Top Music of 2018

January 3, 2019

As with last year, this largely reflects my music listening at work. These lists tend to be more metal-heavy as this is where I do most of my headphone listening.

As of this writing, Last.fm hasn’t updated my Last.year page yet. This link should update once the new data is out. My previous most listened to posts can be found here:

My top artists for 2018

Rank	Artist	Plays
1	Meshuggah	465
2 ↓	Daniel Romano	266
3	Soreption	256
4 ↓	Anaal Nathrakh	247
5	Ghost	196
6 ↓	Behemoth	168
7 ↑	Clutch	150
8	Robbie Fulks	134
9	Abnormality	121
10	Code Orange	116

Despite releasing four albums this year, Daniel Romano drops one spot to number two! What happened? I finally got to see Meshuggah live, that’s what. And at a small venue! Code Orange opened, it was better than I could have imagined.

Abnormality is an interesting one. Their album, “Mechanisms of Omniscience” came out in 2016. Not sure why this made a resurgance this year, but it is a really good record. As a feminist, I love when such a brutal tech death band is fronted by a woman. As a dude, I feel lame for bringing that up.

My top albums for 2018

Rank	Artist — Album	Plays
1	Soreption — Monument of the End	240
2	Meshuggah — The Violent Sleep Of Reason	166
3 ↑	Ghost — Prequelle	151
4	Clutch — Book of Bad Decisions	147
5	Abnormality — Mechanisms of Omniscience	121
6 ↓	Anaal Nathrakh — The Whole of the Law	106
7	The Dean Ween Group — Rock2	104
8 ↓	Daniel Romano — NERVELESS	103
9 ↓	Behemoth — I Loved You at Your Darkest	97
10	Daniel Romano — HUMAN TOUCH	97

It was a great year for new releases! Clutch, Ghost, Anaal Nathrakh, Daniel Romano, and Behemoth—so many of my all-time favorite bands with new releases. And a new artist tops the list this year! More on Soreption below.

Of note again this year, Daniel Romano makes two appearances. Last January he released two new records on the same day for a limited time (they are no longer avaiable online). We should probably keep our eyes peeled on his bandcamps (danielromano and danielromanomusic) for the next few months.

My top songs for 2018

Rank	Artist — Song	Plays
1	Soreption — Children of the Automaton	33
2	Soreption — King of Undisputed Nonsense	33
3	Soreption — Nothingness Becoming	33
4	Soreption — The Anti-Present	33
5	Soreption — Architects of the Apocalypse	31
6	Soreption — A Mimic’s Ignorance	28
7	Soreption — Virulent Well	25
8	Soreption — The Entity	24
9	Meshuggah — Clockworks	20
10	Ghost — Rats	19

So… Soreption is a tech death metal band from Sweden I discovered this year. Their new album dropped during a particularly stressful time for me, and stress hightens misophonia rage. When your new tech death ablum lives at the top of my recently added list during crunch time, you dominate my top ten lists. This isn’t to say that I don’t love this record, but “Monument of the End” does fill more of a thereputic roll than a desert island necessity.

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