Dark Juan’s Top Ten Releases of 2024
Dark Juan’s Top Ten Releases (Which, as Usual, Isn’t a Top Ten) of 2024
By Dark Juan under the influence of a bottle of mulled wine and several beers.
Good day, my friends. It is that time of year again, when we have a trawl through the tens of thousands of words I have written over the year, and I realise just how many tropes from my limited stock I have re-used time and again and hoped that no-one actually noticed. At Team Ever-Metal, we welcomed Neveah and Mare to the team and also my Spanish amigo David, and this led to a massive increase in professionalism and made it look like the rest of us actually knew what we were doing. Oli Gonzalez mocked me mercilessly for my enthusiastic scoring of records I like, and Rory is still labouring under the misguided notion that Limp Bizkit are a good band.
I, however, have still managed to bring you the good stuff despite having a year which could be described as mildly taxing, in an emotional sense. I shan’t go into details but at least two members of my family nearly died, as well as my spending months on an NVQ unit at work that it turns out I DID NOT NEED TO COMPLETE BECAUSE I HAD ALREADY COMPLETED DEDICATED SAFEGUARDING LEAD TRAINING AND NO FUCKER HAD THOUGHT TO TELL ME!
So, 2024 is reaching its denouement, and it is at this time of the year I cast back a drunken eye on the records that turned me into a dribbling, jerking wreck of excitement in a year that gave us (Rory and I were discussing this and there has simply been far too much of the good stuff to keep it as a Top Ten) an embarrassment of superb music. I say every year that it has been a vintage year, but 2024 really has been a bit special – there’s everything from Technical Death Metal to Folk Metal to Synthwave on my list, and a particular highlight for me was the return of Kittie to the fray – I have always loved Morgan Lander’s voice and their combination of Thrash and Nu-Metal and I was delighted when we heard that they were just as abrasive and challenging as they always had been, even after a protracted absence.
Before I plunge into my list though – one last thought.
Hail Darkness.
An album of conspicuous brilliance and one that I thought was a worthy successor to Jinx Dawson and Coven and was more than usually effusive about when I wrote my review. It is important to note that I wrote the review (as did many others) whilst operating under the understanding that they were a real band. When it came out that the entire band, the music, the vocals, the imagery were all generated by AI and the creators of the project had essentially LIED to the entire scene about it, I was disgusted and felt betrayed, and more than a little bit stupid. How could I not pick up on this? How, as a journalist of many years’ experience, and a total music nerd to boot, could I not notice that what I thought was excellence was in fact computer-generated? Their argument that they simply wanted to see if it could be done held no water because there was a shitload of people who shelled out for albums and merch without knowing they were not a real band and telling them after they had parted with their hard-earned was, well, frankly a load of fucking steaming, freshly laid bullshit. More to the point, should my review (and excellent score) still stand?
The answer is an emphatic NO. Music comes from the soul and from the talent of the players, not from feeding a bunch of terms into a data aggregator and letting it do the work (regardless of how many hours you spent thinking up ways to make it work). From the lyrics being written with feeling to the thousands of hours of practice and learning that musicians must go through in order to perform, both live and on record, we simply cannot allow AI generated “music” to supplant these important facets of performance. You aren’t going to get a live show from an AI project. You aren’t going to press the flesh or make friends or drink with them after a show. You won’t be able to interview them. You aren’t going to get to meet your heroes if they are AI constructs and we must, absolutely MUST resist the rise of AI-based art. AI is supposed to be there to take on the more mundane jobs in society to free up creativity, not the other way round, so we are not listening and watching computer-generated entertainment in our AI assigned two room flats while we complete 12 hour shifts on a production line somewhere…
So, FUCK Hail Darkness and the people who perpetrated a fraud on the entire Metal scene!
And now… The list, in order from bottom to top!
20. Abrams – Blue City
Way back in May, this worthy American four-piece blew Dark Juan out of his shoes with an album of serrated, uncompromising Post-Metal with admixtures of Post-Grunge and contemplative, dreamy Psychedelia. It combined flayed nerve emotion with the kind of heaviness that only steroid-driven Soviet powerlifters could handle and did this with sensitivity and charm. The power of this album is undeniable, and the vocals. The fucking vocals, friends. Just listen to it and tell me you aren’t transported off this miserable blue marble careening through the cosmos to somewhere rather more magnificent.
19. Ponte del Diavolo – Fire Blades From the Tomb
Screamingly scarlet and emotional yet possessed of icy cold rage at the same time, this Italian band sent shivers down the spine of Dark Juan back in February, when their compelling mix of Goth, Black Metal and Doom Metal sent me into paroxysms of what passes for joy in my poor, tortured hypothalamus. Capable of moments of staggering beauty, they confounded expectations every step of the way and made listening to their album rather more of a journey, an adventure if you will, rather than just experiencing music. If you love the idea of Siouxsie and The Banshees covering early “In The Nightside Eclipse” era Emperor, you’ll fucking adore Ponte del Diavolo. Dark Juan does. Again, it is the vocals that make this album special, as Erba del Diavolo oscillates between spine-caressing crooning and the kind of fiendish howling that you’d only hear in at least the fifth circle of Dante’s Inferno. Normally within a split second of each other.
18. Fury Weekend – Million Flares and Starlights
Minsk in Belarus brings us a man called Ars Nikonov (and a particularly warped lese-majeste law where you can get five years in prison for merely reading something that is less than complimentary about the government there) and Fury Weekend is the sound of John Carpenter films on record. Lush soundscapes and oh-so-Eighties synths invoke pictures of leather and PVC clad anti-heroes operating in the seedy underbelly of a rain-soaked, teeming retro-futurist megapolis, sneaking proscribed data and Dexedrine from kitchen labs to underground resistance organisations. However, the music of Fury Weekend is not just Synthwave. It has interesting Industrial, Aggrotech, Electronic Dance and Post-Rock influences which lift it beyond the realms of cathode ray tube displays and flying cars and mere soundtrack-building into something rather more cohesive and magical.
17. Kill The Thrill – Autophagie
All the way back in January, and the first of several entries from the burgeoning French Extreme Music scene on this list, Dark Juan had been forced to wait NINETEEN years for this new album from the French Avant-Garde stalwarts Kill The Thrill. Having been a fan for nearly as long as I have been lauding the Sisters of Mercy to anyone who might listen, Kill The Thrill’s eclectic mélange of Gauloise-husky, cracked and broken Café Chanson crooning and stabbing, feral, tear-streaked noise has not lost any of its power, or its hold over Dark Juan’s excuse for a soul. This album is simply brilliant and conjures up images of barely glimpsed figures on a stage, seen through clouds of dry ice and Gitanes while you are pressed up against gorgeously attired creatures of the night and you know that you are going to have the time of your life, but you aren’t coming out alive… But by Christ, it will have been worth it.
16. High Parasite – Forever We Burn
To October now, when the legend that is Aaron Stainthorpe of My Dying Bride decided to open new vistas of sound with his new band, High Parasite, where the morose pomposity of MDB gives way to a more accessible and actually very cool Deathpop sound. Stainthorpe shines brightest when he is stretching his vocal talents and there is even, dare I say it, a joie-de-vivre in his performance, his intimate baritone being seductive in the extreme, rather than utilising his normal alienated bark. The sound is as you might expect considering Paradise Lost legend Gregor Mackintosh produced the album as well as contributing guitars to it. The album lifts Aaron clearly above My Dying Bride’s Gothic Doom and into realms where Gothic doesn’t necessarily mean dark and miserable. Also, Tombs’ bass tone on this album is fucking incredible!
15. Pound Land – Mugged
Dark Juan is a champion of the underground, British Extreme music scene, and will search out bands from that scene to write about frequently. However, there comes a time when you discover something that is truly unique and special and just speaks to the soul, and so it is thus with Pound Land, a shouty, screaming, Northern rage against everything that is unfair or unjust set to sounds that flay and beat you and eviscerate. Pound Land play Industrial music being assaulted by the scuzziest of Punk Rockers, and their thick, buzzing, bass-led and snot-flicking sound is underpinned by the snarliest of Mancunian accented vocals raging at absolutely everything in sight. Their music is the sound of sink estates in inner cities, of Collyhurst and Miles Platting and Monsall and Newton Heath and Moss Side in the Eighties and the biting social commentary that only the lower classes are capable of. It is not a comedy of manners; it is a baying mob with Molotov cocktails descending on the Department for Work and Pensions because they have fucking well had enough of being treated like cattle and chattels and the working class WILL have its revenge. Pound Land are the bass-led sound of revolution and the people rising up for their freedom. Or it would be, if they weren’t all so fucking lazy and poorly educated.
14. The Gates – …Of the River Styx
It is well known that Dark Juan enjoys a bit of silliness and dressing up from his bands. Canadians The Gates have this in spades, seeing as, judging by the album art, the vocalist has no face, and his head appears to be only composed of chainmail and an M1916 Stahlhelm, and the guitarist is a giant eyeball with arms. The music, which is brilliant and more than a little silly, combines the viciousness of Black Metal vocals with the whimsicality and theatricality of Ghost. This can be jarring but if you are prepared for it then it’s a heady mix of brutality and musicality. Both, however, are clearly as mad as a box of painted frogs and that ticks off another box in the never-ending and entirely arbitrary list of things that Dark Juan likes. As an added plus, having listened to this and subsequently asking Mrs Dark Juan if she fancied a romp, Mrs Dark Juan promptly decamped to her studio, having excused herself uncomfortably…
13. Khost – Many Things Afflict Us, Few Things Console Us
It is not a statement too far to say that UK-based Khost scared the living shit out of me. Their music is the sound of waspish, hornet-like hatred that just does not stop over the course of their EIGHTEEN track album. Bringing together elements of EBM, Black Metal, Industrial and Grind, they sound like the kind of shredding machines used in scrapyards to break down metal items. They do this with a wide-eyed intensity that is truly terrifying to experience and a full listen through of “Many Things Afflict Us, Few Things Console Us” means that you will be spending days in a darkened room, by yourself, trying and failing to rid yourself of the despair, horror and all-consuming rage that Khost have engendered within you. It is truly a British album for the ages, especially if you like having your spine ripped clean out of your back and being beaten to death with it. Assuming you survived in the first place, natch…
12. Kittie – Fire
Remember those dread words, “Return to form”? How old timers do a record that gets close to the glory days and there is a brief resurgence of interest before they sink back into the morass of Metal that is unremarkable and unchanging? Kittie have spat in the eye of those sort of people and have delivered an absolute monster of an Alt/ Groove Metal album that just drips with assured poise and a confident insouciance that borders on a desire for absolute world domination. There is not a weak track on this album and Morgan Lander’s voice has never been better – her stentorian roar is still there, but instead of the blank-eyed, slightly worrying little girl clean voice she used to sing with, she now has a more mature set of pipes that can hold their own easily against any clean Metal vocalist. Kittie doesn’t have claws anymore – Kittie has sabre teeth and fuck off massive talons!
11. Louvado Abismo – Louvado Abismo
Already interesting because they are a very rare thing, being a Portuguese Experimental Industrial band (I am not well versed the Portuguese scene) who sing in their native language and have the consummate front-person in Patrícia Andrade, who appears to be able to channel anything from being a winsome courtesan to a jabbering, raging murderess with disturbing and facile ease. Her theatrical training only enhances her vocal delivery. The music is a combination of everything Dark Juan holds dear – Christian Death, Hawkwind, Godflesh, Killing Joke, Swans and Ministry all have their influences felt and incorporated into the nightmarish universe that Louvado Abismo’s music engenders in the brainspace of Dark Juan, and this is underpinned with an almost monochrome, smoke-tinged 80s Gothic feel as well. It is a truly special album that Industrial fans will get a lot from, as well as your more mainstream Metal fan.
10. Kurokuma – Of Amber and Sand
Absolutely transcendental heaviness from a trio of people who were once based in Sheffield in the UK but now one is in Bulgaria, another is a digital nomad and the third is still ensconced on these sceptred Isles of the UK. This trio have harnessed something that cannot be explained, as their music far outweighs the fact that there is only three of them. “Of Amber and Sand” is so heavy that it creates its own event horizon and crushes elements into a hitherto unknown substance denser than plutonium. Kurokuma’s music is the absolute zenith of what three people can do with just guitar, bass and drums and the absolute last word in British (kind of) Sludge alongside the mighty Torpor. Kurokuma redefine the word monolithic.
9. Winterfylleth – The Imperious Horizon
If you pick up only one Black Metal record this year, make sure it is the ever-reliable Winterfylleth. This bunch of Brits brought us the perfect Folk-tinged Black Metal album (with a superb production, meaning that it doesn’t sound like someone has been recording it in a jar with Radio Shack equipment and yoghurt) back in September and promptly tore off Dark Juan’s face before trampling all over it and dumping it on the moors outside of Manchester. “The Imperious Horizon” is an absolute tour-de-force of wintery Black Metal that conjures images of snow falling sideways in a gale-blasted moor, no trees and no shelter – showing that the UK can be truly inhospitable and has soaked up the blood of many an invader throughout the centuries. Their deep love of Britain shines through the absolute sonic warfare that is their music but their reverence for the country is never rose-tinted. The North of Britain is a cold and unforgiving place and Winterfylleth have now given it its own sound.
8. Vexing Hex – Solve et Coagula
To Illinois in the USA now, and “Solve et Coagula”, being the sophomore effort of Vexing Hex. Lightweight, Poppy and owing quite a lot to everyone’s favourite band they love to hate if they are a bunch of fucking gatekeepers, Ghost, this is another band that has Dark Juan covered on the silly names (for example, Cadaverus, Lord of Dread on vocals) and Vaudevillian entertainment front. Stepping away from the cartoon Satanism of Tobias Forge’s mob in favour of a world more based in witchcraft and folklore, they do share the same musical firmament of Ghost, however, and operate in the form of a modern band taking their sensibilities from the beginnings of Metal – your Giants, your Ten Years Afters, your Mountains and the like. However, this album is stupendously good if you aren’t a total tosspot, and if you are a neophyte just discovering Metal with the likes of Ghost and Sleep Token, you WILL enjoy the fuck out of this album. Dark Juan commands this.
7. Dusk – Industrie
When you think of Costa Rica, one might imagine that your first thought is of endless beaches and a balmy blue ocean. Not if you are Dark Juan, however. If you are Dark Juan, thinking of Costa Rica brings forth thoughts of musical brutalism, miles of endless, poorly finished and sharp-edged concrete that lacerates the palms of your hands and the soles of your feet. Yes, Dusk brings us a horrible, nightmarish Industrial sound that takes bleakness and hopelessness to levels only seen by fish factory workers on a night shift in Grimsby. On the gutting line. Dark, dank, and the epitome of function over form, Dusk are the soundtrack to meat-packing plants with overhead mass transit systems rattling overhead and shaking the ground where heavily dressed workers scurry through sputtering, ineffective fluorescent pools of light as they are swallowed up by the industrial plants they work at… If you like your music without hope or succour, Dusk are the band for you.
6. Ixion – Evolution
A late entry on this list, being as I only heard them in October – French band Ixion blew Dark Juan totally away with their combination of Synthwave, Drone and Doom Metal. Their sound is expansive and utterly all-consuming and Dark Juan was reduced to a gibbering, boneless mess by the end of their album – which to be fair was composed of three previously released EPs. This gave the album a very definite feeling of movement and progression and was very much like a performance in three acts. All of which Dark Juan appreciates mightily. Ixion are possibly, along with Dusk, my discoveries of the year. This band are unmissable – a matt-painted juggernaut roaring through the night, tinted orange by sodium streetlights.
5. Protosequence – Bestiary
I had sat on the review of this record for quite some time by the time it got published in April, having been kindly given a copy of it well before the release date by the band themselves because Dark Juan can be trusted with things like this (ask The Machinist, whose new album I have also been sat on for quite some time as they seek a deal to go with the music) and when I wrote about it I was more than usually excited as I had been a fan of the mad Canadian bastards for several years and their debut EP “A Blunt Description of Something Obscene”. Taking the already ridiculous amounts of technical ability they already possessed, Protosequence upped the ante with their first long player and took that technical ability to extraordinary new heights that mere mortals with the original amount of limbs they were supplied with can only dream of attaining. Also, they sport unironic and quite glorious moustaches. Quite simply, the greatest thing to come out of Canada, including Rush. If you love Technical Death Metal with a strong Jazz undertone, Protosequence are the band for you!
4. John 3:16 – The Pact
“For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life” is the quote that John 3:16 references from the Bible. This record is here because it fills a deep-seated and yearning need in Dark Juan to explore the human condition, no matter how much it generally sickens me (apart from the few people I actually like). This one-man Industrial project (Philippe Gerber being the absolute gentleman and now friend behind this music – bonjour, mon ami!) is choppy, deeply idiosyncratic and very damaged indeed, taking in all manner of sounds and then running them through so many programmes and filters that they emerge bastardised and suffering out of the other side. It is a cacophonous assault on the senses – maschinenklang melded to Shoegaze and Black Metal and Drone and Darkwave and cinematic sounds to create somethings that feeds upon your fear and your alienation and your misanthropy, and then amplifies it before flinging it straight back into your face – a feedback loop of misery and sorrow, shot through with bizarre religious messaging and the fear of Hell awaiting you… Truly, it is a tour-de-force of using your own feelings against you, and for that it is number 4 in my list because “The Pact” is just such a deeply affecting work.
3. MASTER BOOT RECORD – Hardwarez / Keygen Church – Nel Nome Del Codice
…And this is where we start to fudge our own Top 20 list because both of these records are by the conspicuous and unique genius that is Victor Love (and not an IBM 486 processor who became self-aware as he would have had us believe once upon a time) and Dark Juan is such an avid fan that he absolutely could not separate these records from each other, no matter how hard he tried. As far as MBR goes – Dark Juan has been a fan for many years, and this rabid, Neo-Classical Electronic Metal has consistently forced Dark Juan to espouse the absolute supremacy of Love’s musicianship and quality of composition. “Hardwarez” does however break from tradition insofar as Love’s live guitarist Shreddy plays on this album (previous works being Love and a metric fuckton of machinery) and this use of analogue meat-machine whacking a piece of wood with some metal wires and some magnets on it really did add another dimension to the music of MASTER BOOT RECORD and gave it a curious human quality that may have been lacking on previous releases.
Keygen Church, however, is a different kettle of fish and no mistake – the organ (fnaar fnaar!) is a truly mighty instrument that is tremendously Metal, and Love uses it to devastating effect on “Nel Nome Del Codice”. There’s no pretence at anything but the singular desire for Love’s accomplishment of his musical vision and the use of choir and organ and some of the most slamming Electronic Metal he has ever recorded. The quasi-religious aspect of Keygen Church’s record has a power of its own as well – the merging of religion and Electronics being really quite special to behold and to hear.
Two records on the same ranking. I do not care for your rules, and I will do exactly as I please. Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law.
2. The Chronicles of Manimal and Samara – Origins
Now there’s a surprise for you! A new TCOMAS album and it not being at the top of my list? First of all, because I have made friends with Daphne Ang and Andrea Papi via the means of my blatant and repeated fangirling, I want to make it clear that this list is not compiled by how much I like people. It is about the music and this fairness is enhanced by NOT having my favourite band of the modern age of Metal being my number one pick of the year. Even though it is equal to the ACTUAL choice, but in a myriad of different ways. TCOMAS’s brilliance lies in their absolute refusal to constrain themselves or their music by any genre or method and this is absolutely to be praised to the hilltops, especially in Extreme music, where genre can sometimes become king, and the music therefore is bordered, corralled, tamed and limited.
Not so with The Chronicles of Manimal and Samara and their explorations of music as a whole from a backbone that is more Metal than 98% of Metal bands but the influences of music from around the world, obscure instruments, genres that normally have nothing to do with Metal or Extreme music, cut-glass English poetry and unusual polyrhythms and arrangements abound, to make any TCOMAS album a challenging and educational experience, even for the more intrepid listener. I have listened to “Origins” dozens of times since I reviewed it, and every time there is another discovery to uncover, another motif I missed, another intelligent lyric I had glossed over.
I have declared many times that The Chronicles of Manimal and Samara are THE most important British-based band of the past decade. I still stand by that statement. They are truly unique and very special to me. I have taken them to my heart.
1. Fange – Perdition
Well, here it is, fiends, my personal record of the year out of the many I have listened to! You will no doubt, if you are regular readers of the nonsense I foist on you on a regular basis, remember that France, and more especially Brittany, has a special place in my heart because I lived there for a few years. Fange are from Rennes, which is one of the biggest, if not the biggest city in Brittany and their “Bretagne Industrielle” has cut Dark Juan right to the bone, what with its utterly bestial savagery, heart-bursting humanity and their roaring, grinding, Industrial Sludge Metal. Where “Perdition” differs from previous releases is in the electronics they have employed this time round, where some of the Industrial greats like Meat Beat Manifesto and GGFH share their influence on a band that really should be influencing every Industrial Metal band going forward. Fange are not polished and streamlined and clean in the manner of Stabbing Westward and “Psalm 69” era Ministry. They are dirty, oily, covered in soot and lubricants and half-deaf from working next to a bellowing, unsilenced, large-displacement diesel engine. White eyes stare out of smoke-blackened faces and their movements are tired and languid, but the eyes are fierce and watchful, and their fists are clenched and there is a febrile, barely contained violence about them as they emerge from a dank engine room into the light, squinting against it. Their music is absolutely fucking massive and powerful enough to destabilise tectonic plates and cause catastrophe.
And that’s why I fucking love them so much. There is no quarter given or taken in the hellscape that is Fange’s music, and it should be taken as an object lesson into just why Heavy Metal and Industrial weld together so well. There is nothing more brutal than “Perdition”. Mainly because it is not a speedy record. It is an inexorable slow grind through the lower levels of Hell. I have never heard guitars sound so apocalyptic. Ever.
So, there you have it. This is my romp through what I thought were the best records of the year out of a cast of hundreds. There are some bands out there with releases that are worthy of note, however, and I want to draw your attention to them because they are pretty damned special!
Grendel’s Sÿster – Missed out on the top 20 by a gnat’s chuff. German Folk Rock/ Metal that has a very idiosyncratic sound and a very unusual voice in frontwoman Caro. Rory and I both loved this record. That’s a very rare thing indeed… https://www.ever-metal.com/2024/08/28/grendels-syster-katabasis-into-the-abaton/
Iron Slug – Kentish Sludge Doomsters who thankfully have a robust sense of humour after I’d been at them and have released two fucking brilliant EPs this year. Had they released an album they would have made the top 20 EASILY! https://www.ever-metal.com/2024/07/01/iron-slug-debauched-and-bored-ep/ and another review that won’t be posted until after I have submitted this work.
Quinn The Brain – These Texan Grungers continue to defy every attempt Dark Juan makes to get them on a top 20 album list by steadfastly refusing to release an album. This year, they released “Bleed Me” which was another superb EP of Riot Grrl anthems and dirty grooves. Dark Juan loves this band more than chips! https://www.ever-metal.com/2024/03/15/quinn-the-brain-bleed-me-ep/
Chain Code – One-man mad Metal and Metal adjacent music from MuRphry that challenges convention and makes you wonder just what the fuck you are listening to as chaotic complexity unfolds around you. https://www.ever-metal.com/2024/10/14/chain-code-synthetic-outcomes/
Cold In Berlin – London based Gothic Doomsters Cold In Berlin served up a fucking peach of an EP in “The Body is The Wound”. Cold, yet curiously human, it was a superior slice of what Siouxsie Sioux would have done if the Banshees discovered Boss Metal pedals. If it was an album it, too, along with Quinn The Brain and Iron Slug, would have displaced people off the top 20 list. I can’t wait for their next release. https://www.ever-metal.com/2024/01/11/cold-in-berlin-the-body-is-the-wound-ep/
That will do for now although there were the likes of Haunted Plasma (terrible band name, great record), Verminthrone and many others that were worthy of note, but I have stop somewhere and I have the latest album from Welsh sonic terrorists Lifer to listen to, so I will bid you farewell and wish you and your families all the most blessed of Yules and a very prosperous New Year.
Let’s see what 2025 brings.
Disclaimer: This article is solely the property of Dark Juan and Ever Metal. It is strictly forbidden to copy any part of this article, unless you have the strict permission of both parties. Failure to adhere to this will be treated as plagiarism and will be reported to the relevant authorities.
