It's anything but instant, that's for sure. I didn't even like it at first. Now I think it's brilliant. Most of the tracks are super long and complicated and take a while to settle. Having listened to the album several times now, I really find that it flows super well and that there's such an abundance of amazing details and compositional ideas. To me, Arkona's albums are all good, but their 4 newest so far are my favorites. Yav stands as my number 1 so far.

I enjoyed that Kobra & The Lotus album a lot, but it just didn't get to my top 30 overall.

I like it because of the songwriting. The mix on the album really does its best to sabotage some fundamentally good tunes.

To me, it's just kind of a slightly weaker copy of the album they put out last year. Fun, but nothing special.

I need to listen to it more but Some Rap Songs is probably a safe bet at this point.

The 30 albums I posted are the 2018 releases I have bought and listened, but since I take a lot of chances with what I buy, they're not necessarily all gold. But actually, I was super lucky this year with my album purchases. Here's the albums with color coding to show what the rough ranking is so far.

https://i.imgur.com/ZyTglQWh.png

Yellow albums are ones that I hesitate to have an opinion on yet.

Bigger size pic: https://i.imgur.com/ZyTglQW.png

It is so. ****ing. Good.

Amazing how few of them don't feature a woman on the cover.

Yeah, I'm just very eclectic like that. Definitely not mainly looking for female solo artists.

Working on the road in Saskatchewan next week, looking forward to hearing this album in its natural habitat. Probably my AOTY right now.

Oh my goodness! Has no one heard this?


Anybody know Änglagård? Well, All Traps on Earth is a new project started by Änglagård’s founding member and bassist Johan Brand. His new album, "A Drop of Light", is like a mix of Änglagård and Magma. Well, more like layering than mixing, but whatever. Brand has his daughter on vocals for this one. Enjoy!

It's impossible to hear all the releases from a given year. I've been so busy with work and also going through a very long back catalog in my home listening that I've only really been able to listen to about 25 new releases this year. So, this top five is very preliminary as I need to really catch up but I wanted to get something down before the end of the year.

1. Daughters - You Won't Get What You Want
2. Nils Frahm - All Melody
3. John Coltrane - Both Directions at Once: The Lost Album
4. Mothers - Render Another Ugly Method
5. Yo La Tengo - There's a Riot Goin' On

2-5 will likely change. I'll expand to a top ten once I catch up but that's what I got so far.

Edgy, confrontational, dangerous? It's none of these things; it's a simplistic and boring rock album with some distortion on the master bus. It's a Hot Topic version of dangerous music, which explains its broad appeal.

No music is dangerous no matter how much attitude it has. It's just sound. What that Daughters album has, that people love, is atmosphere. At least that's how I see it.

If Daughters aren't edgy and confrontational I don't know what the **** is.

To me, that album mostly doesn't register as "confrontational". I hear it as a form of post rock/metal hybrid. Post rock is more expressive of angst and other emotions, but not so focused on attitude. I don't know what edgy would mean in 2018 since everything has been done to death. Nothing feels edgy to me, that's for sure. The most provocative music in a time where every manner of abrasive music has been done to the furthest extreme, it seems far more challenging to dare make something embarrasingly earnest and pretty.

lol I know that. Although some music makes me want to inflict self harm. Mostly some of that tepid pop-R&B crap they're playing on the radio around these parts.

But doesn't all that subversive art lose it's sting really fast? I think it does.
Your grandma will protest music like Daugters, but for your average music geek, it should be pretty been there done that in terms of the more "dangerous" qualities of the music. Doesn't mean it's not good in a variety of other ways of course.

What direction is even left then if you wanna do something provocative or challenging? Maybe focusing on making the lyrics as politically charged as possible. MAGA-rock!

I agree with that. What I'm thinking about is more how music affects those who are used to listening to all manner of underground material. That Daugters album, for example, would probably have seemed really offensive in some way to me 20 years ago, but now it's nothing new. I've listened to albums that are just straight up screaming and noise, so it's nothing surprising on that level. Seems to me that music has to focus on being actually very well made to have any impact on me, since the act of making abrasive music in itself is unimpressive when you've heard it done so many times before. I like that Daughters album because it's so creative and artfully made.

1. Both are done in spades.
2. Nothing ever truly reaches its limitation imo. Oversaturation is one thing, but pushing the envelope in "abrasive music" requires innovation which is difficult to predict.

Not to give any weight to Mord's dull ass rejectionist post, but I wouldn't call it confrontational either. Confrontational is like I'll cut off your face and you'll like it. The new Daughters album sounds more oppressive to me, like this is my dark world and you can't escape.

Very well put. It's not an album that's trying to impress you with darkness. It's a nightmare.

The road is long, the road is dark....

Album basically ends with a panic attack of not being able to get away from whatever evil is chasing him.

You can not like an album but if you think this is just an attempt to sound dark and evil, you're not really paying enough attention.

Watch me. *deletes file*

The Daughters album is trash. It's what normies think being alt is like.

Thank the gods for that. Wouldn't want you consulting with me on anything, lest some of your failures rub off on me.

I respect that opinion, though I've noticed that such an opinion seems to come about whenever an edgy album or band gains traction and enters any sort of relevancy.

trash is my favorite genre

Trash sounds like a made-up genre RYM would pull out of their ass. I feel like it'd be a subgenre of either glitch hop or harsh noise.

if the genre hasn't been mined and extracted from some sort of ore then I don't wanna hear it

That's a good point.

Not for me. Everyone has their own tastes and I respect that.

All this talk about this Daughters album y'all are talking about is making me want to listen to it.

You'd love it.

Listening now. Will report back later.

I'm a few tracks in and I'm liking this a lot. It's literally what I love about this kind of genre. So this gets a thumbs up from me. Each track keeps getting better and better. It's a pretty wild ride tho. But I love it.

:beer:

This album is close to unanimous MB approval.

And you love challenging, confrontational music so much

EDIT: *derp*

Not really AOTY, but the first of at least 3 or 4 mixes of stuff I've enjoyed the last year.