2017 Music

By anders pearson 01 Jan 2018

For the third year in a row, here is my roundup of music released in 2017 that I enjoyed.

One of the reasons that I’ve been making these lists is to counteract a sentiment that I encounter a lot, especially with people my age or older. I often hear people say something to the effect of “The music nowadays just isn’t as good as [insert time period when they were in their teens and twenties]”. Sometimes this also comes with arguments about how the internet/filesharing/etc. have killed creativity because artists can’t make money anymore so all that’s left is the corporate friendly mainstream stuff. I’m not going to get into the argument about filesharing and whether musicians are better or worse off than in the past (hot take: musicians have always been screwed over by the music industry, the details of exactly how are the only thing that technology is changing). But I think the general feeling that music now isn’t like the “good old days” is bullshit and the result of mental laziness and stagnation. We naturally fall into habits of just listening to the music that we know we like instead of going out looking for new stuff and exploring with an open mind. My tastes run towards weird dark heavy metal, so that’s what you’ll see here, but I guarantee that for whatever other genres you are into, if you put the effort into looking just a little off the beaten path, you could find just as much great new music coming out every year. I certainly love many of the albums and bands of my youth, but I also feel like the sixteen year old me would be really into any one of these as well.

OK, I know I’ve said that I don’t do “top 10” lists or anything like that, but if you’ve made it all the way to the bottom of this post, I do want to highlight a few that were particularly notable: Bell Witch, Boris, Chelsea Wolfe, Goatwhore, Godflesh, King Woman, Lingua Ignota, Myrkyr, Pallbearer, Portal, The Bug vs Earth, Woe, and Wolves in the Throne Room.

Plus special mention to Tyrannosorceress for having my favorite band name of the year.

Tags: music