask me to pick a favorite – it will change with every track.

9. Full of Hell, Coagulated Bliss

I don’t like grindcore. There, I said it – as if that’s even a remotely controversial position to take. It’s a genre that exists as a joke, from the microsongs to the gross-out lyrics. It’s easier for me to argue that Coagulated Bliss is a hardcore album than it is to swallow my pride and admit that I actually enjoyed a grindcore record. This was the last album added to my top-ten, supplanting Foxing’s self-titled (which is also a masterpiece in genre redirection, going from twinkly emo to full-tilt rowdiness), but Full of Hell accomplished what no one else could: they made a (albeit very, very begrudging) grindcore fan out of me.

8. Sleater-Kinney, Little Rope

Longtime readers of this column will take S-K’s position here for the surprise that it is. Path of Wellness was my worst album of 2021, and I was terrified that the collapse in songwriting ability that had followed drummer Janet Weiss’s departure from the band would continue unabated. This year’s follow-up record proved me wrong in all the right ways. Carrie and Corin sound sharper and more in sync with each other, and more than anything, the record has a point. It needed to be released. Thank God for that.

7. Les Savy Fav, Oui, LSF

Les Savy Fav had a difficult task in releasing their sixth studio album. Their last release, Root for Ruin, came out in 2010. In that time, the band was better known for their live antics than their music. Those antics haven’t stopped (at the Union Transfer in June, vocalist Tim Harrington handed me the microphone to carry the chorus of “World Got Great” while he drank from my beer), but they can’t carry a studio album. Oui, LSF is an art-punk masterpiece from a band who wants you to hear them as much as they want you to watch out for their goblinesque frontman.

6. Kneecap, Fine Art

On the subject of difficult tasks, Kneecap is the unlikeliest story of the last few years. How does a rap trio, whose music is almost entirely in the Irish language, accumulate such a cult following? Part of it is spite – their rage against the British occupation of their Belfast home speaks to anti-imperialist sentiment across the globe – but the rest is talent. You don’t have to know the language to nod your head along to the beats and flow.

5. Leprous, Melodies of Atonement

Some artists have a place on this list penciled in the moment that they announce an album. Leprous is one of them, their specific brand of symphonic progressive metal filling an underserved niche in my listening. It would be easy to file them in somewhere between 10 and 6 just for releasing a full-length, but Melodies of Atonement vaulted itself by breaking through with a raw edge to it that Leprous’s last two LPs lacked. Einar et al. are more confident in their abilities, surer that they have something to say – and that people will listen.

4. Better Lovers, Highly Irresponsible

Every Time I Die and The Dillinger Escape Plan: two bands often imitated and never surpassed. Although the circumstances leading to the marriage between these two bands are less than ideal (Keith Buckley’s sudden hostile departure from ETID forced his brother Jordan to seek out the talents of longtime Dillinger vocalist Greg Puciato), the members of Better Lovers made the best out of a bad situation, pushing forward with the chaotic precision both predecessor bands did so well.

3. Kendrick Lamar, GNX

Can I tell you a secret? Before this year, I would not have called myself a Kendrick Lamar fan. I enjoyed individual songs of his, but I largely found his talent at the mic undercut by his pen and his devotion to overwrought conscious rap, exemplified by the laughably drivelous “BLOOD.” in 2017. I grew up on the feuds of the 90s, Biggie and Tupac firing barbs from coast to coast. It’s one of the reasons I praise Meg so highly – you can tell she cut her teeth in battle rap. Well, K.Dot went to therapy and became more spiteful, and GNX made a fan out of me.

2. Amigo the Devil, Yours Until the War Is Over

I discover bands in a few ways: playlists, recommendations from friends, opening acts, and entirely by accident. Amigo the Devil is the latter – while enjoying a lunch break at Riot Fest some years prior, I was captivated by Danny Kiranos’s storytelling and sense of humor on tracks like “Murder at the Bingo Hall” and “I Hope Your Husband Dies.” His most recent effort has those in spades, with tracks like “I’m Going to Heaven” and “Once Upon a Time at Texaco, Pt. 1” weaving darkly humorous narratives. But what Yours Until the War Is Over has over his previous works is heart. Pathos. “Cannibal Within” has an earnestness to it that I couldn’t imagine him employing before, and “Stray Dog” is a love song with no wink or nudge.

1. Aaron West and the Roaring Twenties, In Lieu of Flowers

Every five years, Dan “Soupy” Campbell of The Wonder Years adds to a story of his – Aaron West. Ten years ago, Aaron’s father died, his wife asked for a divorce, and things got worse from there. It’s tempting to torture Aaron further, and the last decade has not been kind to him. In Lieu of Flowers covers the years 2019 to 2024, as he struggles with the COVID-19 pandemic, the economic anxiety of being a touring artist, and a descent into the family trade of alcoholism. But Campbell – and Aaron, by extension – never lose hope, and if this is the last chapter of his story, it ends as it should: with him looking up and letting go.