For me the main stand-out releases of the year were both from projects that have been around for years who are basically making "come-backs", as it where.
Brighter Death Now's "With Promises Of Death" hid me immediately just as "Necrose Evangelicum" did, but not entirely in the same way. It started with a powerful declaration of intent, acknowledging a return to power, and gradually and with great skill winded down the mood to the kind of depression inducing Death Industrial Karmanik pioneered. I'm a bit of a BDN tragic so I was prepared to accept anything that wasn't complete crap but this was more than just good enough, this was not only a return to form but a real extension of the project's catalogue.
The second release that excited me this year was The Primitive Calculator's "The World Is Fucked". Essentially synth punk, but with the kind of urgent power and grunt that marks actual punk as opposed to watery shit that tries to sound like it, combined with a real sense of nihilistic miserablism that I just love. I understand the people in the band are somewhat politically active but thank Cthulhu there's no notion of such ethics here, just sheer bleakness and contempt of both self and everything else that I can only concur with. And, thank fuck, no attempt from the vocalist to hide the fact that he's an Australian (by using) a phony seppo accent.
For the most part, it was these two releases that I felt a genuine, warm thrill for. There were others, most notably Shift's "Altamont Rising", which combined rotten synth tones with layers of samples that made me jealous, but I don't like to buy too much these days so what does stand out, tends to stand out more strongly.
(The Ultra box set also gives me strong tingles but I'll rant about that later, still absorbing).
