At long last, ALARM unveils its 11 favorite albums of 2013 — a list of amazing music that you won’t find anywhere else.
Saving the best for last, we’ve chosen our 51 favorite albums of 2013, pulled from the acclaimed and the unsung — some of the best as well as most boundary-pushing releases from rock and beyond.
Chrome Hoof: Chrome Black Gold
RJD2: More Is Than Isn’t
Anna Calvi: One Breath
Sleigh Bells: Bitter Rivals
Kevin Hufnagel: Ashland
Inspired by the third installment of The Naked Gun, we decided to compile our favorite albums over the first 3 1/3 years of the 2010s.
Draped in glittery silver cloaks and masked in dense fog, London-based collective Chrome Hoof puts on inimitable, over-the-top performances to enhance the indefinable quality of its music.
Among the thousands of under-appreciated or under-publicized albums that were released in 2010, hundreds became our favorites and were presented in ALARM and on AlarmPress.com. Of those, we pared down to 100 outstanding releases, leaving no genre unexplored in our list of this year’s overlooked gems.
Hella returns as a duo; Converge posts a studio preview of a new song; Busdriver, Shining (Norway), Om, Russian Circles and Aphex Twin all have new albums on the way.
Fantômas plays The Director’s Cut in its entirety, Jon Brion posts an instrumental tune, Tim Fite releases a free Halloween EP, MySpace posts the Ben Folds Five performance of The Unauthorized Biography of Reinhold Messner, and much more…
Other than spending All Hallows Eve at the campy blood fest of a GWAR show, seeing London’s Chrome Hoof on October 31 has to be the ultimate in Halloween plans. Whether the group’s members are burning a 12-foot ram in effigy or donning silver, sparkling, hooded robes in uniform, their stage show is just as riveting as their weird sonic stew.