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37 Albums from 2019 You Need to Hear

Best Albums of 2019

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!

Categories
Job Board News

The To-Do List Paradox

There was a time in music when being really good at one thing was enough to secure some form of employment. If you could talk to people in radio about new music and sound convincing, you could get a job. If you could hustle merchandise at shows and keep good records, you could get a job. If you understood how to find and contact music writers about new artists, you could get a job. As long as there was one thing you could show others you understood how to do better than they themselves could do it, you could find a job somewhere in music.

For better and worse, those days are now long gone.

In today’s music business, having a plethora of skills is key to securing employment more often than not. The budget for staffing is tight across the board in music, so employers are actively seeking individuals they believe can fulfill the needs usually met by a team of people. As a result, simply knowing how to do one or two things really well is no longer enough to justify the need for someone to give you a job. Aspiring professionals today need one or two strong skills, as well as several other skills or talents that can be applied to whatever role they seek. If you’re looking to do publicity for example, writing and sending clever emails is no longer enough. Those competing for publicity roles today are good at emails, cold calling, social media outreach, and they have a good ear for finding new talent because, more often than not, they started their own PR firm and have already worked with several small time artists they know through school or friends. These people are essentially unpaid professionals, and they have already worked on everything that a paying role would ask of them and then some. That is what you have to assume anyone competition with you for a job has already accomplished, and you need to make sure you do some of those things yourself if you want to even be considered for a role in this industry.

It wouldn’t be possible for me to outline everything you need to do in order to make yourself appear as a strong candidate for any job in the industry as the needs for each individual role will vary greatly from job to job. I can, however, help you make one change to your current behavior that will enable you to expand your skill set while still refining the skills you’ve already developed. To do this, you need to recognize that your current to-do list is a mess, and you should also understand most other people have horrible to-do lists as well because they, like you, expect to much. They seek to ensure they do everything they can to position themselves for employment, and through doing so create a list of tasks so daunting that completing the tasks can feel next to impossible. The reminder of how much remains undone eats away at you in time and, slowly but surely, you begin to doubt your ability to reach the next level of this business.

To fix this, not to mention simplify your life as a whole, throw out whatever to-do list you currently maintain and start creating today lists instead. By this, I mean creating a new list of goals each and every morning that outlines everything you need to do that particular day in order to be ready for the next morning. The amount of things you need to do in a week or month will not change, but the feeling you have toward what is left unaccomplished will because you won’t be looking at several days or weeks worth of work at once. Instead, your brain will see 5-10 things that, with hard work, can most likely be accomplished between sunrise and sunset on a single day. With each completed task, that already small list shrinks, and as you near the end of your daily to-dos your confidence in your ability to maintain this level of output over the long haul will grow.

But how does this help me find employment in the music industry?

Good question. Employers at every level are going to expect you to tackle multiple projects at once, and each of those projects will have their target completion date. If you tell yourself you can do it all at once you’re only going to end up frustrated and exhausted, but if you break down your longterm goals into manageable daily chores your ability to progress on each item from day-to-day will flourish. Your brain will stop worrying about the overall deadline and start concerning itself more with tasks at hand, which in turn will relax your mind enough so that you are able to think clearly and creatively amidst the chaos of this business.

I’m not going to lie to you: Finding steady employment of any kind in music today is next to impossible, especially if you’re just starting out. The competition for any job, big or small, is fiercer now than at any other point in the history of the entertainment business. This frustrates job seekers and complicates the selection process for most business owner, but at the end of the day it’s actually a blessing because it means only the truly talented and hardworking individuals end up working full-time. The people who find themselves in a position to influence real change not only know how to make change happen, but they possess the organizational skills needed to make the most of the opportunity they have been given.

Categories
News

A list of the worst ideas I’ve had lately (and why they’re really not so bad)

  • A music festival sponsored by Jif and Smuckers called ‘Peanut Butter and JAM’
  • An interactive google map outlining the quintessential route for seeing every major landmark referenced in a third wave ska song.
  • Taking a road trip to see every major landmark referenced in a third wave ska song
  • A blog dedicated to late-90s alternative christian rock
  • ‘TheySoundLike’ a website that autogenerates a playlist of recommended artists based on the name of any band input by users

  • A collection of .gifs from the 1994 film ‘The Paper’ with headlines and dialogue from the 2016 election photoshopped into the frame
  • A listicle of playlists developed by characters on The Simpsons
  • A petition to convince Netflix it needs to resurrect the mid-2000s sitcom My Name Is Earl in order to properly conclude its Season 4 cliffhanger.
  • Crowdfunding a Slick Shoes tribute album
  • Editorial – ‘In Defense of Neon Pop: Embrace Your Inner Scene Kid’
  • Book: My life as a millennial emo and why I no longer hate everything 

Even when a list is good the contents of that list can be bad. I try to set aside time every day to brainstorm a few new ideas. These can be ideas related to my career, my hobbies, or life in general, but every day I challenge myself to develop a few things that could change my world. The ideas outlined above were all written down by me at some point in the last week, and I’m not ashamed to admit I definitely made in depths notes plotting out how 2-3 of these might come to fruition. I’ve since moved on, but that’s kind of the point of the exercise: Be creative without fear of failure. Anything is possible, you just have to use your imagination.

I make a lot of lists in my life. I make lists for grocery store, for chores around the house, for work, and in order to keep track of all the things I’ve yet to do. Sometimes these lists help me work more efficiently, while other times they remind me to complete a task or two I may have otherwise overlooked. Whatever the case, lists help me get a lot more accomplished in a timely manner than I would be able to do without them. 

Idea lists, like the one posted above, help me by keeping my mind active even when I’m otherwise not engaged in an activity. By getting all the wild thoughts and ideas I have down on paper I’m able to better decide what I should or should not do next in my day, week, month, life. I’ve also found that creativity exercises like an idea list can help generate better ideas faster than you typically world. The brain is a muscle after all, and in order to make it function to the best of its abilities you have work it out. Consider idea lists like going to the gym, and the more you do it the more creative you will feel yourself becoming.

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