What are your favorite albums from the 2020s?
What are your favorite albums from the 2020s?
I've always held the belief that music wasn't better in the past, people just have survivorship bias. What are your genuine favorite albums of the last few years?
Personally, I'm loving The Rime of Memory by Panopticon, Ants from Up There by Black Country, New Road, and Hellfire by Black Midi.
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So far, these three come to mind:
Mammoth WVH (2021 self-titled debut)
- Eddie Van Halen’s son Wolfgang’s debut album in which he wrote and recorded all instruments. It’s some fantastic hard rock about not giving a shit what other people expect of you. “Mammoth” embodies the spirit of the album, while “Stone” is one of the best low-tempo, high-energy songs I’ve ever heard.
Pawns & Kings (2022) - Alter Bridge
- A heavy, raw, intense and politically charged album about how the new generation of humanity needs to be better if we want any sort of societal continuity. I may be playing it up but the music is kickass.
Fortitude (2021) - Gojira
- Most of Gojira’s music is about the doom we’re sowing by destroying the planet. This album is a stark tonal shift for them in that almost all of it is supposed to be positive and encouraging. “The Chant” is nothing but encouraging those who suffer oppression to fight on for their rights. “Into the Storm” is an anthem for fighting for political change in a world that beats everyone down for trying to challenge the status quo. This album was exactly what I needed after COVID had already gone on for a year and showed no signs of stopping.
If you like politically charged albums, check out God's Country and Hostile Architecture, by Chat Pile and Ashenspire respectively. Unashamed and raw are what I'd use to describe them.
Chat Pile mfn rulz
I've been meaning to listen to Gojira for a while- what album/song/whatever do you recommend I start with?
Hoo boy what a question.
TL;DR: I would say give at least one song from each album a try since they have a good amount of variety in their sound from one album to the next. I recommend:
Terra Incognita: “Clone” The Link: “Remembrance” From Mars to Sirius: “The Heaviest Matter of the Universe” The Way of All Flesh: “The Art of Dying” L’Enfant Sauvage: “Planned Obsolescence” Magma: “Magma” Fortitude: “Fortitude” followed by “The Chant” (they go together)
Otherwise, If you like heavy metal, Terra Incognita is great. “Clone” and “Blow Me Away You (Niverse)” get stuck in my head a lot. “Planned Obsolescence” from L’Enfant Sauvage (one of my favorite songs ever) is about as in-your-face “fuck off, capitalism” as a song can get.
If you like environmentalism in music, the theme persists throughout their discography but From Mars to Sirius is chock full of it. “Ocean Planet” builds to one of my favorite lines in any song ever with a painfully dissonant melody at the very end of the song. It’s also hard to ignore “Flying Whales” with all the memes and the song is written from the perspective of whales looking down in sorrowful pity on how humanity treats their shared home, plus the song has a wonderful chorus. And I can’t not mention “Global Warming.” It might just be Gojira’s magnum opus imo. “Toxic Garbage Island” is a really cool rhythm-heavy song about treating the planet like a giant trash can with one of the most emotional finales of any song I know.
“The Art of Dying” is an incredible song about what it means to die well. The music is incomparable, and it pairs really well with “The Way of All Flesh” which is an artistic audible rendering of the experience of actually dying - only listen to it if you plan to listen to all 17 minutes of it.
If you need something more encouraging, “Born In Winter” has been my track of choice many a late night. “New Found” is also shockingly uplifting compared to the rest of their music.
Truthfully, I love all of their music and I normally will turn on an album and listen to it start-to-finish. I most commonly do that with their album Magma because it’s extremely well paced musically and emotionally. While in the process of writing it, Joe and Mario Duplantier’s (vocalist/guitar and the drummer) mother died and you can definitely feel it. The album is mostly about the way that strong human emotions can feel like Magma boiling inside of you, and I think it’s extremely well conveyed. I go back and forth between thinking “Global Warming” and the entire album Magma are their greatest work.
Wow, nice. I love it when people are clearly so interested in what they're writing about.
Sounds like I'll start with Planned Obsolescence then, and work my way through their stuff. Thanks for such solid recommendations. :)
Hey I’m just glad more people are interested in them.
Thinking about “Planned Obsolescence” reminds me that another of Gojira’s greatest skills is in writing endings. Plenty of songs have great endings, and every single album ends with something emotionally memorable. It’s probably why I love listening to all of their albums start-to-finish. There’s a great sense of completion and closure to all of them.
Terra Incognita’s “1990 Quadrillions De Tonnes” (the weight of the Sun) is layered with the sounds of people screaming as the Earth burns. The Link’s “Dawn” is a dark naturalist instrumental. From Mars To Sirius’ ending… well you should just listen to it. “The Way of All Flesh” I already mentioned. L’Enfant Sauvage’s “The Fall” is about as dark as the entire album gets. Magma’s “Lowlands” into “Liberation” tears my soul to shreds. And Fortitude’s “Grind” is the heaviest, most depressing sarcastic call to inaction to follow all of the encouragement that came before it, reminding the listener that the world is not easily fixed.
Damn I think I really love this band more than I thought I did lol
lol sounds like you do, good on you. I've been listening to them for a bit and I really like them. I'll be checking them out some more later, thanks again for the great comments!
This is a really solid writeup. L'Enfant Sauvage is a banger front to back. Of particular note for me are Explosia, L'enfant Sauvage, and Gift of Guilt.
Magma feels really good too. Silvera and Stranded are the standard picks, but Magma and Low Lands are worth checking.
Fortitude... Born for One Thing starts it off nicely, but Amazonia just bugs the shit out of me to the point that everything that follows sounds bad. I have listened once with that song blocked, and I enjoyed it much more, but not enough to give more info.
“Only Pain” is my pick for the real peak of Magma. I always get stoked out of my mind when that drum intro comes on.
I’m surprised you don’t like Amazonia. It does sound like it has some power metal influence but I think it’s got a great sound overall. I especially love the mouth harp intro lol
The mouth harp is legit annoying.