I may not have been keeping up with my monthly music blogs, but I’ve still been listening to new music. As I’ve written about, I have been keeping a playlist of The 2020s in Music, and it’s about halfway done now. One of the rules for this playlist is that it can only have one song per album, so this doesn’t represent all the songs I liked this year. I added 37 new songs for 2024, it’s been another great year for the dark alternative. Over the course of the year my musical tastes have delved from post-punk to industrial, which I hadn’t been into much over the past few years but I got a craving for it over the summer, after exploring the discographies of longtime bands Vomito Negro and dreDDup. The former didn’t have any 2024 releases, but the latter did. It’s a lot of songs so I don’t think I’ll be writing a huge essay about each song, but I may say a thing or two about my favorites. These will be more or less in the order I heard them, which is close to the order they were released in. I will include links to the albums on Bandcamp too.
You can find all the songs on the playlist, just scroll down to the end and work your way up to the first song below.
The Full List
- Obsidian - Night Director
- Raw Desire - Avaricia
- Metawave - Ausencia
- Tango Mangalore - Re-Vamp
- Scary Black - The Fallacy of Worth
- Anja Huwe - Exit
- No Man Cry - Qo Achkery
- Kalte Nacht - The Last Breath
- Damian Hearse - Bad Luck Charm
- Скубут - T’Ma
- Selofan - Love’s Secret Game
- Guerra Fría - En Mi Tumba
- Mekong - Danse Danse
- Slow Danse with the Dead - Today is a Good Day to Die
- Alone in the Rain- Amore Malato
- Aven Graph - Bloody Kisses
- Melancholy Rat’s - No sé bailar
- Glis - Dream Catcher
- Last Grasp - Goth Enough
- Damien Hearse - Negative Mental Attitude
- The March Violets - Hammer the Last Nail
- Devoted Sinners - It Was Tuesday
- Molchat Doma - Ty Zhe Ne Znaesh Kto Na
- Statiqbloom - Posession
- Gothic Vixen - Tik Tok Ate Your Brain
- No Horizon - Eternal Void
- Desmond Doom - Damaged Goods
- Attic Frost - A Sad Thought Made Dance
- Worm Man - Spit it Out (Feeling like a Demigod)
- dreDDup - President Evil
- Neon Nightmare - She’s Drowning
- Elita - Masturbating in a Coffin
- Заабризль - Гоки под Луной
- Bax Taylor - All I Had to Give
- Ratpajama - Infamia
- Kontrast - D3R DIKTATOR
- Mr. Strange - Metropolis 2984
Obsidian ~ Night Director
Album: 19 Dead
Release Date: January 19
Origin: USA
Notes: Obsidian have grown as artists, I like this release better than their previous albums. A good start to the year.
Metawave ~ Ausencia
Album: Fragmento
Release Date: March 8
Origin: Paris, France
Notes: This song is goth music with a Middle Eastern accent, which I wish happened more often. Metawave are a Portuguese-French duo.
Tango Mangalore ~ Re-Vamp
Album: Re-Vamp
Origin: Greece
Release Date: March 1
Notes: I first heard Tango Mangalore in 2017, and was captivated by this Greek fisherman goth who sings in a ghostly tone about longing for the sea, and hating being on land. His new album didn’t disappoint at all, this certainly isn’t the only good song on it.
Scary Black ~ The Fallacy of Worth
Album: The Fallacy of Worth (single)
Origin: Louisville, Kentucky
Release Date: February 24
Notes: A wonderfully motivational song, about not letting other people determine your self-worth. It’s a lesson I’ve been learning over the past few years. You don’t get too many pep talk songs within the goth genre but this one is really good. Worth is a fallacy. Looking forward to more from Scary Black, one of my favorite still-active bands in the scene. No album to go along with this track, it’s just a single, hopefully we will see more songs from Scary Black in 2025.
Anja Huwe ~ Exit
Album: Codes
Origin: Hamburg, Germany
Release Date: March 8
Notes: Anja Huwe was a member of the seminal early1980s post-punk band Xmal Deutschland, and this is her first release decades after leaving the band. The song was the first I had heard of her, I love that guitar feedback throughout the song, gives it really freaky spine-chilling vibes. She’s still got it.
No Man Cry ~ Qo Achqery
Album: T’Mard (not on Bandcamp, was released on YouTube for free)
Origin: Yerevan, Armenia
Release Date: January 14
Notes: The singer of No Man Cry was gone for two years as he did his mandatory military service in Armenia. Fortunately he made it out, and he’s back with new music! I was excited to see him again and know he was okay. This song is a post-punk cover of an old Armenian song. Here’s another very different-sounding cover of the same song by the band Lav Eli for comparison. I never really liked how Armenian gets transliterated sometimes, maybe a better way to do it would be “Koh Atchkeruh” if that helps, it means “Your Eyes” and is a love song.
Kalte Nacht ~ The Last Breath
Album: The Last Breath
Origin: Athens, Greece
Release Date: March 22
Notes: I had been waiting for Kalte Nacht to release more music since 2020, and I was not disappointed. This one is a very catchy, dancey darkwave track that was stuck in my head for a couple months last spring.
Damien Hearse ~ Bad Luck Charm
Album: Alone/Apart
Origin: Arkansas, United States
Release Date: January 23
Notes: Damien Hearse is an amazing artist and definitely one of the musicians I listened to the most this year. He had two 2024 releases and I’m picking one song for each for my playlist (the rules are if an artist has two releases in one year they can both be represented). This song, about being born unlucky, was just a little bit relatable in some ways.
Скубут ~ T’ma (Dark)
Album: Pogranichnyi
Origin: Vienna, Austria
Release Date: May 17
Notes: My favorite Russian post-punk band from Austria was back this year with a great new album. Among their best entries I would say. Their music stands out in a genre where a lot of the music can tend to sound the same, they have their own sound instead of just riding on the coattails of Molchat Doma, let’s just say.
Selofan ~ Love’s Secret Game
Album: Animal Mentality
Origin: Athens, Greece
Release Date: April 10
Notes: It’s kind of funny how much Selofan and Kalte Nacht have in common. Both are darkwave bands from Greece that I was waiting since 2020 to hear from again, and they both came back with new albums this year! I even get them mixed up sometimes. Their track “Absolutely Absent” carried me through the dark times of Fall 2020. This album seemed a little more upbeat for the most part, although it includes a lot of songs recorded during the Covid lockdowns, so there’s that too. I wonder if this is the last year we might get some lockdown music.
Devoted Sinners ~ It Was Tuesday
Album: Recalling Faerytales
Origin: Ireland
Release Date: July 30
Notes: Devoted Sinners came out with a new album of mainly older material but with a couple new songs, this one included. I just so happened to know where the quote comes from, a line from the live action Street Fighter movie. “For you, the day Bison graced your village was the most important day of your life. But for me, it was Tuesday.” I know this more because there’s a trope on TV Tropes named after it than from the movie. It’s a song about that feeling where someone’s really upset at you, but you don’t care because they and their opinion are insignificant to you. It can be an empowering song, not unlike “The Fallacy of Worth” earlier.
Molchat Doma - Ty Zhe Ne Znaesh Kto Na
Album: Belaya Polosa
Origin: Minsk, Belarus
Release Date: September 6
Notes: Molchat Doma was previously known for their slow, melancholic post-punk that would serve as a good soundtrack for exploring the abandoned ruins at Chernobyl, but this track is one of the danciest ones I’ve heard in a long time. Like I can’t not start at least head-bobbing when this comes on. This song belongs in a dance club. Admittedly I haven’t tried translating the lyrics, but that tune is hypnotic. One of my favorite songs to come out this year.
Gothic Vixen - Tik Tok Ate Your Brain
Album: Pentagram Dystopia
Origin:
Release Date: TBA
Notes: Gothic Vixen seems to be kind of a mysterious artist at the moment. They only appear to have a YouTube account, I don’t see them on Bandcamp, but maybe they’ll get there when their album is finished. Tellingly there’s no TikTok profile either. But this song is a very timely one, a good anthem for the early 2020s. I have avoided that website, but I’ve seen how that website ruins attention spans and can send someone spiraling down the conspiracy theory rabbit holes. Back in my day we rotted our brains with good old YouTube Poop, mah boi. And before that, it was bad flash animations on Newgrounds and EBaum’s World. Not that I find the reasons for banning TikTok justified either. I feel worse about American corporations spying on me and collecting my data than China, like what’s China going to do to me? Anyway, YouTube has its issues and is run by an evil corporation too, but I’ll stick with the devil I know, I guess. Same way I feel about Facebook.
Worm Man - Spit it Out (Feeling like a Demigod)
Album: Jackal Unbound
Origin: Opovo, Serbia
Release Date: August 12
Notes: I discovered two new favorite bands doing a deep-dive on the ex-Yugoslavian dark alternative scene. This song is off Worm Man’s second release, and first EP. Their music is full of adrenaline, and might have you feeling like a demigod yourself. I like how they chose the term “demigod”, it’s so randomly specific, like not quite a God but almost there. The title track is a close second favorite, check that one out too.
dreDDup - President Evil
Album: Pan/Dora
Origin: Novi Sad, Serbia
Release Date: September 7
Notes: dreDDup is a criminally underrated industrial band that has been around since 1997, giving me an extensive discography to get through when I first discovered them. They happened to release an album this year, which is always a nice bonus when you discover a new band. “President Evil” was a very timely song for this year, for reasons. My favorite song from this band at least at the moment is “Garden of Dead Friends” from 2011.
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