2021 is coming to a close. The Pandemic is still happening, but some of the restrictions have loosened, allowing musicians to tour again. Musicians who were stuck in lockdown in 2020 and unable to tour used this downtime to produce more music, and we got to see the spectacular results this year. We also saw a lot of new bands starting out in 2020/2021, and heard from some old favorites. This list is but a small sampling of them. I was inundated with new music all year long. As I said last year, I’ll probably be discovering music that was released in 2021 for years to come. It’s near impossible to get to them all. But, here are just a few of the albums that shaped my year, in no particular order. I hope that, if you find that you like any if these albums, you’ll support the artist on Bandcamp and purchase them. Especially on a Bandcamp Friday when they get the full payments.
Slow Danse With the Dead - Babble of Despair
Release Date: October 1
Top 3 Favorite Tracks: Babble of Despair, Crucifix, Cold Caress
I first heard of Slow Danse With the Dead late summer 2020, and it has remained one of my favorite current bands ever since, hardly missing a month of having a song featured on my Top Songs of the Month. They even made last year’s Albums of the Year blog. The dismal, droning vocals of Johnny Montoya just resonate with me, and I feel like if I were ever to make music myself it would probably sound something like this. Again with this album the singer has returned to his characteristic, over-the-top, almost humorously miserable lyrics which was what first made me fall in love with this band’s sound last year. The title track turns the gloomily redundant line “Such a tragic tragedy” into a catchy, danceable beat. The song “Cold Caress” is about someone or something with a cold grip, dragging the singer down by the throat into an “endless realm”. It’s probably metaphorical, I’m guessing for depression or some other mental illness.
I got this album on CD when it came out.
No Man Cry - Disappeared Men
Release Date: July 24
Top 3 Favorite Tracks: A Calm Evening, Forgive Me, Teardown
No Man Cry is the post-punk solo project of Tigran Davtyan out of Yerevan, Armenia, founded in 2020. There is a story behind this album. This was their fourth album in about a year, and it was released just two days before Tigran Davtyan began his mandatory two-year military service for Armenia. The western media isn’t talking about it, but this is a scary time to be serving in the army in Armenia, given their hostile neighbors at the borders in the aftermath of a vicious war late last year. The title of the album may be an allusion to the soldiers who keep disappearing at the border, taken as prisoners of war by Azerbaijan to be used as political bargaining chips. I hope Tigran stays safe, and I look forward to hearing from No Man Cry again after this two-year hiatus.
In many of the songs you can feel the angst and anxiety of someone about to enter the military service in a wartime environment. For example the song “A Calm Evening”, gives the feel of the calm before a storm. The lyrics, in Armenian, tell how the singer will miss their hometown while he will gone for years but will try to keep the image of it in his mind. Probably has an autobiographical element to it.
As far as I know the album is still a YouTube exclusive, and is not on Bandcamp, nor do I know of a way to actually pay for it, but you can listen to it here:
Vestron Vulture - Heretic
Release Date: June 30
Top 3 Favorite Tracks: Crippling Death, Cemetery Cowboy, Darkest RoadVestron Vulture is a band out of Monterrey, Mexico released three albums at once on June 30th, Hexen, Heretic and Hecatomb. Heretic is my favorite of the three, the most post-punk and gloomy of them, while the other two albums are good as well they have more shades of synthwave. Vestron Vulture has switched genres several times over their career, but it was when they turned to post-punk that I finally discovered them. Many of their songs deal with themes of the negative effects of drug abuse. For example, the song Cemetery Cowboy. also just a great post-punk track, with its gloomy bass guitar and macabre subject matter. I don’t know why the word “cowboy” is in the title, but at least this sounds nothing like a country song. Another song I like from Vestron Vulture is “Crippling Death”, off this same album, which I also recommend listening to. The singer Vestron Vulture, the namesake of the band, has been very prolific since 2010 when he left a thrash metal band to go solo, with almost forty albums, and in that time he has hopped through several different genres if you look into his back catalog, from more electronically influenced styles like synthwave and EBM, to this sort of music, which he’s been making since 2019.
Glaare - Your Hellbound Heart
Release Date: April 30
Top 3 Favorite Tracks: Your Hellbound Heart, Buyer’s Remorse, Mirrors
Glaare’s 2017 debut album To Death and a Day is still a favorite of mine, I even got it on cassette. The song “My Love Grows in Darkness”, first song on the album, is one of the most beautiful songs I have ever heard, and I don’t say that lightly. So I was thrilled when I learned that Glaare was going to have a new album out this year. The new album, Your Hellbound Heart, takes their sound in a bit of a new direction, with synthwave tones thrown into their usual shoegaze/post-punk. The theme of the album is sci-fi action movies of the 1980s, such as Hellraiser and They Live. One of the songs is even called “Terminator 2” and is told from the perspective of Sarah Connor, a character in the film. It’s very much a concept album, which are getting rare these days. Like their previous album, listening to it from beginning to end is like listening to one single work rather than a collection of unrelated songs, and that’s the mark of a good mix. There’s a lost science to placing songs on an album (or mixtape) in a way that they flow into each other and you kind of forget that you’re listening to more than one song at times. Glaare is good at this.
“Buyer’s Remorse” and the title track “Your Hellbound Heart” are a bit slower and sound closer to Glaare’s initial sound, although I do like all the songs. Admittedly nothing is quite like “My Love Grows in Darkness”, but perhaps that song is like lightning in a bottle. I do wonder if this album signals a permanent change of musical direction for the band, or if the next release will be different still.
Pretty Addicted - Soul for Sale
Release Date: April 8
Top 3 Favorite Tracks: Phobia, Soul for Sale, ‘Tones and Whiskey
“Suffering is what makes me create.”
Pretty Addicted’s music is very aggressive, loud, in-your-face, and the singer doesn’t sound like anyone else I’ve heard. The music videos are fun too, and Vicious always has the best makeup jobs. On their Bandcamp page they deem themselves dance-punk, which is a new genre to me but I like it. I found several of the songs off this album both catchy and relatable. After months of listens “Phobia” rose to the top as my overall favorite song on the album. A song about dreaded phobias, especially of the dentist office, with its cringe-inducing sounds of drills in the background. I hate going to the dentist too, and had a very traumatic root canal done to me, so I can relate to this song. The line “I don’t want to be brave, I don’t want to overcome anything” stands out to me. Everyone looks at phobias as something you need to face and overcome, but what if you just don’t want to? There’s too much of a problem-solving mentality in psychology. Then again, you do have to go to the dentist sometime, so learning to at least cope is something you kind of have to do, if overcoming the fear is impossible.
It’s about craving for human interaction, and getting it by having a one night stand with someone you meet at a bar. I can relate to the loneliness aspect at least, if not the solution she takes.
Jrimurmur - Lur Mur
Release Date: June 21
Top 3 Favorite Tracks: Es Kendani Em, Anharmar a im Mej, Averak
Jrimurmur, or alternatively Jrimurmurner (the “ner” is a plural suffix) translates to seaweed; understandably since Armenia is a landlocked country I had never come across that word. Jrimurmur is a duo from Yerevan, Armenia, who describe themselves as “two crazy girls making noise”. They’ve been active from at least 2015, and just released their first full length LP this year, Lur Mur.
Some highlights of the album include “Averak”,which translates to “Ruins”. It’s a breakup song; the singer claims that their lover left them in ruins, comparing themselves to the ruined medieval Armenian capital of Ani, which is now on the Turkish side of the border, while the lover went on to flourish like Yerevan, the current capital. It’s a cover actually. The original song was by Elvina Markaryan, a very famous jazz singer in Armenia and the former Soviet Union. Another favorite of mine is the very Lebanon Hanover-esque “Anharmar a im Mej”; the title translates to “Uncomfortable in Myself”, and the lyrics carry with them themes of body dysmorphia, and not liking to look at yourself in the mirror. The finale of the album is also noteworthy, “Es Kendani Em!”. While most of their songs are downbeat, dark and atmospheric, this song screams with passion. “Es Kendani Em” translates to “I am alive” (Ես կենդանի եմ in Armenian script; I wrote it in English transliteration because that is how the band lists it). The first word is pronounced more like “Yes” than “Es”, but that’s how transliteration goes sometimes. The climax of the song has this phrase repeated like a mantra. The wolf howl in the background of the final screams is a particularly nice touch, gives the song a really carnal adrenaline rush. It reminds me of the cry of a nation surrounded by enemies, declaring that they still live in spite of their enemy’s attempts to destroy them. I am not sure this is the intended interpretation, but it’s what comes to my mind. It isn’t a proud or happy shout, but one of desperation. The entire song has kind of a feeling of despiration. It screams “I’m still alive in spite of everything!”
Some of the tracks, like “Anharmar a im Mej”, have one or two other versions that don’t appear on the album, and as far as I know are only on YouTube. The ones that appear on the album itself are a bit more polished, but you might also like the somewhat more raw and gritty versions on YouTube.
Altar of Eden - Chimeras
Release Date: February 11
Top 3 Favorite Tracks: Existence, Sacrilege, Genesis
Altar of Eden truly sounds like it came right out of the early 1980s, echoing the sound of classic deathrock. It’s got a heaviness to it that a lot of modern bands in the genre lack. Zero synths to be heard anywhere. I found an interview with the singer of the band, and from what I can gather they’re not trying to chase any modern trends with their music, they mainly just listen to classic punk and post-punk and go from there. I can respect that, as an artist I don’t like chasing trends either. Just stick to what you want to make.
The Tears of Ozymandias
Release Date:
Top 3 Favorite Tracks: 683280 Hours, Zero Point, Slow Death
A solid debut album for this band which makes me excited for what they might put out next, this rose to the list late in the year for me, almost exclusively due to the song “683280 Hours”, the most thought-provoking and poignant song I’ve heard in a long time, but the album has other strengths as well. This is a song about life; its finite nature. I relate to it deeply as its lyrics examine many of the existential questions I’ve often dealt with in recent years. The song could only be the end result of a similar journey to find meaning in life. The title made me curious as to how much 683280 hours adds up to. It’s 78 years. Roughly a typical human lifetime. Even though it’s a bigger number it hits differently than counting it in years. Makes it seem much shorter. No one even makes it to a million hours. And you’re lucky if you make it to 683280 hours, most people don’t. Perhaps it’s because I can fully grasp how long an hour is, while a year is a longer time and thus harder to conceptualize. It’s more abstract. I’m going to be halfway to 683280 hours in less than four years. Every day your number of hours goes up by 24. How many of those hours do you spend doing what you want to do? How many of those hours do we waste sleeping? Or doing a grueling 40 hour a week job? Add them all up and subtract them from 683280. It really changes your perspective on everything when you consider how finite life is. And yet we still dream, as the song says.
Manticore Kiss ~ Intertwined
Release Date: July 4
Top 3 Favorite Tracks: Aboulia, Intertwined, Endless Whisper
“Aboulia” was my very first hit of 2021, having debuted New Years Day. And the duo had plenty more where that came from. Their music is very melodic, not only due to the captivating vocals from both members but the accompaniment of a cello in many of their songs. “Aboulia” in particular has an almost “Phantom of the Opera” quality to it, and I would consider that the strongest track on the EP. “Intertwined” is a bittersweet love song about a couple deciding to face death together. A lot of their songs sound like something you would have to have experienced in some way to write.The band has really taken their pain and made art out of it. That’s always the best sort of art in my opinion.
Скубут ~ Меланхоличен
Release Date: January 2
Top 3 Favorite Tracks: Акт Самоубийства, Устал, Художник
They released another album this year in June, Сгублен, which was just as good as this album and deserves a mention as well. I decided to go with the first album I heard but they’re both just as good.
Release Date: June 15
It’s the long lost song from The Smell of Rain. It was apparently made available to Mortiis’ patrons in 2019 before it was made public in Spring of this year, so it almost doesn’t count as a 2021 single, but that’s when I first heard it. I almost never thought I would hear a new Mortiis song in this style again. I’ve liked all of Mortiis’ genre shifts over the years, but in my opinion darkwave Mortiis is best Mortiis. And he was only darkwave for that one album. I wonder if he has any other songs like this lying around. If so, take my money Mortiis.
Top Singles of 2021
Not every great song that came out this year was part of an album compilation, so I thought I would give a special shoutout to some of the singles of 2021 I greatly enjoyed.
New Cross ~ Fist of the Hanged Man
Release Date: June 3
This song still gets stuck in my head all these months later. It’s a song with staying power. New Cross is a band out of London, England, which emerged last year. This extremely catchy tune left me hungry for a full album, here’s hoping there will be one soon.
Mortiis ~ Methuselah
It’s the long lost song from The Smell of Rain. It was apparently made available to Mortiis’ patrons in 2019 before it was made public in Spring of this year, so it almost doesn’t count as a 2021 single, but that’s when I first heard it. I almost never thought I would hear a new Mortiis song in this style again. I’ve liked all of Mortiis’ genre shifts over the years, but in my opinion darkwave Mortiis is best Mortiis. And he was only darkwave for that one album. I wonder if he has any other songs like this lying around. If so, take my money Mortiis.
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