From an ever evolving pandemic to constant turmoil, this year has just been a flurry of confusion, anxiety and stress. Thankfully, even amidst the constant chaos, music has been the saving grace. It goes without saying that this year has been phenomenal for the entirety of the alternative music spectrum, with the year hosting a seemingly endless plethora of brilliant releases from both established names and emerging talent. We’ve seen legacy acts reinvent themselves, new names come screaming out the shadow with jaw-dropping work and acts breaking new ground by subverting redundant genre norms. With that in mind, it’s made compiling this list excruciating – but regardless – it’s here; the Noizze top 50 records of 2021.
Now, before we delve into our top 50 records of the year, a little disclaimer is needed. The eagle eyed amongst you may notice a discrepancy between the ranking of this list and individual review scores. Throughout this list a number of records we gave perfect 10/10 scores will be placed lower than albums we gave scores of 9 and 8. The reason for this is that whilst reviews are the opinions of a single writer, this list was decided as a collective. As you can imagine it took a lot of discussion, arguing and maybe one or two death threats, but we got there in the end.
Now with that out the way we present the first part of our 50 best records of 2020, beginning with 50 down to 26.
With a soundscape perfectly balancing the scales between volatile vulnerability and the thundering race to the demolition of our eardrums; Caskets bravely ventured through the harrowing realities surrounding the seven emotional stages of trauma, which is detailed beautifully across their deeply profound debut album Lost Souls. – Bennie Osborne
Capturing the zeitgeist of the process of growing up in this fractured and ceaselessly chaotic modern culture, and everyone else smiled back is an irresistibly charming and wholesome body of work that’s wall to wall with pop hooks and creativity. Reminiscent of other acts that once specialised in narrating the woes of coming of age such as Modern Baseball and Los Campesinos!, with this gilded release Bears In Trees have seemingly become the voice of unbridled Gen Z creativity. – Dan Hillier
Outworld by Black Coast is full of riffs, riffs and more riffs, with elements of all the old favourites like KoRn and Linkin Park, they’ve crafted a record that not only dances around their more hardcore inspired roots but heavily involves itself with the old nu-metal recipe book; in their own words: “we didn’t invent the the wheel, we just rolled it back into the party”. – Elliot Grimmie
With the amount of excellent releases this year no one would blame you if the self-titled solo debut effort by Wade MacNeil (Alexisonfire/Gallows/Black Lungs) was missed. That said, Dooms Children is an album that is incredibly immersive and packed full of style and flare unlike anything he has previously released. The album takes the listener through the journey of MacNeil that led him to rehab and beyond delivered in the style of 60s psychedelia albeit in a well-produced manner and providing a modern take on the genre. An absolute hidden gem. – Jac Holloway
With such a beautiful blend of DIY style emo-indie-punk, Contender pulls at the heartstrings in all the right ways to invoke emotional reaction and relation. Lucky Coin, I’m Starting To Think You Don’t Even Want To Go To Space, The Absolute State Of Me, all of these songs hit right in the feels, and the record strikes such a tone that it’s relatable at any time of day, any part of year, through sunshine, rain, day and night the record just feels right at any given moment. You can listen to it on cosy days in, wrapped under blankets, yet equally so out and about on sunlit strolls around town, a true hidden gem in the realms of British indie artists. – Elliot Grimmie
Written and presented as a soundtrack to a movie of the listener’s own mental design, French post-rock collective Bruit ≤ manifested something truly awe-inspiring with The Machine Is Burning And Now Everyone Knows It Could Happen Again. An amalgamation of classic post-rock, modern neoclassical and ambient electronica, the record is a must listen for anyone with even the passing interest in the subversion of genre convention and stands tall as a testament to the group’s steadfast devotion to chasing ardent creativity without industry imposed restraints. – Dan Hillier
Released at the height of summer, Primary Colours is a vibrant as its namesake suggests. Yet whilst it’s sonically sun-kissed, blissfully warm and easy-going in nature, this is a record of brilliant contrast. The debut from Lovebreakers spins stories of British rain-soaked misadventure in the guise of swaggering American West Coast pop rock in a way that’s sleek, ensnaring but still ultimately uplifting. A perfect summer time record with brilliant hidden nuance. – Dan Hillier
Twenty-one minutes of sheer and utterly terrifying chaos. Whilst 2017’s ‘Trumpeting Ecstasy’ wore its hardcore influences on its sleeve, 2019’s ‘Weeping Choir’ introduced further experimentation of industrial and noise elements. Now, ‘Garden of Burning Apparitions’ sees the band refining these as well as expanding their experimentation and creating something truly restless, challenging and uncompromisingly vicious. – James Davenport
Thank you very much. Some of the songs on the mixtape have been floating around since the ‘skeletons’ EP came out but others were written in lockdown. I would just record full demos on my laptop and send them to the band and then we would de/reconstruct them from there. We then went to Squarehead Studios in Kent with our good friend James Simpson in February of 2020 to record the mixtape properly. The band stayed together in a cottage locally which was a treat. Ended up writing the final lyrics for ‘scuttlebug’ in the shower there. Fun fact that nobody asked for.
Not at all (any more). When we started the band, there was definitely a sound in mind but now that we’re two releases in, I don’t really think about it. Just let songs come and they’ll be what they’ll be. Just add it to the pile!
It was all by design rather than coincidence unfortunately. All the skits were recorded at a later date in our drummer’s gaff and it was actually Brooker’s suggestion to add the skits in the first place. It’s not a record that takes itself too seriously and was a way for us to put out a bigger chunk of material we’ve been sitting on.
Well, there are no plans as of yet….but there are songs. We’ve released 15 tracks on 2 releases over the last 18 months so we’re just looking to get on the road and play all these songs live. That said, we’re always thinking ahead….
We’d love to collaborate with you!! If anyone wants to do a remix of our tunes, we’d love to hear ‘em! We’ve had a few people do their own versions or our tunes or remixes and it’s been pretty wild to hear. Do your best/worst.
Primitive in a way that’s more arcane than it is undeveloped, ‘Jaguar’ see’s psych sludgers Kurokuma tap deep into the cabalistic brutality of the ancient primal magic we have a long forgotten as a species. Somewhat of a tribal war chant that echoes mind-altering psychedelia, this latest track from Kurokuma serves as the introduction to their forthcoming debut LP Born Of Obsidian, which see’s the band viscerally explore the culture of the Mesoamerican civilisations; concepts that include the subject of human sacrifice, the Sun God Huitzilopochtli and how Aztec priests used psychedelics to commune with such blood thirsty deities.”After years of silent gestation, our first full length will finally emerge into the blinding light of corporeal existence”, state the band on the record. “The five songs that make up this album stand both unified and distinct, creating an edifice that transcends the moment and speaks to the raw nature of the universe. So turn your back on the madness; seek this column of unseen truth and elevate yourself from the primordial chaos in which you dwell.” – Dan Hillier
An unholy amalgamation of sludge, hardcore and metal, fast-rising quartet Heriot aren’t for the faint of heart. With their latest dual single ‘Near Vision / Into the Flesh’, they give another glimpse into the continual evolution of their sound ahead of a debut release we can only hope comes soon. Even with two tracks, it’s scarcely four minutes of music; Heriot can do an awful lot in not much time, which ‘Near Vision’ demonstrates neatly as it careens from whiplash-inducing speed to a glacial breakdown heavy enough to pulverize bone. The twin vocal attack of Debbie Gough and Jake Packer is backed up by thunderous drumming and caustic riffs across both songs. Make no mistake, this is the sound of the future. – Will Marshall
Taking place May 7th at Fuel, The Moon and Tiny Rebel in Cardiff, next year see’s the festival partnering up with Heads Above The Waves and yours truly at Noizze in order to present a day boasting some of the best emerging talent in the national and local contemporary scene.
Heading today’s announcement is the Fuel headliner in the shape of self-proclaimed “dirtbag boyband” Bears In Trees. Cultivating a colossal fanbase with their satirical social media use – having amassed over 360K Tik Tok fans and 100K Instagram followers even before dropping a full length – the South London collective have swiftly become widely known for capturing the zeitgeist of modern living with their warm, relatable and earnest take on lofi indie pop. Essential listening for anyone with even a passing interest in bands such as Modern Baseball, Cavetown and Los Campesinos!, Bears In Trees are the band for the emerging generation, one raised on a diet of anxiety, progressivism and haplessly ensuring indie hooks.
Also joining the bill today are Brighton beach fuzzers Beach Riot, Aberdeen emo heartthrobs Dude Trips, progressive indie rockers Lakes and PWER Fest staples Sienna. They will also be joined by the math tinged emo collective Sleep Outside, Bristolian math rock riff slingers Memory Of Elephants, the volatile Salt The Snail and Ellie Thomas.
Originally taking place in 2018, PWER FEST has become an event fully committed on providing a stage to some of the best new names to be found in South Wales and beyond, with acts such as Vukovi, Dream State, False Advertising, Cassels and more previously appearing at the festival in the past. With still so many more names to come very soon – including a further two headliners – PWER FEST 2022 is already gearing up to be one the most important days in the alternative Welsh festival calendar.
Early Bird Tickets are now available and can be found here. See the lineup thus far below.
In your own words what has been the progression since previous album Desolation came out?
It’s actually kind of interesting because before Desolation we have always struggled with this idea of being labelled as a doom band. We think that can be a constricting framework, if you go in expecting us to sound like Candlemass or something like that you’re probably going to feel a bit let down. We’ve always aimed to be a metal band that are doing all sorts of different things, like High On Fire or something where it doesn’t really matter what classification it fits under. Desolation was us trying to deliver on that by making an album that felt like us paying homage to the traditional heavy metal that got us into this kind of music in the first place. Something that could have been contemporary of Judas Priest on Sad Wings of Destiny or Sin After Sin.
With this album and the whole process of making it, it forced us to re-evaluate our relationship to the band and we decided to let go of the reins of feeling like we had to prove we were anything to anybody. This is the sound of us pulling from all the influences we have to create what we think is a really cohesive and dynamic album. It is a doomy album, we’re not going to try and run from that this time, there’s enough confidence in us now to know when we deliver an album it will sound like us no matter what. You’re getting a lot more explicit death and black metal influences and we’re dialling up the doom factor on this one. It’s inherently emotional and its born from a dark chapter in our lives.
From the beginning of your career you’ve tended towards longer songs, is that something you intend or do the songs take on a life of their own during the creative process?
I mean, I wish we could write sub-four minute songs sometimes! It always just feels like the song is over when it’s supposed to be over and we know where that is supposed to be. For it to really take you to the places we want to take you they generally have to be pretty long and it feels incomplete otherwise. We kind of succeeded with ‘Living Pyre’ which is around five minutes and still feels like a satisfying experience, and with ‘Isolation’ from Desolation. It’s difficult to do especially if it’s a downtempo song, if the riff is like forty seconds long and we base the song around it, it has to repeat enough times for the song to make sense, for it to have a vocal melody over it. Stuff has to be as long as it has to be. We want to be introducing a new element every time you hear something, it has to keep evolving, that’s something we’ve been working on with our song-writing, getting the right balance between things progressing in a way that makes sense the first time you hear them but are still rewarding on repeat listens with stuff you don’t notice right away. I think we’ve done better with that on this album than in the past. I’m proud of how we’ve improved as songwriters on this record to be able to support the songs better, trying to be economical with the time even though it normally ends up being a six and a half, seven minute song. We’re never going to sell a million records with eight minute long songs but for the people that want to listen to it, it provides that journey that we want to take you on. With the last track, ‘The Astral Road’, it starts with a clean guitar passage but that comes back as the final riff at the end of the song. They’re similar enough but it’s not too obvious that’s the thing that’s happening, we don’t want it to be obvious you’re hearing the same thing unless it’s the hook.
In many of your songs there’s a symmetry between the lyrics and the instrumentation in terms of the emotion and mood that they evoke, when you’re putting a song together do you start with the lyrics or does the music come first?
More the latter, we start with usually a riff and then we’ll start building a song. Maybe the riff needs to be harmonised or maybe juxtaposed against a death metal riff. We have to feel like the whole song is satisfying as an instrumental and the storytelling of the music has to be there. From there really the last thing that ever happens is that I’ll come up with a lyrical concept for the song based on listening to the music over and over again. While I’m doing that I’ll ad-lib vocal melody ideas. The hard part for me is that I’m never able to write lyrics until I have a melody, I try really hard to have the lyrics match syllable for syllable what the vocal melody is, I’d never be able to write a song where I start with the lyrics then come up with the melody. There’s some bands that do this and it becomes too wordy, I always want the words to be sympathetic to the melody rather than force everything to go along with it. So I’ll come up with a concept, like ‘this will be about my inability to reconcile with a memory I have regrets over’, I’ll start writing lyrics based on a vocal melody I come up with and usually this will change quite a bit in the studio. Me and our producer, Dave, have a really good relationship where we have a lot of faith in each other to experiment with these things so I’ll change a lot of lyrics at the last second. It’s always kinda stressful for me because I’m under the gun! But I always try to tap in to the energy of the song and what the song makes me feel, then what kind of story I want to tell.
Leading today’s announcement is the confirmation of Turnstile, who will be co-headlining Friday night alongside the previously announced Thrice. Commonly refereed to as one the greatest live acts on the planet – something that can be attested to by anyone who caught them at the festival in either 2019 or 2018 – the announcement comes following the release of their latest LP Glow On back in midsummer. They will also be joined by fellow newcomers in the form of acclaimed psyche rockers Pigs, Pigs, Pigs, Pigs, Pigs, Pigs, Pigs, newly reformed post-hardcore legends Mclusky, fast risers Can’t Swim and Trees favourites Nervus, John and Higher Power.
Also confirmed today are Airways, Avalanche Party, Bears In Trees, Bent Knee, Cassels, Chapter and Verse, Chastity, Creature, Gatherers, Grief Ritual, Halflives, InTechnicolour, Lady Bird, LibraLibra, Lucia and the Best Boys, Marisa And The Moths, Panic Shack, Raiders, Rews, Sapphire Blues, Slothrust, The Oozes, The Virginmarys, The Winter Passing, Together Pangea, Tom Jenkins, Worriers and Wych Elm.
Today’s new wave of acts also comes following the confirmation of the Wednesday early bird lineup. Hosted in the newly revamped Forest Stage, Wednesday will see Trees staples Pulled Apart By Horses, Black Foxxes, Palm Reader and Johnny Foreigner appearing alongside Jim Lockey & the Solemn Sun, Dave Mcpherson, Holiday Oscar, Non Canon, Heartwork, George Gadd and Andy Oliveri.
2000 Trees Festival takes place at it’s usual home of Upcote Farm, Cheltenham, between the dates of 6th – 9th July 2022. Tickets, including early entry for Wednesday, can be found here. More acts ad the full Forest Stage lineup are set to be announced soon, see the lineup thus far below.
