The Armed have become something of a genre-eating machine over the last six or so years, feeding post-hardcore, noise rock, math rock, and punk together into the business end of a mulcher and documenting the blurry, static-washed spray of humus that emerges. Whatever genres you prefer, I guarantee there’s something below the fold that will pique your interest. On that note, take a dive below into our 25 favorite releases of the year thus far. Taking the time to pause and recap where we stand each year is a great way to prepare for our final lists, and more importantly, it gives us the chance to catch up on any highlights we might have missed. It goes to show why we do a mid-year list at all. All of these releases deserve to contend for a spot on our official year-end list, yet it’s more likely than not that a huge chunk will be left off in favor of albums from the second half of the year. This is something that always hits me after we finalize the post and hit schedule.
A number of these releases won’t even make it on our final list. We can only wonder what the second half of 2021 will have to offer if this trend continues.ģ. Our staff converges to nominate a list of candidates when we form our mid-year list, and this year’s selections has both quality and quantity to an insane degree. That might have been a trend instead of an aberration, because this list is absolutely STACKED. We all repeated this line a million times to one another - 2020 was an abysmal year, but the crop of new releases was among the strongest in recent memory. The “silver lining” of 2020’s musical output continues. There’s still plenty of metal on here, of course, but just look at some of the variety: an ensemble album that blends progressive electronic, spiritual jazz, and modern classical an up and coming experimental rock group adding a dash of klezmer into their brand of art punk an emcee bending the boundaries of hip-hop with elements of horrorcore, trap, industrial, and metal. A combination of factors have led us here - officially dropping our “metal only” policy several years ago, recruiting a more diverse group of writers/listeners, our established staff growing their tastes, etc. This is one of our most diverse lists to date. As is our tradition around these parts, we’ve taken a collective look back at our favorite releases from the year thus far, many of which will make our proper “Best of 2021” post.
I know Eden already made this comment in his Missive into, but…seriously? July already? Maybe it’s because 2020 felt like a time void and the universe is playing catch up (or something like that).
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