2021 Year End Review - Eric's Picks

2021 turned out to be a great year for hard rock and a so-so year for metal albums. That's not to say there wasn't a ton of great metal music this year, but I was surprised at how few albums really held together for me. Gojira and Mastodon are two great examples of this, both releasing incredible songs on albums that were…let's say “complicated”. One pleasant surprise for me is that three of the albums in my top five are from rock bands I had somewhat written off after their most recent efforts—and two of those came rolling in right at the very end of the year! Anyway, I hope you had a wonderful year and that you find something to enjoy on this list.

15. Gary Numan - Intruder

Like most denizens of planet earth, I’ve been casually familiar with Gary Numan’s music for most of my life. But it wasn’t until a couple years ago that I really started digging into his later-career music while trying to find more synth-heavy music for a playlist I was working on. Intruder came out right at peak-Numan for me, so the timing couldn’t have been better. The man still does bass-heavy, atmospheric synth rock better than anyone out there, and his voice is truly one of a kind. Check out ‘The Gift’, ‘A Black Sun’, and ‘And It Breaks Me Again’.

14. Dry Cleaning - New Long Leg

Post-punk indie rock bands with vocalists who are too cool to sing tend to make me cranky. But Dry Cleaning’s music is so engaging that I powered through my initial distaste, and I’m really glad I did. Yes, vocalist Florence Shaw doesn’t so much sing as she does talk over the music, as if she’s a little too bored to do otherwise. But it suits the songs perfectly, and her lyrics are truly bizarre poetry. Maybe the most quotable album of 2021.

13. Todd La Torre - Rejoice in the Suffering

This is probably the album I recommended most to other metalheads this year, as it seems to have undeservedly flown under way too many radars. As Brian and I said in our mid-year review, “Amidst all of the drama with Rockenfieldsryche and Toddsryche, not to mention the ever-present spectre of Geoff Tate, you’d be forgiven for missing that Todd La Torre released a solo record in 2021. But you dismiss it at your own peril, as it’s a trove of muscular metal that will have you pumping your fist in time. Whatever happens with Queensryche, Rejoice in the Suffering is ample evidence that Todd La Torre is a metal force in his own right.”

12. Shihad - Old Gods

I regret not getting around to reviewing Old Gods as it was one of my most anticipated albums of the year, and it (mostly) doesn’t disappoint. Lyrically, it’s a little exhausting, tackling social issues with all the nuance of Andy Samberg at a hot dog stand. But musically the band is as strong as ever, and most of the songs on Old Gods are impressive enough that I can forgive the band’s pervasive cynicism.

11. Tremonti - Marching In Time

Hootie and the Mosh Pit are back at it with another stomper of an album! At this point Tremonti is pretty much comfort food for me. If I can’t decide what I feel like listening to, or am getting overwhelmed by life, I can always put on Tremonti and be back on top in a jiffy. Now as always, there are a few tracks on this album that veer a little closer to Creedville than I’m comfortable with, and Tremonti definitely owes himself a sandwich for the breakdown he stole from himself on ‘Thrown Further’. But you just can’t argue with the dude’s riffs and songwriting abilities. 2018’s outstanding A Dying Machine was always going to be a tough act to follow, but Marching In Time gets pretty close to that high-water mark.

10. BAEST - Necro Sapiens 

This one made my mid-year list and managed to hold on for a top ten spot despite some stiff competition in the second half of the year. As I said then, “Br00tal death metal from Denmark with a vocalist who sounds so much like David Vincent (trills ov hell and all) that I had to Google that shit to verify this wasn't a stealth Evil D side project (that's high praise). So yeah, the growls are amazing, and the lead guitar work on this album is melodic without ever diminishing the band's intensity. The whole package sits right in that Slugdge-meets-VLTIMAS sweet spot of thrashy, progressive death metal that's been doing it for me the past few years.”

9. Cassius King - Field Trip

Doomy stoner metal is honestly not my genre, but I make exceptions when the riffs and songs are as solid as they are on Cassius King’s Field Trip. If you’re not familiar with the band, it’s a bit of a supergroup featuring riffbeast Dan Lorenzo (Hades), Jason McMaster (Dangerous Toys) on vocals, and Ron Lipnicki (Overkill) on drums. Everyone turns in stellar performances, but McMaster is a revelation, channeling a bit of Dio with a John Garcia-ish mid-range that just plain slays.

8. Archspire - Bleed The Future

I loved Archspire’s brain-melter, Relentless Mutation, back in 2017 and was pleased to hear the band hasn’t skipped a beat on Bleed the Future. Archspire’s playing is, of course, off-the-charts insanity, but it’s vocalist Oli Peters’ machine-gun growling that never gets old for me. It doesn’t hurt that the songs are fun and the album is full of dynamics and mercifully short at 31 minutes, which is about all I can handle of this sort of thing. Also, their video for ‘Drone Corpse Aviator’ is really well done and quite funny (and violent—don’t watch it at work or with your kids in the room)!

7. Flotsam & Jetsam - Blood In The Water

This album hit me hard early in the year and had some serious staying power. They had some competition from those old hacks, Exodus, but for my money F&J brought the better tunes this year. As I said in our mid-year review, “You’d think following up their best album since No Place for Disgrace just two years after its release would be a daunting task, but Flotsam & Jetsam have crushed that challenge with a ferocity that may surprise haters and true believers alike.”

6. Hactivist - Hyperdialect

Even after writing my Seven Stages of Grief for Trve Heshers Hearing Hyperdialect For the First Time review, I never expected this album would end up on my Year End list, much less this high up. But damn it if this oddball blend of djent and grime didn’t get its hooks in me. Go ahead and be a hater, but as I said in my review, “If this is false metal, I don’t want to be trve.”

5. Carcass - Torn Arteries

While I knew this album was solid on first listen, it took a fair amount of the year for me to come around to the notion that it might even be as good as the magnificent Surgical Steel. I think I still give that album the edge for ‘1985’ which might be the best metal album intro of all time. Having said that, Torn Arteries has its fair share of truly memorable moments. The riffs on the opening track in particular are so infectious that I can pretty much replay the whole song in my head from start to finish. These guys have been straight-up fantastic since their reunion and don’t show any signs of letting up (though Bill Steer has apparently given up aging).​​

4. The Darkness - Motorheart

After the holy trinity of the band’s first three albums, The Darkness seem to have settled into a reverse Star Trek Odd-Even Rule of Quality. Motorheart is a giant step up in quality from Easter is Canceled which was a big step down from Pinewood Smile which was a big step up from Last of Our Kind. While Motorheart may lack the big blockbuster hooks of the band’s best three albums, it makes up for it with a flawless record of slow-growers that will eventually have you wondering how they ever didn’t do it for you in the first place. I initially rated this a distant 4th place in the band's discography, but over the weeks I've come to really love these songs. I’m not sure any lyric gave me more joy this year than “And if you don’t want to be Jussy’s girl, have you got a friend who looks just like you but maybe isn't as fussy and wants to be with Jussy?”

3. The Wildhearts - 21st Century Love Songs

I almost put this one in my top spot, because it’s honestly been the most exciting music of the year for me. However, I have major beef with the track sequencing, and there's one song in particular I really don’t care for. But on the whole, 21st Century Love Songs has SO MUCH going for it. Check out my track-by-track review for all the details, but in short, this album has some of the best songs of the band’s career, and ‘Directions’ was my most-listened-to track of 2021 according to Spotify.

2. Quicksand - Distant Populations

While Quicksand’s 2017 return album, Interiors, had its moments (namely the first three tracks), it left the impression that maybe the band wasn’t sure how to move forward without the abundant high octane fuel of their disaffected youth. Distant Populations lays that fear to rest with a combo of old school Quicksand crunch meets early aughts Radiohead art-rock (seriously, imagine Thom Yorke singing ‘Brushed’ or ‘Missile Command’). Plus the songs are just plain better than anything on Interiors, across the board. It is a bit of a slow grower, but definitely worth the effort.

1. Failure - Wild Type Droid

In a year full of bands I’d lost a little faith in coming out of nowhere with surprisingly great releases, Failure crafted the greatest album of them all. From my review of Wild Type Droid, “More than anything, I love how this trio sounds like Failure again without ever repeating themselves or pandering to fans. Wild Type Droid isn’t a retread or sequel to any other Failure album, but it does summon the same kind of emotions so many fans felt when listening to Comfort, Magnified, and Fantastic Planet. Each of those albums had a voice of their own, and Wild Type Droid is no different in that regard. It really is a new Failure classic.”

Honorable Mentions:

• Gojira - Fortitude
• Exodus - Persona Non Grata
• LÜT – Mersmak
• Fractal Universe - The Impassable Horizon
• WHARFLURCH - Psychedelic Realms ov Hell