Troll Trax Studios’ fiery compilation of Quad Cities technical death metal and grind core titled The Cave Compilation landed in January and laid out an entire roster of like-minded Midwest metal freaks that all proved capable of shredding our guts to pieces.

Late in 2019, Iowa City's ZUUL dragged a large pile of small amps into a warehouse in Washington, Iowa. Even with a half-dozen amplifiers, an organ, drums, and sundry recording equipment, the three-piece barely took up more than a corner. The intention: to capture the minimalist intensity of their howling noise rock in a cavernous empty space, with microphones placed at intervals near and far to catch it all.

When Ryuichi Sakamoto, the electronic music pioneer and esteemed elder statesman of the Japanese and international music scenes, was diagnosed with throat cancer in 2014, it felt like a crippling blow to the canon of living legends that walk, perform, and dine among us.

A recap of 2020 is unnecessary for this article. We all know what kind of year it was. Its upside was the incredible amount of good music that made its way to the ears of a world that needed to hear it - perhaps more than at any other time in recent history.