We all agreed in 2020 that time (like a lot of aspects of American living) had lost all meaning, and I'm not sure if most people have moved on from that, but I am still extremely unmoored. My life has more routine and stability than it did last year and I'm grateful for that, but 2021 has been a drawn out realization that the things I hoped would re-acquaint me with a feeling of normalcy did not do that. Endings and beginnings and growth and grief are messier than I imagined, and I have a wild fucking imagination. So when I think about the span of time that got me from January- the meandering tenth month of what would ultimately be a thirteen month lockdown where going downstairs to do laundry and taking the trash out were panic-inducing endeavors- to December, where my concerns revolve around managing CPTSD from childhood trauma in a brutal and chaotic world that is constantly escalating, it feels like a chain of islands you might visit in a leaky boat. You can't make the whole journey at once, so you pick a nearby destination and risk your life to get there. And then you do it again. It's not linear, but there are waves and a reliable rhythm of day and night and it's horrible but it's beautiful if you still love the ocean. Anyway here are some albums that are planks in that boat. I always imagine I'll wash to shore still gripping them even if the boat doesn't make it.
5. ...And Again Into The Light
Panopticon's "...And Again Into The Light". Released May 15. I remember this album wearing grooves into my brain on an evening in late spring while I watched the bright yellow metal struts of the Seventh Street Bridge tick by through a rain-pelted bus window. The way the yellow was such an unnatural color against the aching grey of the sky and sympathetic grey-blue of the Allegheny River below seemed to be almost too on the nose for this album: elemental in the face of the artificial. It perfectly brings out the atmospheric bleakness specific to each season, and hits just as hard in the winter as it did the first time I heard it. As a whole it feels like cold air rushing to fill the vacuum of your lungs when your body is too hot. It is so pretty and so full of rage, with moments of reflective beauty forcing their way in. The contrast between the pounding fists of Moth Eaten Soul and the short peaceful interlude Golden Laughter Echoes exemplifies the whole album. It concludes with an epic roll-credits feeling track titled "Know Hope" (damn if I don't love a good pun) with lilting melodies that melt into driving, purposeful drums before reaching a sweet, sad finale that feels like the last line of a love letter. It has such balance, which is the signature of Panopticon's sound, but "...And Again Into The Light" even better articulates the excruciatingly slow apocalypse we're living through than their other releases. Maybe there's something different about me this time around that makes this album feel even more full of a fury that honors an absence of something nourishing. The shadow of wholeness is there. It's reassuring to a mind that feels lost. It's the restlessness of wanting better. Or again, maybe that's just me.
Iludium's "Ash of the Womb". Released October 15th. The first time I listened to this album it was the middle of fall, and I was very preoccupied trying to decide if 65 degrees felt too hot or too cold for that time of year and that moment in the afternoon. I was getting groceries on a cloudy day where the sun peaked out every few minutes only to be swallowed up again. With this album swirling around in my head I remembered a time exactly a year ago that I would have died for the simple freedom of dissolving into a crowd, choosing food from shelves in front of me, taking the long route to the bus stop because I had the time and the space to do a little extra nothing. But my brain just rejected it all, refused to stay in the moment, lost footing from one second to the next. Everything was a panicky haze except this beautiful howling voice against a storm of guitar and drums, building me up before dropping me back down again. It was a storm that I could stand in the eye of while life as it's always been roared on around me and I tried to figure out the words to even ask myself what the fuck was wrong with me. I had just finished writing a poem called "Aster" which is also the title of the ethereal and gritty opening track of the album, that somehow makes me feel like I'm viewing the world through a stained glass window. The track Sempervirens gives shape to an experience like "I went somewhere I hadn't been in a year and a half that for some reason I thought might not exist anymore only to find that it's me that doesn't exist anymore." And in Soma Sema her voice manages to command authority while ringing with desperation, regal and tragic, driven forward by an onslaught of heavy guitar. Ash of the Womb gives life and color to the moment-to-moment fight to exist that seems otherwise mundane. It imbues everything with a somber significance; it's a graceful sermon delivered through six tracks.
Blacklight Holywater's "Silence/Motion". Released October 22. For many years now, every one of my days has started by a waking up that feels like reassembling myself piece by agonizing piece. That is what this album feels like. It creaks eerily to life with an opening track called Delusional, and I instantly knew this would be an album I would go to over and over in a very particular soul searching mood. The title track builds on bird-like, chirping melodies that transform carefully into a heavier, momentous rift that never loses its connection to the unresolved chords- it stomps through flowers without crushing a single one. "Around You" begins the end trajectory of the track with a joyful discordant opening that feels like driving through a ruined countryside, and delivering us to the final track, "Every Corner", a warbling poem that glides into a powerhouse of grinding, psychedelic guitar that gets more frantic as the album winds down, exhausting itself into haunting screams. As a whole it has the jagged peacefulness of stepping into a bath that's too hot. I'd put it on repeat and be absolutely incised when it was time to turn my headphones off and interact with the world again. While the first two albums on my list strike me because of the way they balance the external impact of the world on an internal state, this one is such an internal and personal experience. It's perfectly balanced, smooth and searing and bruising, without any intrusion from the outside world, The sound palette radiates a light that it uses to create its own shadows, it's beautifully self-contained. It feels like going out for the night alone and dancing with only yourself. It feels like falling off a building. It's mournful and catchy and powerful. It perfectly encapsulates the way I spent a year and a month in isolation and now I want to be in public and have everyone leave me the fuck alone and how there is absolutely no contradiction in that.
King Woman's "Celestial Blues". Released July 30. Listen, I try to be sweet and kind for my own sake more than anyone else's, because I deserve better than to be burned alive by my own hate. But in spite of that I have my moments, and even if I didn't, I would still love and need this album. My most potent memory of bonding with it was one weekend in late summer when I canceled everything I wasn't 110% required to do, didn't tell anyone where I was or where I was going, and wandered aimlessly through the neighborhood for hours openly sobbing my way through a panic attack with Psychic Wound on repeat, debating whether to go to the psych hospital (I didn't have to, good for me). Then there's the track Bohgz, with a relentless pounding rhythm that absolutely makes me want to get down, tapping into the sense of hypnotic compulsion that the human desires to fuck and worship are built on. The raw and blasphemous vibes of this album remind me to treasure the anger in my blood. This album makes me feel in all ways like a fucking god.
1. Bloodmoon I
Converge & Chelsea Wolfe's "Bloodmoon: I". Released November 19. When I first heard about this collaboration it was like, well this is exciting but not every collab can be May Our Chambers Be Full so let's not set impossibly high expectations here. But it's fucking perfect. The transition from Coil into Flower Moon is everything- fizzling into a lingering note, the sound loses form before rebuilding into a playfully forceful theme. The rhythmically staggering canter of Daimon is a battle chant that has been stuck in my head since I first heard it. Crimson Stone is a song that makes things about life that will never be okay feel momentarily okay. It's been a legitimate struggle to turn this album off to make time to check out other music (and could be why this list only has five albums on it). There isn't much I can say about Bloodmoon I that isn't redundant because it is so easy to fall in love with. I put it on when I'm leaving work and need to create a comfortable, familiar vortex around myself. I put it on when I don't feel like getting out of bed. If I ever hit my head and forget who I am, play me this album. Just, goddamn dude, it's perfect, I'm going to go put it on right now.
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