Best of 2024: Cool Songs

Welcome to the first installment of The Elite Extremophile’s Best of 2024. Today we’re starting off with Cool Songs, to be followed by the Top EPs tomorrow and the Top Albums on Wednesday and Thursday.

Before we get to it, let me give my usual Best-Of disclaimers. This is a one-man operation, in regard to writing the reviews. My proofreaders Kelci and Dan are very helpful, but I’m sure there was plenty of great music I just simply couldn’t get around to. I’ve also got my own personal biases against certain styles and trends.

And as a reminder, these year-end lists cover music released between December 2023 and November 2024. I spend much of December compiling and editing these lists, so I don’t bother searching for new music released in December until the new year.

This segment is meant to show off great tracks that do not appear on my other year-end lists. If a release makes my best EPs or best albums list, it is disqualified from appearing in this particular segment.

Without further ado, let’s get to it!

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Odds & Ends: December 30, 2024

Band: Anarchÿ | Album: Xenötech and the Cosmic Anarchÿ | Genre: Progressive thrash metal | Bandcamp

Anarchÿ’s third full-length release sees this St. Louis-based thrash duo both stay in their usual niche and also push some sonic boundaries. Verbose sci-fi storytelling, blazing guitar lines, and more umlauts than any reasonable person would ever use all abound here. Synth pads do a great job at adding richness and lushness to the music, and the occasional acoustic interlude helps to keep this record varied and interesting. There is even a splash of sitar for some truly unexpected sonic variance.

Score: 83/100

Band: Avneya | Album: Road to I | Genre: Progressive death metal | Bandcamp

Avneya’s debut record is a great example of progressive death metal. There’s a strong focus on contrasts between delicate, melodic passages and moments of crushing heaviness. Dashes of strings here and there add some nice contrast, and folk motifs from the band’s native Israel also add to this record’s distinctiveness.

Score: 79/100

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Odds & Ends: December 16, 2024

Band: Å | Album: Åtråvärld | Genre: Progressive rock, Folk rock | Bandcamp

The latest release from this Swedish act sounds almost as if late ‘70s Jethro Tull were from Scandinavia. It’s lightly-crunchy progressive folk rock with a healthy dose of flute. The mood here is a little hazier and more psychedelic than anything Tull ever did. Jazz elements are apparent, too, and this whole record has a wonderfully laid-back feel to it. This is very much music for walking through the woods. But, y’know, proggy.

Score: 81/100

Band: amalakamala | Album: LaaMaKaMaaL | Genre: Jazz-fusion, Progressive rock | Bandcamp

This lovely little EP does an incredible job blending the smooth sounds of 1980s Japanese jazz with biting, acidic guitar tones and progressive songwriting. The three songs presented here provide a wonderful mix of sounds and moods, and the closing epic “Traveling Sleepers” is especially emotive and powerful.

Score: 91/100

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Odds & Ends: December 9, 2024

Band: Celeste | Album: Echi di un Futuro Passato | Genre: Progressive rock | Bandcamp

Celeste is an Italian band that put out one album in 1976, disbanded, and then reunited in the late 2010s. Despite hailing from Italy, their style of prog has never felt particularly Italian. The music here (and throughout their discography) is light, breezy, and laid-back. Jazz flourishes are ample, and I really like the keyboard tones. This is a nice, relaxing bit of music to have on in the background, but it doesn’t really have enough to grab onto for active listening.

Score: 64/100

Band: Five the Hierophant | Album: Apeiron | Genre: Post-metal, Progressive metal | Bandcamp

Instrumental post-metal band Five the Hierophant blends biting, buzzy saxophone with sludgy guitars and plodding rhythms. In many ways, this band reminds me of a metallic, instrumental version of Van der Graaf Generator. They draw heavily from dark, jazz-influenced classic prog, like King Crimson and the aforementioned VdGG. Little bits of Middle Eastern music crop up on “Moon Over Ziggurat”, and the two-part “Tower of Silence” features unsettling drone and electronic elements. Though the songs are long, their length feels appropriate. The music is clearly carefully constructed, and no notes are wasted.

Score: 85/100

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Album Review: Vylet Pony – Monarch of Monsters

Band: Vylet Pony | Album: Monarch of Monsters | Genre: Alternative rock, Progressive rock | Year: 2024

From: Portland, USA | Label: Horse Friends Music

For fans of: Meer, Tool, angsty music from 1998-2006

Bandcamp

This record has been generating a lot of buzz lately, and I think it’s only about 60% related to the semi-erotic furry artwork that graces the album cover. And considering Vylet Pony’s origins, such album art makes sense.

Vylet Pony is a one-woman project based out of Portland. She got her start in music in the early 2010s making My Little Pony-themed electronic music. I’ve never seen My Little Pony. I’m sure it’s a perfectly fine show, but it’s one of those things that had (has? Is brony-dom still going? I don’t wanna research it.) one of the most irritating fanbases I’ve ever encountered. I classify it the same way as things like Steven Universe and Doctor Who: shows I’ve heard generally positive things about but with a fandom so annoying, I’m never going to watch any of it.

However, I strive to be a serious music critic on this site, and acts can evolve well beyond their origins. Hell, if you told me back in college that I’d like a Job for a Cowboy record, I would’ve said you were nuts. If someone got their start in music in a niche I found personally grating, I think I can set that aside if they really have put out a great album.

Now, as regular readers of my site know by now, I’m not a lyrics guy. I like the sound of the human voice, but I usually don’t care about the specific words themselves. There are exceptions, and when there are those exceptions, it’s usually a bad sign for the album in question (*cough* Somalgia *cough*). Monarch of Monsters is based on a novella by the artist. I didn’t read it, and I’m not planning to. I’m writing this during Thanksgiving week, and I don’t really have the time to. (I’m also honestly not much of a fiction reader, either.) I wanted to get that out there for full disclosure.

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Odds & Ends: December 2, 2024

Band: Anciients | Album: Beyond the Reach of the Sun | Genre: Progressive metal | Bandcamp

“Anciients” is one of my least-favorite band names. Certain dumb misspellings can be fun (see: Kömmand, Toxik, Vektor), but just slapping another “i” in there seems stupid. That being said, the focus of this site isn’t on bands’ names, but rather on the music they put out. And if I weren’t able to look past names I dislike, I’d never be able to enjoy acts like Between the Buried and Me or And So I Watch You from Afar.

Anciients is one of those bands that is adored by the likes of r/progmetal, and which I enjoy but do not view quite so worshipfully. Think Caligula’s Horse, Devin Townsend, or recent Haken. Beyond the Reach of the Sun, though, resonates with me more than this band’s prior work. Melodic, Dream Theater-influenced prog metal coexists with heavier sludge-influenced passages, and it results in some exciting compositions. Some slower cuts can take a little long to get going (I’m especially looking at you, “Is It Your God”), but the payoff is usually worth it.

Score: 78/100

Band: delving | Album: All Paths Diverge | Genre: Post-rock, Progressive rock | Bandcamp

Elder frontman Nicholas DiSalvo is back with his second album under the delving name. It continues in a vein similar to the first delving record, but I like this one more. Hirschbrunnen, released in 2021, is a passable but forgettable post-rock album. All Paths Diverge has more complex and purposeful compositions. I really like how thoroughly keyboards have been integrated, and the guitar tones are lovely. This very much feels like a non-metallic, dreamier version of Elder, and that twist on Elder’s sound works really well. Like any hour-long instrumental post-rock record, there’s some bloat, but this is a release where the vibes and atmospheres are more important than any specific riff.

Score: 79/100

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Album Review: Opeth – The Last Will and Testament

Band: Opeth | Album: The Last Will and Testament | Genre: Progressive metal, Progressive rock | Year: 2024

From: Stockholm, Sweden | Label: Reigning Phoenix

Apple Music

Opeth is a band that really needs no introduction, so I’ll try to keep this brief. They’re one of the giants of progressive metal with some of the best albums ever in that genre. Their run from 1996-2008 is nigh unimpeachable.

But ever since Mikael Åkerfeldt decided to move the band away from metal with their 2011 record Heritage, I’ve been less taken with their music. None of the albums since then have been bad, but they’ve all just kinda lacked that ineffable spark that makes a truly great record. It’s been a lot of decent, fairly heavy retro-prog, but Opeth doesn’t really stand out from the field in that particular style. There’s even a difference between their recent stretch of records and 2003’s Damnation, their first foray into non-metal. Damnation feels much more like classic Opeth than, say, Sorceress. Damnation’s contemplative folkiness suits Mikael’s voice and songwriting better than his recent attempts at drawing from acts like Uriah Heep and Jethro Tull (or at least Tull’s heavier stuff).

The Last Will and Testament, Opeth’s fourteenth full-length album, sees the band return to something closer to their classic mid-aughts sound, making this their strongest release in a while. The album tells the story of a wealthy family and their sordid secrets in the form of the reading of the recently-passed patriarch’s will. Seven of the eight songs on this record are titled “§1-7”.

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Album Review: Beardfish – Songs for Beating Hearts

Band: Beardfish | Album: Songs for Beating Hearts | Genre: Progressive rock | Year: 2024

From: Gävle, Sweden | Label: InsideOut Music

For fans of: Big Big Train, Spock’s Beard

Bandcamp

Throughout the 2000s and early 2010s, Beardfish were one of the most notable bands to come out of the burgeoning Scandinavian prog scene. Their music was melodic and usually pretty fun. Quirky vignettes easily mixed with more contemplative pieces, and they always incorporated a wide variety of influences. Sleeping in Traffic: Part 2 is one of the best prog albums of the 2000s, and it highlights all their strengths. They disbanded in 2016, and vocalist Rikard Sjöblom set out on a solo career.

Nine years after their last album, the cumbersomely-titled and somewhat uneven +4626-Comfortzone, Beardfish have reunited and recorded a new album. For as diverse as their records could be, Beardfish has a recognizable sound, and they largely stick to it.

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Album Review: Jon Anderson & The Band Geeks – True

Band: Jon Anderson & The Band Geeks | Album: True | Genre: Progressive rock | Year: 2024

From: Accrington, UK | Label: Frontiers Records

For fans of: Yes (duh)

Apple Music

Yes is a band I’ve written about a lot. My Yes Deep Dive was the first one I wrote for this site (and I’ve lately been contemplating rewriting parts of it, since my style of doing Deep Dives has shifted over the years). After I published that, they put out two more albums: the crap-tastic The Quest and the pretty-decent Mirror to the Sky.

This post initially began life as an Odds & Ends blurb, but I found myself with more to say than I expected. It also took me a while to get to this record because I honestly kept kinda forgetting about it. It’s not on Bandcamp, and I have a very strong preference for finding music through that platform.

Jon Anderson, Yes’s founding vocalist, hasn’t been in the band since 2008. Yes had scheduled a tour, and Anderson suffered a severe asthma attack shortly before it was to start. Under doctor’s orders to not sing for at least six months, the rest of Yes gave him the boot and replaced him with Benoit David (who was then replaced with current vocalist – and my whipping boy for all of modern Yes’s ills – Jon Davison).

The four Jon Anderson-less albums Yes has since released have varied from terrible to decent, but most of them have a certain dullness and sterility to them. I diagnosed Anderson’s absence from the band as a potential reason for Yes’s recent lousiness, as he was always one of the band’s primary songwriters. He’s also a much more dynamic and expressive vocalist than Davison. While I’m not overly-familiar with Anderson’s solo works, I know he’s put out some very solid music on his own. His solo debut, Olias of Sunhillow, is a favorite of mine.

The Band Geeks are a band headed by Richie Castellano, one of the current guitarists of Blue Öyster Cult. Initially evolving out of a podcast headed by Castellano, it featured him and a rotating cast of friends covering various classic rock songs.

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Odds & Ends: November 4, 2024

Band: Arcane Atlas | Album: Constellation Plus | Genre: Progressive rock, Art rock | Bandcamp

Arcane Atlas plays a relatively light and relaxing variety of prog. Expansive atmospheres and lush textures have a calming effect, and there are some really enchanting passages here. ‘90s Rush and ‘90s Yes are the most obvious influences to my ear. This album’s instrumental moments are its best. This duo does a great job at establishing a mood and toying around with drama. Not everything here is a winner (“Sample”, in particular, was a tough listen for me), but this band’s occasional veers into soft rock are forgivable in the end. If you’re looking for something intelligent but soothing, Constellation Plus is a good choice.

Score: 76/100

Band: Bent Knee | Album: Twenty Pills Without Water | Genre: Art rock | Bandcamp

This is a welcome return to form for Bent Knee after their unimpressive last outing. Smart pop hooks are mixed in amidst creative and surprising arrangements. The textures are lush, and the vocals are strong, as usual. Parts of this record can veer into less-distinctive sorta-art-poppy-type stuff every now and then, but overall, Bent Knee does a great job at weaving together accessible and inventive elements.

Score: 79/100

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