Top 30 Synth Albums of 2017

TOP 30 Synth-Based Albums/EPs from 2017!

This list was very hard to do. There were so many amazing albums, EP’s, and singles released in 2017. In order for an album to qualify, it had to be in my library. I get music a lot of ways. A lot of times promoters, record labels, and artists send me their music so I can play the music. A lot of times I have to buy the albums. Sometimes the artists offer the albums up for free on their web page, Bandcamp, or other sources.

All those sources resulted in having 4,396 unique album/EP/single entries from 2017 that I had to go through. That’s a daunting number and it should be noted that there’s no way I have all the new music released in 2017! There is no doubt in my mind that I missed some new music that may have ended up on this list if I had it in my library.

Narrowing the list down:

In order for an album to qualify it had to be new material from the musician/band. So the first thing I did was remove any remix albums. The second thing I did was remove any compilation/best of/greatest hits albums. The third thing I did was remove any singles where the song was part of a later or earlier album. Doing those three things dwindled the number of unique entries to 3,477. Still a daunting task.

Next step was to go through each of those almost 3,500 entries and rate them from 1 to 10. Then I deleted everything that I rated 8 or below. Entries required a 9 or 10 to make it to next round. This processes narrowed the unique entries to 76.

I then re-rated the remaining 76 entries with a much stricter ear. After the re-rating I removed anything below a 9. That left me with 47 unique entries. Then I had to do it again until I got down to 40 entries. At this point, removing anyone from the list physically hurt my heart. The amount of awesome goodness on that list of 47 and 40 was painful as I removed one after another.

Now that I had it down to 40, I had to remove 10 more, who are the honorable mentions. As hard as it was getting down to 40, removing those 10 more was even more difficult!

The Caveats:

1. Music is subjective. There is a really good chance that your list would be completely different from mine. I did not use any criteria like record sales, listening stats, or anything that would require me to hire someone with a Master’s Degree in musicology.
2. My criteria for the initial rating and re-rating was asking two simple questions:
   1. Do I want to listen to this album on repeat or just once and listen to a different album?
   2. Are the majority of the songs on the album listenable? The more I wanted to listen to an album on repeat and the more songs on it that were listenable, the higher the rating it got (weighted for singles and EP’s of course). Narrowing those down to just 40/30 was a lot harder than I thought it was going to be for sure.
3. I am sure that I will get a lot of “But what about Band A and album B? How could you not list those?” See #1. Music is subjective to the listener.

There was a lot of amazing new music put out in 2017. Let’s hope 2018 is just as awesome!

2017 TOP 30 SYNTH-BASED ALBUMS (alphabetical order):

3FORCE — Resistance
3Teeth — _shutdown.exe_
AM Tierpark — Trashy Luxury
Angelspit — Black Dog Bite
Arian 1 — Signals
Blakk Glass — Trial EP
Christopher Anton — Connected
CRYSEHD — EP III
deZeption — Mature
Drab Majesty – The Demonstration
Elektrostaub — Birthday And Death
Funker Vogt — Code Of Conduct
Gary Numan — Savage: Songs From A Broken World
Grendel — Age Of The Disposable Body
Hexheart — Midnight On A Moonless Night
Lorelei Dreaming — Banshee
ManMindMachine — Point Of Departure EP
Missing in STARS — Echo Point
Night Drive — Night Drive
Priest — New Flesh
Reflection — Lumen EP
Schwarzschild — Radius
Stilz — Starcrash
T.O.Y — Pain Is Love
Telekon — Hope for Believers
Torul — Monday EP
Wiccid — By Design
William Control — Revelations: The White EP
Xenturion Prime — Humanity Plus
Zynic — Neon Oblivion

2017 SYNTH-BASED HONORABLE MENTIONS:

C-Lekktor — Out Of My Way
Crüxshadows, The — Astromythology
Dav Dralleon — Depths EP
Forces Of Light — Darklights
New Division, The — No Pride In Paradise EP
Orange Sector — Endzeit (Deluxe Edition)
Slave Republic — Songs For Sinners
Sonic Reunion — Turning Point
Vainerz — Patient
Watch Clark — First Week of Winter

BWAHAHA: 3/1 – 3/7

BWAHAHA (Blair’s Week Attempts at Haha’s) 3/1 – 3/7: This week was a pretty slow week for me. I was distracted by my real job and by Suzie (Suzie, you’re amazing!).  I did get to rant and rave against skinny people who always seem to want to offer advice to us fat folks when we go on diets and exercise. He skinny person, you have no fucking clue, so fuck off.

3/1

I love it when people tell me, “That food is bad for you.” No shit! Now tell me about this Jesus guy I’ve never heard of!

What happened to “Jesus Take the Wheel?”

What happens when you buy cheap funeral arrangements…

Libertarian roads… part II.

3/2

Dopamine crash in 3… 2… zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

Lucky for me, Parmesan cheese tastes amazing when it’s slightly burnt.

Beth be like, “You’re not my dad!” #TWD

But I like peach schnapps! #TWD

Bad moonshine can make you go blind, just like masturbation. #TWD

Daryl came so close to a reacharound. #TWD

I think ‘Walking On Sunshine’ by Katrina & the Waves should have been playing while the house burned. #TWD

3/3

If you’re gonna party, then dammit, PARTY! (She probably has a degree in Marketing)

Random snowflakes falling in downtown Huntsville. Someone punch Mother Nature in the crotch!

Apparently the Zombiepocalypse might be happening on my street. That’s a shitload of emergency vehicles…

Fighting the urge to sing my playlist while at the gym.

3/4

I’m pretty sure my friends have a pool going on when I change my relationship status. Dicks!

Suzie’s dog vomited all over me. That’s a sign of approval, right?

3/5

Guy pulled off a great move to avoid rear ending me at 60. So I have him a thumbs up. #MissedConnections

3/6

New FedEx home delivery…

Physics: sometimes you just can’t explain that shit.

I made the shirt I’ll be wearing at DragonCon this year (buy your own here):

BWAHAHA: 10/5 – 10/11

BWAHAHA (Blair’s Week Attempts at Haha’s) 10/5 – 10/11: I spent this week mostly in jail. That reaction you just had? Yeah, that’s the one I love when people read when I say things like that and they don’t realize I work for jails and prisons. Good times. While I was at the jail, the local BB&T bank was robbed. When I posted about it, people asked me if I was playing Grand Theft Auto. Yeah… hard to tell between GTA5 and real life sometimes. #ThankYouJesusFor GTA5! I also spent Friday night in the ER with suspected acute Cholecystitis. It’s very painful shit (well, pre-shit, since it’s the gall bladder). No gall stones, so they think my gall bladder is simply not functioning. My ER doc, who is British, comes in and writes me a three week scrip of Percocet. So I say, “Three weeks? That’s an awful lot of Percocet.” He responds, “Well, you can’t call to make an appointment with the gastro surgeon until Tuesday, and he probably won’t be able to see you until two weeks out. So yeah, welcome to American healthcare.” He then adds, “In Britain, I would have a gastro surgeon in here already looking you over, but hey, at least you pay a lot for what you get!” Touche, my British doctor… touche!

10/5

I’ve been playing too much #GTA5… caught myself going 120 MPH on the freeway earlier. Oops.

10/8

My ex-girlfriend is half Mexican and half Irish. She’s culturally confused, so she drinks green Dos Equis.

If the Republican Congress died in a plane crash, I would shed a tear… for the plane.

I love it when the GOP compares Obama to Hitler, especially since Hitler would agree with the GOP on almost everything.

My toast always lands butter side up, but that’s because I butter both sides.

10/9

So #ThankYouJesusFor is trending on Twitter. My asshole genes are itching to get in on this action.

#ThankYouJesusFor killing all those kids in Iraq earlier this week. Keep shining that light of love you hippie!

#ThankYouJesusFor giving my friend cancer and then curing it (well, the doctors did that, but you get the credit anyway).

#ThankYouJesusFor saving my buddy from the tornado. But yeah, fuck the family across the street that it killed.

#ThankYouJesusFor keeping all those kids in Africa and India starving while my preacher eats well from tithes!

#ThankYouJesusFor starting the zombie craze! I love me some Zombiepocalypse!

#ThankYouJesusFor for teaching me to turn the other cheek: comes in handy during spankings.

#ThankYouJesusFor loving me unconditionally, well, except for that threat of hell thing.

#ThankYouJesusFor loving me, but you never call! So I’m having an affair with Hera.

#ThankYouJesusFor getting viruses on the Ark. We really appreciate that shit.

#ThankYouJesusFor all the blood on Via Dolorosa. You know, someone had to clean that mess up! Way to ruin someone’s day, you jerk!

#ThankYouJesusFor for cutting the tip of my penis off. Now I have a porn star penis!

#ThankYouJesusFor abstinence only sex ed. Now my chances of anal sex are greatly improved! #TechnicalVirgin

I’d like to start a donation drive to pay for a delivery of Pampers to the Republicans in DC.

10/10

Way too many women posting #ProteinForGirls on Twitter after they “work out.”

10/11

I find your lack of taste disturbing.

Being single is both awesome and horrible. Relationships attempt to find a compromise between those two extremes.