2019 has been a year for me to rediscover my love and adoration of all things punk, hardcore, and metal. Now, I wrote about more than just those types of bands this year, so thankfully, my list will be relatively diverse. However, It should be noted that it took at least three revisions until we got to this point, so bear with me. It should also be noted that none of these releases are in any particular order.  Albums and EPs Dirty Junk - On Yr Knees ( Don't Panic Records & Distro ) Dirty Junk is probably the band that first rekindled my love of punk and hardcore with their 2019 EP, On Yr Knees . Its unbridled energy and unchecked rage was the punch to the stomach needed to start the year off right. The band stretches new songwriting muscles with this EP. Unyielding blastbeats and tremolo-picked guitars give way to twinkling interludes and sludgy breakdowns. Renn Fontana and Ace Robbins use their proclivity toward dissonance and chaotic instrumentals to crea...

For me, instances of discovering a band organically are becoming extremely few and far between. Time and the occupational hazard of working with music make stumbling across an album cover (or in some cases a performance video) that piques your interest a rare occurrence. So imagine my joy when I scroll across the cover of Grogus ' newest record Four Kings , with its necromancer-like figure and illegible typography. I didn't know what I was going to get upon pressing play. I was hoping for crushing riffs, and riffs I did get. The band's 2016 debut  Intuitive Readers and Metaphysical Artisans set the bar high for this new record. Its layered instrumentation and atmospheric additions landed Grogus in the tiny zone in which the circles of sludge, hardcore, and black metal all intersected in this highly specific Venn diagram. The trio pulls pieces from each genre to create something uniquely Grogus. The album's opener "An Oceantomb of Centipedes" knocks you o...