Ever since I started writing for this site, I’ve found myself in the same difficult spot at the end of every year: trying to select 10 albums that were released that year and were the best in my humble opinion. Seeing how many records get released every year, I just can’t avoid to have missed a few here and there. So I end up listening to quite a bunch of albums that others have been recommending on last notice, of which some actually make it into my list still. After long moments of contemplation, putting albums in my list, moving them around and replacing them by others, this is what finally became of my “albums of the year 2017”:
| Honorable Mentions | 10-4 | 3-2 | 1 |
3. Igorrr – Savage Sinusoid
French multi-instrumentalist Igorrr threw quite the curveball at me with his third album Savage Sinusoid. His eclectic mix of really harsh metal riffage and aesthetics with music that has as good as nothing to do with the genre like breakcore, baroque, classical and Balkan music is one hell of a mind-blowing piece of work. It needs some getting into for most people, but once you do it won’t ever let you go… it’s heavy, catchy and confusing all at the same time. Igorrr might chase away some people with his brain twists, but he masterfully manages to put “old music” and “new music” together without making it sound like a cut and paste job. Every element in every song sounds like it belongs there and is at its intended natural place. This is what music should be like: without bounds, exciting, surprising and mind-blowingly good. For any music fan with a (very) open mind, get familiar with Igorrr, he’ll bring you into ecstasy for sure… For my full review go here.
2. Throne of Heresy – Decameron
For a lot of people this band will probably sadly enough be an unknown name. Throne of Heresy already convinced me about their talent for black/death metal with a good story on their album Antioch. But with Decameron they took it up a notch: really strong and well-crafted black/death metal with influences of other styles combined with this time a concept that fits the music so well. For the album they decided to take inspiration from the same named literary work by Boccaccio about the “Black Death” that travelled through Europe on a deadly path. Every song on the album stands for a certain city or place, starting from the first known victims in Asia and travelling down to their own native Ostrogothian soil. A death metal release with tons of variation and the cold touch of black metal with an interesting concept that fits well in a black/death metal band. Throw on top of that the fact that these guys really did their homework to make sure that everything they refer to has some kind of historical correctness and you get a release that is this high up in my list for a reason! For my full review go here.
