The Other Sun might not replace last year’s The Infinity Ring in my heart, but they hit in the same relative direction. This album oozes vibes: occult, gothic, a little bit magical, slightly menacing, ever so intriguing. Each listen pulls back a new layer: sometimes it has that western twang, other times it’s dripping in 70s atmosphere (complete with Comus like vocals. If you’re into that, “Lion Spell” is your song), and occasionally I think perhaps Earth snuck into the recording session. It’s trippy, soothing, and unjustly under the radar. If you fancy something that sounds like it was brewed in a cauldron of mystery and melody, this could be your poison.

Opeth are such an active itch in my life that at this point I think they will always be (and no, their new album doesn't quite scratch it). With this album, Anciients manage to address that pretty well. Sure, it’s a tad over-indulgent length wise, yet I find it interesting enough to sit through it time and time again. It is layered, complex, takes me through a variety of metal leaning genres, and it’s polished with crisp production, which is usually quite a big deal breaker (I know I’ve skipped great albums simply because the production didn’t work for me, even if it was intentional). Beyond the Reach of the Sun doesn’t miss: it’s modern, packed with catchy metal, and hits a variety of sweet spots.

This is disso for the faint of heart, the melody lovers, the posty, proggy gang (hi, peeps!). I’ve spent a lot of time with it and I think it’s an incredible debut. Eye Eater balance restraint and emotional punches, hitting me in the feels exactly when it matters. Clocking in at 36 minutes, it’s easy enough to binge repeatedly yet packed with detail that keeps revealing itself. The only reason this isn’t in my top 10 is a criminal lack of space; it absolutely deserves a spot.

Some albums do find their way into your playlist and refuse to leave. Mesh is one of those — subtle, yet it sticks in your head like a melody you swear you’ve always known. LizZard aren’t trying to show off or pull a fast one; they’re just real. This album was made purely for the joy and love of music making, and you can hear it wearing its heart on its sleeve. Yet what makes it truly shine is its paradoxical complexity in simplicity. At times, it’s easy to forget there are only three people behind it. They’ve woven something so rich that each listen pulls you deeper into its threads. I’ve listened, I’ve tried to let go, and I can’t, so here we are. Maybe I just don’t want to.

If an album could encapsulate my entire 2024 mood, it’s The Unknowing. It is delicate and restrained, a quiet friend who doesn’t want to chat but instead sidles up, hands me a warm cup of tea and shares their blanket on the sofa. Dawnwalker make music that feels effortless; it is surprisingly accessible, welcoming, and sing-alongable, yet it carries the weight of entire galaxies of depth, waiting to be unwrapped. It is honestly wonderful, like a deep exhale in a year of chaos. Unlike so many albums that insist on being rather intense, The Unknowing gives me space. There’s something magical about it as instead of adding to my existential dread, it leaves me feeling oddly at ease with the world, if a little melancholic (a minor miracle these days). It’s become the safe space I keep returning to.

I remember watching my granny’s house on the hill get demolished. It’s bittersweet — painful to see the walls my grandad built crumble into dust, but also liberating, clearing space for something, or someone else. A Frame of Mind hit me like a weird mix of mourning the past while handing over the sledgehammer for what comes next. It is nostalgic and wispy but it holds the kind of power that makes me feel like I’ve outgrown who I was, even as I sob over the pieces of my old self scattered around. Listening is standing in the dust, laughing at old memories, crying at the inexorable passage of time, bawling at the state of the world, and somehow finding hope in the rubble. It is both heartbreaking and healing, and always leaves me with a smile on my face. Tearing down walls isn't so bad when Kalandra have my back.

Ontology of Nought wouldn’t have made this list had I not first heard it whilst sloshing through the rain soaked streets of a post communist Eastern European capital. Its chaotic mix of dissodeath and experimental jazz echoes those sinister, brutalist towers looming over you like they’re judging your Spotify wrapped. This album is unhinged, unapologetically uncatchy, and polished to a mirror shine that reflects the chaos of your soul as well as your questionable life choices. Listening to it feels like a personal attack at times, demanding full attention and sanity as it carves a bizarre void in your brain. Ideas collide like drunk memories trying to piece together last night. It’s overwhelming, exhausting, and impossible to ignore. It feels less like music and more like an unrelenting dictator barking commands in time signatures I can’t count. Obviously, I gave in, Stockholm syndrome be damned. What a wild ride.

Laudare stepped into my life like the uninvited guest at my avant-garde dinner party. They came bearing snacks: piano, strings, and operatic vibes that skirt campy theatrics but slowly devour you. The eerie compositions sent shivers down my spine, stirring awe and scratching my Latin years PTSD (sing along? Eh. Feel smarter pretending? Always). Requiem is an uncompromising fusion of post metal, post rock, scramz, and a sprinkling of neoclassical finesse. It’s grandiose, uncompromising, and vies for focus in a way that screams less “look at me” and more “let’s ascend together”. This is music for the art nerds, the avant garde seekers, and the post everything crowd who’ve moved past worrying whether their friends think they’re pretentious twats. It’s different. It’s bleak. It’s jaw-droppingly cohesive. This is no grit, no pearl, just pure, unapologetic beauty. Laudare aren’t here to fit in. They’re here to make fine art for our ears.

If fairies threw a rave in a neon forest, Frailty would be the soundtrack. This album doesn’t just push the envelope; it folds it into an origami crane, sets it on fire, and sends the ashes soaring into a multicoloured sky. OU create a maximalist dreamscape: they break a bunch of genre barriers and sprinkle magic dust. Poppy hooks collide with djenty riffs, futuristic soundscapes meet tender melodies, and it’s all delivered in Chinese, because you don’t need to speak a language to feel it in your bones. It’s been the perfect soundtrack for my late evening coffee when my brain is in a daze, but I’m ready to let go and be swept away. Each track smacks me in the face with intricate layers, demanding me to play it loud enough to rattle them olde existential cobwebs. It’s relentless yet airy, and overall feels like a portal to another world. Don’t sleep on it.

What reels me into an album is its sheer refusal to pick a lane — that glorious hybrid chaos where it's not fully one thing, but also definitely not anything else. Still, I wasn’t quite sure what to make of The Dry Land at first. It felt almost impervious: an intricate storm of masculine and feminine energies clashing, colliding, and doing who knows what in a very dramatic fashion. Wide-eyed, thoughts raced...sludge, post metal, prog? Am I smart enough for all this?! I wasn’t. Then, something clicked. Chaos became clarity. Clash turned into a weaving, harmonies morphing into primal intensity. Carefully engineered musical edging (yes, crescendos) waited at every turn, yanking my emotions around like a cat chasing a laser pointer. I wasn’t just vibing, I became obsessed. This thing swarmed me, completely took over, and left me wondering why I had ever doubted it. Never underestimate music that feels smarter than you. It’ll get you in the end.

A few days ago I realised I’ve been listening to Sleepytime Gorilla Museum for some 19 years now. That’s basically an entire adult human’s worth of time spent loving weird, unhinged music that sometimes sounds like a grouchy deity demanding sacrifices. I was not expecting another album but I got it anyway, and Of the Last Human Being is just as bonkers as I’d hoped. Listening to it sometimes sounds like stepping into a circus where I’m trying to herd flaming animals whilst also juggling knives riding a unicycle. Absolutely abstract, compellingly coherent, but far from dissonant or bizarre. It’s a groove that sucks me right in. Not sure by which witchcraft it manages to sound completely deranged and insanely melodic, but I’m here for it. Some days I press play, hang on for dear life, and hope I make it out in one piece. Totes worth it.

Imagine kissing a frog, and instead of turning into a prince, it grows teeth, grabs a stack of instruments, and obliterates your brain with the weirdest, most prismatic prog death you’ve ever heard. That’s Pleroma. The songs flow so seamlessly that I didn’t even notice when one ended and another began, like some hypnotic swamp jam session playing in my subconscious. Each track is an odyssey, gliding between chaos and calm. The long form prog opuses gently hold my hand through labyrinthine twists, and yank it away when bursts of intensity come to jolt my senses. It’s lush, it’s heavy, it’s soulful, and boundary pushing. Sometimes so far I wondered if they’re playing in a dimension I can’t quite access yet. You might not “get” this album straight away and that’s ok. Sometimes you need to kiss a frog several times to realise how mind-blowingly cool they actually are.

If you want to read about this album, find some thoughts in my review. If you want read about emotion, stay with me. Ultimately, my number one will always be what resonates most with my essence, regardless of how musically (un)impressive I find it. When Julie sings, she kicks the door down to my brain, grabs my kaleidoscopic thoughts by the collar and yells “You’re going to make sense now”. When Julie sings, time stops, the chaos muffles, and briefly I’m not just a pile of of feelings wrapped in over recycled food stained tinfoil. When Julie sings, she belts out the hurt so I don’t have to, turning the sad into something rather comforting. When Julie sings, it’s like a tender hug from someone who smells of heady cocktails and cigars, and also swears a lot. When Julie sings, it’s all a bit raw, a bit messy, but ultra necessary. When Julie sings, I don’t know if it’s herenoworthen. When Julie sings, the whole universe echoes in my mind’s eye, time opens at the seams, and so do I.