This year was a departure for me in how I listen to music. I decided to go full-bore into self hosting a large amount of the tools I use. Partly because it interests me, partly because I want control of my data, and partly because big tech can fuck right off.

One of the big changes was switching to being my own “streaming” platform. Now I buy the music I want to listen to long term and put it in Navidrome. If I want to hear something ahead of buying it, I listen to it on Bandcamp (which is also where I buy music from to send as much as I can to the artists) or on YouTube.

This makes music less a buffet and more a considered choice. I’ll say it is a bit more hassle, and a bit more expensive, but I’m enjoying my music more and listening to albums more often and more closely than before.

Top Album

In Mourning – The Immortal

In Mourning’s latest slab of progressive death metal juuuuust edges out several other excellent albums this year (Fallujah, Nephylim, and Black Narcissus at the top). Each album these folk keep progressing their sound and sharpening their skill at crafting crushing, melodic, progressive death.

Death

• Buried Realm – The Dormant Darkness
• Fallujah – Xenotaph
• Inerte – Singulier
• Lightchapter – Where All Hope Begins
• Nephylim – Circuition

Not Death

• Amorphis – Borderland
• Black Narcissus – There Lingers One Who’s Long Forgotten
• Hiroe – Wield
• Katatonia – Nightmares as Extensions of the Waking State
• Raphael Weinroth-Browne – Lifeblood

Honorable Mentions

Here is a list of everything else I added to my collection this year. Since I have gone to self-hosting my music instead of using Apple Music (or another streaming service), I am picky about what gets into the collection. Everything on here is quite good.

Albums with a ⭐️ came very close to making the top lists above.

• An Abstract Illusion – The Sleeping City
• Aephanemer – Utopie (and the instrumental version)
• After Earth – Dark Night of the Soul
• Allegaeon – The Ossuary Lens
• Arcanis – On the Edge Between Life and Death
• Arch Enemy – Blood Dynasty
• The Archon Rift – The Arcane Chronicles
• The Archon Rift – The Harrowing Path Between Loathing and Love
• As the Sun Falls – Pohjoisen Sydän
• ⭐️ Atlantic – Timeworn
• ⭐️ Aversed – Erasure of Color
• Before the Dawn – Cold Flare Eternal
• Blackbraid – Backbraid 3
• The Black Cat’s Eye – Decrypting Dreams of Weird Animals and Strange Objects
• Brainblast – Colossus Suprema
• bunsenburner – Reverie
• Burned in Effigy – Tyrannus Aeternum
• Changeling – Changeling
• Citadel – Descension
• Dark Matter Secret – New Matter
• Darkness Surrounding – Is There Salvation?
• ⭐️ Death Reapers – Thirst for Chaos
• Death Rift – Impatiently Dying
• Death in Fiction – Rotting Society
• The Depth Beneath Us – Descent
• Disarmonia Mundi – The Dormant Stranger
• Ehrling – various songs
• Erebor – Infinitus Somnium
• EverRise – Lost
• Evocatus – Inevitable Death
• Fragments of Unbecoming – Dawnbringer: Chapter 7 – The Amber Emperor
• Ghost – Skeletá
• 兀突骨 (Gotsu Totsu Kotsu) – 不死 (Immortality)
• Harakiri for the Sky – Scorched Earth
• The Halo Effect – March of the Unheard
• The Halo Effect – We Are Shadows
• ⭐️ Hate – Bellum Regiis
• The Haunted – Songs of Last Resort
• Haunted by Silhouettes – Faith Came Crawling
• Hollow Decay – Anchor of Madness
• Human – Concetto Transeunte
• Lacuna Coil – Sleepless Empire
• ⭐️ Melpomene – A Body is a Suggestion
• Mors Principum Est – Darkness Invisible
• Obscura – A Sonication
• Ominous Ruin – Requiem
• Omnium Gatherum – May the Bridges We Burn Light the Way
• ⭐️ Pelican – Flickering Resonance
• Progeny of the Sun – Prophets of the Void
• Revocation – New Gods, New Masters
• ⭐️ Rivers of Nihil – Rivers of Nihil
• Serenity in Murder – Timeless Reverie
• Sighs of Death – De-Evolution
• Slow Fall – Blood Eclipse
• Stone from the Sky – Bakeneko
• Sun of the Suns – Entanglement
• Syncatto – Memento
• Technologist – Reborn
• Testament – Para Bellum
• Thrill of the Haunt – Interitus
• Thron – Vurias
• Valtari – Emperor
• Vintersorg – Vattenkrafternas Spel
• Vittra – Intense Indifference
• Voidfallen – The Rituals of Resilience
• We Lost the Sea – A Single Flower
• Whitechapel – Hymns in Dissonance