A Year In Ten Records

Highlights of 2024
Before we get sucked too deep into the twists and turns of 2025, I thought it would be timely to have a quick look back on what was a pretty spectacular year in terms of new music. I must admit I find the notion of league tables rather unhelpful in anything but a sporting context. So, perhaps, think of this more as a roughly chronological review of a year through the lens of ten records that helped shape it for me personally.

Someone Else’s Dance by Canal Irreal / The Land Is Not An Idle God by Wreathe / Heel Of The Next b/w Physical God by Flower (clockwise)
The year kicked off in style with the new Flower EP, Heel Of The Next b/w Physical God. There are some who claim that the 7-inch is the perfect format for hardcore. Not a view I’ve ever concurred with to be honest as they typically feel more like an appetite wetter to tantalise than the full meal. But no such reservations here. Just the two songs, but what a two songs. Venomously rhythmic vocals sneered in conjunction with wave upon wave of searing metallic riffage. My appetite is fully sated.
Canal Irreal followed with their second full-length Someone Else’s Dance, which is an absolute belter. Blending darkly melodic post-punk with a bristling hardcore attitude, the Chicago band serve up, perhaps, the singularly most contagious album of the year. The crystalline, almost brittle, riffs quite simply steal your breath away and your body will soon be possessed by the innate need to move in a way that you didn’t know that you were even capable of.
Then, The Land Is Not An Idle God, the debut album from Wreathe landed with crushing relish. Featuring four members of Morrow, Wreathe are in many ways a simultaneously stripped back yet more muscular interpretation of that band. The soaring melancholic melodicism is countered by a fiercely defiant anger in a vividly realised fusion of emotional crust and vocalist Alex CF’s allegorical fiction, which explores the deterioration of our relationship with nature and the corrosive impact of individualism.

See The World On Fire by The Ar-Kaics / Contempt by Bad Breeding / Abattoir by Subdued (clockwise)
The next-in-line though was a bit of a surprise if I’m honest. The Ar-Kaics earlier output comprised of some well-executed garage punk, but it just wasn’t my particular thing. But when I checked out their new album, I was blown away by their evolving direction. See The World On Fire is an album imbued with a surging sense of the dramatic and saturated in a sombre Southern Gothic atmosphere that is equal parts rollicking and haunting. An unexpected treat.
I was then back in more familiar territory with the much anticipated return of Bad Breeding. Now, not many hardcore bands last five albums, even fewer reach new heights with their fifth. But Contempt sees the band in utterly rampant form. A seething yet precisely constructed denunciation of the distorted priorities that are bringing our society to its knees and all entwined with their most discordant, brutal, and skilfully crafted onslaught yet.
And the anarcho-punk fuelled riches did not end there, as Subdued promptly weighed in with Abattoir. Their blistering new material had been well flagged during their wave of early year shows and it certainly didn’t disappoint. The bleakly ominous atmosphere is one of bitter fury at what has preceded, and an existential dread that yet worse is to follow, all brilliantly evoked by an utterly inspired guitar attack – dense, complex, almost unremittingly fast.

Moraliser by Negative Gears / Società Mentale by Festa Del Perdono / Delirik by Freak Genes / Nuevo Dogma by Muro (clockwise)
Then came a change of pace with the debut 7-inch, Società Mentale, from Festa Del Perdono, featuring members of Spirito Del Lupo and Porta D’Or. Hypnotically rhythmic Italian vocals are intertwined with an otherworldly tapestry of guitar and electronically programmed flaring organs and punchy brass that transport you somewhere entirely unexpected. A hazily dream-like yet urgently gripping EP.
I don’t think I will provoke much dispute with the notion that the Australian hardcore scene appears to be absolutely thriving at the moment. The stand-out release for me was the debut album, Moraliser, from Negative Gears. A thoroughly potent blend of ineffably catchy post-punk with brilliantly acerbic, anarcho fashioned vocals that sardonically dismantle the false ‘common sense’ defining our lives. They hit the UK next month – not to be missed.
And then landed another leftfield delight. Now, I’ve been enjoying the electronic evolution of Freak Genes, but nothing had quite prepared me for their latest release, Delirik. This is a genuinely mind-bending album, one that seems to incessantly shift shape. It segues from dancefloor euphoria to the jarringly percussive by way of darkly enticing choruses, and from the reflective to the bombastic, all with a disorientating ease. It is unsettling and challenging in all the right ways.
Finally, my year reached a satisfying finale when I managed to land a healthy stock for the distro (now all gone I’m afraid) of Muro’s new album, Nuevo Dogma. Muro’s strength has always been their ability to inject their recorded output with the explosive energy of their live performance, and by leaning a touch further into their metallic inclinations, this feels an even more vividly instinctual album. One that revels in the relentless push-pull between dissonance and melody, the primal and the progressive. And, of course, all in the context of the band’s compelling political narrative and lived DIY ethos.
So, there you go. A year in ten records. I think it’s fair to say that it wasn’t a bad one at all!