Rock Sound's Top 24 Albums of 2024

On twenty one pilots’ seventh album *Clancy*, the duo of Tyler Joseph and Josh Dun have crafted a project that is both a culmination and a glimpse into the future. Narratively, *Clancy* wraps up a story they’ve been weaving since 2015’s *Blurryface*. Sonically, the Columbus, Ohio-bred group begins forging the next iteration of their style. “It feels like truly the beginning of an era, but an end to one as well—or will be,” Dun tells Apple Music. “I think it\'s been a great place to write songs from having this kind of story in mind, but I think that definitely by no means is it the end of our band.” Take the thriller “Next Semester,” which finds the group diving into elements of synth-pop, emo, dance-punk, and more. It’s equal parts catchy and subtle, with Joseph’s lyrics almost directly in conversation with early themes the group focused on, like alienation, confusion, and loneliness. He sings: “I don\'t wanna be here, I don\'t wanna be here/It\'s a taste test/Of what I hate less/Can you die of anxiousness?/I don\'t wanna be here, I don\'t wanna be here.” “Lavish” is a futuristic psych-pop track buoyed by glimmering keyboards and dusty drums. When Joseph sings, “Welcome to the style you haven’t seen in a while,” before delivering an intoxicating rap, he’s almost speaking to the creation of the album itself. It’s an ambiguity and a breaking of the fourth wall that the band has embraced. “Maybe there are conversations that will happen between friends who have followed the storyline and maybe have some kind of arguments over what the outcome was,” Dun says. “And I think that\'s cool.”

For their third album, Kentucky hardcore troupe Knocked Loose chose a title that resonated deeply with vocalist Bryan Garris. During an airplane takeoff that triggered Garris’ fear of flying, the woman seated next to him offered the comforting words, “You won’t go before you’re supposed to.” “The line struck him so strongly that it immediately occurred to him that it should be the title,” Knocked Loose guitarist Isaac Hale tells Apple Music. “It also became a lyric in the last song, ‘Sit & Mourn.’ Like the rest of our records, this is a collection of stuff from Bryan’s personal struggles dealing with anger and loss and depression and sadness. It’s a reminder to him—and all of us—that we’re still here. We made it through all the hardships that came with the past four years of writing this.” Musically speaking, Knocked Loose entered the writing sessions for *You Won’t Go Before You’re Supposed To* with a very different mindset than the one that drove their 2019 breakthrough *A Different Shade of Blue* and revered 2021 concept EP *A Tear in the Fabric of Life*. “There was just way more pressure, and we had way more experience,” Hale says. “Some people view the third album as a make-or-break record. We had pressure from the fans and the outside world, but more so pressure from ourselves. We thought, ‘How can we possibly outdo what we’ve done before?’ It was tough, but I think we were able to come up with a record where every song accomplishes something unique.” Below, he discusses each track. **“Thirst”** “This was written in the first session that we ever had for this record. It was written before *A Tear in the Fabric of Life* even came out. It came from a jam session we were having where we wanted to create a really difficult song on drums to challenge our drummer Pacsun. We wanted something super short, super intense, and we just made it as complex as we could. And to start the record, it’s something we’ve never done before—a super in-your-face jump scare.” **“Piece by Piece”** “This was our attempt at doing kind of a Hatebreed-esque banger. It has a hook to it, but the hook is one of the mosh parts in the song, akin to \[Hatebreed’s\] ‘Perseverance.’ One of the things we wanted to accomplish on this record was to create stuff that was hooky and catchy, but at the same time crazy heavy. In many ways, I think that it’s the most hardcore song on the record, and that’s what we love about it. It’s our version of a catchy hardcore track that can really connect with people.” **“Suffocate” (feat. Poppy)** “We wrote this song after we thought we had a finished record. Before we went to record, Poppy slid into Bryan’s DMs asking if we would be interested in collaborating on some music. Me and Bryan are huge Poppy fans, so of course we said yes automatically. That same day, Bryan called me like, ‘Hey, man—I’m coming over. We need to write another song.’ We wrote the track the next day, and it was one of the smoothest writing experiences on the record because we wrote it knowing Poppy was going to be a part of it. And because of that, we were able to do some sassy parts that maybe we wouldn’t put on a normal Knocked Loose song but that really work with her voice. I think it’s one of the most special songs we’ve ever written.” **“Don’t Reach for Me”** “This was our attempt at writing a song with a more rock- or pop-oriented structure. It’s different from stuff that we\'ve done before because it has a slightly melodic chorus with a hook. It has a soft bridge with a jam part and some cleaner guitar. And a lot of it is midtempo, besides the very beginning. It only gets fast very briefly. That’s very new for us. There’s like seven mosh parts, so we needed to balance those. It took a long time to figure out, but I think the final product really succeeds in that juxtaposition.” **“Moss Covers All”** “This was written in the second writing session that we did for this record, up in Michigan. We woke up one morning, started jamming, and we were just not coming up with a lot of stuff we liked. We were pretty much just throwing paint at the wall and getting aggravated. When we took a break, I had an idea and basically wrote this entire song in my head in about a minute. I voice memo’d it briefly on my phone and then immediately started putting it down without telling the guys. When they came back, I played it for them—and what I played is pretty much exactly what’s on the record. It’s short, sweet, and super heavy, with a breakdown and a spooky lead that goes directly into the next song.” **“Take Me Home”** “‘Moss Covers All’ and ‘Take Me Home’ are very much connected songs. ‘Moss Covers All’ was written first, but then we really felt the need to have a song on here that’s meant to scare you. We didn’t worry about a mosh part or any sort of heaviness. We just wanted a scary track that’s uncomfortable and throws the listener off guard. When we were thinking about what shape that could take, I immediately thought of that spooky lead from ‘Moss Covers All,’ which we ended up looping as the blueprint for this track.” **“Slaughterhouse 2” (feat. Chris Motionless)** “This song started as an inside joke because Motionless in White was kind enough to reach out to Bryan and have him collaborate on one of their songs, ’Slaughterhouse,’ a very heavy, politically charged track. We’re all huge Motionless in White fans, so of course he accepted. And then we were able to tour with them. As soon as Bryan did that track, we were joking that we should do a song called ‘Slaughterhouse 2.’ We were just kind of laughing about it for a while, but then we thought we were kind of shooting ourselves in the foot if we didn’t do it. Chris was down from the beginning, and his voice is amazing on this. It was a challenge to match the theme and vibe of the original song, but I think we were able to create something that’s not just a great sequel, but that really stands on its own as a highlight of the record.” **“The Calm That Keeps You Awake”** “The funny thing about this one is that the song totally revolves around the huge breakdown at the end. That part was written first, as part of another thing that was written before *A Tear in the Fabric* had even come out. So, like four years ago, we needed to write new parts because the rest of the song we’d written wasn’t up to par, but that breakdown was super necessary. In doing so, we created this really cool, Meshuggah-esque, kind of Sepultura-auxiliary-percussion vibe that’s one of the most unique parts of the record.” **“Blinding Faith”** “We definitely have some jabs at religious hypocrisy throughout the Knocked Loose discography, and this is just kind of an update on that situation. We hadn\'t done one in a while, and it was something that was feeling close to home for Bryan at the time. To me, this sounds like a mix of some of our greatest riffs that we’d written over the course of a year—it’s kind of a riff-salad song. In some ways, it’s one of the heaviest and scariest songs on the record, so we put it out as a single to say, ‘If you thought we were going to get any softer, absolutely not. And here’s proof.’” **“Sit & Mourn”** “This one revolves around the melodic lead and the kind of ambient post-rock breakdown at the end. We wrote that in the first writing session in Joshua Tree, and it took us a while to come up with more parts that we felt were that good. But the song is very, very anthemic. It sounds very dark and melancholic, but at the same time, the lyrics are positive in a way. Thematically, it’s kind of a title track in the way that the lyrics relate to the name of the record. I know it was a very cathartic song for Bryan. In many ways, it’s the saddest song on the record, but in other ways it’s the most positive. And it’s mentally exhausting from start to finish. It ends with a sound clip that I won’t disclose, but it’ll take you by surprise.”

Neck Deep have never been afraid to explore, regularly seeding sounds and ideas from other genres into their pop-punk foundations. The Wrexham, Wales, band were at their most adventurous on their fourth album, 2020’s *All Distortions Are Intentional*: Setting the songs in a conceptual world called Sonderland, they nosed around in indie rock and Britpop while reflecting on identity, mental health, and disenfranchisement. However, this intrepid spirit stalled under lockdown, and when restrictions lifted, the five-piece struggled to find that momentum again. “We had to rediscover ourselves a little bit, post-COVID,” singer Ben Barlow told Mark Hoppus on Apple Music 1’s After School Radio. “It took us a little bit to build back up and figure out where we were gonna go.” Even by the time Neck Deep stationed themselves in LA to record this self-titled fifth album in 2023, there was still uncertainty. After just a few weeks’ work, all they’d forged was a nagging feeling of dissatisfaction. The music didn’t sound right, so they decided to strip away outside influences and start again by returning to their own studio in Wrexham, where the other Barlow brother, bassist Seb, took on production duties. It’s little surprise then that *Neck Deep* marks a return to the exhilarating and simple blend of melody and adrenalin that characterized their earliest records. “It’s straight-up pop-punk, just short, sharp, to the point, in your face,” said Ben. “We just simplified, took a step back, looked at where we came from and what we loved about the music that we write. It’s always been about hard-hitting, fast, pacy anthems that are catchy, can help you through a bad time and be the soundtrack to your good times. We’re really at peace with ourselves—let’s just be a straight-up pop-punk band and do what we do.” What’s different now is their music carries the wisdom of age and experience, and Ben’s lyrics present more shades and nuance as he explores his relationship with his parents (“They May Not Mean to \[But They Do\]”), urges self-belief in times of frustration and vulnerability (“Moody Weirdo”), and raises an insurrectionary call to make a difference in a turbulent world (“We Need More Bricks”). “It’s just life, love, relationships, myself, lots of looking inward,” he says. “I’m looking at how I was as a kid and who I am now. All I know is I know nothing, and I’m just a fool in a crazy world—dealing with normal things. While we’re a successful band, I’m a pretty normal dude: My life revolves around my band, my future wife, and my dogs. So, hopefully, I’m relatable—and that’s always been something I look for in music.”

Arriving 20 years after the open political ire of *American Idiot*, Green Day’s 14th album sees the veteran California punk trio energized by a new wave of worrying trends. Now in his early fifties, singer/guitarist Billie Joe Armstrong retains the snotty defiance that has always been his calling card, whether the stakes are high or low. He doesn’t mince words on opener and lead single “The American Dream Is Killing Me,” calling out the nation’s boom in conspiracy theories and reimagining the classic patriotic lyric “my country, ’tis of thee” as “my country under siege.” While less of a concept album than the rock opera turned stage musical *American Idiot*, *Saviors* still latches on to some recurring themes in the name of getting a point across, such as updating 1950s-era rock ’n’ roll tropes: “Bobby Sox” swaps the aw-shucks question “Do you wanna be my girlfriend?” with “Do you wanna be my boyfriend?” while the timeless-sounding romantic ballad “Suzie Chapstick” is timestamped with a reference to absently scrolling Instagram. And “Living in the ’20s” may flash a guitar solo ripped straight from rock’s earliest days, but it also cites the more modern markers of mass shootings and pleasure robots. Armstrong’s urgent venting is delivered within some of Green Day’s catchiest songs since the 1990s, and longtime producer Rob Cavallo proves just as crucial to the album’s punchy, uncrowded sound as bassist Mike Dirnt and drummer Tré Cool. After all, Cavallo helmed the band’s 1994 smash *Dookie*, and *Saviors* sneaks in a few nods to that ripe era too. The sheer simplicity of the chugging chords opening “Strange Days Are Here to Stay” evokes the former album’s hit single “Basket Case,” while the mortality-minded closer “Fancy Sauce” borrows Nirvana’s coupling of “stupid and contagious.” The bubblegum anthem “Look Ma, No Brains!” harks back even further to Green Day’s DIY roots (and before that, pop-punk godfathers the Ramones), further cementing the idea that righteous anger goes down easier smuggled inside a pop song.

“We are capable of doing whatever we want,” Stand Atlantic vocalist Bonnie Fraser tells Apple Music. “So that’s what we’re doing.” This shouldn’t come as a surprise to long-term fans of the Sydney outfit—they are, after all, a band that’s evolved from their pop-punk roots into one of rock’s most forward-thinking acts. On 2022’s *f.e.a.r.*, they embraced collaborations with artists outside of their scene such as emo rapper nothing,nowhere. and MC Tom The Mail Man, while incorporating a grab bag of styles including electronica and hip-hop. So it continues with their fourth album, *WAS HERE*, which further embellishes their sound with elements of reggae (“ROCKSTAR”), metal (“CRIMINAL”), and electropop (“GIRL$”). “We’ve never wanted to be put in a box, but this record was defining in that scenario,” says Fraser. “We were just like, ‘If this song is sounding pop as hell, let’s roll with it. If it’s sounding really heavy, let’s roll with it.’” Though the album’s name was inspired by the dressing room walls on which the band members have scrawled “Stand Atlantic Was Here,” it also has a deeper meaning that alludes to the diversity of the LP. “I knew going into this record we were going to push ourselves a lot more than we ever have,” admits Fraser. “So I wanted it to set the theme of like, ‘Just forget everything you know about our band.’ It’s almost as if we’ve died and been reborn, in a way.” Lyrically, the record finds Fraser in typically unflinching form, working through issues such as sexual abuse (“17,” “17 // REPRIZE \[ONE TAKE\]”) and a crisis of confidence in her reason for being. “This album really helped me get back to how I was feeling and realize who I am again,” she offers. “It was really cathartic and therapeutic for me.” Here, the singer talks Apple Music through *WAS HERE*, track by track. **“WAKE UP-SIT DOWN-SHUT UP”** “The song was written when I was living in Manchester. I was feeling very numb. I was questioning everything about who we are, why we are here. Like, ‘Is this my life?’ I was getting super existential.” **“FRENEMIES”** “I had this friend, and I didn’t know where the hell I stood with them. For some reason, they just weren’t interested in being my friend anymore. I did everything I could and extended every olive branch and still didn’t get anything back. I was like, ‘Is this what it feels like to have an enemy? I don’t know what I did wrong.’ It was a sad moment.” **“GIRL$” (with PVRIS and Bruses)** “I’ve wanted to have Lynn \[Gunn, PVRIS vocalist\] on a song for a while. Someone at the label sent her the track and I got a text from her and she was like, ‘Oh, my God, “GIRL$” is so good!’ She loved the track and jumped on. I really wanted a third person on the track too, and having another queer woman \[Mexican artist Bruses\] is awesome. I don’t think we ever really got into depth about the song’s meaning specifically, but I know that at least me and Lynn have talked about growing up as a woman in the music industry, or in society in general. But I didn’t want it to be too heavy, it’s supposed to be fun and uplifting and like, the girls are the best.” **“FREAKIN’ OUT”** “It’s one of my favorite tracks on the record. Lyrically, it just goes back to a dark spot that I was in—I was numbing myself subconsciously and in my behavior. I was partying and doing drugs and drinking without realizing that I was trying to cover up my feelings and not deal with the stuff that I was going through. Kind of heavy, I guess. But the song’s super fun, so that’s how we balance that out.” **“NOSE BLEED” (with Sueco)** “I don’t know why this reminds me of Quentin Tarantino, but there’s this little organ thing that’s going on. And I’m like, ‘If Quentin Tarantino was a fucking song, that’s what it would sound like.’ So I was thinking a lot about that and that’s where all the visuals lyrically came in—of ‘nosebleed’ and ‘twist the knife’ and basically dying over someone and doing everything that they want and being stuck in this toxic cycle that you cannot get out of. And you’re like, ‘Well, just leave me to die. I surrender to the cycle, and I’m never getting out of here.’” **“LOVE U ANYWAY”** “The relationship I was in, it felt like make-or-break at the time and I was like, ‘I’m gonna write a love song for the first time in my life.’ I don’t know if I was trying to trick myself into thinking everything is going to be OK or not. We ended up breaking up soon after I wrote it, which is awesome karma. So I’m never writing another love song in my life!” **“KISSIN’ KILLER COBRAS”** “I have a fair share of experience in toxic relationships. Sometimes when you’re in a toxic relationship, because that’s your normal, you lean into that and you think that’s normal to fight back or participate and perpetuate other toxic interactions. It kind of made me feel like I was becoming the monster that I was being presented with, if that makes sense. So I was trying to write this little urban legend of someone getting attacked by a snake and then becoming the fucking snake.” **“WARZ0NE”** “It’s basically me being like, ‘Fuck you’ to the keyboard warriors—people on the internet who have nothing better to do than send hate for no reason. They don’t know you personally, but they’ll judge everything about you based on stuff they see online or your songs. You can tell yourself that it doesn’t matter and not to read into it, but when you see it, it does hurt a little. It makes you so angry because you want to respond and roast the fuck out of them, but you have to just not. So the only way I could do that was write a song and be like, ‘Fuck you guys.’” **“CRIMINAL” (with Polaris)** “The way I write and the style of writing that I participate in is like, I need to feel something and then get it out. I feel like you can get caught in this cycle mentally of like, ‘Oh, I guess I need to fuck my life up a little bit to write these songs.’ And the people that are selling them don’t care about what you’ve gone through to get there as long as you get the song. And it feels a little weird. You’re making other people money based off the pain that you put yourself through. Then you also make money off it. It does feel a little bit criminal.” **“17”** “It’s something I’ve barely spoken about. And I’ve definitely never written about it. It’s about sexual assault; it was something that happened to me a few years ago. I thought I’d processed the whole thing properly, but one night on tour, I woke up in my bunk and I’d had a dream about this person, who I hadn’t thought about in a long time. I hadn’t thought about the situation in a long time. I woke up and I was so angry, and I was punching the bunk above me. After that I was like, ‘I think there’s some residual shit here that I need to process, or at least stop burying and actually talk about.’ The only way for me to do that is writing a song about it.” **“17 // REPRIZE \[ONE TAKE\]”** “The original song is where I was at the time and getting all that emotion out. Then the reprise is like, ‘This is where I’m at now. It’s not fine, all that stuff that you did, because I have to live with that for the rest of my life. But I’m doing OK, and you’re not clouding up my mind every day. And I’m not fucking my life up because of what you did.’ The interesting thing about that song was that we did that in one take. The lyrics just kind of came out in one go.” **“G.A.G.”** “It stands for ‘Girl’s a Gun’ but I didn’t want to have the word ‘girl’ in two titles! That again is just back to a toxic relationship situation. Just feeling like you have to surrender to it to make it get better when it doesn’t. But you’re also questioning like, ‘Is this right? Are we doing something stupid here? Like, maybe we need to look at this a little further.’ But essentially it’s kind of just surrendering to it all, unfortunately.” **“ROCKSTAR”** “It’s about a specific person. I thought we were cool with each other, and then I found out he was talking so much shit on my friends, on my band, my friends’ bands. It just pissed me off so much. I was like, ‘You literally think you’re the coolest dude. And all you do is talk shit on other people because you’re friggin’ insecure. Fuck you.’ It’s just a huge middle finger to this person. There’s lots of Easter eggs, so if people know the story and know the person, they’ll be able to figure out who it’s about.” **“SEX ON THE BEACH”** “It was inspired by one of the first times I went to LA. I was in this club and it was full of douchebags wearing their sunglasses inside at 3 am and purposely being dicks. I was like, ‘This is so gross. I’m just gonna sit here and drink myself to death, I guess.’ Then, people at the same time were blowing smoke up my arse and trying to be a friend. I know exactly what you’re trying to do here, you’re trying to network. It just feels superficial. I did not like that at all.” **“KILL\[H\]ER”** “Lyrically, it’s when you’re in a situation that you feel like you can’t get out of and you are compromising who you are constantly. It feels like you’re killing off a version of yourself. It’s kind of like wishing to get that old you back but realizing that that person doesn’t exist anymore, and you’re left with this shell of whatever the hell you used to be. You’ve killed yourself off, basically.”