The Great Big Best and Worst Albums of 2016 List

Another year, another wave of music from new bands, old, those we can’t get enough of, and those we wish would stop. So let’s discuss the best and worst albums of 2016. But first, a couple of rules.

Rule 1: Only full original material from 2016, no re-releases or demos. This means all EPs, Singles and LPs from this year are fair game, but not singles for upcoming releases in 2017. This also means no Live albums or Cover albums. Those just don’t count.

Rule 2: An album cannot end up on the “best” list for being just ok, it has to be great or near-perfect. Likewise, albums cannot end up on the “worst” list just for being mediocre. If you are on the “worst” list, you deserve it.

Rule 3: Don’t get hung up on the ranking. All music on the “best” list is good, so do yourself a favor and check everyone out.

OK, let’s begin. 

Honorable Mentions

Albums that weren’t good enough to be the best, but not bad enough to be the worst. These are albums I think you should give a listen, and decide for yourself if it was worth your time. This is also where all the weird stuff tends to end up.

TTCM/Smash Potater - Food Fight!

Not technically a full EP from either band, so I couldn’t justify putting it on the official list, but I just had to talk about it. Coming out of nowhere, Chicago crossover thrash bands Texas Toast Chainsaw Massacre and Smash Potater put out this little EP all about food and wrestling (get it?) The result is some solid Smash Potater songs, some of the best Texas Toast tracks to date, and a goofy cover of Tupac’s “California Love”. It’s a fun time, and well worth your time if you are into crossover thrash and don’t mind some comedic and silly vocals.

VHS - Screaming Mad Gore

Horror grindcore is a subgenre I can get behind, and hearing these guys having both influences from crossover thrash and glam metal, it was something I was dying for. The final product however, is lost in the mixing. The bass is cranked so high on this thing, it ends up drowning out everything else in the band. The drums sound like they’re underwater, and the guitars barely make any sound besides 2 heavy tones due to being so submerged. The vocals work, being your typical “i scream high, you scream low” grind affair, but without some solid music behind it, it looses some of its magic. If the follow up has a bit higher production, this band will certainly go places.

No Time - You’ll Get Yours

OI! OI! OI! Nothing wrong with some good ol’ fashioned British hardcore punk. Fast, sloppy riffs, pounding drums, and a shouting vocalist with a unique voice. Nothing really special about this LP, I just really enjoyed it.

Brain Tentacles - S/T

Weird does not begin to explain this band. Let me run something by you. How does a heavy metal/doom metal band with nothing but a drummer, bassist, and a saxophonist sound? If that’s your thing, then I have the record for you. Brain Tentacles only exists to be weird. Riffs that may be a-typical if this was your average band, but the saxophone subbing in for the guitars gives this a little extra dash of weird. If you listen to the second track on this album, “Fruitcake”, you’ll pretty much decide on whether this is right for you. It’s a weird one, but it’s worth looking into.

Dream Theater - The Astonishing

Here’s an album that’s a little too ambitious for its own good. A 2 hour rock opera, The Astonishing tells the tale of music coming to a post-apocalyptic fascist regime. Musically, it’s a diverse and complex rock opera, just like most of Dream Theater’s records, but purely in execution is where it fails. The songs just don’t weave together as well as they should. Not in a “this song doesn’t fit the mood or transition anything” but in a, “these songs bleed together so well, I actually can’t listen to this record without listening to everything in one go”. With the exception of “The Gift of Music”, every track is meant to be played together, so listening to a track out of order means you are getting tracks that sound more like interludes rather than full tracks. I’m reminded of Pink Floyd’s “The Wall” when listening to this, but unlike “The Wall”, this can’t be enjoyed in any order. It would have been more beneficial to release 4 or 5 half our long tracks as opposed to 30 small ones. Really, a long edit would make this entire record more tolerable.

Phish - Big Boat

Recent Phish records have gotten away from the jam-filled folk rock the band is known for, but Phish still proves that they can make a fun record. Every song on this record is a catchy pop-rock song with some fun hooks and an easy-going attitude. I’d put this record on whenever I needed to relax. It’s such a quiet and mellow album that never got boring. The final track also dips back into the jam territory with 13 minute run-time filled with some lavish soloing. It’s a fun record, but don't expect it to be the best thing you’ll ever listen to, and as far as Phish records go, I can understand why some people were turned off by the more simple melodious style.

Best

Now to get into the real stuff. Remember, this is the stuff I thought was good enough to give a hearty recommendation, and it’s all my opinion anyway, so if it doesn’t tickle your fancy, then sorry, I tried.

#9: Ghoul - Dungeon Bastards
My favorite Ghoul album? Nope. One of the few diamonds in the rough that was metal in 2016? Hell yes. Granted, while it's not the masterpiece I was hoping for, Ghoul makes quite a few improvements to their sound on this record, and it's the main reason I kept coming back to it. This album goes back to Ghoul's more grind-focused roots, featuring some heavier blast beats, more rigid and crunchy riff writing, but also managing to keep that hardcore punk/crossover thrash style they perfected on Splatterthrash. The production has much more volume and depth than Ghoul's last project, giving even their more repetitious and formulaic sections of their music this enormous amount of power and speed. My only real gripe with this album is that it's not as charming or balls to the wall crazy as their previous record, which I can definitely let slide considering the massive increase in quality of the music. Like GWAR before them, Ghoul may have become a little bit less silly, but that only serves to deliver their music in a tighter and stronger format.

#8: NOFX - First Ditch Effort

I was way too hard on this album when it first came it. I lamented over how bland the music was, lacking much of the melody and style of the previous Self-Entitled (that album was worse in hindsight), as none of the songs jumped out at me and demanded my attention. Upon multiple listens, however, First Ditch Effort may just go down in history as one of NOFX’s best work. The music is a tad bland, but only because of the nature of punk rock. NOFX steps back from melody to focus more on short, fast punk tracks comprising of mostly 3 chords and the occasional bridge. Nothing really special there, but where First Ditch Effort surprised me was with the lyrical writing. Compared to recent NOFX records, First Ditch Effort is one of their better written records. It still draws on Fat Mike’s very far left views (there’s entire track about “big-pharma”; Oxy-Moronic) but there are some very heartfelt lyrics here, in addition to them just being cleverly worded. “I’m a Transvest-lite” for instance, is about a man transitioning to a woman, but doing it at his/her own pace, while also containing many references to Rocky Horror and Frank N' Furter. The album then ends with the very touching “I’m So Sorry Tony” about punk legend Tony Sly. First Ditch Effort is a roller coaster of an album. You may find it to be musically uninspired, but much like the band’s previous “Wolves in Wolves Clothing” it’s denser than you would expect.

#7: Pears - Green Star

Sometimes I forget that punk music can actually require some level of skill. Pears falls into the vague “punk rock/melo-hardcore” genre so expect some tough-as-nails crunching riffs, some blisteringly fast melodies inter cut with more easy-going clean vocals and smoother guitar work. Normally, I find melo-hardcore hard to listen to since the musicians seem to have a hard time making the heavier bits interweave with the melodious bits, and while Pears’ music doesn’t flow as well as say, a prog rock album, it stands up pretty well. What makes it all work is the overall sense of speed and non-stop riff work. It’s been a long while since I heard any punk music that not only played faster than modern Judas Priest, but also put so much heart into their music. Lyrically, it’s all pretty standard melo-hardcore stuff (i’m all alone, love escapes me, etc) but it can surprise you with some influences from Dante’s Inferno of all things (see: Hinged by Spine) as well as the unrelenting power of vocalist Zach Quinn. Pears may not always have the punk attitude, but they make up for it by being better musicians than almost anyone on Fat Wreck Chords or any other “live for punk” record label.

#6: Condition Critical - Extermination Plan

Oh hey look, some actual thrash metal was released this year. If you skipped this one because Condition Critical’s first album didn’t tickle your fancy, I don’t blame you. CC’s first release was a bunch of good ideas worn down by bad mixing, bad vocals, and a general vibe of bad. All that changes with Extermination Plan. New vocalist, new guitarist, and a fresh batch of riffs, Extermination Plan is a perfect example of a band improving their sound. Ryan Taylor (the new live vocalist for Lich King, BTW) does a fantastic job of breathing some new life into CC’s sound, letting their nickname Demolition Hammer Jr. really take form as his gruff yells and screams fit perfectly with the death/thrash style. Ryan Donato on drums absolutely kills it, and the mixing of Lich King’s Brian Westbrook gives the whole album some much needed velocity. And wouldn’t you know it, a thrash album that isn’t about the usual war and terror and conspiracy theory bullshit that thrash has been stuck in for years. Seriously, go listen to this now.

#5: Abnormality - Mechanisms of Omniscience 
Sometimes all you really have to say about death metal is "this is brutal as shit". Abnormality crushes it in the brutal department, but has more then enough tech and groove to show that the band has legit talent underneath all the brutality. On top of that, the death growls here are some of the nastiest and heaviest I have ever heard, and they are sung by a woman, who absolutely dominates the entire album with her vocal presence. I can't wait to hear more from these guys, Abnormality is fucking going places. 

#4: The i.l.y.’s - Scum With Boundaries

God help me, the Death Grips made something I actually like. The i.l.y.’s are a side project to Death Grips consisting of Zach Hill and Andy Morin, and instead of experimental rap that sounds like a thousand shitposting musical chimps, we instead get an experimental noise rock band. So why is this album good when I hate the Death Grips and all they stand for? Well it’s because of the genre change. I’m no die-hard fan of garage rock, but it’s hard to deny when something strikes me. Scum With Boundaries is a fun rock album with elements of grunge, punk, pop, throws in some synth beats and sound effects, and even some horns for good measure. Not only is there a diverse musical selection here, it's all handled so well, utilizing the Death Grips classic balls-to-the-wall makes-no-sense lyrical and songwriting style to make an album that constantly swaps between being enjoyably strange and diverse (see “Starts with a C and Ends With a U”) and so approachable and catchy that it’s a wonder why this album doesn’t receive any radio airplay (see “Stop Yelling in the Museum”). If you’re someone who hates the Death Grips only for their genre, then this is the album for you. If you’re just someone looking for a different sounding rock album, then give this album a try cause you will not be disappointed.

#3: Sumerlands - S/T

I’ve been struggling to find the words to explain why exactly I enjoy this album so much. Don’t get me wrong, I know for a fact that this album should be on this list, right in this spot. It deserves it, it really does, I’m just having a hard time explaining why it does, as there are only so many ways I can say “this LP is really good”. Sumerland’s debut release is all about metal. Not any particular flavor of metal, but classic heavy metal at its finest. Muddied guitars with chugging riffs and a vocalist who sounds like he took the best parts of Ozzy and added a dash of Danzig, it’s hard not to find something to love on this album. Best of all, and probably the reason I ended up liking this so much, is the lack of gimmicks and attitude. That almost sounds like a bad thing, but trust me, it’s not. Sumerland’s approach to metal is to show rather than tell. All these 80s revival metal bands like Airborne, Skull Fist, etc, all have one thing in common: they come off like a high-schooler who just got into Judas Priest for the first time, with all the talk about how great metal is, how terrible every other genre is, and just general elitism. It all just feels like there is no substance, even if you like the music around the style. So when Sumerlands comes out with another metal revival album (albeit this time focusing on late 70s doom/acid rock) I was pleasantly surprised to find that instead of talking out their asses about how great the 70s were, I found an album with so much heart and depth, that it was hard to tear myself away. Sumerlands is one of the best releases of the year from a band I never saw coming, but look forward to for years to come.

#2: Vektor - Terminal Redux

There was no band I was more on edge for than Vektor this year, but boy did they fucking deliver. Terminal Redux is another black/thrash/prog powerhouse from Vektor, the most original out of the new wave of thrash bands. It’s hard, however, not to compare Terminal Redux with Vektor’s previous work, Outer Isolation, one of the few albums I would consider a masterpiece, and compared, I would probably say Outer Isolation is better, but I didn’t punish Terminal Redux for not being Outer Isolation. That’s just plain rude. No, on its own Terminal Redux is a damn fine album, an hour and a half long concept album about sci-fi space revenge. What’s not to love? The only thing really keeping this album from being flawless is that the songs have a tendency to be more technical and conceptual rather than sticking to catchy hooks. It’s just a little too dense for its own good. It’s still one of the best albums of the year, and hell, will probably go down in history as a masterpiece just like their last one, but don’t be surprised if you start to notice cracks in Vektor’s songwriting.

#1: Dimitri Demanyanko - Insomnia

Sometimes all an album needs to do is show up and kick ass. Dimitri Demanyanko, leader of the djent band Shokran did just that. Insomnia is a masterpiece of an album that combines djent guitars with strong melodies, some classic metal riffs, and ambient sounds to create an album that just plain rules. The guitar work on this thing is just plain incredible. It’s not so weird and technical that it rivals that of say, Buckethead, but it doesn’t need to be. Insomnia is the answer to the problem with djent, which is that so many of the genre’s songs are stuck in one frame of mind: angry with broken rhythms. Meshuggah, Dillinger Escape Plan, and even Shokran have been doing that for more than a decade now, and as a result the whole genre is just a wall of the same noise. Insomnia goes above and beyond that by incorporating elements that most djent bands won’t use, as well as toning down the janky broken riffs. You can cry all you want about how the odd time signatures are what make djent what it is, but you listen to “Face With No Scars”, and tell me how wrong you are.

Worst

The actual worst stuff of the year. The following albums aren’t just boring, they are a disgrace to their artists, to their genres, and to music itself.

#4: The Misfits - Friday the 13th (EP)

I don’t know why I do this to myself. You know, where I cling to the hope that The Misfits will get better like it’s the breathing tube for my vegetative corpse. In keeping with that analogy, I now want that hope pinched off and all the vegetables who cling to the rotting teets of Jerry Only can suffocate knowing it was for the right reasons. As you can probably guess, I didn’t really like the new Misfits EP. It’s actually kind of fascinatingly bad. See not only is it some of Jerry Only’s worst songwriting to date, it sounds like it was recorded while the studio was on fire, it has almost 0 horror elements or appreciation for horror, and what is there is displayed like a plastic mannequin for a Party City. It’s just a fucking mess. So for the love of god, stop buying Misfits merch, stop buying their music, stop seeing them live. Just ignore the Misfits until Doyle comes back (ha), Michael Graves comes back (ha ha), Danzig comes back (ha ha ha), or someone with some competent songwriting skills takes over (lulz).

#3: Shokran - Exodus

Holy shit Shokran, what the fuck happened? You guys were supposed to save djent, not turn it into wuss rock. This album probably wouldn’t be on this list had Dimitri Demanyanko not release the perfect Insomnia right before this album’s release. All of the inventive and crazy guitar work that Dimitri wrote for Insomnia is missing from this record, and replacing it is the exact same copy-paste djent we’ve heard from Meshuggah and Dillinger Escape Plan for almost two decades now, all with the and elegance of a Suicide Silence production. Seriously, this album swaps between tones mid track like a bipolar revolving door. I thought deathcore was supposed to be dead?

#2: Sum 41 - 13 Voices

2016 will forever be known as the year David Bowie died, we had the worst election in U.S. history, and pop punk came back for absolutely no fucking reason. At least Green Day was constantly releasing albums before this, so it’s no shock. You may notice that the new Green Day record isn’t on here. That’s because I really didn’t hate Revolution Radio, it just wasn’t great. Same with Blink-182’s California and Good Charlotte’s Young Authority. The last of this pop punk comeback was Sum 41’s 13 Voices, and if it was just another mediocre, forgettable pop punk record, I’d just ignore it like the rest, but words do not describe how “not a pop punk record” 13 Voices is. Words also don’t really describe how “not good” it is.

I’ll be the first person to tell you I’m not a fan of Sum 41. That being said, I could at least kind of see why people like them. They had some catchy songs, and they seemed interested in tackling some different genres, kind of like The Offspring but with a more SFW attitude. But I know what they aren’t. They aren’t My Chemical Romance. They aren’t Imagine Dragons. They aren’t mid-late 2000s pop knock-offs. Seriously that’s the core problem with 13 Voices and it’s what makes it so sickening. The problem is that Sum 41 has given up on pop punk and instead decided that ripping off every relevant act from 2000-2010. You think I’m joking? No. Not in the slightest. Everything from MCR, to Panic! At The Disco, to Imagine Dragons, to Owl City, all with the mixing of a Linkin Park album, with everyone involved giving as much of a fuck as if they just got jury duty notice for the same date as their wedding. It’s an album that is pretty much impossible to listen to because it’s just the equivalent of musical junk food… if that junk food had expired about a month prior.

#1: Okilly Dokilly - Howdilly Doodilly

When I started writing this whole thing about a month or two ago, I was fairly certain that nothing could possibly beat 13 Voices as worst album of the year. Sometimes I really fucking hate being wrong. Okilly Dokilly is the Ned Flanders themed metal band that (before you eagerly open the bandcamp page in a new tab) does absolutely nothing with its own gimmick, doesn’t try to be funny, isn’t actually metal, and thinks that shitposting into a microphone qualifies as comedy. This thing is just so fucking hard to listen to it should qualify as an Olympic sport. Basically a bunch of hipsters recorded some “totally new wave and experimental” music and screamed Ned Flanders quotes instead of actual lyrics as a placeholder, and somehow if you don’t like it you’re just a guy with no sense of humor and obviously don’t understand the artistic complexity of a good shitpost. Oh silly me, how ironic and hip and cool and pretentious and goddamnit do I need a drink.