And we’re back for Part 2 of my most-wanted albums for 2024!
As mentioned in Part 1, this list is comprised of the top twelve artists who haven’t released a new album in at least five years (since 2018 or earlier). This list originally contained 39 artists; the top twelve are presented, alphabetically, below.1
As with yesterday’s post, I’m not including any artists who have set release dates. But also, this list contains some serious long-shots. Some of these acts may be truly defunct — but that’s the problem with falling in love with smaller artists: if they break up, there won’t be any real news about it. They just stop producing and you’re left wondering.
On that note…
The List
Faunts
Last Album: Feel.Love.Thinking.Of. (2009)
The Faunts are one of those bands that may or may not exist anymore. Ostensibly, they do, and the band’s members are still active musicians, but the band hasn’t done a whole lot recently. They teased a five-part series of new music called Ostalgia back in 2016, then released the first EP from that project, and the next four never surfaced. Since then, there’s been a single single in 2019, and that’s it.
Keyboardist and mixer Rob Batke has split from the band to pursue a solo career as Artisan Loyalist. Meanwhile, Tim Batke, who is still an official member, started up a side project with fourteen other friends called Duplekita. That project dropped albums in 2014 and 2023 (which I should probably find time to check out).
As for why this band and its blend of Electronic/Space Rock is worthy of this list, allow me to just remind you, real quick, of this song, which featured in the end credits of the original Mass Effect title.
For All We Know
Last Album: Take Me Home (2017)
I haven’t hidden the fact that Within Temptation is one of my all-time favorites. I haven’t even tried. So it only seems reasonable that when Within Temptation’s guitarist, Ruud Jolie, starts up a solo project, I’m gonna love it, right? And that project is going to appear on this list.
That’s exactly what For All We Know is: an atmospheric Symphonic Rock/Metal group spearheaded by a dude with impeccable hooks and an ear for melodicism. Both albums that came out of this project were incredibly good. I want more. And how better to showcase what this project was capable of than to include the track which featured Anneke van Giersbergen.2
ilyAIMY (and/or Heather Aubrey Lloyd)
Last Album: Cicada (2017) / A Message in the Mess (2017)
ilyAIMY3 is a band local to the Baltimore area who doesn’t have much reach. They’re not well-known at all. Their monthly listener count on Spotify is just 133. But they’re a great little indie rock band.
Heather Aubrey Lloyd is a member of the band who also produces some solo material. Her voice is gorgeous and was essential in getting me hooked on them, so I would be happy to get a new solo album from her, as well. For that reason, the song I’m including below is an ilyAIMY song with her on vocals, but I really have to include at least a link to another track that makes me eternally happy: a cute little DnD-based nerdy love song.
I’m not sure that the band has any interest in producing new albums at this point in their career, so I may have to content myself with their weekly livestreams.4
Kamasi Washington
Last Album: Heaven and Earth (2018)
Kamasi Washington is an American Jazz saxophonist who you really have to hear. His magnum opus 2015 album, The Epic, was truly epic, at 172 minutes long - but every bit of it was glorious. Since his last album, he’s released a few songs in 2021, including a cover of Metallica’s “My Friend of Misery” for the Metallica Blacklist.
Hands down, it was one of the best covers in the Blacklist, which included SO MUCH GOOD SHIT.
Washington’s sensibility is flawless and, in my opinion, he is carrying his entire, storied genre on his back right now; bringing it into the future and cloaking it in a sense of legitimacy which it hasn’t had in a long time.5 He isn’t doing it completely on his own, but he’s been a leader in the movement. We’re at the point now, though, where we need new material to keep him on top.
Jazz needs you, Kamasi!
Karnivool
Last Album: Asymmetry (2013)
If you’ve read through any commentary in any prog metal spaces in the last few years, you’ve likely come across some mention of Karnivool — and likely some measure of pining for a new album. This Australian band has only produced three albums — THREE! — to date, but those albums have wormed their way into the Prog zeitgeist in a way that is impossible to replicate. Especially 2009’s Sound Awake, which includes the phenomenal tracks “New Day” and “All I Know”.
The good news for metalheads is that the band has been slowly ramping their activity back up for a few years now. Granted, that May 2019 announcement that a fourth album was in the works is almost old enough to be forced onto this 5+ year list. In the time since, the band released a single in 2021 and headlined a festival in 2022.
They’re teasing us all relentlessly at this point. Here’s hoping they finally put out this year. And that it’s worth the excruciating wait.
Marcela Bovio/Stream of Passion
Last Album: Through Your Eyes (2018) / A War of Our Own (2014)
The first time I heard Marcela Bovio’s voice, I was immediately enraptured. She sang the role of the wife on Ayreon’s seminal The Human Equation (2004), which has been my absolute favorite album for nearly twenty years now. The best part is that, before that album, she was a virtual unknown,6 and her inclusion on that album was won through a lengthy, competitive audition process.
See, Ayreon, a metal opera project run by composer Arjen Anthony Lucassen, typically recruits a huge pool of talent from across the metal world; vocalists, guitarists, drummers, you name it. It’s a metal all-star project. Except, for The Human Equation, Lucassen decided to bring a fan in to perform a role. At the end of it, Mexican soprano Marcela Bovio was handed the role of the wife; and after that, Lucassen believed so strongly in her talents that he helped to create a new band, Stream of Passion, specifically to give her a platform.
Stream of Passion actually disbanded in 2016, but have recently reunited and produced a new EP in 2023. So a new album in 2024 isn’t a total pipe dream.
A new solo album from Bovio would also be welcome, though. She hasn’t produced one since 2018, and I really just want to hear her voice outside of the Symphonic Death band she’s involved with (MaYaN).
Shireen
Last Album: Matriarch (2017)
Shireen is a very unique act, one of very few that can be properly described as “Witchpop” or “Witchrock”. Led by vocalist Annicke Shireen, this Dutch band languishes in dark tones and themes with folky instrumentation and solid hooks.
The vibes are immaculate.
But the band has only produced one album to date.
Annicke Shireen has produced some solo material more recently, but there’s still no album on that front, either. And after 2023’s Hexvessel release failed to provide the witchy tunes I was hoping for, I really would love a release from a more witchy act in September or October of 2024.
Sunburst
Last Album: Fragments of Creation (2016)
This is, perhaps, the longest shot on this wishlist. There isn’t much on this Greek Prog Metal band, but their 2016 debut album was amazing. Stylistically, there’s a lot of the melodicism of Kamelot paired with the aggressive prog of Dream Theater. Their Encyclopaedia Metallum entry shows that the band’s members are also active in other projects (vocalist Vasilis Georgiou and guitarist Gus Drax are both members of Black Fate, for example), which may be why there hasn’t been another album. But Fragments of Creation was good enough that they seriously caught my attention.
I’d love to see a sophomore effort from this project soon.
Symphony X
Last Album: Underworld (2015)
If you enjoy Power Metal, but are unfamiliar with Symphony X, then you really can’t claim to enjoy Power Metal. They’re one of THE bands within that genre, having solidified their importance to it by the early 00s, fueled by the madman that is guitarist Michael Romeo.
Why is he a madman? Well, Romeo has featured in more than one Ayreon album, and after production for one of them wrapped, Lucassen had this to say:
Romeo’s peerless talent is supported by the slick vocals of Russell Allen, one of the best male voices in metal. And the band’s subject matter focuses heavily on literature and mythology, with their last album, Underworld, being based on a blend of Dante’s Inferno and Orpheus in the Underworld. I admit, I’ve only given that one a few listens, but in college I was absolutely hooked on their Paradise Lost album, and I might literally explode if I go too long without listening to their 24-minute “The Odyssey” track.
It’s been nearly a decade since Underworld. And 2024 is the band’s 30th anniversary. We need new Symphony X this year. Thankfully, the band has been working on their tenth album for a bit now, though a November 2022 interview with Romeo indicated that nothing had been fully decided. Still, fingers crossed!
Tanuki
Last Album: The Fear. The Fire. The Fall. (2018)
Another long-shot. And this one I know because I reached out to the mastermind behind this project, Aleksander Wong-Kmiec, who also happens to live in Massachusetts. Studio time is expensive. Especially when you have a family and grocery prices have exploded.
Still, I’m hopeful that, eventually, we’ll get more music from this project. Wong-Kmiec stated that he has one last EP in the works. You can bet that if he decides to crowdfund for it, I’ll be hitting people up to contribute.
Why?
Because every single time I return to this album, I get chills. The Fear. The Fire. The Fall. is an album that really just haunts me. If you like Metalcore, Post-Metal or -Hardcore, or deeply emotional music, you MUST check this album out.
It’s absolutely incredible. And this project speaks to something I would love to transform Versatone into, should this outlet ever truly get off of the ground — funding for small artists to help them produce music that we will never get from more established acts.
I hope 2024 is better for Aleks.
Vienna Teng
Vienna Teng is an Indie-Folk-Pop singer-songwriter who has been on hiatus for years now as she took a break from touring to focus on life and starting a family. And we’re very happy for her.
Most of all, we’re happy that she has announced a return to music and started touring again. Because this means we may, at some point, get new music.
Let me be clear: I didn’t rank this list. For several reasons. But if I were to rank this list, it’s between Vienna and Spiritbox for the top spot. She’s one of my all-time-favorite musicians. And most of her songs are just her and her keyboard. It’s all very light, simple music, but so very well-crafted at every level.
For the song sample for this entry, I’m going to go WAY back to the AMV which initially introduced me to Teng’s music: Koopiskeva’s “Waking Hour”, which combines Vienna Teng’s “Gravity” with visuals from the incredibly gorgeous animated film by Makoto Shinkai, The Place Promised In Our Early Days.
Vuur
Last Album: In This Moment We Are Free — Cities (2017)
This is, now, Anneke van Giersbergen’s third appearance in this list. Technically. Since I utilized a song in which she was featured for the For All We Know entry.
Vuur is a Symphonic Metal project which was intended to let van Giersbergen more fully express her heavier side. Unfortunately, they’ve only released one album to date — though, it was an absolutely stellar album. You’ll notice the lengthy, and strange, title above. And I have to mention that that debut album had this awesome concept of focusing on the stories of individual cities — Paris, San Francisco, Rio de Janeiro, Berlin — and expressing them musically. San Francisco’s song is called “The Fire”, which is pretty clear in its subject matter. One of my favorites is “Freedom”, the song for Rio, which is also the title track, and likely about the moment that Brazil declared its independence, with Rio as its capital; the lyrics are vague, though.
I want more from this project. I love van Giersbergen’s solo material, but her voice really soars when there’s some weighty instrumentation beneath it.
And that’s the list! All of it.
There are still so many artists I didn’t have room to mention. Check out the Honorable Mentions below and in Part 1 of this list.
Is there an artist I should have included instead? Who have a I missed?
Honorable mentions for this list include: Alice in Chains, Breaking Benjamin, Death Grips, Estelle, Evergreen, Hourglass, Imogen Heap, Jess Glynne, Judas Priest, Kyler England/The Rescues, Masterplan, Peter Bradley Adams (or Down Like Silver?), Saosin, Stone Sour, The Decemberists, The Mayan Factor, We Are The Fallen, and Weird Al
This is technically her second appearance on this list.
For those unfamiliar, this is an acronym: I Love You and I Miss You
I say this, as a white man, fully aware of who it was who pushed the narratives that suppressed Jazz and the Blues and other black genres and artists through much of the 20th century. Kamasi is the real deal.
At that point, she was a vocalist for a band called Elfonia, which only ever produced a single album.