The Mountain Goats leader John Darnielle had a busy year as usual, having done both book tours (supporting his 2017 book Universal Harvester) and music tours. He debuted a new Mountain Goats song live, played “The Best Ever Death Metal Band in Denton” with an actual death metal musician (Hate Eternal's Erik Rutan), and released the Hex of Infinite Binding EP and a covers EP. 2018 was also the year that the I Only Listen To The Mountain Goats tribute album came out (featuring Against Me!’s Laura Jane Grace, The Hold Steady’s Craig Finn, Andrew Bird, Amanda Palmer, and more).

Now that the year is almost over, John Darnielle published a unique year-end list on Merge Records' website, which includes lots of metal bands (Obliteration, Aura Noir, Summoning, Frozen Crown, HYVMINE, Shylmagoghnar, Gaerea and The Lion's Daughter), rapper Royce Da 5'9", crossover jazz greats Sons of Kemet and Kamaal Williams, art-R&B icon Janelle Monae, and more, plus interesting commentary. Check out his full list below.

Also watch the video for The Mountain Goats' classic but currently relevant "This Year" below:

John Darnielle's 2018 Year-End List

Pretty decent year for music in my opinion. I've made my list a Greil Marcus Real Life Top Ten style list because some of the most important music listening of my year was something other than the album, but I did go longer than ten. I remain an album partisan but am now cautiously open to the possibility that there might be more to life than the distance between the first song on side 1 and the last song on side 2.

Obliteration, Cenotaph Obscure

Aura Noir, Aura Noire

buying entire discographies of labels at deep discounts on Bandcamp e.g. ΠΑΝΘΕΟΝ, an incredible Russian ambient label, and then spending weeks digging through the riches

Summoning, With Doom We Come

Frozen Crown, The Fallen King

Cheer-Accident, Fades

running my Soundcloud follows through the Sonos for hours at a time esp. the dance mixes esp. esp. Upperberry Vibrations, Peach & Hiroshi Watanabe aka Kaito

James Ferraro, Four Pieces for Mirai, a masterpiece

Janelle Monae, Dirty Computer

Cave-In live at Roadburn - one of the bravest and most moving performances I've ever seen, can only imagine what it was like in person

Royce Da 5’9”, Book of Ryan

Javier Colina and Chano Dominguez, Chano & Colina but also Edward Simon, Sorrows and Triumphs, and also Allison Miller & Carmen Staaf, Science Fair: basically anything on the Sunnyside Label is a year-end candidate, reliably amazing jazz label

Gaetir the Mountainkeeper, Norðr

HYVMINE, Earthquake, this band is excellent & plays beautifully & deserve more shine than they've gotten so far

Sons of Kemet, Your Queen is a Reptile

Mary Chapin Carpenter, Sometimes Just the Sky

Shylmagoghnar, Transience

Gaerea, Unsettling Whispers

Steve Hauschildt, Dissolvi

Richard Bonnet, the Unknown Species

The Lion's Daughter, Future Cult

Kamaal Williams, The Return