favorite albums of 2016

In no order, here are some of this year's albums that I enjoyed/listened to the most. Check the links in the band - album name if you are so inclined.

Nothing - Tired of Tomorrow
Really chill pop rock, catchy AF. Lead singer was apparently in jail for stabbing a dude, got out, and started this band.

Culture Abuse - Peach
This album is awesome. Catchy, poppy, sometimes Nirvana-y mid-tempo punk rock pop grunge. I don't know, I probably listened to this album the most this year.

Murder Made God - Enslaved
No idea that brutal death metal could be this catchy.

Angel Du$t - Rock the Fuck On Forever
Vocalist from a super tough hardcore band forms a super fun, super catchy punk rock group, and this is what happens.

Wormed - Krigsu
The vocals are unintelligible. FYI, this is death metal. That pseudo-horizon tho.

Cognitive - Deformity
If you ever wondered what brutal technical death metal should sound like, this might be it.

Destroyer 666 - Wildfire
Awesome heavy metal. Try not to get too PUMPED when listening to the linked up jam.

Joyce Manor - Cody
Another album of infinitely catchy pop punk indie rock from these guys.

And this is a last minute add:

Fury - Paramount
This reminds me of the first time I heard Have Heart, one of my favorite/most listened to bands of the this millennium. Powerful, modern hardcore, with a great throwback feel. The album smokes, and I see myself listening to this a lot.
 

Here are a couple awesome songs from 2016, where the whole albums didn't really grab me:

I thought this Hamilton Leithauser + Rostam jam was pretty fantastic. Apparently it's the lead singer of a band called The Walkmen working with a dude from Vampire Weekend. Don't know about The Walkmen, but Vampire Weekend is pretty sweet.




Wanted to like the new Regina Spektor album, but it is mostly meh. This song is great though. OK, and Bleeding Heart is pretty awesome too.



Biggest disappointment of 2016: No new Abominable Putridity album!

2016, wtf

The last couple weeks have brought one of the things I look forward to at the end of each year: albums of the year lists. It's a nice way for me to check out tunes I didn't hear over the course of the year. Each list generally contains a nice little synopsis of the jam, and then a link to further listening. Some gems I am now enjoying are new albums from Mithras, Insomnium, Asphyx, and a band called Crying. Seriously, Crying. My own list will be coming soonish.

Anyway, one thing i noticed in virtually every list I read was that a lot of musicians died in 2016. OK, that's legit, it is a list concerning music over the past year. Makes sense. But the other thing that I noticed in every list is that 2016 apparently has been a terrible year for the world...and then obviously Trump OMG. Just a couple months ago, we had Hillary Clinton telling us how awesome everything is. It was Trump that was apparently painting this dark picture of the world. Make up your minds, assholes.

Well, what do reasonable people with functioning brains think? SPOILER ALERT: we don't think that.

We like to look at the positives.

OK, but first the negative, a big one: Donald Trump is President. That's the reality, pretty shitty.

With that out of the way, let's focus on some of the good things a Donald Trump presidency means. The first thing that comes to mind is that Hillary Clinton is not President. There will likely NOT be a nuclear holocaust with Russia. This is a good thing. Second and third, neither Ted Cruz nor Bernie Sanders are president! Not one of those three shitheads will be the leader of the free world. Objectively, I think that's pretty awesome. And if you are a pro-equality, anti-war dickhead like me, you should agree.

Real talk though: The Republican candidate was Donald Trump. Donald Trump. Democrats and progressives should have been drooling over this election. Many probably already were anyway.

This should be a unanimous vote, or at least a goddamn landslide.

But then how does a Democrat manage to lose? By employing an election strategy that consisted of fucking up in probably the most epic manner ever, starting with (deceptively) presenting the only candidate that is more vile than the other one. And the Russian hacker stuff too, lol. That some WMDs-in-Iraq bullshit. If you were genuinely excited about Hillary Clinton, it might be best if you were no longer with us. At the very least, just shut the fuck up and go back to your seat at the kids table.

Aside from all the fake news, Trump, the hate crime hoaxes (wait, these hoaxes are actually good because that means that the hate crimes didn't actually happen, right?), the presidential election in general, 2016 was actually a pretty goddamn awesome year for me. I'd explain why, but you likely don't care. I'm not sure I do much either.

If you had a crappy 2016, we at HYM Corp all hope that your 2017 is marginally better.