Top 10 Albums of 2018 from APF Records’ Andrew Field
The end of the year is just days away and we here at Distorted Sound are absolutely ecstatic about what 2019 will bring us for heavy music. However, we’re not quite done with 2018 just yet. As we undergo our preparations for the new year, we turn to APF Records‘ Andrew Field to give us his top 10 albums released in 2018. Having released quality records from the likes of BARBARIAN HERMIT, UNDER and BATTALIONS this year, the Manchester-based label hosts a roster of mouth-watering talent, so who better to give us an insight into the favourite records of the year? Over to you Andrew with your choices!
10. Fed Into The Nihilist Engine – GRAVE LINES
A gigantic leap forward from their 2016 debut Welcome To Nothing, Fed Into The Nihilist Engine is a ferocious and epic hour-long double vinyl feast for you to gorge yourself on. If ever there was a statement of intent then opening cut Failed Skin is it. A titanic, nearly 15-minute slow-burner which builds to a colossal, feedback-drenched moment of sheer sonic turbulence. It’s a cut that nattily encompasses all the best things about doom, sludge, stoner metal and goth without owing much to any of them.
For every elephantine dirge on this album there’s a moment of gloomy respite to cleanse the palate. The best of these is Shame Retreat, an introspective and echo-drenched lament underpinned by Oliver Irongiant’s gentle six-string acoustic work over which Jake Harding’s sonorous baritone soaks and soothes you into submission. When the quartet combine their strurm and drang with quieter moments, such as on album closer The Nihilist Engine, the result is nothing short of majestic: its lyrics about the nature of self-loathing perfectly matched by the musical bile underneath. There’s something important going on here and you need to be a part of it. Turn off the lights, put on headphones. Fed Into The Nihilist Engine is riveting from start to finish.
9. TBCT – BLACK TUSK
2014 was BLACK TUSK’s annus horribilis. Founding member Jonathan Athon suffered severe brain damage in a motorcycle accident and passed away shortly afterwards. If 2016’s Pillars of Ash album, which featured the trio’s final recordings with Athon, was a fitting tribute it nonetheless weighed heavy under the sorrow Andrew Fidler [guitar, vocals] and James May [drums] carried into its production. Two years later, and with Athon’s replacement Corey Barhorst fully settled in on four-string duties, TCBT finds the Savannah sludgers once again firing on all cylinders. The fire in their bellies is clearly audible with the resultant songs sounding ferocious, gnarled and angry. Their brutal slamming together of punk and swamp metal has never sounded better, especially on the caustic Ghosts Roam and album highlight Orange Red Dead. At a time when luminaries such as IRON MONKEY and HELMET are struggling to find a creative spark, BLACK TUSK are still bang on the money. TCBT is a beast of an album.
8. The Revolt Against Tired Noises – YAWNING MAN
My undisputed song of the year was The Black Kite, which opens this glorious record. A mere 32 years into their career YAWNING MAN delivered their best album, and then some. Hypnotic, achingly beautiful and packed full of mature but perky anthems, The Revolt Against Tired Noises reveals nuances and curveballs with each and every listen. It also turns out Mario Lalli can sing. YAWNING MAN have upped their game. They’ve always been life affirming, but now they’re just plain vital. The Revolt Against Tired Noises is nothing short of sheer sonic perfection.
7. True Misery – OLD MAN LIZARD
I’ll declare my hand here: Jack Newnham could release the sound of his own farts and I would buy it. His work with SLABDRAGGER and MEADOWS is top notch, but he seems to save his best stuff for OLD MAN LIZARD. True Misery is rampant, quirky and spine chilling – encapsulated in Cursed Ocean, Relentless Sea which travels between nasty sludge and moments of painful guitar-led beauty with effortless ease. They sound like the bastard offspring of THE MELVINS and ELDER, and as those two bands blow my mind that – from me – is high praise indeed.
6. Saboteurs Of The Sun – LIMB
If you thought you had LIMB sussed as a straightforward heavy fuzz quartet, think again. Seven years into their career the Londoners have delivered a stonker of an album, and a unique one at that. Saboteurs Of The Sun is lyrically dark, exploring our unfailing ability to destroy the world around us, with the anger and edge in the music and Rob Hoey’s vocals married perfectly to his words. Their four-to-the-floor stomps are now inflected with KILLING JOKE vim, moments of FLOYD-ian ambience, and a Philip K Dick dystopian resonance which is utterly thrilling. The highlight is Survival Knife, which gleams and glides through its verse to a massive release of a chorus. A stunning record.
5. The Sciences – SLEEP
Being an old fart, I was around when SLEEP released Holy Mountain back in 1992. At the time it was as pivotal as KYUSS’ Blues For The Red Sun, introducing me top the sounds of the desert and from there into a world of stoner rock, sludge and doom. But my interest in it waned over time and I came to think of SLEEP as over-rated (I can’t believe I’ve said that out loud, but it’s the truth). So when Matt Pike and the boys dropped The Sciences this year I had to eat humble pie, because it’s amazing. Yes, you can argue that It’s basically an early BLACK SABBATH album with a better singer, but with hooks and riffs as tungsten-solid as these I’m not complaining.
4. The Tide. Beneath. The Wall. – TUSKAR
Ok, I’m cheating a bit because this is an EP rather than an album. But sod it, because these three tracks are so sublimely wonderful that I just had to list them. TUSKAR are a two-piece who you will never forget if you see them live. Tom Dimmock is a tone master, wrangling the most widescreen slabs of riff from his guitar. Tyler Hodges is this generation’s Keith Moon, playing his drums with such wild abandon. Together they make the finest noise you’re likely to hear this year: born in sludge, but with wings. Their combined age is less than mine, and that’s great: in TUSKAR, the future of fierce music is in safe hands.
3. Stop Being Naïve – UNDER
I released this album on my label APF Records, and (with all due respect to the other bands on my label) it’s the record I’m most proud of this year. This Stockport power trio make unique, challenging and unclassifiable music that is not for the mainstream rock fan or the feint of heart. That said, it does contain the Riff Of 2018 in opening cut Malcontents, and a full on rock banger in single Traitor’s Gate. But what hooked me was the genre-hopping madness of the “stuff on side two” – the piano trills in Happy, the stunning beauty of An Inch Of Sun, and the pure pop of Circadian Driftwood. I was never going to sell a million copies of this album, but I don’t care. The UNDER lads – Matt, Andy and Simon – are creative geniuses. It’s a pleasure releasing their music….. music that gives me so much pleasure.
2. Come & Chutney – CHUBBY THUNDEROUS BAD KUSH MASTERS
Nothing rings my bell as much as buzzsaw guitars being trampled under foot by a rhythm section resembling a herd of wilderbeest on the charge. CHUBBY THUNDEROUS are the undisputed masters of that. All the promise they showed on their Earth Hog EP was fully realised on their first full length album, and then some. All killer, with no filler, Come & Chutney is like KYUSS with a sense of humour. Utterly majestic.
1. Melted On The Inch – BOSS KELOID
If 2016’s Herb Your Enthusiasm was the album that showed BOSS KELOID’s potential, Melted On The Inch is the one that realises it. And then some. Forget ‘genre defining’, this is genre creation pure and simple. No one else sounds like BOSS KELOID, and that’s surely the biggest complement you can pay them.
The angular riffing Paul Swarbrick has been honing since 2013’s The Calming Influence Of Teeth comes of age in the opening minutes of first track Chronosiam. He’s enhanced his palate with a healthy dose of Steve Howe-esque string picking and is now writing fully realised musical paintings rather than just pulling together a collection of disparate lead lines into a whole. The addition of keyboardist Matthew Milne is a revelation, as his organs add a whole new widescreen touch to the band’s songs – making KELOID feel fuller and weightier as a quartet than they ever did as a four-piece.
Underpinning everything is drummer Ste Arands mastery of his instrument. His adeptness at switching from a simple groove into a flight of percussive fancy is breathtaking, particularly on the monstrous Peykruve. At times this epic tune – and indeed the following cut Jronalih – sprawls into territory only YES have been brave enough to explore before, yet it sounds thoroughly 2018 – making what is at time quite difficult music easily accessible. Now that’s a feat. Bravo!
The aforementioned Jromalih is the high-water mark, and its chorus the most sublimely beautiful thing you are likely to hear all year. This is the moment where this band becomes amazing. Alex Hurst’s voice has never sounded better: like a hot bath that takes your breath away initially then makes you feel all warm and fuzzy as you adjust to the temperature.
Melted On The Inch is a perfect record. Brave, intelligent, modern, chock full of melodies, and with moments of stunning musicality. There’s not a single wasted or average second. How often can you say that about an album? This really is something very special indeed. Apollo-sized venues surely await them.
And that rounds off the top 10 albums of the year from Andrew Field! What did you make of their list? Let us know in the comments below!
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