The best albums of 2019
This year has proved that underground music is stronger than ever. A lot of bands and artists have faced current real issues by standing up to support the idea that the world should be a safe place based on equality. This is the list of the records that best represent 2019 with a gallery of photos that embodies our personal point of view.
- Marika Zorzi + A.F. Cortés.
1) LINGUA IGNOTA – CALIGULA
On her new album CALIGULA, Lingua Ignota takes Kristin Hayter’s vision to a new level of grandeur, purging her and vengeful audial vision going beyond anything preceding it and reaching a new unparalleled sonic plane. Eschewing and disavowing genre altogether, Hayter builds her own world. This music has no home, any precedent or comparison could only be uneasily given, and there is nothing else like it in our contemporary realm.
2) NICK CAVE - GHOSTEEN
In the first album wholly written since the death of his son, Cave reaches an extraordinary, sad and beautiful artistic evolution. Nick Cave emerges with one of his most powerful albums yet, an endlessly giving and complex meditation on mortality and our collective grief.
3) BLACK MIDI - SCHLAGENHEIM
Schlagenheim is the debut studio album by English rock band Black Midi, released through Rough Trade Records. Since forming just over a year ago, the band has quickly cemented their reputation as one of the hottest new underground bands, following a string of sold-out UK live dates and surprise shows punctuated by constantly shifting sets and blistering musicianship.
4) SUNN O))) – LIFE METAL
Life Metal is the first new studio album by Sunn O))) in four years, release via Southern Lord.
The band recorded the album with Steve Albini and the result is a record impeccably recorded, authentically represented and completely accurate. The spectrum cracked the firmament open in clarity. An all analogue technique was used, they recorded and mixed on tape, providing a creative gateway for Sunn O))) to evolve their production methods into stronger, confident, performance based and a more logical executive process.
5) CHELSEA WOLFE – BIRTH OF VIOLENCE
Birth of Violence touches upon tradition, but it also exists in the present, addressing modern tragedies such as school shootings and the poisoning of the planet. But the record is at its most poignant when Chelsea Wolfe withdraws into her own world of enigmatic and elusive autobiography. The songs describe an internal awakening of feminine energy, a connection to the maternal spirit of the Earth, and a defiant stance against the destructive and controlling forces of a greedy and hostile patriarchy.
6) SWANS – LEAVING MEANING
Michael Gira, multi-instrumentalist and frontman of Swans really likes to push himself and the rest to make some ambitious records. After a long hiatus between the last century and the present one, he has managed to pull another great record. For Swans, the salvation of mankind is just an illusion. As Gira suggests in “Sunfucker”, we have only to “surrender, the flood is coming, believe it or not”.
7) BIG BRAVE – A GAZE AMONG THEM
A Gaze Among Them was spawned by a simple, but no less profound, question: “How do we take very little and make something bigger than what we actually have?” Toying with stark minimalism, melodic tension, and Wattie’s staggering vocal strength, the album serves as a culmination of BIG|BRAVE’s near-decade of musical fearlessness.
8) FONTAINES DC – DOGREL
Dogrel is the debut full-length release for the ambitious Fontaines D.C., the Irish indie rock band, produced and mixed by Dan Carey. Determined to find romance and poetry in grim times, Fontaines D.C. have made a record to fall in love with. Fontaines D.C. come good on a debut album that offers both a storyteller's narrative voice and a snarling new vision of disillusionment.
9) BORIS - LφVE & EVφL
Boris have never been one for sentimentality, they simply wave goodbye to old worlds in favor of new horizons. The members of Boris boldly explored their own vision of heavy music, where words like “explosive” and “thunderous” barely do justice. Using overpowering soundscapes embellished with copious amounts of lighting and billowing smoke, Boris have pivoted onward a more organic, non-grid literary style that LφVE & EVφL showcases.
10) HIDE – HELL IS HERE
HIDE's second full length album Hell is Here sees the band's evolution pushed even further. The tone is sick and heavy. Using their previously established blueprint of complex drum programming, stomach churning sub bass and aggressive expressive vocals, Gabel and Sher poke and prod at the perception of musical context, and remind the listener that feelings of anxiety, pain, and discomfort are equally as important as those of resolution.
WORDS MARIKA ZORZI
PHOTOGRAPHY: A.F. CORTÉS