Category Archives: Best Of

Best of Avant-Garde Black Metal 2021

by Dæv Tremblay

Avant-garde black metal is when expectations are defied, challenged. The listener is a gladiator fighting an arena full of wolves, bears, and lions. So, let’s see which albums managed to kill me this year.

Number Five: Issolei – Devouring Current



Devouring Current was released in two parts, but I’ll take it whole. The album is filled with intricate, banger riffs that are only at home on the fringes. While the album is more in line with the norms of the genre than the others on this list, it does such a good job of it that I could not let … Read more

Best of Atmospheric Black Metal 2021

by Dæv Tremblay

Then comes “atmospheric black metal”. This tag alone bears a lot of weight, and I’ve decided to include all of the post-black and blackgaze releases under that umbrella term. There might also hide a few “avant-garde” or more experimental entities in there, but at the end of the day it was an arbitrary call to include them or not. When I first started this blog, I wasn’t much into black metal, but it’s one of the first new genres to which I warmed, thanks to the amazingly diverse and creative minds sowing their seeds on the fertile soil of black … Read more

Best of Afrobeat 2021

by Dæv Tremblay

Welcome to the first of this year’s best of lists, curated by yours truly! As you might have noticed by now, this year is going to be separated by genre, or style, or attribute… it’s rather inconsistent between categories! On top of that, some categories are rather spread-out within themselves! I mean, there’s more than one kind of “hardcore” music out there for example, and I’m trying my best to keep my categories straight, but it’s often difficult to decide in which category such and such album should go, especially with the miscegenous music I usually listen to! Nevertheless, in … Read more