I’ve not had my typical run up to Christmas this year. Usually I’d be enjoying wintery walks to and from work while listening to all my favourite Christmassy rock: 80s stuff from bands like KISS, Whitesnake, Magnum, Van Halen etc… but my knee has been knackered for a couple of weeks so I’ve been using the car. This has disrupted my Christmas listening mojo quite dramatically and I’ve ended up more in the mood to revisit my favourites of 2024. Great stuff, but not very Christmassy! Bah humbug.

So, what are my top five of 2024?

I didn’t want to call it until I had heard the new Tribulation album Sub Rosa In Aeternum. Tribulation are one of my favourite modern bands so I thought this would be an Album Of The Year contender but the full-on goth direction they’ve gone in isn’t quite doing it for me. There’s some really good tracks on it and it is growing on me with each listen but it’s not exciting me as much as I’d hoped.

A more enjoyable recent purchase was Opeth’s The Last Will And Testament, which brings back the growls and is a hugely enjoyable prog metal concept album. So much so that it squeezes out Blood Incantation’s Absolute Elsewhere from my Top 5 of 2024.

So the HMO Top Albums Of 2024 are (in no particular order) Doedsmaghird’s Omniverse Consciousness, Darkthrone’s It Beckons Us All……., Deep Purple’s =1, Winterfylleth’s The Imperious Horizon and Opeth’s The Last Will And Testament.

Ermaghird!

-1 for the artwork though

It’s a black metal dominated selection but that’s not unusual for me. And there were plenty of other albums that I enjoyed like the aforementioned Blood Incantation as well as Bruce Dickinson’s The Mandrake Project, Coffin Storm’s Arcana Rising and Ulcerate’s Cutting The Throat Of God.

It’s interesting to note that Tribulation have now largely eschewed their usual growled vocals and Opeth have brought theirs back after many years… but that’s a musing for another time maybe. I’m off for a mince pie. Merry Christmas, you lot!