metal
Top ten metal/hard rock albums of 2022
I was a bit more conservative in my tastes and breadth in this genre in 2022, but still managed to find plenty to enjoy. Here are ten of the best:
Blind Guardian: The God Machine // Michael Romero: War of the Worlds, Pt. 2
The Birthday Massacre: Fascination // Borealis: Illusions
Disillusion: Ayam // Ghost: IMPERA
Rammstein: Zeit // Riot City: Electric Elite
Evergrey: A Heartless Portrait (The Orphean Testament) // Imperial Circus Dead Decadence: Mogari — Shi e Fukeru Omoi wa Rikujyoku sura Kurai, Kanata no Sei wo Aisuru Tame ni Inochi wo Tataeru
Top ten debut albums of 2022
This category gets harder to curate every year, as I debate whether a low-key single counts as a proper debut, as opposed to an EP or album. Regardless, here are the top ten debuts by artists who made their biggest impacts in the calendar year.
iScream: i // Lonesome_Blue: First Utterance
FLO: The Lead // Em Beihold: Egg in the Backseat
Madison Rose: TECHNICOLOR // Naniwa Danshi: 1st Love
Kira Shiomi: TOKYO CONTINUE // Early Moods: Early Moods
Takanori Iwata: THE CHOCOLATE BOX // Gabi DeMartino: Paintings of Me
Top ten most disappointing albums of 2022
Just to be clear, the biggest disappointment of the year was the release of the soundtrack (not score) for Stranger Things 4 which did not include the mix of “Running Up That Hill” used in the show’s pivotal scene, nor the gorgeous orchestral mix used for the episode’s end credits. What did we get instead? Seven dozen mediocre, awful, and increasingly annoying cover versions that failed to understand the point of the original and that quickly deteriorated its magic and impact. That’s just how disappointments work — they’re not things you hate, or that are inherently terrible. They’re things that fail to meet your expectations or fail to provide what you were looking or hoping for. Here are ten of this year’s in no particular order:
Circa Survive: Two Dreams // Red Velvet: Bloom
Sigrid: How to Let Go // aespa: GIRLS
Cleo: Vinylova // Above & Beyond: The Last Glaciers (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)
Taylor Swift: Midnights // Key: Gasoline
TOKYO GIRLS’ STYLE: NOCTURNAL // Michael Jackson: Thriller 40
Top ten 2021-misses of 2022
As we get started on this year’s best-of lists, here first, in no particular order, are ten of the best albums, of any genre and category, released in 2021 that I didn’t discover until 2022, and in some other better, alternate universe, might have made last year’s lists.
HALLCA: Paradise Gate // Gigolette: SHINE
Maurizio Malagnini: Coppelia (Original Soundtrack) // Max Cruise: Cruise Control
Nicholas Britell: Don’t Look Up (Soundtrack from the Netflix Film) // Zsasz: ⸮
Ramin Djawadi: Eternals (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack) // Shannon & The Clams: Year of the Spider
S. Kiyotaka & OMEGA TRIBE: AQUA CITY REMIX // Night Tempo: Ladies in the City
Top ten metal/hard rock albums of 2021
This list trended more towards hard rock than metal this year, with many bands making their usual appearance. With a year as static as 2021, it’s no surprise that old standbys provided more comfort than newer finds: Legends Chevelle and Evergrey both released fine examples of longevity at its finest, groups like Beast in Black and Greta Van Fleet continued to mine the sounds of yore for their brands of throwback power metal and 70’s dino-rock respectively, and a group like Aephanamer just kept doing whatever incredible spell-casting they do to produce another album both beautiful in sound and sight. It wasn’t the greatest year for the genre by far, but it’s a sign of my enduring trust in it that I could still find ten albums that reminded me why I never give up on metal. In no particular order, here are my ten favorite:
The Pretty Reckless: Death by Rock and Roll // Evergrey: Escape of the Phoenix
Chevelle: NIRATIAS // Greta Van Fleet: The Battle at Garden’s Gate
DIAMANTE: American Dream // Unto Others: Strength
Angels & Airwaves: Lifeforms // Beast in Black: Dark Connection
STARSET: Horizons // Aephanemer: A Dream of Wilderness
Honorable Mentions
Khemmis: Deceiver
Dee Gees: Hail Satin
Eastern High: Halo
IOTUNN: Access All Worlds
Orden Ogan: Final Days
September 2020: Highlights
Things have really picked up this month, prompting serious decisions about what I would realistically have time to focus on. At the same time, the race is now on to listen to any major releases I missed or put off all year in preparation for year-end lists. Yes, it’s already that time! In the usual way of things, the longest year of our collective lives is also careening past us, the unforgivable march of time continuing on its way. Below are a few of September’s highs and lows to enjoy in its wake.
BBHF: BBHF1 -Nankasuru Seinen-
(2020.09.02)
It’s always with more hope than faith whenever a group makes the best debut list of the year, as BBHF would have last year, if it hadn’t turned out they were just masquerading under a new name. Many of the groups won’t amount to much, or like so many K-pop groups, sputter out or disappear. In many cases, the only thing left behind is one great moment orchestrated to prove beginner’s luck. So maybe it’s a good thing BBHF didn’t make the cut, or maybe the name change was just what the band needed, as their “debut” studio album, an ambitious 2-disc concept album chronicling one man’s emotional journey through a labyrinth of history and emotion set to a wave of poppy 80’s synth rock, proves. “Sooner or later, everything changes / I’m not happy at all / For better or for worse, this country is falling into a depression” they lament in “1988,” folding the twin tragedies of a burst bubble and a broken heart into an excuse to get wasted. “Let’s drink till we’re sick, of love itself,” they urge, as the synths swell and the titular character high tails it in a bid to escape depression and responsibility as if a physical entity, like so many Don Drapers before him. “Carrying all the burden in the back I will go south / I will go south, to survive.” It’s not the helpful message we need, perhaps one of the reasons the album was pushed back from its original May release date, but it’s honest, and refreshing, a J-rock band refusing to hide behind dour epithets without any genuine emotional anchor behind them. “Apps that I merely touched once and don’t use / I deleted them all, that is the pleasure of getting rid of things,” the opening track opines; one only wishes it was possible to shake off everything as easily.
Harry Gregson-Williams: Mulan (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)
(2020.09.04)
The story of getting Mulan released to the public is almost as epic as the film’s story line, a journey that promises to get topped only by Wonder Woman 1984 or No Time to Die‘s own struggle to hit the silver screen. Gregson-Williams battled his own struggle in providing the musical backdrop, standing in the shadow of legend Jerry Goldsmith, and reckoning with one of the most iconic songs in Christina Aguilera’s discography. Luckily, he neither kowtows to nor completely eschews the original. If we’ve had to wait an extra six months to see the film, imagine how G-W, who began work for the film years before its release, felt! Luckily, the extra time paid off, with this score every bit as robust as the plot line and titular character requires: along with the usual soaring strings, there’s plenty of time-period appropriate instruments from the erhu, to woodwinds. The whole thing is capped off by the original theme, sung by returning vocalist Aguilera, who belts out “Loyal Brave and True,” with all of the sincerity, if not skill, as her original work on “Reflection.” What this soundtrack didn’t need was a repeat of “Reflection,” with the new vocals a mere memory of what the singer was capable of delivering twenty years ago, when she was still ambitious enough to put the work required into making it sound so easy. This score isn’t re-writing the Disney playbook, but it’s one of the few I was genuinely looking forward to this year, and it has delivered in ways the film, based on critical reviews, hasn’t.
TAEMIN: NEVER GONNA DANCE AGAIN: ACT 1
(2020.09.07)
TAEMIN is one of the closest people we have to The Great Pop Star, something on a par with the type of megalomania we had in the 80s and early 90s, a Michael Jackson or Madonna, a Solitary Figure with an otherworldly sense of talent, charm, and charisma. All of these traits are on display in his newest video for “Criminal,” including the hardly-human way he moves his body and the uncanny knack he has for looking through the camera straight at the heart of the viewer on the other side. It’s important, but easy, to look past all the shiny surfaces, CGI, and loose fabrics TAEMIN is always draped in, because there is never a moment he doesn’t emanate straight out of it. Like his predecessors before him, he’s seemingly more comfortable in front of the camera than behind, a man who comes alive in the pageantry of performance, and not a moment before. The rest of the mini-album serves its purpose well. TAEMIN’s sound is down pat now, a hook-based, sinister pop infused with tantalizing mystery, like the foreboding “Strangers” and ethereal “Clockwork.” It’s hard to be upset that his team rarely thinks outside of this box when he excels so well inside of it — a TAEMIN playing in his own shadowy sandbox instead of the bright ones his SM peers are often found running amok in is part of what preserves his iconic imagery. I’m not looking forward to his two-year absence to serve his time in the military, and thinking of SHINee without him helps little with the looming void. I’m glad he’s leaving us a few more tokens, and between this and his duties in SuperM, I’m sure the physical requirements of training will seem relatively familiar to the work SM has him put in day in and day out.
YooA: Bon Voyage
(2020.09.07)
There have been a number of girl-group members with less than solo-worthy chops getting their time in the spotlight, so it’s nice to see one come up that doesn’t deserve to go straight to the discard pile. YooA, from OH MY GIRL, has released her debut solo EP, Bon Voyage, and it’s giving off all the I ♡ Natural meets Shakira vibes. Unfortunately, the title track is the only one to take some risks with the quotidien K-pop sound, leaving the rest of the EP, especially tracks like “Nareul Chajaseo (Far)” and “Jagagmong (Abracadabra)” to fill in the blanks. Overall, the collection is indecisive, a box of pretty, but mismatched buttons that’s easy to chalk up to lack of direction, but as long as we’re not in Hyoyeon, or insipid, one-off ballad territory, I’ll take any of these I can get. In any other month, one not so jam-packed with top tier releases, this would have been easier to appreciate — YooA might not be a superstar, but mostly she just got unlucky.
BABYMETAL: LEGEND – METAL GALAXY (METAL GALAXY WORLD TOUR IN JAPAN EXTRA SHOW) DAY 1 & 2
(2020.09.09)
Live albums rarely get much appreciation, and BABYMETAL’s latest illustrates why. As a live group, they are pretty great, making use of their strongest assets to cover for places they might be more deficient. They’re idols, but a lot of their fans are metal heads, so many of the usual tricks are tweaked, with video screens promoting the band’s Fox God myth, pyrotechnics over lasers, minimal costume changes, some goth-y props, etc. Lip-syncing still helps in a pinch here and there, especially almost all of MOA and YUI-METAL’S “vocals,” while the band, central to the sound but not the marketing, remain wailing away at their instruments in shadow, with the focus staying on the three (now two) stars of the show. It’s all a lot of fun, and the band clearly enjoys the performance realm more than the studio one judging by the sheer number of live albums and videos that have been released over the course of this group’s 3-album existence. The problem is that rarely does their live music warrant so much attention — like most of it, these two albums are nearly note for note the studio versions with an audience piped in. Unless there are some crazy innovative, off-the-cuff solos, or new arrangements, albums like these, especially when they are unnecessarily spread across two separate releases, are blatant cash grabs of the worst kind. While “money-makers” is how most producers like business-minded Kobametal have always viewed idol groups, I’m not really sure how much longer fans will put up with a stagnated mythology, poor communication, and such obvious, and constant, recycling.
Ava Max: Heaven & Hell
(2020.09.18)
Going by initial buzz alone, you would think Ava Max wasn’t anything but a deliberate Lady Gaga clone. However, one thing was always clear during the drawn out string of singles leading up to her debut album Heaven & Hell: Ava Max has neither the quirky magnetism, nor the endearing desperation of Gaga’s early singles. “Just Dance” and “LoveGame,” were built on muscular hooks, their choruses as easily mutable through the expensive sound systems of clubs as tinny earbuds, the notes as hummable, and memorable, as a nursery rhyme. I barely registered any of Ava Max’s songs after the first listen. Luckily, her music works better in the album format, where the basic Euro-pop foundations lend a steady, sturdy purpose to an extended run of music, a stepping stone path of a track list that wraps up an almost 3-year block of fun, but indistinguishable singles. It’s not the best representation of what a major label like Atlantic can offer, but there’s raw material within Ava Max, one that hasn’t yet been tapped by truly innovative pop, the kind that gives songs an instantly recognizable personality. I would love to see what Max with a top-tier producer like Justin Tranter could come up with, though I worry that three years of little growth bodes ill for a journey to the next level.
Arashi: “Whenever You Call”
(2020.09.18)
It’s a shame that Arashi have reached a genuinely interesting stage of their career moments before calling it quits. Everything from a relatively robust Internet presence, to a Netflix documentary, to experimenting with popular social media platforms like TikTok that utilize their strongest appeal (personality), Johnny’s has finally allowed this group the space to grow, as the last year before hiatus, and what was sure to be a spectacular crowning performance at the 2020 Olympics went up in flames, comes to a close. This single, written by Bruno Mars and produced by D’mile is just another curve ball from the group this year. Technically, Mars’s name does not hold the same weight it would have five years or so ago, but his skill hasn’t waned in the four years since he hit a peak with 24K Magic (both the song and album). “Whenever You Call“‘s mid-tempo pace does a stellar job of covering all the group’s worst weaknesses, including some serviceable but awkward pronunciation (this doesn’t bother me, but it’s obvious most of the members are struggling a bit), and the video’s robust choreography that doesn’t quite match the laid back tone of the song (this routine has none of the chill that is a hallmark of Mars’ personality — even when he’s on his knees, he’s always in charge). Otherwise, this simple number is perfect for Arashi: bland enough to fit neatly into the group’s discography, but interesting enough to add a bit of flavor and genuine pathos to a long list of stuffy love songs. It’s no coincidence that Arashi is finally taking fun, sometimes lopsided, risks knowing that they have nothing left to lose, and it really makes one wonder what the group could have been if they had cared enough to think outside the very rigid confines of the Johnny’s formula ten or fifteen years ago instead. Of course, I have liked them just fine for the last few years, but imagine!
Movements: No Good Left to Give
(2020.09.18)
I feel a little guilty admitting that I think that Feel Something is one of the greatest debut albums of all time: the lead singer had barely reached legal drinking-age when the band put out one of the most honest and sincere depictions of depression set to audio. Does the album surpass its years to express a mature, wiser-than-its years clarity upon the subject? No, and all the better for it. The very heart-on-its-sleeve, sometimes angry, sometimes okay see-saw is the reason it works, a collection of haphazard emotional turbulence that only the young can, heart whole, deliver un-ironically. The dedicated post-hardcore touches only added to its mystifying success. Three years after its release, it’s still one of the CDs that sees the most re-play on my morning commutes. So with some apprehension, I queued up their follow-up album No Good Left to Give, already wincing at the train wreck of an album jacket. Luckily their sophomore album returns to the same trademark atmospherics of Feel Something. The genre has remained the same, but the execution feels more evolved and fleshed out, with a bit more specificity in its storytelling (“Seneca“) that lends songs a high relatability factor, and an overall less at-the-precipice than already-over-the-cliff commitment on the production side. The album can be a bit unforgiving in its relentless drive to play up the half-empty mindset when the music itself already does so much of the heavy lifting, with the lyrics an overkill at times and the spoken-wore segments still a distraction (also, note for note the same melody as the ones on Feel Something so it sounds — not in a good, come-full-circle way — like the exact same song), but this is still a world I can see myself spending as much time in as its predecessor, an aural space perfect for the bleak landscape we’ve all found ourselves in this year.
Kylie Minogue: “Magic”
(2020.09.24)
When Kylie announced the title of her new album, Disco, and revealed the cover art, I was hardly imagining the sound of “Say Something,” the first single released. But this is more like it! “Magic” perfectly captures the tone of “grown-up disco” that Minogue hinted at almost a year ago. With good reason, it lacks the serious resonance of Jessie Ware’s disco odyssey, reflecting, instead, the poppy fun we’ve come to expect from Minogue. It might not be so much grown-up, as an attempt by a grown up to capture the same nighttime feeling you only get at the club in your 20s, but it says a lot more than its predecessor. It also has a better, carefully social-distanced music video — okay, there’s only like six people total in the club and an invisible glass barrier surrounds our star, but we’re in the club again! Dancing! Celebrating! You can be nostalgic for 1979 and 2019!
April 2020: Highlights
It’s been another long month of uncertainty, stay-at-home orders, and streaming concert videos, the last a somewhat soothing balm to ease the blow of a virus that has wiped out any sense of security basically everywhere except South Korean, and not getting that Lady Gaga album that might have made it all just a little easier to deal with. Predictably, the music industries around the world scaled back and postponed in anticipation of more lucrative times, and we were left with a fraction of the music that would normally be rolled out to start heralding the great Song of the Summer Battle. But it hasn’t been a total blank and we did get some interesting releases in a variety of genres — here are a few that stood out.
(G)I-DLE: I Trust
(2020.04.06)
Up until now, (G)I-DLE has been the group to go to for straight-up tough-girl bangers like “Maze” and “Latata.” Their follow-up EP, I Made, paved no inroads, delivering more of the same generic, tropical-house that has been clogging K-pop the past few years. Luckily, the group has done a minor overhaul with I Trust, taking the moody lust of last year’s one-off “Lion,” and creating a whole EP around a sound less focused on getting bodies out of seats, than taking people outside of their bodies altogether. “Oh my god,” the lead track off of I Trust, is something of a red herring, not as cerebral as it wants to be, but certainly more dramatic, shifting the tempo abruptly into neutral just as soon as it seems to be taking off. These moments that give pause are scattered throughout this more somber side of (G)I-DLE. While the collection does rely a bit too heavily on trendy trap-hooks that set a very short expiration date on its longevity, it’s a nice, new color for the group, the more serious right of passage on any girl-group’s mood ring. (G)I-DLE wear it well, as I expect they would a big summer bop and winter ballad, too.
Anly: Sweet Cruisin’
(2020.04.08)
It would seem like the Anlys of the world are a dime a dozen now, so ubiquitous you can’t click a Related Artists link on Spotify without being bombarded by the same ten or so indie-bent singer-songwriters signed to major labels. Okinawa-born Anly’s origin story isn’t unique: the Millennial fairy tale-template is strong in this artist who grew up listening to her father’s music collection and began releasing and playing her own songs straight out of high school, gaining traction with modern gimmicks like iPhone-filmed music videos, pushing the “genre-less” party line, and boasting large streaming numbers. She was signed to a major on the promise of just two singles. But the music holds up well, though I’m not sure if “genre-less” is the correct term for Sweet Cruisin’, so much as “indecisive,” the kind of record that careens between swinging acoustic-prominent J-pop jams like “We’ll Never Die” and “Sunshine,” and mellow hip-hop like “Sleep” in an attempt to distinguish itself from more over-produced outfits by purposely maintaining a bit of a rough, DIY aesthetic that offers the illusion of authenticity, a sound now as marketable as any idol’s. There’s an audience for this kind of music, and while I might not be it, I can appreciate what Anly is doing within the confines of the box she’s built herself into.
Spell: Opulent Decay
(2020.04.10)
A minor avalanche of great metal albums have been release throughout April, so it’s a real shame that I just haven’t been in the mood to listen to and enjoy them as much as I normally would. I don’t have any explanation for this, aside from the inability to give the genre the concentration and consideration it deserves lately. Aside from Dawn of Solace’s Waves and Stallion’s Slaves of Time, Spell’s Opulent Decay is the first metal album I’ve enjoyed since 2020 kicked off, and even now I’m at a loss to articulate what distinguishes it from other albums in its sub-genre. The album is steeped in early 80’s hard rock, with its immediate influences being groups like Black Sabbath and Blue Oyster Cult, though I hear a lot of debut-era Ghost in these songs, too (themselves drawing from the same wells in their first years). It’s full of decent hooks covered in a tell-tale funereal gloom, and guided first by the dominant guitar work and then the thin, somewhat incongruous vocals. But it all works, even when nothing feels particularly original, and while I’m under no impression this will be making many year-end lists, I have found it a treat to chew on this past week, a kind of aperitif that I hope will stimulate my appetite for more in the coming months.
Nanaka Suwa: So Sweet Dolce
(2020.04.15)
If you’re a young seiyuu looking to make the transition to solo idol star, the history of the genre has ensured there are plenty of models available to emulate. Nanaka Suwa seems to be pulling from a variety of sources, among them veterans like Luna Haruna and Aya Uchida, but especially Ayami Muto and Yui Ogura. The latter is proving a particular inspiration, not just in visuals, but in sound. Suwa’s debut album So Sweet Dolce is something of a concept album, with each song focused around exactly what its titles suggest: sweets. With titles like “Donut Ring World,” “CHOCOLATE PHRASE,” “MACAROON LOVE,” and “POPCORN no Kumo (Popcorn Cloud),” the album goes all in, though the lyrical content and music itself isn’t anything different than so much upbeat idol-pop before it. While the album trades in a sound as expendable and nutritionally deficient as its thematic content, I’d argue that its sincerity and commitment give it some lee-way: junk food never promises anything more than a pleasing and evanescent mouth-feel and delicious sugar rush, followed by a crash that leaves the consumer lethargic and unsatisfied. On that front, this album comes fresh out of Wonka’s factory, perhaps all the better to keep it so short and so sweet. Suwa doesn’t bring anything new to this genre that you can’t already get from someone like Ogura, but for those who can’t get enough of this sound, and the endless parade of pretty women in crinoline who represent it, then as the title track says, prepare for some “uncontrollable crush vibes.”
Who-ya extended: wyxt.
(2020.04.15)
Anime tie-ins won’t be the first or the last time I will see Who-ya on my radar if they keep this up: sampled at random, the debut album wyxt. took me a bit by surprise. Not much is known about Who-ya except that it features the voice of a gifted 20-something who hits all the right dramatic heights for the type of guitar-driven themes common in shounen. The album also incorporates just enough synths to keep things clipping at a very nice, quasi post-hardcore pace. I listened to this one around the same time as the new miyavi album, so while I’m bound to draw some comparisons, this album has a lot more studio spit-and-polish than the latter’s just plain polish, incorporating more bells and whistles like on “REC ON,” where some dubstep-lite makes an unfortunate appearance, or on “G.O.A.T” where all the hooks are electronic. It’s a true hybrid of an album, fusing rock, balladry, and electro in a way that shows modest promise.
CHUNG HA: “Stay Tonight”
(2020.04.27)
I have been waiting all year for K-pop to wake up, to give me the first glimpse of a genuine heart-pounding, intergalactic, stars-collide hit. I really did not expect that hit to come from CHUNG HA, who until now, has released some pretty good dance-adjacent solo songs after a stint in short-lived girl-group I.O.I., but nothing of the caliber of a “Stay Tonight.” The energy of this song reminds me a lot of my favorite song of 2013, Kim Sori’s “Dual Life.” It’s a knock-you-on-your-backside song from a somewhat out-of-left-field performer that you never thought would be good enough to attract the kind of songwriting that could elevate them from the lower tiers. That’s not to say this will send CHUNG HA to the top of the heap — after “Dual Life,” I never heard anything about Kim Sori again, but wow, wouldn’t it be nice? In addition, the music video for “Stay Tonight” takes this bouncy house song to another level: the precision of the choreography accompanied by some clever visuals and cuts make this a feast as much for the eyes as the ears. This is the first time I have really felt the spirit of K-pop this year, and though it’s sad that it took until late April, that click you hear is the resounding connection of the hope of normalcy restored.
April: Da Capo // OH MY GIRL: NONSTOP // GWSN: the Keys
(2020.04.22) // (2020.04.27) // (2020.04.28)
K-pop has become one of the few East Asian music industries that relies on overseas sales to float, so it’s not surprising that with that particular market (both nearby Japan, and far away Europe/United States) off-limits during the coronavirus pandemic, K-pop is eager to start getting back into the release cycle to churn out whatever revenue they can wring out of their groups. And since South Korea is one of the few countries to have managed their outbreak competently they can afford to — the last half of this month has finally seen glimmers of a return of regular, bigger-ticket brands, and release schedules, with mini-albums by girls-groups (G)I-DLE, Apink, April, OH MY GIRL, and GWSN. It was a nice surprise since the three latter are all groups that I regularly follow and have a genuine interest in. It’s fair to say most of them started out as spackle to fill the space left behind by Girls’ Generation, but have put a lot of effort towards breaking out of the mold. None of these is a game-changer, but they are undoubtedly strong, with April’s “LALALILALA” being the big standout for me. The track relies on a 90’s eurodance via T-ara hook that shimmers in all the right, bubbly places, not unlike one of WJSN’s summer hits (or even Apink’s own, “Dumhdurum“). OH MY GIRL’S “Saljjak Seollesseo (Nonstop)” is the most forgettable, shooting for a broad, tropical-house vibe that, while fun, leaves it rather indistinguishable. That leaves GWSN’s “BAZOOKA!” squarely in the middle of the two, the ultimate palette cleanser. What matters most in the end is that getting to compare, contrast, dissect, and pick a favorite among multiple comebacks is the real victory here, one of the first and few luxuries fans can indulge in after a bleak winter of bad news and an industry reluctant to roll out any significant music during a time very few people were paying attention. We’re not out of the desert yet, but what a welcome oasis.
Top ten East Asian pop/rock albums of 2019
When Johnny Kitagawa passed away this summer, it was accompanied by a muted, collective sigh of relief, rather than the quiet, mournful sigh at the passing of a legend. I don’t know, maybe people loved this guy, but it seems as if in his last days, Kitagawa was more like the crusty, embarrassing grandpa nobody likes but everyone has to put up with, wielding the iron fist of tradition, opposed to any and all business strategies that might take him and his mega-successful company into the present, let alone the future. On July 9, you could practically see balloons being released into the sky: happy days were here again. Like dominoes, the country’s most successful producer of boy bands began falling into the warm embrace of social media. YouTube accounts sprung up, celebrities appeared on Instagram, wow, album covers weren’t immediately wiped off of the face of the Internet. Meanwhile, Arashi began their Olympic campaign in earnest, uploading videos to YouTube and singles onto the streaming platform Spotify and a member’s nuptials was announced with an eye-roll, merely confirming an open secret.
As far as defining the capabilities and limits of the last decade of J-pop, Johnny Kitagawa’s death is as momentous as any event; it’s sheer lucky coincidence that it happened around the same time the Heisei era ended and the new era, Reiwa, began. Two monoliths passing the torch, one in peace, one fighting the whole way down.
The rest of the musical year has been rather predictable, with the expansion of the 48/46 groups, Gesu no Kiwami no Otome.-clones riding the success of the group’s low-key J-rock, plenty of mediocre solos, and the demise of many more of your favorite idol groups (including E-girls in 2020, which I am not emotionally prepared to discuss at this time). Across the sea, tragedy returned to K-pop once again, claiming the life of more beloved performers, while at the same time, K-pop’s star continued to rise overseas, led by YouTube-trailblazers like BLACKPINK and TWICE, and Billboard-favorites BTS and NCT, while rookies continued to churn out tepid debuts and earnest comebacks. And yet, as always, there was so much music to wade through, that is wasn’t difficult to unearth hidden gems hidden among the tropical-house drops. Like a lot of music released in 2019, I would not necessarily say the year produced many J- or K-pop albums that we’ll still be talking about in a decade or two, but they kept things going moving along nicely, with a few that are worth examining in depth.
LOONA // [x x]
2019.02.19
LOONA could have been nothing more than one of the greatest K-pop marketing campaigns in history, but if so, nobody would be talking about anything more than the process, which isn’t the case. While I’ll never get over the disappointment of the phenomenal pre-debut singles never being collected into a single compilation, the group did release their first original EP, [++], in 2018, which was re-released in 2019 under the title [x x], and included six new songs, all which convey the singular, interstellar space in which LOONA lives, and it is indeed a mood. Unlike TWICE, LOONA comes off as a witchy and wise older sister: check new tracks “Butterfly,” “Curiosity,” and “Where you at,” which build on the older, faster-paced tracks. There’s a subtle brilliance to these songs, an ice-cold chill that benevolently provides as many goosebumps as it does ear worms. We’re all unworthy of a follow-up in 2020, but pray that LOONA chooses to bless us anyway.
Key // I Wanna Be
2019.03.04
SHINee just celebrated ten years since their debut last year, so it was only fitting that three of the four surviving members began prepping for their great military-service hiatus, while baby TAEMIN went off to pursue jopping with the other Korean Avengers on Ellen. Luckily, the group left behind treasures to enjoy during the break, including last year’s The Story of Light trilogy. But the greatest was Key’s solo album FACE, released in 2018, and re-packaged this past March as I Wanna Be. The re-package includes three additional tracks, among them the title track, featuring Soyeon of rookie group (G)I-DLE. This album feels like the true successor to 2015’s Married to the Music, an ode to K-pop boy bands and a testament to the pop aesthetic of SM Entertainment in a nutshell, both which are at their strongest together. The number of hooks on this record are stratospheric, and while I’m not convinced that Key is any better on his own than with his band mates, he brings the exact level of vocal enthusiasm these tracks deserve. It’s a hasty prediction, but this album should be enough to keep fans going for the next two years or so.
BAND-MAID // BAND-MAIKO
2019.04.03
Performers in the Japanese and South Korean music business (idols or otherwise) are some of the hardest working in the world, so you’ll have to excuse me if the constant mantra of Ariana Grande releasing two albums over two years doesn’t impress me much when it is has been de rigeur for a group like BAND-MAID to release a new album every year — and two in 2019. Obviously, the sort of work ethic that pushes K-pop idols to train and perform for 14 hours a day is by no means practical, safe, or just. With a group like BAND-MAID, there is also the possibility of not just physical and mental, but creative, burnout. Up until now, BAND-MAID’s releases have been on a strong, upward trajectory with each release topping the last: they have been featured in the top ten albums of the year list here for the last two years. But interestingly, it is not the late-entry CONQUEROR that makes this list, but the shorter EP released in April, BAND-MAIKO. CONQUEROR is a strong album, but it’s the first one that I haven’t been instantly taken by, and while I let that album continue to percolate and work its magic on me, I’ll let BAND-MAIKO speak for itself. As if to preempt a rut, the group changed things up for this special EP by giving a few of their signature metal hits a traditional Japanese sound, complete with taiko drums and shakuhachi flutes piping into every available space left in the production. This idea could have been a silly, ineffectual gimmick (perhaps like being forced to wear maid costumes?), more Wagakki Band-rip off than genuine novelty, but the melting of the two styles are perfect, offsetting, collaborating, and molding themselves into something just as hard and heavy, but with a unique texture. It also gives the band a chance to ditch the maid outfits and don traditional kimonos in music videos for “secret” and “Gion-cho” — I’m not sure they were any more comfortable to shoot in, but they certainly make for stunning visuals (women’s fashion throughout history, I guess). So far, the EP has been a one-off, but I wouldn’t mind seeing this little side-experiment blossom into a regular gig. It’s a gorgeous, sweeping testament to how adaptable and open the metal genre is, and how hard BAND-MAID work every day to keep innovating and challenging expectations, while proving the band is anything but out of ideas.
Nao Toyama // Gunjou INFINITY
2019.04.03
Seiyuu solo albums are a hard sell when so many can sound nearly identical. This isn’t inherently a bad thing if that’s exactly what you’re looking for, but it can get difficult to distinguish between them all if you listen to a dozen or so a month. “All pop music sounds the same” is easily one of the laziest insults to hurl, but the older you get, the more you realize there’s nothing insulting about stating merely uninformed facts: after all, even the most manufactured idols can create alchemy with the right songwriters that produce potions that keep a cauldron bubbling throughout the year. Gunjou INFINITY seems to have hit upon that very wizardry, taking Toyama’s lithe vocals and peppy guitars to a level beyond what she hinted at on her debut album. There’s not going to be anything here for those who saw the word seiyuu and immediately turned heel, but for those still on the carousel, check the extra synths on “Action,” the traditional instrumentals woven throughout “Tomoshibi no Manimani,” and the frenetic one-two punch of “Living Dying Kissin’” that make an album like this, adrift in a sea of so many like it, stand out. Nao Toyama has been on my radar since Rainbow, but she hasn’t proven herself until now, a woman more than capable of keeping up with the Nana Muzukis of the world, if given half a chance in a fickle, over-saturated market…and several return trips for draughts of that elusive elixir.
The Dance for Philosophy // Excelsior
2019.04.05
The Dance for Philosophy have been one of the strongest indie idol-groups since their debut, releasing one quirky, vintage-inspired album after another since 2015. While it was easy to lump them in with the rest of the Tower Records-set alongside Michiru Hoshino, Negicco, and especia, The Dance for Philosophy songwriters took their inspiration from 70’s soul and funk, mixing in just a hint of City Pop for thematic relevance. The result has been adorable, dorky albums, almost too earnest for their own good. This year’s Excelsior tries its hardest to be just a but more slick, a bit more chill, but of course it’s a losing battle, and all the better for it. The group is at their best when they’re at their least cool, breaking out all the horns, cliche sparkle effects and almost-Mickey Mousing sound effects on tracks like “IT’S MY TURN,” and “FREE YOUR FESTA.” But it’s smoother tracks like “PARRHESIA” and “HEURISTIC CITY” that hit the sweet spot in-between, and luckily The Dance for Philosophy spend quite some time in this zone. It might not have all the idol bells-and-whistles of their previous albums, but it’s a more mature, albeit tiny, step forward for the group’s sound that I sincerely look forward to hearing evolve at a pace slower than evolution, all the longer to simmer and enjoy.
TWICE // Feel Special
2019.09.23
TWICE had a better year than any other K-pop girl group in 2019, and that includes Internet phenoms BLACKPINK. While the group has always been hit-or-miss for me, never achieving a level of consistency that precluded enthusiasm for comebacks, they scored three amazing releases this year, including two Korean EPs, and an original Japanese album that hit #1 on the Oricon the week of its release. It’s their second EP, Feel Special, that has stayed on heaviest rotation. From the title track on, it’s a burst of sparkling energy, with the dance-pop glitter parade hitting peak ticker-tape on the stomping triplet “Get Loud,” “Trick It,” and “Love Foolish.” The album winds down with “21:29,” the nostalgic missing piece from Seohyun’s 2017 Don’t Say No. It’s a perfect example of K-pop from a group that has released more than seven original Korean mini-albums since 2015, but who still bring enough innovation, enthusiasm, and need to prove themselves to feel like a rookie group.
BABYMETAL // METAL GALAXY
2019.10.11
BABYMETAL were mired in a bit of controversy this year, the type only surprising to those unfamiliar with the Japanese entertainment industry, but enough to derail the group’s international momentum. When Yuimetal was reported mysteriously missing from live shows, conspiracies abounded until a press release confirmed the usual story: Yui Mizuno would not be returning due to poor health. Betrayed fans punished the withholding of information by insta-damning their newer singles as inferior, lacking in the same quality and depth of their early releases. It seemed the group was doomed to the same recycle bin and sudden irrelevance as other Japanese crossovers. So imagine my surprise when I tuned in to the new album and found myself charmed and impressed. METAL GALAXY, five years removed from the group’s debut album, is their poppiest to date, relying on metal as a production style, rather than a genre. The album still soars with riffs and earnest vocals, but it’s softer, a bit more diffused around the edges, with the endearing addition of a ballad and what can only be aptly described as soaring choruses. Rest assured, there are plenty of cheeky moments sprinkled throughout, like the bubbly rap-interlude on “DA DA DANCE.” There’s a reason this album is wedged into this category and not metal: it’s as laser-focused as any idol group on this list, just with a heart worn on a spikier sleeve than most.
TAEYEON // Purpose
2019.10.28
The slow demise of Girls’ Generation, from down-one-member, to down-a-couple-members, to let’s-just-give-them-all-solos, to hmm-how-about-this-pointless-subunit is one of K-pop’s saddest horror stories. This is not to say anything of the solo releases, which for those who have opted to stay with SM Entertainment, are as top-quality as ever, and some, in fact, being astonishingly good. TAEYEON, as one of the three biggest vocal powerhouses of the group, and now the highest-selling female artist in K-pop, has been given solo opportunities since 2010, and official solo albums since 2015, when the albums started to come in earnest. Of all of these, 2017’s Voice has been the strongest collection, but Purpose has blown that album out of the water. While it doesn’t necessarily showcase TAEYEON’s vocals so much as use them in the best, and holiest, way possible, it’s a chance for TAEYEON to get some great pop songs under her belt, by way of the usual overseas heavy-weights like LDN Noise, and Dsign Music who have been behind your favorite East Asian pop songs since 2013. As usual, the music is a mix of glossy R&B influences coating sultry pop (“Ha Ha Ha (LOL)“), and the type of sad song you play on the way home from a long day of work after your exhaustion has got you brooding (“Wine“). TAEYEON is an expert at this point, ringing emotion out of every last note, and so the album feels effortless. TAEYEON might be portrayed as a bit of an ice-queen in the media, but Purpose, both cool and confident, is surprisingly warm.
Hey! Say! JUMP // PARADE
2019.10.30
It will be interesting to see how Johnny’s entertainment will grow, mature, and respond to their musical competition, now that Kitagawa has passed and the handcuffs have come off. As mentioned above, there are already massive steps being taken to join the rest of the entertainment industry in 2020, and it bodes well for the years ahead. There will surely be many great, successful, working things the company will want to hold on to as it moves forward, and one only hopes that one of those things is a rich musical history. It has taken me nearly all of the last decade to truly appreciate the particular style of J-pop that Johnny’s produces, and though I would not call myself a super-fan, and remain skeptical of most of their performing groups, it’s been a wild ride to slow down, and carefully study, understand, and appreciate what these groups offer to the genre. At its worst, they indulge in the sort of outdated, saccharine idol-pop you’d find as filler content on a CD produced in 1978 from the clearance section of Half-Price Books. At its best, it fuses vintage styles with modern production to create something fizzier and more nuanced than the individual pieces, as do one of Johnny’s most successful modern groups Hey! Say! JUMP, whose name alone now endearingly dates them. They’re all set to take over once Arashi vacates the top spot, and aside from drama with a former member who was swiftly and quietly put to sleep like a rabid dog, they seem more than capable of carrying the torch. PARADE is Johnny’s at its best: long, winding choruses, slightly-awkward rap breaks tempered by pleasing disco strings, Western-pop and EDM pop-ups, individual vocals twining into the distinctively joyous group singalongs. It can’t possibly be less-than-average compared to the intellectual records littering year-end lists over at The Ringer or Pitchfork, and it won’t win any awards for bringing anything innovative to the table, but in that way, it’s like Johnny’s itself, leaning so heavily on the personality and charisma of its stars. Perhaps that’s why so many continue to draw from this particular well, year after year, and who’s comparing it to those stuffy lists anyway?
Cosmic Girls (WJSN) // As You Wish
2019.11.19
Like TWICE, Cosmic Girls had two above-average EPs to choose from this year: the frothy soap bubbles of For the summer, a giant, shimmering, sunshine-in-a-bag collection of K-pop, tailor-made for what is still the one season of the year most likely to have you throwing caution to the wind and, if you are unlucky enough to work a 9-to-5 like the rest of us, playing hooky or gazing out the window, wishing you had the guts to do so. But it is As You Wish, their autumn entry, that brings a bit of levity to the songs that showcase how great WJSN is when they are less gimmicky, and focus on what makes them work so well as a group. Some of the same songwriters appear on these tracks, such as FULL8LOOM, but the addition of newcomers KZ, Nthonius, and B.O. add some much-needed gravity to the parade of hooks on tracks like “Iruri (As Your Wish),” “Luckitty-Cat,” and the album’s strongest banger “Badaboom,” which veers into beloved T-ara territory with its catchy, repetition of “Badabing-badabing-badaboom-yeah.” WJSN and TWICE have had a similar musical evolution, and both groups have released work this year that reflects their status as worthy contenders beyond their beginning as SNSD-clones, but WJSN has the added benefit of being the type of group you can always count on to deliver consistency in great songs and great visuals.
Honorable Mentions
Wa-suta: Cat’ch The World
TAEMIN: FAMOUS
OH MY GIRL: Fall in Love
Flower: F
SUPER☆DRAGON: 3rd Identity
Top ten metal/hard rock albums of 2019
In this, the year of our Lord 2019, I never thought I would find myself typing these words, but here we go: Rammstein created one of the best music videos of 2019. Now let me back up. The German outfit has been around for so long, it is sometimes hard to remember that there was a time when bands like Rammstein and Marilyn Manson were truly terrifying to a subset of parents and teachers. It was a different time, and as the Internet changed everything we know about religion, sex, politics, and personal boundaries, bands like these began to seem less and less important to people who now had to worry about their eight-year-old kids stumbling across hardcore porn after clicking an innocent-looking link on a Geocities Pokemon fan site. Rammstein’s music always seemed purposely engineered to spark controversy, but by the time the group was packaging dildos with their new albums, it was all a little stale. Their low-budget videos didn’t seem so much thought-provoking or subversive, as they did a bunch of people in the active process of learning that art and taboo were not actually the same thing, and that pissing people off for the sake of it was an amateur’s game.
The music was one thing: Richard Kruspe is practically incapable of not writing a massive, chugging riff, but Till Lindemann’s message got muddled, and the band’s means of expression seemed hampered by their desire to first and foremost, provoke. Inevitably, intentions backfired after right-wing groups started co-opting their music, prompting the band to spell out their left-leaning political views and politely asking Nazis to get lost. Indeed, it’s like Rammstein has been waiting 25 years for someone with a better means of communication to corral all the interesting things they had to say in a meaningful way. That someone is Specter Berlin, and on March 28, he released “Deutschland” into the world.
Like all Rammstein videos, it is dark, violent, and makes for uncomfortable viewing. But due to the careful cinematography, its beauty makes it brutally remarkable. I cannot think of a music video that better captures what it is like to live in the ruins of a crumbling empire, of what it is like to love the freedoms and opportunities your country has given you, while knowing the truth of how those freedoms and opportunities were won. While watching those freedoms and opportunities narrow for more and more people. As Lee Seymour writes, ““Deutschland” makes clear [the band’s] intention: not to exploit or glorify, but to excoriate their homeland’s history of violent nationalism.” The video is a brief historical chronology of all of Germany’s worst moments, from the Middle Ages, to the Weimar Republic, and through two World Wars and the Iron Curtain. It does not sugarcoat, condone, or hide the atrocities committed by Germans against others and their own people (there are some great YouTube videos breaking the scenes down, for all my fellow history nerds). All this, set to words almost childlike in their simplicity, expressing the difficulty of reconciling the desire to take pride in one’s country, with that same country’s dark history. Is it possible when the future doesn’t look any brighter, when over and over again, we see that these fundamental evils have never really gone away, and return to the mainstream in almost clock-like cycles? You don’t have to be German to get it, though keeping up with current events helps. We are at a point in history when inroads are being made to rectify mistakes of the past, when responsibilities are being taken, but we are also at a point when a man who supports white supremacy lives in the White House.
These are scary times indeed, and making art of it is a tricky tightrope, one that I do not think Rammstein was capable of 15 or 10 years ago. For example, even their other recent attempts have been a bit dodgy, with follow-up song and video for “Auslander” making its point, but in a clumsy, cringey way (all you need is the shot of the butterfly being meticulously cataloged, studied and then slammed between the pages of the book — that’s it. Fin.). But “Deutschland,” both the song and video, manages to capture the shallowness, the fear, the confusion, the reckoning, the impossible reconciliation, and the unfulfilled promise of progress in a brief ten minutes. That doesn’t even begin to touch upon how great the music itself works to highlight all of these beats: the rhythmic verses, the chilly delivery of the chorus, the synths that journey in and out of the music like the red lights threaded throughout the video, connecting all of history, all of one nation’s self-contained life from the womb to outer space, while weaving in the band’s personal history through nods to past lyrics and imagery. It all works together like one great whole, like all of the world itself, self-contained by one action leading to the next, from one continent to another, like ripples on the massive timeline of world history. By the time the end credits, with its funereal take on “Sonne,” begins, as we watch one last macabre montage of devastating footage, all you can do is take one deep, collective breath and sigh, as Berlin wraps up with a mournful humble-brag of somber, haunting shots. As Leonid Bershidsky concludes, “The discussion about the video is really about what’s bubbling close to the surface here — and about the importance of awareness, and bitter irony, in keeping the lid on.”
So is Rammstein’s self-titled the best metal album of the year? Nah. It’s bogged down by a particularly slow second half, and there are definitely other albums that have a stronger track-by-track presence, such as the critic-panned Resist by Within Temptation, one of my most-played albums of the year (I think I am the only person on this planet who didn’t hate this album). There are certainly more cerebral albums, like Atlantean Kodex’s The Course of Empire, and more fun albums like the insanely cheesy and quixotic throwback-metal of Beast in Black’s From Hell with Love. There are are more technical albums like Aephanemer’s Prokopton, and darker, comfort-haunts like Idle Hands’s Mana. They all have a place on this list, a small piece of the variety and surprises that await us in metal every year (and don’t forget to check out a few more on our debut list). But to my mind, nothing beats the enormity and accomplishment of “Deutschland,” which is why it is so disappointing to me that many had already dismissed this dinosaur of a band, due in part to their less-than-graceful past, and are missing out on one of the most honest and important musical statements of 2019.
Within Temptation: Resist // Aephanemer: Prokopton
Rammstein: Rammstein // Idle Hands: Mana
Screamer: Highway of Heroes // Dayseeker: Sleeptalk
Diviner: Realms of Time // Atlantean Kodex: The Course of Empire
Beast in Black: From Hell with Love // Black Therapy: Echoes of Dying Memories
Honorable Mentions
Riot City: Burn the Night
Stormhammer: Seven Seals
Dream State: Primrose Path
Lacuna Coil: Black Anima
Gygax: High Fantasy
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