(written by Islander)
I wasn’t able to make this list last year due to the rude demands of my day job. Especially because of that, I’ll repeat some things I’ve written in the past about this final part of our annual LISTMANIA orgy:
This particular series isn’t about best albums or best shorter releases, and it isn’t even about best songs. As the title says, it’s about “most infectious” songs. Some of those might be among the year’s best songs, but in every year there are stand-out songs that aren’t immediately infectious, and actually might never be. Conversely, there are some highly infectious songs every year that most people wouldn’t critically acclaim as great works of art.
The process of compiling this list, as in every previous year, is a bit bizarre, or at least very poorly planned. Let me explain:
I try to keep a running list of songs I find infectious as the year unfolds, though sometimes I let a week or two go by without adding to it, so there are gaps. On top of my own list, I added a list of all the songs recommended by readers in response to this invitation, as well as a group that Vizzah Harri sent me. DGR usually sends me his own recommendations, and I suspect he will do that again. This year, for the first time, Andy Synn also plans to weigh in with his own picks at the end, in case I’ve missed anything he thinks should be on the list, so the choices won’t be entirely my own.
Leaving aside whatever Andy contributes and whatever DGR may add, what I have in front of me right now is a master list of 388 song candidates, which is what scholars would call a fuckload of possibilities. (However, the last time I did this two years ago I started with a list of 564, which was a mega-fuckload.)
As I’ve done in the past I put that master list in alphabetical order by band name, which allowed me to see how many bands and songs got repeat mentions. As usual, there was a crazy amount of scatter. 26 bands had 2 song picks, each, on the master list; 12 had 3; only 1 had 4. And in many cases, where a band had more than 1 nominated song on the list, they weren’t even the same song. This did not make my choices easier, even though this list has never been a popularity contest.
I do try to spread the picks around among different genres and sub-genres, because this list is also intended to be a reflection of all the variety that the last year brought us, but it’s inevitable that it will reflect my own particular tastes more than anyone else’s.
As in past years, I plan to include some well-known names whose 2024 albums commanded a lot of attention and acclaim, but those will be out-numbered by much more obscure groups and releases. Part of that derives from the ethos of our site, but equally from my own listening habits.
Getting back to the “poorly planned” observation: If I had nothing else to do for NCS and nothing else going on with my life, I’d spend the last month of the year methodically going through that master list, listening and re-listening to everything on there, and compiling my final list so that it’s all nailed down and buttoned up before I start rolling it out here in the first week of January. But that never happens.
Instead, I just make a start and then continue to figure things out as January rolls on. That’s why I have no idea at this point how long the list will be by the time I end it. If I stick to my plan of only posting each Part on consecutive weekdays, and not on the weekends, there will be 22 Parts by the end. At this point I’ve made choices for the first 13 Parts. But the number of songs in each Part may vary. And I might panic near the end and post on a weekend too.
As for when I will end the list, I promise to do that by the end of this month. Although I will number each of the near-daily installments, the list will be unranked — because ranking presupposes that I would first have a complete and final list and then be able, somehow, to compare all the apples and oranges. The first thing isn’t a reality, and the second thing is beyond my capabilities.
So, with that, here we start….
DARKTHRONE
I did say this list would include songs by some well-known names whose 2024 albums commanded a lot of attention and acclaim. There aren’t many names as well-known and rightly honored as Darkthrone, and even though no one here chose to review their new album It Beckons Us All, it did receive a lot of support elsewhere and among fans, and made its fair share of YE lists, and not just because of the name they wear.
“Black Dawn Affiliation” was the first single released from the album before its release. First time I heard it, I thought it was damned infectious. I still think so. A week ago, it’s the song I would have picked for this list… but recently that changed.
Our contributor Vizzah Harri caused me to reassess, urging the delights of the second single, “The Bird People of Nordland.” So I listened to those two singles back-to-back several times, and came away convinced by Darkthrone‘s homage to the eider and the symbiotic relationship between those birds and the coast people of Nordland.
As Fenriz commented about the song, which was “Ted’s song,” it’s not about a very metal subject, but it earned my little award because of how many things happen in it, and because all of them have a catch, and are a catch (look how much the net brought in!). I usually make descriptions myself, but this time I’ll use the words of Fenriz:
“First of we have a typical grim Ted riff for the verse, then he surprises with a catchy riff for the refrain AND THEN comes my fave part of the album; the post-refrain riff which sounds like Queensryche 1984 style and you can also hear how much we enjoy to play it! EXACTLY where I want to be! Could have played that riff for 8 minutes straight, haha! This loops again with the refrain again without singing and then back to Queensryche ’84. Then first riff again with my added harmony guitar playing on it, what our studio man Ole Øvstedal called “the Corleone part”.
“A break arrives and then things are sped up (not faster than Yardbirds in 64, we are not an extreme metal band, more like MODERAT EPIC) which corresponds with a slower heavy metal riff where we also brought out the mellotrone if I remember correctly.
“Then Ted bombs you with a final part, primitive d-beat thrash with a riff that sounds like Tom G Warrior made it and I also ordered Ted to lay on some hellish guitars. Anyway, I LIVE for that queensryche 84 riff, Ted!”
https://peaceville.bandcamp.com/album/it-beckons-us-all
https://www.facebook.com/Darkthroneofficial
CRYPT SERMON
Almost 10 years ago (shit, has it been that long?), Crypt Sermon made a very good first impression with Out of the Garden, and then an even better one four years later with The Ruins of Fading Light. But last year’s The Stygian Rose still represented a giant step up. As our Andy Synn wrote:
Make no mistake about it, this isn’t just Crypt Sermon‘s best album, it’s the sort of album which should make people completely re-evaluate the band, and elevate them from being “the next big thing” to being full-on headliners… and, quite possibly, one of the biggest names in Metal one day, if things continue on this path.
He wasn’t alone in that kind of praise. Not many albums made as many year-end lists both here and elsewhere as did The Stygian Rose. No chance I would forget about it in preparing this list, especially because of how many hooks it held. The hard part was picking the song to include (if I didn’t mention it before, my self-imposed rule is to include no more than one song from an album for this list).
I have no doubt I’ll be subject to lots of second-guessing from listeners, because the album is home to lots of very good and very infectious tracks, but I thought the most infectious one was “Heavy Is the Crown of Bone“. And hey, the band probably thought so too, because they made this one the album’s first single.
It has big jolting doom stomps. It has eerily quivering melodies and neck-cracking beats. It has sinister, gritty vocals and scorching screams (which soar into cries) and an eye-popping solo. And through and through, it makes an evil vibe.
https://darkdescentrecords.bandcamp.com/album/the-stygian-rose
http://www.facebook.com/CryptSermon
DÖDSRIT
Way up near the top of this post, about a hundred paragraphs ago, I noted that out of the 388 entries on my list of candidates for this series only one band was the recipient of four “nominations” among myself, our readers, and another writer, and that band was Dödsrit.
Their Nocturnal Will album became a favorite of many of us around here (e.g., DGR put it at No. 17 on his Top 50 YE list), and it landed on other lists we re-published from bigger locations than our own, as well as on 11 lists we received from our readers.
Oddly, even though the album only includes four “full band” songs (with two other instrumentals), I had some trouble picking which one to include. Perhaps even more oddly, those four songs are all pretty long. More often than not, it’s the shorter songs that make up most of these lists, although (spoiler alert) there will be some other very long songs on the list this year, not just this one.
After some mental writhing I chose the album opener “Irjala,” a 10 1/2 minute epic that edged out a song I happily premiered (“Nocturnal Fire“). Why did I settle on this one? Well, for starters, listen to the ringing opening riff and how it then transforms into glory in the midst of a storm, and then transforms again into a presence that sounds ancient and inviting.
The song’s rhythmic propulsion is also a big attraction, thanks to really big bass-throbs and whip-cracking beats, and the vocals are pleasingly larynx-bursting, but it’s those ringing guitars that continue seizing attention, even when the storms subside and they gently ripple, only to build again.
This song, like the other very long ones I’ll be including in this list, satisfies a dimension of “infectiousness” (as I define it) that signifies memorability, and a persistent desire to listen again. Its length is a benefit, because I still don’t want it to end. As DGR wrote about the album as a whole in his YE list, it is “just stunning.”
https://dodsrit.bandcamp.com/album/nocturnal-will
https://www.facebook.com/DODSRIT/