Top 10 Surprisingly Great Albums of 2018

This is a list about the albums that personally surprised me the most in 2018
The Top Ten
1 Firepower - Judas Priest

Judas Priest delivers their best album since Painkiller, that's all that I'm going to say

My favorite of that year

The song is nice

2 Kamikaze - Eminem

After revival flopped, I was shocked that this came out just 8 months afterwards, and even more shocked that it was so good.

For an album called kamikaze, it definitely crashed into our hearts.

Eh, it was mostly mediocre.

This is the real REVIVAL.

3 Ysiv - Logic

With the three singles released prior to the album I was not expecting much, but the rest of the album was actually good and Logic just had released the worst material first as singles (bad move).

4 Masters of the Sun, Vol. 1 - The Black Eyed Peas

It isn't perfect, but it is far better than the music they were making in the late 2000's.

Best songs: Yes or No, Get Ready, Back 2 Hiphop, VIBRATIONS pt.1 pt.2, Ring the Alarm

Worst song: Dopeness

5 Trench - Twenty One Pilots

I like Twenty One Pilots, hoever I will never considered them as a great band, or at least one that deserved to in the top of the genre, but this album showed that with enough dedication and time, they can deliver one of the most amazing albums from the year, maybe even the decade

As a Twenty One Pilots fan myself I think that the amount of creativity that they put into this album goes to show how good they actually are, especially at making music that isn't exactly mainstream music.

The backstory of the album could be a movie. That vulture on the logo means way more than you think it does. One of the best and most creative scavenger hunts of all time. Twenty one pilots is one of the best bands of all time. Third band ever to have two songs in the top ten billboard. (Other two were the Beatles and Elvis Presley) and they were the third duo to do so. They nearly have 1 billion listens for stressed out, 769 million on “Ride” and 820 million on “Heathens”. To be honest, I think that Trench was better than Blurry Face even though it didn't get as much popularity.

They are life

6 Lil Wyte - Lil Wyte

This is the closest thing he has had to a masterpiece in a long time. I didn't expect it to be this good but the album gets better with every listen. My only complaint is that it is only 12 tracks, but luckily there is only one skippable track.

Best songs: Keep Going, Cloud 9, Go Up, Nan Day, Dumb It Down, La Familia, Frayser Drive, Slave to Pain

Worst song: Round Me

7 Book of Ryan - Royce Da 5'9
8 Kids See Ghosts - Kids See Ghosts

A side project made by Kanye West and Kid Cudi which mix elements from hip hop to alt rock, both Kanye and Cudi deliver one of the most atmospheric rap albums from the year

Nice move from Cudi to sample Kurt Cobain's "burn the rain" on one of the tracks. This side project gets my vote!

9 Caution - Mariah Carey

I thought this album was going to be awful after the two first singles GTFO and With You, and I was ready to hate on it hard, but the rest of the album isn't bad at all. There's a few songs with great production and even old school production, so not really anything other than the two songs mentioned to hate on. Even Gunna didn't do to bad on the song he was featured in. I'd say the only real problem in these songs is Mariah's voice itself, her upper registre has become very irritating over the years, but luckily there isn't a lot of that on this album and instead she mostly sings in her whispery lower registre, which usually sounds pretty good.

10 Holy Hell - Architects

Probably my favorite album of 2018, I wasn't expecting too much out of Architects after Tom desease but jesus christ this album is flawless, it shows that metalcore done right is amazing

I honestly had no doubts this album would be great. They had an amazing evolution through the years and they reached their peak with this work

The Contenders
11 My Dear Melancholy, - The Weeknd

This is mediocre for The Weeknd's standard.

This is underrated

12 Waylon & Willie 2 - Jelly Roll & Struggle Jennings

This album was so good and definitely surpassed my expectations. Not that I was expecting it to suck or anything, but I just didn't expect an album that I could play from start to finish without skipping any tracks.

13 Little Dark Age - MGMT

This is better than Oracular Spectacular and When You Die is the best song on the album. I love this album a LOT and is probably my favorite pop album ever. MGMT are my favorite pop artists.

MGMT is one of my favorite indie bands, their first two albums are great in my opinion, however s/t was disappointing, but this album show once more that they can make some of the funniest and most energetic pop songs

Most of these albums are pretty bad, but this, KSG, and the Daughters one are pretty good.

14 7 - Beach House

I think Beach House deserves way more love than they have, they are one of the most inventive indie bands out there and they have made a great bunch of albums, this one is a prove of it, however is way more experimental than the rest of stuff they have, I recommend to start with another of their albums before this one, but belive, this one deserves attention

15 You Won't Get What You Want - Daughters

I know that Anthony Fantano put this album as his best but in my opinion, is still a pretty solid album (just not as good as he made it look like) Not only it takes a more industrial side than any other of Daughters albums, but it's also a great comeback record after Daughters hiatus

Unfamiliar with Noisy Industrial Rock but this album is great.

16 ? - Xxxtentacion
17 Prequelle - Ghost

It might not be as great as Meliora. but it's still a pretty solid hard rock album, even after all the drama Ghost have been involved over the years

18 Mad Love the Prequel - Sean Paul

This album turned out amazing. Here’s my review:
Track 1: Upbeat and duet-like
Track 2: BAAD BAAD LOVE
Track 3: Yesss!
Track 4: Chill
Track 5: FIIIREEE
Track 6: More chill
Track 7: Only heard the solo version, and it’s very danceable.
Track 8: EVEN more chill!
Track 9: A good way to finish the album, no lie. (Pun intended)
- TheDuttyGyal

19 Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino - Arctic Monkeys

Personally I like this experimental side Arctic Monkeys showed this year with this album, I take this over Suck It and See and even AM

20 Swimming - Mac Miller
21 Simulation Theory - Muse

Why the frock isn't this on here?

22 The Now Now - Gorillaz

This was a massive improvement over Humanz and a really good album. In my opinion, this is one of the best albums of 2018

23 Black Panther the Album from and Inspired By - Various Artists
24 Tha Carter V - Lil Wayne

Wow, Lil Wayne finally making meaningful music. I have to admit that I didn't really give this album a chance at first and judged it for it's underwhelming list of features and production, but when I actually listened to it more I realized that Wayne has actually evolved, he finally isn't just throwing out mindless lyrics about money, weed, guns and hoes. He still isn't a great lyricist by any means (in my opinion), but this is definitely a huge improvement from his I Am Not a Human Being 2 days where he spent the entire album saying cheesy lines about his love for eating women's genitals.

25 What is Love? - Clean Bandit
8Load More
PSearch List