2024 Album of the Year
My first repeat AOTY winner
Caligula’s Horse - Charcoal Grace
Last appearance: Rise Radiant (2020); AOTY
I can’t pretend Charcoal Grace hasn’t been the frontrunner for 2024 AOTY for literally the entire year. It released on January 26, 2024; it was my fourth review of the year, and the review posted on February 13th. Caligula’s Horse set an early high-water mark that several others tried — and failed — to beat. Sabrina Carpenter, Dvne, Cries for Colour, and Beyonce all came close, but couldn’t do it.
Naturally, personal preference plays a role. I’ve made no secret of my undying love for Progressive Metal; if I were forced to choose a single genre to adhere to for the rest of my life, it would be Prog Metal.1 Caligula’s Horse reliably embodies a lot of my favorite aspects of the genre.
With Charcoal Grace, in particular, the band really showcases their ability to contrast exceptionally well — while the album is very dark in tone throughout, the songs shift effortlessly between light and heavy, attacking and seething. These shifts are sharp, requiring an incredible amount of precision and synchronicity. The chemistry amongst the band’s members is as sharp as ever, despite that they’re down a member since Rise Radiant.
And then there’s the concept and its execution: Charcoal Grace is all about the Covid-19 Pandemic. More specifically, it’s about how the Pandemic affected us — emotionally, mentally. It’s full of sharp critiques for those who exacerbated the situation, profiteers and politicians and sheep alike, through apathy, inaction, and misinformation.
Charcoal Grace blends rage, sorrow, hope, and disbelief into an hour-long roller coaster through aggressive highs and melancholy lows. Through all of it, the anxiety that we all felt during lockdown seethes just below the surface.
There have been several albums, at this point, which have attempted to capture our collective experience of the Pandemic and lockdown in a bottle. I believe that Charcoal Grace is the epitome of that — thus far, at least.
And it is, in my opinion, the best album of 2024 — at least among the 129 I listened to.
If you haven’t seen any of the rest of the countdown, please use the links below to navigate to the other sections.
AOTY | #2-10 | #11-20 | #21-30 | #31-40 | Honorable Mentions
Surprisingly, only 4 out of 40 albums on this year’s list were Prog Metal; three of those were in the top 11, though.