The Not Just A Phase Staff Picks for 2022
I hate album of the year lists. Who can actually decide on only one album that was somehow superior and more listened to than all the other full length releases during the entire calendar year and why is your list being published in November when there’s still another month to go?
That being said I thought it would be fun to torture the staff here by making everyone pick their top releases of 2022 and writing a small descriptor on their number one pick. It also tortured me endlessly to compile this list and pick a number one spot for it, so I guess I’m just a twisted masochist.
Happy holidays I guess? Here’s a list of the top albums of the year hand selected by each member of our very lovely staff.
Rob
Rob’s Picks (@just_reidz)
Often I listen to tracks off this album once and it’s nowhere near enough, I have to hit the replay up to 5 times in a row, “Call From You” regularly got played 12 times back to back on days in 2021. Very problematic stuff, I know. For a few special bands you hopefully come across in your lifetime, you’ll hear lyrics and instantly swear they were written specifically just for you. It’s not a logical thought and yet these words came to me at a time when I needed them most. That joke of “your music saved my life” is always a cringey little laugh right up until the day you go through your lowest point with an album and you know it somehow genuinely helped you pull through more than anyone or anything else ever could.
I don’t get nervous interviewing musicians for the podcast but I’m reluctant to admit I was genuinely shaking the entire time I spoke with Grady when he did NJAP and you can hear it in my voice. I have written, deleted and rewritten this review too many times to count by now, so I’ll just plainly say this is the most important band in Emotional Hardcore right now.
I was honored to have early access listening to this and of course was blown away. This album is flawless and everything I want from Emoviolence: hyper-speed aggression with laser precision riffs, jarring rhythms that attack the listener and mix in just the perfect dash of subdued melodic parts that swiftly weave in and out of all the chaos. There must be something in the water over in Australia, like besides sharks and gnarly surfers. 10/10 if you like your Screamo fast and bellicose, you can’t sleep on this record.
The best EV album release of the year. Hands down. Flawless.
Front to back non stop assault. II was my most listened to song of 2022. This band didn’t re invent the wheel, they raced it down the hill until it caught fire THEN THEY SMOKED IT. Seriously the best 9 minutes of Emoviolence that I have overplayed to death this year. Beyond hyped to hear what they do next.
Blind Girls - The Weight Of Everything
I believe in Blind Girls supremacy. Literal legends in the making. GOAT status and all that shit the cool kids say. They’re a perfect band full of the nicest people. This album was everything I hoped it would be and more and I wait impatiently for new material.
Atameo - It Sure Is Sad To Hope For The Best While Expecting The Worst
Still insanely pissed I missed this vinyl drop. Sell me your copy now please.
Social Caterpillar - When You Woke Up To Dances Of Light
This album got me through some sad times. As beautiful as it is melancholic, every time I play this album it’s a different trip. Much better than The Beatles.
Fleshwater - We’re Not Here To Be Loved
I was gonna list this as my number one album pick because it became an addiction to me but stupid Dalton kept saying it’s a Deftones worship album and I’m not super into the Deftones. However this album and everything Vein associated is so damn good.
To Be Gentle - It Always Hurts And One Day It Will Win
Obviously Eve wrote another flawless album. It happens like every second week but this one might be my fav TBG release, as of this date of course.
BLK ODYSSY - BLK VINTAGE: THE REPRISE
Admittedly I love Benny the Butcher and Griselda and Black Sopranos Family and all that so when they did a song with Benny I checked it out and that’s how I recently fell in love with this group. This album helped me chill out a lot this year when I needed something to help me relax this album hits the body and the mind with mellow vibrations you’ll feel in your bones after. Seriously go listen to this shit right now.
TOP 5 EPS OF 2022
The best in the bizz. Seriously the catchiest band in the game. I haven’t loved a Hardcore band the way I love End It in so goddamn long. Doesn’t hurt that Akil is the funniest dude in Hardcore and that’s not a fucking debate so get your head checked if you think that isn’t a fact.
Canadian Pop-Rock with the voice of a literal Angel. 90s influence just drenched in the overall sound, mark my words this band is gonna be fucking massive one day soon.
Awakebutstillinbed / For Your Health - Hymns for The Scorned
Awakebutstillinbed kick off this split with my two favourite songs they’ve ever written and I’ve abused the hell out of their side of this split this year.
Foreign Hands - Bleed The Dream
I’m very specific in what I define as “Metalcore” Often I say I don’t even like Metalcore cause I like maybe 5 bands considered to fit that genre and I haven’t given a shit about any Metalcore since Poison The Well but this band made me fall in love with the whole thing again. Hell I even threw back on some early 2000s era Metalcore bands I thought I’d never be listening to again. This bands sound is from a time capsule but they breathed new life into the genre.
Roman Candle - Discount Fireworks
I mean cmon we did a review for this EP and I put Piper on the podcast. They deserve all that attention and much more.
Dalton’s Picks (@kvijer)
SPICE's "Viv" was on repeat from the day I heard it, and the soundtrack to my summer. It took me longer than I'd like to admit to learn who the members of the band were, especially being such a big fan of Ceremony.
Each song demands your attention with creative and attentive-to-detail drum patterns, demanding riffs, and poignant lyrics that are so easily accessible. It's impossible to get sick of this record, and it was hard to choose a top for this year, but the replay ability is what made this one.
Sammy’s Picks (@ohmucollective)
LPs:
Never mind the 17 year gap between cult classic "The Moon is a Dead World" and old-soul-living-in-a-young-man's-body "The Loser". Jaw-dropping technicality with adventurous song writing? Check. Heart-wrenching gut punches with unpredictable song structure? Check. While "The Loser" doesn't aim for the same frenetic heights as its predecessor, leaning harder on prog influences than screamo, the subdued approach allows for a more cohesive listening experience and greater breathing room, thanks in no small part to Kurt Ballou's stellar production.
Scarred and torn vocal chords pair with angular guitar riffs. Spell-binding synth giving way to furious and virtuosic drumming. "The Loser" melds the tones of King Crimson and Yes through a filter of Drive Like Jehu and The Jesus Lizard. While "Moon..." may have cemented Gospel and their unique brand of prog-flavored-screamo as one of the single greatest releases the genre has ever seen, "The Loser" solidifies in no uncertain terms that this isn't some one-trick band. Living and breathing through tempo changes and dynamic shifts - age be damned - "The Loser" displays a band fully alive in a way few bands are capable of. Time hasn't stolen anything from these artists, instead only allowing them to further refine their craft.
02. Massa Nera - Derramar | Querer | Borrar
05. Ken Mode - NULL
06. Blind Girls - The Weight of Everything
08. Cult of Luna - The Long Road North
13. City of Caterpillar - Mystic Sisters
14. Gillian Carter - Salvation Through Misery
15. Wormrot - Hiss
Eps:
01. Gospel - MVDM
02. Jeanne - EP
03. Piet Onthel - s(EP)kitomanditlanjey
04. Jamais Vu - Demo
Belle’s Picks (@ab.bashara)
2022 had some amazing releases, if this were an EP and album of the year situation, it’s likely my list wouldn’t look the same. However, that doesn’t change the fact that there were plenty of full lengths that initiated the defining of many bands’ sounds and eras, and shook listeners this past year. Here were some of my highlights in no particular order…:
…except this one. Their first album in nearly six years, Wormrot takes the idea of grind and transforms it into a mass of variety and excitement that comes from the presentation of sounds not yet considered by the audience. With a genre whose lengths have been reached in nearly every direction, it takes a certain band to be entirely distinguishable and inspire different feelings in you with every track. Wormrot does just that, with nearly every song on Hiss being a must-listen. Incorporating chilling violin, punk, whispering, and clean (and purely impressive) vocals, impenetrable blast beats, the album arrays a pristine-ly dreadful combination of sounds that melt together to transport you, while still allowing complete distinction of each instrument. I’m a sucker for an album that can build an atmosphere of sound around you and turn noise into an experience. From the running water flowing past you in track one, to it drifting you away in the finale, Hiss takes you across an auditory journey that’s even more enlightening with headphones on. This is one for grind fans to take with them and for audio engineers to admire into subsequent years.
Deliriant Nerve - Uncontrollable Ascension
Triac - Pure Joy - Numb Grief-stricken Animals
Human Cull - To Weep for Unconquered Worlds
Elias’s Picks (@letsgetpivotal)
It was another excellent year of releases and debuts and I’m grateful as always to have had more to listen to than my ears can make time for. Here are the albums from this year that commanded my attention. Some I loved and forgot until this list was being made, some dropped in the tail end of the year and quickly shot up my rankings and more than a few never left my rotation once they dropped. If I had the time and energy I’d do a top 300 list but unfortunately I’m spoiled for choice and bereft of time. I look forward to whatever wild shit 2023 has in store for music.
10. Sweet Pill - Where The Heart Is
Few bands came in as hard as Sweet Pill did and kept that momentum through the year. “Where The Heart Is” somehow juggles this massive sound with a peal of intimacy ringing crystal clear through its dynamic and moving post-hardcore. Definitely the most excited I’ve been about a band with this sound in quite some time.
2022 was another banner year for screamo and Party Hats made themselves an easy pick when they dropped “Fatima” in March. Anguished and rhythmic, theres notes of that texas midwest screamo sound being driven in a whole new direction and I just can hardly wait and see what they come up with next.
When Philly gives us a screamo band I listen, thats a decreed tenet from on high that I adhere to and I have yet to be disappointed. Sonagi brings something intensely chaotic yet exuberantly delightful and its an album that left me simply wanting another go after each listen.
7. Soul Glo - Diaspora Problems
Soul Glo are the most unstoppably excellent band that we have with us right now. They have written a run of albums that will easily be discussed and lauded for the years to come and “Diaspora Problems” for as biting and heavy and eclectic as it is, will be remembered most notably.
A lot of albums moved me this year, but “Louie” is the album that had me sit down and cry in a way that I hadn’t ever experienced before. A truly stirring album written after Kenny Beats received the news of his fathers cancer diagnosis, it is both joyful and pained, undercut with a myriad of samples and adlibs telling the story of his father's life. A headphone album if I ever heard one, this Dilla-esque, wordless ode to a father and son’s love is something that you should hear at least once.
5. Sudan Archives - Natural Brown Prom Queen
Sudan Archives was a new find altogether for me, even though she sat at about two million monthly Spotify listeners at my time of discovery. She easily deserves at least another ten. “Natural Brown Prom Queen” is a beautiful, weird and somehow frenetic album. Her violin playing, vocals, production and beat selection all meld into something that becomes a true wonder of a musical movement and even though it is a whopping seventeen tracks, once it finishes it still feels like its gone too soon.
4. Spirit Desire - No One Makes Me Laugh As Hard As You
The amount of times I kept putting this album on after the first time I heard it bordered absurdity. Emotional, heavy, folky and catchy, the absolute gamut that Spirit Desire runs on “No On Makes Me Laugh As Hard as You” is as creatively exciting as it is simply fun to listen to. But as enjoyable as the album is sonically it is equally gut-wrenching and painful in it’s lyricism. Easily one of my favorite releases that I’ve heard in quite some time.
3. Gillian Carter - Salvation Through Misery
I suffer from a genuine obsession with Gillian Carter. The elder statesman of screamo have lost absolutely none of their exceptional musicianship, crushing atmosphere and overall intensity as the years have gone on. My only complaint about “Salvation Through Misery” is that its not another fifteen songs.
2. Will Sheff - Nothing Special
I’m a stone cold simp for Will Sheff. Okkervil River has long been one of my favorite bands, and every era and iteration of it has traveled with me through a different phase of my life. On his first full solo venture, Sheff himself is entering a new phase, both informed by all of his years as Okkervil River but with a new polish and outlook that feels all at once fresh as it does familiar. The sonic journey of “Nothing Special” is one of both wistfulness and fullness. A found place in a land that's long endured misplacement, this album sounds as sonorous as it does, introspective and this new chapter in Sheff’s career is not one to be missed.
Nothing this year hit me quite as hard as “Ritma” does. Another band with plenty of years under their belt that have surrendered absolutely none of their ferocity to time. As emotionally intense as it is politically cutting, “Ritma” spends not a single minute without passionate and elaborate musicianship. A triumphantly tragic album that cuts to the heart of you and forces you to look around as much as it asks you to look inward. An absolutely stellar debut album and one that left me impatiently waiting for whatever the band does next.
12/28/22
