Another Best of 2019 list, you ask? Yes, another Best of 2019 list.
2019 was an excellent year for music. One article could not possibly name every fantastic release, but we gathered just over three dozen that you absolutely must make time for in the weeks and months ahead.
As a leader in digital promotion, Haulix has the great pleasure of helping thousands of musicians share their creativity with the world. GRAMMY nominees and complete unknowns alike turn to Haulix when they want to connect with tastemakers. We don’t have access to everything people promote, but whenever clients choose to share music with us, we make an effort to listen.
Summarizing the last twelve months in music is impossible. We saw more than ten thousand records pass through our system. Those releases covered virtually every genre of music, from ambient synth-pop to crushing heavy metal, and they reached listeners scattered across the globe. We fell in love with new artists on the cusp of stardom and rediscovered longtime favorites delivering their best material in years. We cheered for every artist we got to know, and many worked with us through this blog and our industry-focused podcast.
Through it all, however, the Haulix team kept a list of the records we could not put down. Our team purchased many albums on their day of release, while other artists saw support through tickets purchased to tours or merchandise. We believe there has never been a better time to be a fan of music, especially if you love hard rock, and we want to share with you, our readers, the records that helped us survive this crazy year.
The following rankings are like points on the game show Whose Line Is It Anyway, which is a long way of saying they’re entirely made up and don’t really matter. We know that SEO and social media feeds enjoy listicles, so we made one. We believe every artist on this list (and so many more) is worth your time and money. Try a few, discover something new, and tell your friends what you found. Take all the credit! We don’t care.
37. Kublai Khan TX – Absolute
36. The Devil Wears Prada – The Act
35. The Lumineers – III
34. Issues – Beautiful Oblivion
33. Selfish Things – Logos
32. Sum 41 – Order In Decline
31. He Is Legend – White Bat
30. Bad Omens – Finding God Before God Finds Me
29. Emarosa – Peach Club
28. Megan Thee Stallion – Fever
27. Varials – In Darkness
26. The Acacia Strain – It Comes In Waves
25. Sleep On It – Pride & Disaster
24. Toothgrinder – I AM
23. Pup – Morbid Stuff
22. The Dangerous Summer – Mother Nature
21. Sleeping With Sirens – How It Feels To Be Lost
20. Counterparts – Nothing Left To Love
19. Fit For An Autopsy – The Sea of Tragic Beasts
18. Tool – Fear Inoculum
17. Waterparks – FANDOM
16. I Prevail – TRAUMA
15. Jinjer – Macro
14. Aaron West & The Roaring Twenties – Routine Maintenance
13. Stray From The Path – Internal Atomics
12. Slipknot – We Are Not Your Kind
11. The Menzingers – Hello Exile
10. HELLYEAH – Welcome Home
The loss of Vinnie Paul shook metal fans everywhere to their core, including our staff. Thankfully, Paul’s last recordings made its way to fans in the form of HELLYEAH’s best album to date. Welcome Home is a thrilling and deeply moving ode to a fallen friend that comes packaged with soaring hooks and stellar production. It’s hard to imagine anyone hearing this record and not singing along, which is precisely what the man himself would want. We don’t know if there is a heaven, but if there is, then Vinnie Paul is no doubt proud of how his bandmates handled his final work.
9. Creeping Death – Wretched Illusions
Creeping Death’s Wretched Illusions could easily have gotten lost in the avalanche of heavy music that hit in 2019, but eOne’s crafty marketing team refuses to let the band go unnoticed. The record plays like the soundtrack to an epic quest that finds listeners battling orcs and traversing snowy mountaintops. It’s the kind of thing you put on to escape the world and ease that ever-simmering rage that lies just beneath the surface of the ‘happy face’ we all wear in our daily lives. It also points to Creeping Death being a genre mainstay for years to come, so don’t miss out.
8. Drew Holcomb & The Neighbors – Dragons
Drew Holcomb is an American storyteller whose ability to capture the hearts and imaginations of listeners is unmatched in music today. His latest release, Dragons, features a collection of stories co-written with friends and peers that encapsulate adulthood for those that choose to live outside the city lights. It’s not quite country music, and it’s not quite folk, but Dragons is as endearing as anything either genre has produced in some time.
7. Grayscale – Nella Vita
Nella Vita is a swan song to youth and the feeling you will live forever. The Grayscale boys become men throughout this record, and they do so by sifting through the experiences that made them. Tracks like “Just Right” speak to the bittersweet taste of nostalgia, while “Old Friends” and deep record cuts acknowledge the fact we can’t go back no matter how hard we may want to try. Nella Vita is an album many will point to in years to come as the album that positioned them for living a better, healthier life, and we hope the band sees the success they deserve for creating it.
6. Knocked Loose – A Different Shade of Blue
Knocked Loose is doing the lord’s work. The hardcore favorites are writing songs that speak to the anxiety and stress of growing up in a time when people feel painfully alone despite being more connected than ever. They recognize that life is not only too short but also filled with false hope and empty promises. That may sound like a downer to some, but the group and their fans see things differently. It is only after we recognize the reality of our situation that we can make changes to improve the world around us. Knocked Loose is exposing what many choose to ignore in the hope that they may inspire a shift in thinking and actions that are desperately needed in the world today.
5. Sleep Token – Sundowning
Sleep Token’s debut album, Sundowning, is a testament to their ability to forge cohesion between their numerous influences. It’s a sprawling release that begins with a piano-lead ballad and builds to a level of crushing heaviness that could shake the most painful heartache from your soul. Sleep Token is not interested in distracting you from the pain you hold inside. Instead, they want you to feel everything, and Sundowning serves as something of a guide to release and growth that acknowledges the full spectrum of emotions that can develop through the human experience.
4. Bad Wolves – N.A.T.I.O.N.
They say when you truly master a skill that it is easy to make even the most challenging task seem simple. Bad Wolves’ Sophomore record is a textbook example of this idea being true. Throughout the twelve songs on N.A.T.I.O.N., the California-based group delivers a masterclass in musicianship and songwriting. They are one of the few groups that can thrive in the radio market as well as the metal underground. Their fans are rabid for the group’s creativity rather than a particular sound, and that allows Bad Wolves to do whatever they please. It’s something to admire, really, and it should give up and coming acts more confidence in pursuing whatever ideas excite them.
3. Cattle Decapitation – Death Atlas
Hard work will take you far. Cattle Decapitation has quietly grown from a band many considered to be underground favorites to one of the most prolific groups working today. Their devoted following numbers in the hundreds of thousands, and they were all blessed by the band’s decision to share Death Atlas with the world in 2019. No other release we heard has the relentless ferocity or technical prowess head on this record. It is jaw-dropping from beginning to end, and we are excited to see the group bring their latest material to crowds around the globe in 2020.
2. Heart Attack Man – Fake Blood
Heart Attack Man Is keeping the angst and unabashed honesty that made 90s hard rock so great alive with songs that pull from a world of sonic influences. The Ohio-based group found a way to combine their love of acts like Pantera and Sepultura with riffs firmly rooted in grunge and structures pulled from punk on their Sophomore record, Fake Blood. It’s a chaotic collection of cutthroat lyricism that tells you exactly who the group is and what they want out of life. If there was any sense of catharsis found in alternative music this year, Heart Attack Man created it.
1. Killswitch Engage – Atonement
2019 found many iconic rock and metal bands releasing new material, but few delivered an album as consistently thrilling as Killswitch Engage. Atonement brings together everything the group has built its long career upon and pairs it with more than enough new ideas to keep fans (for lack of a better word) engaged. From “The Signal Fire,” which offers the Howard Jones guest appearance longtime listeners want, to the incendiary “Ravenous,” Atonement is the gift that keeps on giving.
Hate lists? That’s fine. We also took our favorite tracks from all these records, as well as singles from albums set for release in early 2020, and put them into our official Haulix playlist on Spotify. Dive in right now:
What are your favorite records of 2019? Send us a tweet and let us know!
