Year-End Top 5
▼ Music
![Top 5 Experimental Albums To Soundtrack Your Faith Crisis](https://www.slugmag.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/Top-5-Experimental.jpeg)
Top 5 Experimental Albums To Soundtrack Your Faith Crisis
Have you had an existential crisis dealing with the faith that your parents raised you on? The experimental albums in this list can help you process the trauma. … read more
![Top 5 Organic Free-Range Local Albums](https://www.slugmag.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/Top-5-Local.jpeg)
Top 5 Organic Free-Range Local Albums
Are you the cruciferous locavore crusader who’s always first in line at the Downtown Farmer’s Market? Fill your reusable, upcycled basket with some of Utah’s best organic free-range local albums of 2015. … read more
![Straight to the Mu’Fuckin’ Greatest: The Best Mixtapes of 2014](https://www.slugmag.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/8683-image1071.jpg)
Straight to the Mu’Fuckin’ Greatest: The Best Mixtapes of 2014
For years now, some of the biggest game-changers in hip-hop haven’t been albums—they’ve been “mixtapes”—free, digital releases that may or may not have an annoying DJ who ruins the whole thing. These days, mixtapes are a necessity for staying relevant, which probably sucks for rappers, but appeals to the cheapskate in me. Everyone makes them, so there’s a lot to sift through. Luckily, SLUG has done all the hard work for you, and these are the 10 tapes from 2014 you need to know about.
![Top 5: Ered Wethrin](https://www.slugmag.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/8570-SLUG_Dec_2014_Ered_Wethrin_Tides_of_War.jpg)
Top 5: Ered Wethrin
Just like the epic themes of fantasy and esoteric mysticism that inspired Ered Wethrin’s lyrics, Tides of War takes its time unfolding a vast and enchanting audial world. From the Glen Cook–inspired “Bloody Annals and Brooding Skies” to the Steven Erikson tribute in “Requiem for the Fallen,” Sven Smith’s solo recordings recall the stoic and battle-hardened tales of lesser-known fantasy realms. … read more
![Top 5: Foster Body](https://www.slugmag.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/8573-7439-foster.jpg)
Top 5: Foster Body
Foster Body’s debut album, Landscapes, which was released on cassette and digitally in March, captures the Salt Lake City–based, punk combo at a brilliant moment of process—merging strong aesthetic sentiment and live performance practice into a compelling vision for contemporary noise-punk. With eight tracks lashing across the album’s 20-minute duration, Landscapes is a quick yet thrilling listen. … read more
![Top 5: Horseback](https://www.slugmag.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/8576-SLUG_Dec_2014_Horseback_Piedmont_Apocrypha.jpg)
Top 5: Horseback
Jenks Miller, the father behind Horseback’s latest album, Piedmont Apocrypha, has again created a twined nest of experimental sound by combining a base of seething feedback and altering levels of oozing drone. The album as a whole lifts up the listener in a cradle to help see Miller’s vision of music as a single, fluid entity with this nongenre specific album. … read more
![Top 5: Hundred Waters](https://www.slugmag.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/8580-SLUG_Dec_2014_Hundred_Waters_The_Moon_Rang_Like_a_Bell.jpg)
Top 5: Hundred Waters
Following the subtly intricate formula of their first album, Hundred Waters’ new release continues with the same airy splendor, but with more refinement. The musical foundation of this album perfectly represents 2014, a year of revitalization and self-discovery, by sounding neither senescent nor ahead of its time, but flawlessly fit into the fringes of current music. … read more
![Top 5: Necrophagia](https://www.slugmag.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/8582-SLUG_Dec_2014_Necrophagia_WhiteWorm_Cathredral.jpg)
Top 5: Necrophagia
The legacy of horror, terror and old-school death metal that is Wellsville, Ohio’s Necrophagia keeps getting better and better. Their seventh release, WhiteWorm Cathedral, is sure to open up the seven seals of Hell and unleash the apocalypse in the form of aural destruction and mental imagery assaults. Necrophagia incorporate an almost obsessive love for horror films which, in addition to the band’s own ideas and interpretations of those horrors, have always made for fun listening. … read more
![Top 5: Pink Mountaintops](https://www.slugmag.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/8584-SLUG_Dec_2014_Pink_Mountaintops_Get_Back.jpg)
Top 5: Pink Mountaintops
Get Back received mixed reviews across the board—some reviewers lauded the album as a rock n’ roll tour de force (Mojo, PopMatters) and others expressed wishy-washy reactions (Paste, Pitchfork). Most seemed, to some extent, to decry the sixth track, “North Hollywood Microwaves” because Annie Hardy (Giant Drag) raps about the joys of cum, declaring “I am a slut!” amid her blithe confessions of bestiality with donkeys and bears (because men no longer satisfy her). The prank worked. … read more
![SLUG Mag’s Top 5 Albums of 2014](https://www.slugmag.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/8533-SLUG_Magazine_Dec_Top_5_list.jpg)
SLUG Mag’s Top 5 Albums of 2014
Every December, SLUG Magazine sounds the rallying call and gathers the staff’s lists of Top 5 albums from the year. In the next few pages, find a wide range of genres, artists and records that were of note for 2014—with a few other Top 5 beats like video games, comics and movies peppered throughout. … read more