Top Five Unsettling Albums of 2024 for Trip Sitting Someone You Hate

The quantity of phenomenal albums released this year across every genre I enjoy—from Megan Thee Stallion to Willi Carlisle to Full of Hell, along with how many incredible shows I’ve seen—have been the driving force behind my will to live throughout 2024. The releases below were common soundtracks for emotional purges, but their intense unnerving quality makes them perfect to psychologically torture someone who’s a couple tabs too deep. 

Knoll
As Spoken
Self-released
Street: 01.26
Knoll = (Cattle Decapitation + Mortician) x the feeling of burning alive

Nothing about Knoll is half-assed. The Tennessee deathgrind quintet has a consistent and carefully curated aesthetic thread connecting their music, merch, online presence and stage performances. It’s the pretty packaging that contains one of 2024’s heaviest and most jarring releases, As Spoken. It’s the same full-throttle sonic assault that had me hooked from 2021’s Interstice, but with a more fully-realized vision and greater propensity for experimentation and boundary-pushing. Funeral director (read: vocalist) Jamie Eubanks unleashes wretched sounds that never sound remotely human atop relentless blasting and grinding that demand to be listened to at maximum volume to appreciate their intricacies. As Spoken’s carefully utilized noise and dissonance make it sound as if it were played on an antique phonograph—take the twisted guitar lead of “Mereward” as an example—which matches their Victorian funeral visuals beautifully. Before this record, if you had told me a trumpet could push grindcore to new unsettling heights of brutality, I wouldn’t have believed you. 

meth.
SHAME
Prosthetic Records
Street: 02.02
meth. = Portrayal of Guilt + City of Caterpillar + Silent Hill boss fight music

SHAME is one of the most crushingly intense records I’ve ever heard. It’s brutal, punishing and devastating; it would be overwhelming were it not such a cathartic listen. Vocalist Seb Alvarez vomits up personal suffering brought on by addiction and religious trauma—suffering you can understand without knowing a single tortured word that comes out. The pummeling bass and drums that create the foundation of each blackened-screamo-noise-rock-grind exploration of anguish are a pounding heartbeat, ready to beat out of the chest from record-high anxiety. I had the privilege of seeing meth. perform much of this record live in the small basement of Fairyland, a house venue in Millcreek. It was a visceral experience, made all the better and more engrossing by watching Alvarez wrestle an audience member while still screaming. meth. beats me over the head with the most ugly facets of their own humanity and forces me into a staredown with the worst parts of myself. Better and more accessible than therapy. 

Crippling Alcoholism
With Love From A Padded Room
Self-released
Street: 02.29
Crippling Alcoholism = Type O Negative + Chat Pile x a cocaine-fueled ‘80s slasher flick

With Love From A Padded Room is a collection of fictional tales of folks in solitary confinement—stories told as clearly by Tony Castrati’s impassioned and raspy Tom Waits-esque vocals as by darkly ironic lyrics that deliver an unforgettable gut punch. Crippling Alcoholism is (self-admittedly) a pop band, as their undeniably catchy hooks will demonstrate, but their music drips with the synth-forward, gothic drama of Type O Negative and Nick Cave and finds itself in the hearts of industrial, doom and grind lovers. With Love From A Padded Room is even more hauntingly beautiful than it is unsettling, and it’s one of those rare, special records that makes for a truly immersive listening experience. By that, I mean it’s hard not to place yourself in the shoes of whatever fucked-up, tormented character Castrati croons about and envision yourself as the main character of a twisted ‘80s flick with each commanding synth melody. 

Infant Island
Obsidian Wreath
Deathwish
Street = 01.12
Infant Island = Love Lost But Not Forgotten + Loma Prieta + Deafheaven

It would have been worth my time to write a separate top five album list just for screamo (Frail Body, State Faults, Senza and Lagrimas would be the other bands mentioned). Infant Island’s fourth full-length release made the cut for this list because of its angsty, violent catharsis. The quintessential skramz misery—along with mathcore influence, classic panic chords and gentle, dramatic intros and refrains—are all there, but more commanding and aggressive rather than yearning and desperate. On Obsidian Wreath, Infant Island is itself with more noticeable and varied inspiration from black metal, shoegaze and grindcore. “Clawing, Still” is blackened screamo at its best. Some tracks lean more into melodic drama (“With Shadow,” “Veil”), while others are relentlessly furious (“Fulfilled”), but the genuine rage is heard throughout. Obsidian Wreath is the perfect soundtrack for unpacking your monumental grief about the state of the world, whether you’re at the point of depression or anger. 

Thou
Umbilical
Sacred Bones Records
Street: 05.31
Thou = Eyehategod + Nirvana + Primitive Man

Few bands at this level of longevity, prolificacy and notoriety are as unapologetically authentic as Thou. In a two-decades-deep well of mesmerizing musical innovation—including collaborations with the likes of Emma Ruth Rundle and a full album of Nirvana covers—Umbilical stands out as a relentlessly aggressive hardcore punk record, still in the brutal fashion of Thou’s signature distorted-to-hell sludge-grunge sound that’s built their following. A departure from many of Thou’s more droning, atmospheric tracks, Umbilical’s aggression showcases their filthy tone and Bryan Funck’s screeching, scathing vocals, the sounds that’ve sent chills down my spine even on my hundredth listen of this record. Umbilical seems rife with misanthropy, but it’s the self-aware (and self-critical) sort, inextricably connected to Thou’s impassioned political ethos. The opening track, “Narcissist’s Prayer,” is one of many that displays this: “Of compromised ideals, friendships abandoned, our works substandard, principles meandering. So speak our names as a warning, as a curse, as a failure. At last, it’s time to die.” Witnessing Thou perform bits of Umbilical at The Clubhouse will remain a core memory as long as I am on this Earth.  

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