Live Report: Psycho Las Vegas Day 2
…
The rooms at the Las Vegas Hard Rock Hotel and Casino have some of the most effective blackout curtains I have encountered, blocking out the early-to-late morning desert sun, letting you get the precious rest needed for another day’s marathon of indulgent metal-related activities.
Every Thursday through Sunday, the Hard Rock hosts a daytime pool party known as Rehab. This is marked by an 11:00 a.m. wakeup call of extremely bass-heavy dance music that reverberates through walls and windows, porting directly into your room. The only silver lining to this situation is the resultant haste with which you complete your morning rituals and get downstairs to discover what sustenance the day will require. The most popular choice is Mr. Lucky’s Diner, located on the casino floor.
This is where I ended up.
I used my time during breakfast to map out another day of human ping-pong between all three venues. It was all leading up to a King Diamond finale — like a mountaintop in the distance acting as a beacon (and reward) for making it through another desert day. Having made it through Day One reasonably well gave me confidence and enthusiasm about the long road ahead to The King, so I paid my bill and set off to my first stop.
…
KD_3
KD_5
KD_4
KD_2
…
The music was set to start at 1:00 p.m. at the Joint, and in a rare occurrence for the festival, there would be only one band to choose from: Richmond, VA-based Cough. The doom label gets thrown around so much these days — it is hard to remember the term’s power. Cough, however, does an amazing job of reminding you. The tempo and melodies evoke images and scenarios of true demise and despair, like wounded but immortal mind trapped in a well with no foreseeable way of making it back to land above. As bleak as this may sound, it ended up being a fitting primer for the rest of the day, as there was much more like-minded heaviness to be had.
I decided to stay at the Joint to experience the current form of Diamond Head. I had no basis for expectations outside of the chatter from nearby metal critics leading up to the performance. The general consensus from this gaggle of aficionados was that it would be interesting at best, and a trainwreck at worst. The venue was about 30% full when Diamond Head started, and there was not much reaction from the audience at first. This did not have an effect on the enthusiasm and playing of the band, though. Most noticeably, the range and ability of singer Rasmus Andersen (who joined in 2014 and recorded with the band in 2015 for their most recent self-titled release) was impressive. The rest of the band delivered a solid, but not remarkable, performance. At the set’s midpoint, there was a noticeable increase in the number of bodies in the room, and active crowd participation finally started to appear. While the negative predictions turned out to be untrue (and seeing “Am I Evil?” live was definitely a treat), the new material may take some getting used to.
…
Green Lung – This Heathen Land
The Night Eternal – Fatale
Dozer – Drifting in the Endless Void
…
The debates, slander, love, hate, distaste, and adoration for the next performer have been bubbling and brewing into a frenzy online, and that energy and discussion bled into the real world before the curtains opened. Myrkur is a black metal-inspired project lead by Amalie Bruun, a Danish-born musician and actress, and the center of heated debates surrounding the authenticity of her take on the genre. Some black metal fans take it upon themselves to be more of a council or tribunal that judges the legitimacy of bands claim of black metal-ness. This judgement and policing has been swirling around Myrkur since the project began, and neither side of the argument looks poised to bow out any time soon.
Bruun emerged wearing a long, white gown, giving her the appearance of an apparition glowing in blue light. Her voice pierced through the ambient murmurs of the audience as she started through an arrangement that included the bassist’s use of a bow to create underlying noises and swells. Going through the first song I did hear and see many of the well known hallmarks of black metal influence, such as blast beats, tremolo picking, and folksy 6/8 rhythms. These techniques were used with a different intention when compared to the originators of the genre, and Myrkur should not be held to the same level of inspection as those who claim rank in the true northern darkness.
The pool stage opened its doors at 7:30 p.m. with Weedeater bringing their humid sludge-filled riffs to weigh the sun down below the horizon. Even by their third song, people were still flooding into the pool area to catch what is a notoriously heavy but hilarious set. The charismatic stage presence of bassist and vocalist Dave “Dixie” Collins is entertaining on its own, but when combined with the band’s adept execution of fan favorites such as “God Luck and Good Speed,” it is hard to find anything that compares. A truly unique heavy music experience that you feel personally invited to based on the band’s warm southern style hospitality and inclusive personal engagement with the audience.
…
Ted Nubel’s Top Albums of 2023
As the final individual list running this year, I'd like to offer my thanks to all our participants – and eternal curses upon my past self for committing to running all of them in the midst of holiday madness. Every part of this process kind of sucks, honestly, but all the tedious work that goes into it has resulted in some fun, engaging lists to read through as I sink into the holiday void.
Anyway, my listening this year was heavily shaped by how my year went – which was stressful, for a large part. I found myself not leaning all that much towards more difficult, intense music with a few exceptions – Khanate, for one, who stretch their agony out into such long-form works it's in some ways easier to come to grips with the pain. Hell, I think I may actually have listened to more Grateful Dead than metal in the latter half of the year – I tackled more Europe '72 volumes than I care to admit. Anyway, I'm moving much too slow; on to the list!
P.S.: Expect a list of lists on Monday!
…
Honorable Mentions:
20. Hex A.D. - Delightful Sharp Edges (Apollon Records, Norway)
19. Slumbering Sun - The Ever-living Fire (Independent, United States)
`8. Celestial Sanctuary - Insatiable Thirst for Torment (Church Road Records, United Kingdom)
17. Kostnatění - Úpal (Willowtip Records, United States)
16. Shadows - Out for Blood (Sentient Ruin Laboratories, Chile)
15. Century - The Conquest of Time (Electric Assault Records, Sweden)
14. Bonginator - The Intergalactic Gorebong of Deathpot (Barbaric Brutality, United States)
13. Rezn - Solace (Independent, United States)
12. Lunar Chamber - Shambhallic Vibrations (20 Buck Spin, United States)
11. Bergfried - Romantik II (Fiadh Productions, International)
…
The term 'psychedelic,' like basically all music descriptors, has been heavily watered down and often sort of describes the symptoms rather than the cause, in a way. When it comes to crafting truly psychedelic heavy music, Hippie Death Cult are in a league of their own, continuously challenging the borders of stoner rock while also reconnecting with its roots. There's no half-baked songs or lazy unexplored ideas on Helichrysum, and the band's authenticity is immediately apparent. Long live the weird shit.
Listen here.
I've enjoyed Danava's past releases, but I feel like Nothing but Nothing was custom-built for me. Teetering on the border of proto-metal and sleazed-up hard rock, incredibly adventurous leads and burly riffs carry each song to astonishing heights directly reminiscent of bands like Buffalo and Budgie who were only slightly concerned with things like song structure or consistency. On my first listen I ran into multiple spots where I thought: "Holy shit, how did we get here? Nothing is going to top this!" I was basically always wrong.
Listen here.
This is an album packed with so many bone-crushing beatdowns that it feels like falling down a staircase for 37 straight minutes. Kruelty's bone-and-concrete mix of death metal and hardcore is usually something you'd expect to be a shorter affair, but each track on Untopia sticks around for some serious punishment. I'm not complaining - for starters, I can't get enough of the snare drum tone on this record.
Listen here.
I saw Drain from a sizable distance at Oblivion Access last year and the pit was a bit like watching a human-operated blender. Should you be up for the task, though, I recommend it, as Living Proof hammers out another ironclad offering for the band that gives them plenty more fodder for insane live shows.
Living Proof tosses out repeat-worthy hits like they're filler, though the opening duo of "Run Your Luck" and "FTS (KYS)" is hard to match in terms of sheer enormity. The band's precision-dialed, massive sound is perhaps the only suitable backdrop for charismatic frontman Sammy Ciaramitaro's howled, sneering vocals, and there's no note, riff, or fill wasted across the record.
Listen here.
Khanate surprise releasing this album after fifteen years of silence was the most welcome of surprises, and if there was a year where I needed something this cathartically sinister, it was this one. I tried playing To Be Cruel for a few people and the general reaction was "where's the notes?" Well, friends, maybe I'm not ready for another note yet. Maybe I need a few more seconds to process the last one!
I will often take long albums to task for being too long (please, boomer thrash bands, keep it under 44), but that never felt like the case here. Each moment was carefully crafted and stitched together into a full, complete narrative with a level of detail and care that most shorter albums can't begin to stack up against.
Listen here.
I regret not being able to give this album much coverage during the year, but it absolutely deserves a place on this list. A common theme across my picks this year is exclusivity - bands that pulled something off that nobody else could have achieved. That sense of singularity is where every album from Flesh of the Stars sits: the Chicago group crafts melodic metal that pulls at the heartstrings and conjures exceptionally vivid thoughts of forlorn beauty and forgotten achievements. Though generally employing melodic doom metal, the group taps into everything from progressive metal to black metal in a quest to render utterly awe-inspiring music, complete with a host of guest musicians and even a little lap steel in there.
Most of the time, Flesh of the Stars is about one months-old social media post away from not existing at all, and that's a sense of impermanence that's so rare as to be treasured. The band's exceedingly infrequent live performances and elaborate instrumentation give The Glass Garden a sense of unrepeatability and fragility that only combine with this sense of fleeting brilliance. The Glass Garden is a blazing, not-to-be-missed emission from a distant star.
Listen here.
This Heathen Land over-delivers on Green Lung's original promise, representing a sort of refocusing on their original sound and also a step forward toward – dare I say it – accessibility. Not 'accessibility' in terms of, I dunno, Sleep Tokenizing things, but an experiment in pushing vocals forward and taking their obvious songwriting mastery to another level by writing songs that can support that vocal focus. We're still talking stoner rock here, but it's not hard to hear a little bit of Ghost in songs like "Maxine (Witch Queen)," and shit, I'm all for bands taking some notes there in terms of production.
Heavily focused on ancient lore and rituals, This Heathen Land feels like a love letter to the band's English origins. It's also an impassioned testament to stoner rock and the power of riffs, though, as each song is positively crammed with them.
Listen here.
I want to reiterate that while yes, Colony Drop vocalist Joseph Schafer is an ex-IO EiC, I have absolutely no connection with him beyond getting PR emails addressed to him (which is absurd! Update your mailing lists, jerks). Conflict of interest accusations, begone!
That being said, I'd be lying if Schafer's vocals weren't a major selling point for Colony Drop's aggressive crossover thrash metal. The Gundam-themed band leverages his charisma as an additional point of emphasis beyond their twin-guitar assault – it's an appropriately dramatic accompaniment. Each song on the record is fun and often drastically different than what came before – the sole connective tissue being d-beats and high-octane choruses. "D-Beat Adventure," indeed.
Listen here.
I am a massive sucker for dark, full-bodied heavy metal, and while I continue to blame Diamond Head for this, The Night Eternal is doing something a bit different. Gothic-tinged, Fatale employs deep, powerful vocals and elaborate twin-guitar orchestration to pull listeners into a darkened world. This sonic angle is compounded by killer songwriting across the board – whether it be the intricate drumming or memorable solos, each song fundamentally is a delight to hear come to fruition. The enormous amount of reverb attached to this record is only the luscious, velvety icing on the cake.
Listen here.
I honestly was not expecting another Dozer record, like ever, but here we are. In traditional Dozer fashion, the band's lineup is roughly intact albeit a new drummer (do they have a Spinal Tap thing going on over there?!), but their sound has taken another enormous leap.
To be even more honest, I wasn't thrilled about that on my first listen. Their last record Beyond Colossal is a constant contender for my favorite stoner rock album ever, or just albums in general, and I think I went into Drifting in the Endless Void hoping for a Part II to that. That was foolish of me, but fortunately it only took a few listens to get what's going on here.
The short version is, to paraphrase myself from earlier this year, is that Dozer had no interest in returning to their past, just in creating new Dozer music. Their noisy, hyperactive approach to stoner rock is still in place, but the riffs bend more toward creating a sense of chaos and space rather than elaborate, mournful tapestries. The band's vocabulary expands on this new release, as it has with every release before, continuously finding new ways for Fredrik Nordin to sing weird lyrics that sound absolutely badass against their music.
Beyond Colossal's album art depicts a massive tree, and it fits the grounded, dolorous music. In contrast, Drifting in the Endless Void is, well, spacey, and sets both the band and listeners spinning into an abyss of curiosity.
Listen here.
Ted Nubel’s Top Albums of 2023
As the final individual list running this year, I'd like to offer my thanks to all our participants – and eternal curses upon my past self for committing to running all of them in the midst of holiday madness. Every part of this process kind of sucks, honestly, but all the tedious work that goes into it has resulted in some fun, engaging lists to read through as I sink into the holiday void.
Anyway, my listening this year was heavily shaped by how my year went – which was stressful, for a large part. I found myself not leaning all that much towards more difficult, intense music with a few exceptions – Khanate, for one, who stretch their agony out into such long-form works it's in some ways easier to come to grips with the pain. Hell, I think I may actually have listened to more Grateful Dead than metal in the latter half of the year – I tackled more Europe '72 volumes than I care to admit. Anyway, I'm moving much too slow; on to the list!
P.S.: Expect a list of lists on Monday!
…
Honorable Mentions:
20. Hex A.D. - Delightful Sharp Edges (Apollon Records, Norway)
19. Slumbering Sun - The Ever-living Fire (Independent, United States)
`8. Celestial Sanctuary - Insatiable Thirst for Torment (Church Road Records, United Kingdom)
17. Kostnatění - Úpal (Willowtip Records, United States)
16. Shadows - Out for Blood (Sentient Ruin Laboratories, Chile)
15. Century - The Conquest of Time (Electric Assault Records, Sweden)
14. Bonginator - The Intergalactic Gorebong of Deathpot (Barbaric Brutality, United States)
13. Rezn - Solace (Independent, United States)
12. Lunar Chamber - Shambhallic Vibrations (20 Buck Spin, United States)
11. Bergfried - Romantik II (Fiadh Productions, International)
…
The term 'psychedelic,' like basically all music descriptors, has been heavily watered down and often sort of describes the symptoms rather than the cause, in a way. When it comes to crafting truly psychedelic heavy music, Hippie Death Cult are in a league of their own, continuously challenging the borders of stoner rock while also reconnecting with its roots. There's no half-baked songs or lazy unexplored ideas on Helichrysum, and the band's authenticity is immediately apparent. Long live the weird shit.
Listen here.
I've enjoyed Danava's past releases, but I feel like Nothing but Nothing was custom-built for me. Teetering on the border of proto-metal and sleazed-up hard rock, incredibly adventurous leads and burly riffs carry each song to astonishing heights directly reminiscent of bands like Buffalo and Budgie who were only slightly concerned with things like song structure or consistency. On my first listen I ran into multiple spots where I thought: "Holy shit, how did we get here? Nothing is going to top this!" I was basically always wrong.
Listen here.
This is an album packed with so many bone-crushing beatdowns that it feels like falling down a staircase for 37 straight minutes. Kruelty's bone-and-concrete mix of death metal and hardcore is usually something you'd expect to be a shorter affair, but each track on Untopia sticks around for some serious punishment. I'm not complaining - for starters, I can't get enough of the snare drum tone on this record.
Listen here.
I saw Drain from a sizable distance at Oblivion Access last year and the pit was a bit like watching a human-operated blender. Should you be up for the task, though, I recommend it, as Living Proof hammers out another ironclad offering for the band that gives them plenty more fodder for insane live shows.
Living Proof tosses out repeat-worthy hits like they're filler, though the opening duo of "Run Your Luck" and "FTS (KYS)" is hard to match in terms of sheer enormity. The band's precision-dialed, massive sound is perhaps the only suitable backdrop for charismatic frontman Sammy Ciaramitaro's howled, sneering vocals, and there's no note, riff, or fill wasted across the record.
Listen here.
Khanate surprise releasing this album after fifteen years of silence was the most welcome of surprises, and if there was a year where I needed something this cathartically sinister, it was this one. I tried playing To Be Cruel for a few people and the general reaction was "where's the notes?" Well, friends, maybe I'm not ready for another note yet. Maybe I need a few more seconds to process the last one!
I will often take long albums to task for being too long (please, boomer thrash bands, keep it under 44), but that never felt like the case here. Each moment was carefully crafted and stitched together into a full, complete narrative with a level of detail and care that most shorter albums can't begin to stack up against.
Listen here.
I regret not being able to give this album much coverage during the year, but it absolutely deserves a place on this list. A common theme across my picks this year is exclusivity - bands that pulled something off that nobody else could have achieved. That sense of singularity is where every album from Flesh of the Stars sits: the Chicago group crafts melodic metal that pulls at the heartstrings and conjures exceptionally vivid thoughts of forlorn beauty and forgotten achievements. Though generally employing melodic doom metal, the group taps into everything from progressive metal to black metal in a quest to render utterly awe-inspiring music, complete with a host of guest musicians and even a little lap steel in there.
Most of the time, Flesh of the Stars is about one months-old social media post away from not existing at all, and that's a sense of impermanence that's so rare as to be treasured. The band's exceedingly infrequent live performances and elaborate instrumentation give The Glass Garden a sense of unrepeatability and fragility that only combine with this sense of fleeting brilliance. The Glass Garden is a blazing, not-to-be-missed emission from a distant star.
Listen here.
This Heathen Land over-delivers on Green Lung's original promise, representing a sort of refocusing on their original sound and also a step forward toward – dare I say it – accessibility. Not 'accessibility' in terms of, I dunno, Sleep Tokenizing things, but an experiment in pushing vocals forward and taking their obvious songwriting mastery to another level by writing songs that can support that vocal focus. We're still talking stoner rock here, but it's not hard to hear a little bit of Ghost in songs like "Maxine (Witch Queen)," and shit, I'm all for bands taking some notes there in terms of production.
Heavily focused on ancient lore and rituals, This Heathen Land feels like a love letter to the band's English origins. It's also an impassioned testament to stoner rock and the power of riffs, though, as each song is positively crammed with them.
Listen here.
I want to reiterate that while yes, Colony Drop vocalist Joseph Schafer is an ex-IO EiC, I have absolutely no connection with him beyond getting PR emails addressed to him (which is absurd! Update your mailing lists, jerks). Conflict of interest accusations, begone!
That being said, I'd be lying if Schafer's vocals weren't a major selling point for Colony Drop's aggressive crossover thrash metal. The Gundam-themed band leverages his charisma as an additional point of emphasis beyond their twin-guitar assault – it's an appropriately dramatic accompaniment. Each song on the record is fun and often drastically different than what came before – the sole connective tissue being d-beats and high-octane choruses. "D-Beat Adventure," indeed.
Listen here.
I am a massive sucker for dark, full-bodied heavy metal, and while I continue to blame Diamond Head for this, The Night Eternal is doing something a bit different. Gothic-tinged, Fatale employs deep, powerful vocals and elaborate twin-guitar orchestration to pull listeners into a darkened world. This sonic angle is compounded by killer songwriting across the board – whether it be the intricate drumming or memorable solos, each song fundamentally is a delight to hear come to fruition. The enormous amount of reverb attached to this record is only the luscious, velvety icing on the cake.
Listen here.
I honestly was not expecting another Dozer record, like ever, but here we are. In traditional Dozer fashion, the band's lineup is roughly intact albeit a new drummer (do they have a Spinal Tap thing going on over there?!), but their sound has taken another enormous leap.
To be even more honest, I wasn't thrilled about that on my first listen. Their last record Beyond Colossal is a constant contender for my favorite stoner rock album ever, or just albums in general, and I think I went into Drifting in the Endless Void hoping for a Part II to that. That was foolish of me, but fortunately it only took a few listens to get what's going on here.
The short version is, to paraphrase myself from earlier this year, is that Dozer had no interest in returning to their past, just in creating new Dozer music. Their noisy, hyperactive approach to stoner rock is still in place, but the riffs bend more toward creating a sense of chaos and space rather than elaborate, mournful tapestries. The band's vocabulary expands on this new release, as it has with every release before, continuously finding new ways for Fredrik Nordin to sing weird lyrics that sound absolutely badass against their music.
Beyond Colossal's album art depicts a massive tree, and it fits the grounded, dolorous music. In contrast, Drifting in the Endless Void is, well, spacey, and sets both the band and listeners spinning into an abyss of curiosity.
Listen here.
Ted Nubel’s Top Albums of 2023
As the final individual list running this year, I'd like to offer my thanks to all our participants – and eternal curses upon my past self for committing to running all of them in the midst of holiday madness. Every part of this process kind of sucks, honestly, but all the tedious work that goes into it has resulted in some fun, engaging lists to read through as I sink into the holiday void.
Anyway, my listening this year was heavily shaped by how my year went – which was stressful, for a large part. I found myself not leaning all that much towards more difficult, intense music with a few exceptions – Khanate, for one, who stretch their agony out into such long-form works it's in some ways easier to come to grips with the pain. Hell, I think I may actually have listened to more Grateful Dead than metal in the latter half of the year – I tackled more Europe '72 volumes than I care to admit. Anyway, I'm moving much too slow; on to the list!
P.S.: Expect a list of lists on Monday!
…
Honorable Mentions:
20. Hex A.D. - Delightful Sharp Edges (Apollon Records, Norway)
19. Slumbering Sun - The Ever-living Fire (Independent, United States)
18. Celestial Sanctuary - Insatiable Thirst for Torment (Church Road Records, United Kingdom)
17. Kostnatění - Úpal (Willowtip Records, United States)
16. Shadows - Out for Blood (Sentient Ruin Laboratories, Chile)
15. Century - The Conquest of Time (Electric Assault Records, Sweden)
14. Bonginator - The Intergalactic Gorebong of Deathpot (Barbaric Brutality, United States)
13. Rezn - Solace (Independent, United States)
12. Lunar Chamber - Shambhallic Vibrations (20 Buck Spin, United States)
11. Bergfried - Romantik II (Fiadh Productions, International)
…
The term 'psychedelic,' like basically all music descriptors, has been heavily watered down and often sort of describes the symptoms rather than the cause, in a way. When it comes to crafting truly psychedelic heavy music, Hippie Death Cult are in a league of their own, continuously challenging the borders of stoner rock while also reconnecting with its roots. There's no half-baked songs or lazy unexplored ideas on Helichrysum, and the band's authenticity is immediately apparent. Long live the weird shit.
Listen here.
I've enjoyed Danava's past releases, but I feel like Nothing but Nothing was custom-built for me. Teetering on the border of proto-metal and sleazed-up hard rock, incredibly adventurous leads and burly riffs carry each song to astonishing heights directly reminiscent of bands like Buffalo and Budgie who were only slightly concerned with things like song structure or consistency. On my first listen I ran into multiple spots where I thought: "Holy shit, how did we get here? Nothing is going to top this!" I was basically always wrong.
Listen here.
This is an album packed with so many bone-crushing beatdowns that it feels like falling down a staircase for 37 straight minutes. Kruelty's bone-and-concrete mix of death metal and hardcore is usually something you'd expect to be a shorter affair, but each track on Untopia sticks around for some serious punishment. I'm not complaining - for starters, I can't get enough of the snare drum tone on this record.
Listen here.
I saw Drain from a sizable distance at Oblivion Access last year and the pit was a bit like watching a human-operated blender. Should you be up for the task, though, I recommend it, as Living Proof hammers out another ironclad offering for the band that gives them plenty more fodder for insane live shows.
Living Proof tosses out repeat-worthy hits like they're filler, though the opening duo of "Run Your Luck" and "FTS (KYS)" is hard to match in terms of sheer enormity. The band's precision-dialed, massive sound is perhaps the only suitable backdrop for charismatic frontman Sammy Ciaramitaro's howled, sneering vocals, and there's no note, riff, or fill wasted across the record.
Listen here.
Khanate surprise releasing this album after fifteen years of silence was the most welcome of surprises, and if there was a year where I needed something this cathartically sinister, it was this one. I tried playing To Be Cruel for a few people and the general reaction was "where's the notes?" Well, friends, maybe I'm not ready for another note yet. Maybe I need a few more seconds to process the last one!
I will often take long albums to task for being too long (please, boomer thrash bands, keep it under 44), but that never felt like the case here. Each moment was carefully crafted and stitched together into a full, complete narrative with a level of detail and care that most shorter albums can't begin to stack up against.
Listen here.
I regret not being able to give this album much coverage during the year, but it absolutely deserves a place on this list. A common theme across my picks this year is exclusivity - bands that pulled something off that nobody else could have achieved. That sense of singularity is where every album from Flesh of the Stars sits: the Chicago group crafts melodic metal that pulls at the heartstrings and conjures exceptionally vivid thoughts of forlorn beauty and forgotten achievements. Though generally employing melodic doom metal, the group taps into everything from progressive metal to black metal in a quest to render utterly awe-inspiring music, complete with a host of guest musicians and even a little lap steel in there.
Most of the time, Flesh of the Stars is about one months-old social media post away from not existing at all, and that's a sense of impermanence that's so rare as to be treasured. The band's exceedingly infrequent live performances and elaborate instrumentation give The Glass Garden a sense of unrepeatability and fragility that only combine with this sense of fleeting brilliance. The Glass Garden is a blazing, not-to-be-missed emission from a distant star.
Listen here.
This Heathen Land over-delivers on Green Lung's original promise, representing a sort of refocusing on their original sound and also a step forward toward – dare I say it – accessibility. Not 'accessibility' in terms of, I dunno, Sleep Tokenizing things, but an experiment in pushing vocals forward and taking their obvious songwriting mastery to another level by writing songs that can support that vocal focus. We're still talking stoner rock here, but it's not hard to hear a little bit of Ghost in songs like "Maxine (Witch Queen)," and shit, I'm all for bands taking some notes there in terms of production.
Heavily focused on ancient lore and rituals, This Heathen Land feels like a love letter to the band's English origins. It's also an impassioned testament to stoner rock and the power of riffs, though, as each song is positively crammed with them.
Listen here.
I want to reiterate that while yes, Colony Drop vocalist Joseph Schafer is an ex-IO EiC, I have absolutely no connection with him beyond getting PR emails addressed to him (which is absurd! Update your mailing lists, jerks). Conflict of interest accusations, begone!
That being said, I'd be lying if Schafer's vocals weren't a major selling point for Colony Drop's aggressive crossover thrash metal. The Gundam-themed band leverages his charisma as an additional point of emphasis beyond their twin-guitar assault – it's an appropriately dramatic accompaniment. Each song on the record is fun and often drastically different than what came before – the sole connective tissue being d-beats and high-octane choruses. "D-Beat Adventure," indeed.
Listen here.
I am a massive sucker for dark, full-bodied heavy metal, and while I continue to blame Diamond Head for this, The Night Eternal is doing something a bit different. Gothic-tinged, Fatale employs deep, powerful vocals and elaborate twin-guitar orchestration to pull listeners into a darkened world. This sonic angle is compounded by killer songwriting across the board – whether it be the intricate drumming or memorable solos, each song fundamentally is a delight to hear come to fruition. The enormous amount of reverb attached to this record is only the luscious, velvety icing on the cake.
Listen here.
I honestly was not expecting another Dozer record, like ever, but here we are. In traditional Dozer fashion, the band's lineup is roughly intact albeit a new drummer (do they have a Spinal Tap thing going on over there?!), but their sound has taken another enormous leap.
To be even more honest, I wasn't thrilled about that on my first listen. Their last record Beyond Colossal is a constant contender for my favorite stoner rock album ever, or just albums in general, and I think I went into Drifting in the Endless Void hoping for a Part II to that. That was foolish of me, but fortunately it only took a few listens to get what's going on here.
The short version is, to paraphrase myself from earlier this year, is that Dozer had no interest in returning to their past, just in creating new Dozer music. Their noisy, hyperactive approach to stoner rock is still in place, but the riffs bend more toward creating a sense of chaos and space rather than elaborate, mournful tapestries. The band's vocabulary expands on this new release, as it has with every release before, continuously finding new ways for Fredrik Nordin to sing weird lyrics that sound absolutely badass against their music.
Beyond Colossal's album art depicts a massive tree, and it fits the grounded, dolorous music. In contrast, Drifting in the Endless Void is, well, spacey, and sets both the band and listeners spinning into an abyss of curiosity.
Listen here.
Ted Nubel’s Top Albums of 2023
As the final individual list running this year, I'd like to offer my thanks to all our participants – and eternal curses upon my past self for committing to running all of them in the midst of holiday madness. Every part of this process kind of sucks, honestly, but all the tedious work that goes into it has resulted in some fun, engaging lists to read through as I sink into the holiday void.
Anyway, my listening this year was heavily shaped by how my year went – which was stressful, for a large part. I found myself not leaning all that much towards more difficult, intense music with a few exceptions – Khanate, for one, who stretch their agony out into such long-form works it's in some ways easier to come to grips with the pain. Hell, I think I may actually have listened to more Grateful Dead than metal in the latter half of the year – I tackled more Europe '72 volumes than I care to admit. Anyway, I'm moving much too slow; on to the list!
P.S.: Expect a list of lists on Monday!
…
Honorable Mentions:
20. Hex A.D. - Delightful Sharp Edges (Apollon Records, Norway)
19. Slumbering Sun - The Ever-living Fire (Independent, United States)
18. Celestial Sanctuary - Insatiable Thirst for Torment (Church Road Records, United Kingdom)
17. Kostnatění - Úpal (Willowtip Records, United States)
16. Shadows - Out for Blood (Sentient Ruin Laboratories, Chile)
15. Century - The Conquest of Time (Electric Assault Records, Sweden)
14. Bonginator - The Intergalactic Gorebong of Deathpot (Barbaric Brutality, United States)
13. Rezn - Solace (Independent, United States)
12. Lunar Chamber - Shambhallic Vibrations (20 Buck Spin, United States)
11. Bergfried - Romantik II (Fiadh Productions, International)
…
The term 'psychedelic,' like basically all music descriptors, has been heavily watered down and often sort of describes the symptoms rather than the cause, in a way. When it comes to crafting truly psychedelic heavy music, Hippie Death Cult are in a league of their own, continuously challenging the borders of stoner rock while also reconnecting with its roots. There's no half-baked songs or lazy unexplored ideas on Helichrysum, and the band's authenticity is immediately apparent. Long live the weird shit.
Listen here.
I've enjoyed Danava's past releases, but I feel like Nothing but Nothing was custom-built for me. Teetering on the border of proto-metal and sleazed-up hard rock, incredibly adventurous leads and burly riffs carry each song to astonishing heights directly reminiscent of bands like Buffalo and Budgie who were only slightly concerned with things like song structure or consistency. On my first listen I ran into multiple spots where I thought: "Holy shit, how did we get here? Nothing is going to top this!" I was basically always wrong.
Listen here.
This is an album packed with so many bone-crushing beatdowns that it feels like falling down a staircase for 37 straight minutes. Kruelty's bone-and-concrete mix of death metal and hardcore is usually something you'd expect to be a shorter affair, but each track on Untopia sticks around for some serious punishment. I'm not complaining - for starters, I can't get enough of the snare drum tone on this record.
Listen here.
I saw Drain from a sizable distance at Oblivion Access last year and the pit was a bit like watching a human-operated blender. Should you be up for the task, though, I recommend it, as Living Proof hammers out another ironclad offering for the band that gives them plenty more fodder for insane live shows.
Living Proof tosses out repeat-worthy hits like they're filler, though the opening duo of "Run Your Luck" and "FTS (KYS)" is hard to match in terms of sheer enormity. The band's precision-dialed, massive sound is perhaps the only suitable backdrop for charismatic frontman Sammy Ciaramitaro's howled, sneering vocals, and there's no note, riff, or fill wasted across the record.
Listen here.
Khanate surprise releasing this album after fifteen years of silence was the most welcome of surprises, and if there was a year where I needed something this cathartically sinister, it was this one. I tried playing To Be Cruel for a few people and the general reaction was "where's the notes?" Well, friends, maybe I'm not ready for another note yet. Maybe I need a few more seconds to process the last one!
I will often take long albums to task for being too long (please, boomer thrash bands, keep it under 44), but that never felt like the case here. Each moment was carefully crafted and stitched together into a full, complete narrative with a level of detail and care that most shorter albums can't begin to stack up against.
Listen here.
I regret not being able to give this album much coverage during the year, but it absolutely deserves a place on this list. A common theme across my picks this year is exclusivity - bands that pulled something off that nobody else could have achieved. That sense of singularity is where every album from Flesh of the Stars sits: the Chicago group crafts melodic metal that pulls at the heartstrings and conjures exceptionally vivid thoughts of forlorn beauty and forgotten achievements. Though generally employing melodic doom metal, the group taps into everything from progressive metal to black metal in a quest to render utterly awe-inspiring music, complete with a host of guest musicians and even a little lap steel in there.
Most of the time, Flesh of the Stars is about one months-old social media post away from not existing at all, and that's a sense of impermanence that's so rare as to be treasured. The band's exceedingly infrequent live performances and elaborate instrumentation give The Glass Garden a sense of unrepeatability and fragility that only combine with this sense of fleeting brilliance. The Glass Garden is a blazing, not-to-be-missed emission from a distant star.
Listen here.
This Heathen Land over-delivers on Green Lung's original promise, representing a sort of refocusing on their original sound and also a step forward toward – dare I say it – accessibility. Not 'accessibility' in terms of, I dunno, Sleep Tokenizing things, but an experiment in pushing vocals forward and taking their obvious songwriting mastery to another level by writing songs that can support that vocal focus. We're still talking stoner rock here, but it's not hard to hear a little bit of Ghost in songs like "Maxine (Witch Queen)," and shit, I'm all for bands taking some notes there in terms of production.
Heavily focused on ancient lore and rituals, This Heathen Land feels like a love letter to the band's English origins. It's also an impassioned testament to stoner rock and the power of riffs, though, as each song is positively crammed with them.
Listen here.
I want to reiterate that while yes, Colony Drop vocalist Joseph Schafer is an ex-IO EiC, I have absolutely no connection with him beyond getting PR emails addressed to him (which is absurd! Update your mailing lists, jerks). Conflict of interest accusations, begone!
That being said, I'd be lying if Schafer's vocals weren't a major selling point for Colony Drop's aggressive crossover thrash metal. The Gundam-themed band leverages his charisma as an additional point of emphasis beyond their twin-guitar assault – it's an appropriately dramatic accompaniment. Each song on the record is fun and often drastically different than what came before – the sole connective tissue being d-beats and high-octane choruses. "D-Beat Adventure," indeed.
Listen here.
I am a massive sucker for dark, full-bodied heavy metal, and while I continue to blame Diamond Head for this, The Night Eternal is doing something a bit different. Gothic-tinged, Fatale employs deep, powerful vocals and elaborate twin-guitar orchestration to pull listeners into a darkened world. This sonic angle is compounded by killer songwriting across the board – whether it be the intricate drumming or memorable solos, each song fundamentally is a delight to hear come to fruition. The enormous amount of reverb attached to this record is only the luscious, velvety icing on the cake.
Listen here.
I honestly was not expecting another Dozer record, like ever, but here we are. In traditional Dozer fashion, the band's lineup is roughly intact albeit a new drummer (do they have a Spinal Tap thing going on over there?!), but their sound has taken another enormous leap.
To be even more honest, I wasn't thrilled about that on my first listen. Their last record Beyond Colossal is a constant contender for my favorite stoner rock album ever, or just albums in general, and I think I went into Drifting in the Endless Void hoping for a Part II to that. That was foolish of me, but fortunately it only took a few listens to get what's going on here.
The short version is, to paraphrase myself from earlier this year, is that Dozer had no interest in returning to their past, just in creating new Dozer music. Their noisy, hyperactive approach to stoner rock is still in place, but the riffs bend more toward creating a sense of chaos and space rather than elaborate, mournful tapestries. The band's vocabulary expands on this new release, as it has with every release before, continuously finding new ways for Fredrik Nordin to sing weird lyrics that sound absolutely badass against their music.
Beyond Colossal's album art depicts a massive tree, and it fits the grounded, dolorous music. In contrast, Drifting in the Endless Void is, well, spacey, and sets both the band and listeners spinning into an abyss of curiosity.
Listen here.
…
Weaving my way through a now-packed crowd at the Joint, I headed toward Vinyl to witness The Skull, a group consisting of members of Trouble, as well as Witch Mountain. Despite being one of the pioneers of doom, Trouble have become a well-kept secret within the genre. While there is a version of Trouble still active, The Skull are the closest to the real thing. Running through songs such as “R.I.P. Assassin” and “End of My Daze,” we were treated to some of the best of Trouble’s catalog. The Skull have been writing and recording their own new material as well, which thankfully does not fall far from the tree of Trouble’s rich Chicago-inspired blues steeped in Iommi’s influence.
And right back into the Joint for Neurosis. From the balcony, the size and scope of the venue could be felt, and it was easier to focus on the performance itself. Seeing Neurosis live has always been a reality check, or at least has aided in contemplative thoughts about personal situations, serious or trivial. The thoughts for me that night, however, were completely focused on the band: I found myself contemplating what makes this band such a complete juggernaut.
When a massive beast or object moves, it appears slow… but it is in fact covering more ground than its more nimble counterparts. It is that type of power and movement that make Neurosis so awe-inspiring. This set also featured the first real display of aggression from the audience, and my vantage point was perfect to watch the bursts of energy from the band result in explosions of movement from the crowd. I was also able to see that a few of the security personnel got swept up in the moment and decided to participate in the pit as well — not to hurt people and get away with it — but for their own sheer enjoyment.
…
Addison Herron-Wheeler’s Top Albums of 2023
It’s funny, the more I immerse myself in the world of death metal, both as a musician and a professional metal writer (whatever that is), the more I don’t necessarily listen to death metal, or even metal, constantly. I think part of it is also hitting my mid 30s and realizing there is no such thing as a “guilty pleasure.” If I want to listen to black metal followed by hardcore followed by country or pop, fuck it. This list reflects that, with special love given to hardcore this year, just by chance.
...
Honorable Mentions:
20. Godflesh – Purge (Avalance Recordings, U.S.)
19. Enslaved – Hemidal (Nuclear Blast Records, Norway)
18. Blut Aus Nord – Disharmonium-Nahab (Candleight Records, France)
17. Crypta – Shades of Sorrow (Napalm Records, Brazil)
16. Blackbraid – Blackbraid II (Self-Released, U.S.)
15. In Flames – Foregone (Nuclear Blast, Sweden)
14. Cattle Decapitation – Terrasite (Metal Blade Records, U.S.)
13. Osiah– Kairos (Unique Leader Records, U.S.)
12. Knuckle Puck – Losing What We Love (Pure Noise Records, U.S.)
11. Drain – Living Proof (Revelation Records, U.S.)
...
Gel are one of the bands that have been shaking up hardcore in the year 2023. Throwing all conventions out the window, including the gender binary and how much hardcore is allowed to borrow from punk, grunge, and even pop and metal, they’ve made a completely unique and ultimately listenable record. If you haven’t already checked this out, we suggest you change that immediately.
Listen here.
Similar to Gel, this record is solid and then some, and adds some femme and softness into the world of hardcore without losing a bit of edge. This record is here to prove to anyone who thinks a pink album cover or clean, femme vocals mean something can’t be heavy. A few spins of this record will prove that is definitely not the case.
Listen here.
This record sees Wicca Phase Springs Eternal getting even further outside of his alt-hip hop comfort zone and embracing way more country—like, a lot of country. But don’t let that scare you! Like everything else he touches, what could easily be cheesy or hacky in other hands is absolutely professionally handled and stunning here, as he nails every song and creates just as much of a mood on this record as he has on previous releases.
Listen here
This hardcore/post hardcore masterpiece proves the band still have what it takes to keep the energy going and make some solid and relevant music in 2023. I would recommend this either as a jumping off point for the band or for fans who are already familiar.
Listen here
This one basically needs no introduction background-wise, because if you’ve been following metal, punk, and hardcore news at all this year, you know the band were in a harrowing accident that almost cost them their lives or their mobility. Now, they are bouncing back, and this album, while recorded before the accident, is a testament to that resilience, as it features bassist Madi Watkins, who took the brunt of the accident, on vocals. While it’s short and sweet, it’s one of the heaviest and most diverse hardcore records of the year.
Listen here
I’m always a fan of HEALTH, and this record feels especially well-thought-out, catchy, and heavy, even for them, which is saying a lot, as they don’t really have any bad albums under the belt. This is definitely one you’re going to want to listen to over and over to catch all the Easter eggs.
Listen here
Interestingly enough, this is the only death metal release to make it to the front part of this list, and I truly consider this to be one of the most important death metal records of all time. It harkens back to the forebearers of the genre themselves, Death, with a melodic, sonic approach and a vocalist who is more inspired than most by his intimate brush with death thanks to a cancer diagnosis. But it also pushes all the limits of the genre and breaks new ground, and most importantly, cannot in any way be seen as just rehashing the same tired, old-school death metal tropes.
Listen here
This may seem an odd one to be so high up on my list, but I love everything this band has done, and in my mind. this is their most refined record to date. It seems that they’ve completely stopped worrying about trends and fully embraced all the nuances of their sound, going from big arena anthems and sad, acoustic ballads to post-hardcore that more borders on full-on hardcore. This is a great one to check out even if you don’t usually listen to this genre.
Listen here
This is another slightly off pick, but with a lot more hardcore influence and even some metallic riffs in there for good measure. This album is a great example of a record that has everything, including pop, pop punk, metal hardcore, and just general riffs. This is a must for any Australian punk and hardcore enthusiast.
Listen here
I discovered End this year, and they are by far my pick for best band of the year, not just album. As someone who always answers “Pig Destroyer” when asked my favorite band, this band has everything to earn that band’s seal of approval—and that’s clearly not just my opinion, as Pig Destroyer vocalist JR Hayes does guest vocals on this record. It’s heavy, still thoughtful, a little electronic, sort of experimental, very hard hitting, and still catchy and memorable. Damn, this one’s a keeper.
Listen here
Luke Jackson’s Top Albums of 2023
Sometimes over the course of the year, The List falls naturally into place, pulled noisily into alignment like pieces in a game of Connect 4: a long awaited release from a revered artist - CLUNK, a black metal loner does a dungeon synth tape - CLAK, a member of Pissgrave records literally one note on any instrument - CLUN-KLIK.
Other years, and this was one of them, you need to check the receipts, do a little accounting. Which is not to say the sum total of releases in 2023 was lacking in some way, on the contrary so much powerful music was released this year that it would instead be quite easy to miss an artist you had a dizzying fling with in the spring, because the deluge of music released during the musical cuffing season of October onwards has been so strong.
It was a fun process, an unnecessary but welcome reminder that heavy music remains in rude health, if perhaps continually consolidating into a smaller number of labels that seem able to balance commercial instinct and artistic cohesion (if I’m wrong call me out!). The hope of any list maker is that you’ll glance below (having naturally skipped these opening words, it’s cool, you came back) and in recognising that which you enjoy and is familiar, become at once curious about that which is new. There should be lots of metal below that meets this criteria, there’s also a little not-metal, though less than initially intended, put that down to cowardice on the author's part. The point of these inclusions is not for the sake of being contrary, but to get across a sense of heavy music as an idea first and a complicated family of genres second - I know you’ll check out the riffs, I hope you’ll check out the rest.
...
Honorable Mentions:
20. Yohualli – Turquoise Stars and Night Skies (Night of the Palemoon, US)
19. Woe – Legacies of Frailty (Vendetta Records, US)
18. Wayfarer – American Gothic (Profound Lore, US)
17. Model/Actriz – Dogsbody (True Panther, US)
16. JPEG Mafia & Danny Brown – SCARING THE HOES (AWAL Recordings America, US)
15. Lamp Of Murmuur – Saturnian Bloodstorm (Argento Records, Netherlands)
14. Body of Light – Bitter Reflection (Dais Records, US)
13. Thantifaxath– Hive Mind Narcosis (Dark Descent, US)
12. Vastum – Inward to Gethsemane (20 Buck Spin, US)
11. Gravesend – Gowanus Death Stomp (20 Buck Spin, US)
...
Was it just us, or did Grime Stone Records jump the shark this year? Increasingly becoming a boutique label for soundtracks to Commodore 64 games about jousting [Editor's Note: There's a market for that!], listeners were forced to look elsewhere for a dose of black metal with renaissance fair sprinkles.
Enter Idaho’s Weald & Woe, who deploy a heaving, hooky interpretation of black metal with a layer of medieval fantasy that nails the actually very tough balancing act of doing service to both, with their ‘medieval’ instrumentation and melodies primarily used to weave a lightness into the otherwise dense brickwork of Weald & Woe’s musical castle. Not to cause a panic, but For The Good of The Realm is the first of several albums in this list that will be described as FUN, in each instance the intention being a compliment.
Listen here.
For those who worship at the altar of the brothers Skarstad, experimentation and heaviness have been an equal part of the sermon for some time, with stylistic shifts typically flowering off into other named projects. Here though is something else, a mainline Yellow Eyes album (another is promised next year) that partially sheds the genre trappings of black metal, and instead invites the listener to lose themselves in a stone sculpted, wicker adorned village of their creation.
Cardinal sin coming up, but with Master’s Murmur Yellow Eyes have created such an interesting sense of place that once familiar with its pacing and structure: try listening to it out of sequence; the album not only survives but thrives through this kind of reinterpretation, new avenues and alleyways opening up each time. It feels like Master’s Murmur has so much substance to give, and many more stories to tell than we’ve yet extracted in our scant time with it.
Listen here.
Mmm, forbidden fruit. Everybody reading this list (and certainly everybody writing it) has a period of a couple of weeks in the summer when all they listen to is Blind Guardian, it’s okay! It’s good! Power metal is such an unusual proposition - complex but cheesy, celebrated but maligned; and an individual’s relationship with the subgenre is often just as multilayered.
As a musical language however, power metal is plainly ripe for experimentation and cross pollination, so when Moonlight Sorcery released this perfectly pitched power/black mashup in the mid year, we all threw ourselves at its feet before we even properly considered what it was, and had an incredible amount of fun doing it.
Listen here.
Youth is often venerated for the wrong reasons, but sometimes creators and bands earlier in their careers enter the room with such zeal and such armfuls of ideas and things to simply try, that you can only smile and be swept along by the energy.
So it was with the self titled full length by Agriculture, who begin with a brew of black metal and stir in contemporary social themes, structures and arrangements culled from classical music, playing the same song twice in succession in a different style! And flaming swords; somehow making all this cohere, and somehow making it feel like it’s over in minutes. They are also the nicest gang in black metal. Everyone fell in love with Agriculture a little bit in 2023, and were right to do so.
Listen here.
As an awful music nerd, one of the rarer, more interesting phenomena of the music world to witness is when an act with basically zero obvious commercial potential just breaks out, thus it was for Mandy, Indiana in 2023.
If you’ve put off listening to their scraping, imploding, industrial decrees because of their seeming ubiquity, get past it, this is some of the most intimidating music released all year, in a scathing, oblique way that other types of music, including metal, rarely achieve.
As a former Manchester resident, it is also cathartic to see success for an act that sounds fuck all like the traditional idea of that city, which is so obsessed and in love with the romance of its own musical legacy that it often threatens to choke on it.
Listen here.
There was a real sense this year that some of the most celebrated acts in the underground had been to a meeting, a bit like the Ents, and decided unilaterally that 2023 was going to be twenty percent more prog than usual - (look no farther than the rest of this list for evidence) and it felt like Tomb Mold were at the absolute forefront of this movement.
If you’ve spent years reveling in the complexity of Tomb Mold’s riffs and beats, it was probably not that much of a surprise to hear them extending that complexity into new territories - arrangement and sound. This is still inarguably Tomb Mold, as soon as Max Klebanoff’s gargle pierces through the opening verse of “The Perfect Memory (Phantasm Of Aura)” that is apparent, but it is Tomb Mold expanded; they have always had one eye to the stars, and now in addition to the alien crust and filth they captured on Planetary Clairvoyance, they’ve captured those other elements of the cosmos - space and light.
Listen here.
Every time the author has seen Spirit Possession play, something has gone wrong - sound and equipment failures, venue management stuff, it feels now almost an integral part of watching the band. What is utterly fantastic about the band’s music, black metal and punk which feels roughly hewn and nailed together, all crunchy surfaces and dreadful sculpture, is that it can withstand all of this and still knock a crowd to the floor.
Of The Sign… is a terrifying step up from Spirit Possession’s debut, it’s the sound of a band confidently realizing ideas they had when they first started to write and rehearse, and its snarling arrogance suggests that they too are fully aware of this.
Listen here.
Ulthar released two albums simultaneously in 2023, Basic Ulthar (Anthronomicon) and Advanced Ulthar (Helionomicon), and the reason (beyond the author’s immutable basic-ness) Anthronomicon stands here is that it contains the pure distilled essence of talented musicians doing two things: being talented and having fun, this album is a blast.
We get a sense of the band looking at one another smiling, struggling to believe they are physically capable of spawning the rhythms and melodies poured forth over the entirety of this album. There is such skill in translating immense complexity into something that can not only be understood but enjoyed by people who are not experts, and on Anthronomicon Ulthar spend 40 minutes doing so unrelentingly.
Listen here.
It seemed as though huge underground acts were announcing, releasing, touring and shadow dropping new music constantly in 2023 in a way that left even less time than usual to spend charting an independent path, scouring for satisfying chunks in the gutters of metal’s fringes. Thank you then, dark forces, for Venusberg Cardinal’s Atlas Of Dungeons. The premise is simple; recorded by members of Departure Chandelier, around the same time as their classic Antichrist Rise To Power, but thematically and musically distinct from that work. Atlas Of Dungeons is fuzzy, punked out black metal that not only sounds the part, but contains songs that ‘explore medieval and ancient tortures’ - which is so incredibly metal that it essentially u-turns and becomes brilliantly fun. Murky, scuzzy production is difficult to do right (look how the Whole Internet has seemingly denounced Këkht Aräkh overnight) but Venusberg Cardinal make it work by keeping the music simple, and letting the mid paced melodies rise up from beneath the static.
Listen here.
For the average KRALLICE listener there has been a point in time that the sentiment around a new release from the band shifted from ‘this is incredible’ to ‘well done’. Never lacking in technical force or musicianship, several of the band’s recent releases have nevertheless failed to hit the same emotional highs as in canonized classics like Years Past Matter.
Porous Resonance Abyss changes this, with its clarity of concept (four part space opera!), of musical impetus, and of form. It would be disingenuous to say this is the first time KRALLICE have incorporated synth parts into their work, but never before have they served such a key melodic purpose, bringing a joyous new voice that first skims across and then plunges into the deep well of musical dark matter that the band is known for. In the relentless hunt for the new and inspiring, sometimes the biggest surprise leaps not out in front of you but from over your shoulder, and this year KRALLICE gave us an album that could only have come from an act with their maturity and confidence.
Listen here.
Weald and Woe – For the Good of the Realm
Mandy, Indiana
Ulthar – Anthronomicon
…
It was time to come down from my crow’s nest and work my way toward the front for Saturday night’s massive resolution. Random outbursts of instruments rang out from the PA as the final sound checks were performed in preparation for King Diamond. The lights finally went dark and the loudest cheer so far of the festival roared, almost drowning out the sample from “Out of the Asylum” from Them (1988). The curtain was now again drawn open revealing a stage set with as much detail and quality as you find for a theatrical production. Right as the sample ended, the drum intro to “Welcome Home” incited for cheering as King and Grandma appeared on stage.
(If you are at all unfamiliar then I urge you to look into the storyline of King Diamond’s concepts for the band’s albums as they are as bizarre as they are entertaining. The music associated with King Diamond requires a large amount of technical ability from every member of the band, and the band that has been assembled and back the show for the past several years is nothing short of amazing).
After running through three more King Diamond and Mercyful Fate songs, it was time to start the full play through of the album Abigail. Released in 1987, Abigail is the second studio album from King Diamond, and the first concept album from the group. The concept is an original story developed by the vocalist that tells the tale of a happy couple moving into an inherited mansion with a bad past involving a stillborn child and adultery. This entire storyline is also played out on stage by King and a woman playing multiple roles. There are props and backdrop changes throughout the set making it a true heavy metal horror opera. You will be hard pressed to find more entertainment and production value in a heavy metal concert.
-Alyssa Herrman & Guy Nelson
…
Venusberg Cardinal
Luke Jackson’s Top Albums of 2023
Sometimes over the course of the year, The List falls naturally into place, pulled noisily into alignment like pieces in a game of Connect 4: a long awaited release from a revered artist - CLUNK, a black metal loner does a dungeon synth tape - CLAK, a member of Pissgrave records literally one note on any instrument - CLUN-KLIK.
Other years, and this was one of them, you need to check the receipts, do a little accounting. Which is not to say the sum total of releases in 2023 was lacking in some way, on the contrary so much powerful music was released this year that it would instead be quite easy to miss an artist you had a dizzying fling with in the spring, because the deluge of music released during the musical cuffing season of October onwards has been so strong.
It was a fun process, an unnecessary but welcome reminder that heavy music remains in rude health, if perhaps continually consolidating into a smaller number of labels that seem able to balance commercial instinct and artistic cohesion (if I’m wrong call me out!). The hope of any list maker is that you’ll glance below (having naturally skipped these opening words, it’s cool, you came back) and in recognising that which you enjoy and is familiar, become at once curious about that which is new. There should be lots of metal below that meets this criteria, there’s also a little not-metal, though less than initially intended, put that down to cowardice on the author's part. The point of these inclusions is not for the sake of being contrary, but to get across a sense of heavy music as an idea first and a complicated family of genres second - I know you’ll check out the riffs, I hope you’ll check out the rest.
...
Honorable Mentions:
20. Yohualli – Turquoise Stars and Night Skies (Night of the Palemoon, US)
19. Woe – Legacies of Frailty (Vendetta Records, US)
18. Wayfarer – American Gothic (Profound Lore, US)
17. Model/Actriz – Dogsbody (True Panther, US)
16. JPEG Mafia & Danny Brown – SCARING THE HOES (AWAL Recordings America, US)
15. Lamp Of Murmuur – Saturnian Bloodstorm (Argento Records, Netherlands)
14. Body of Light – Bitter Reflection (Dais Records, US)
13. Thantifaxath– Hive Mind Narcosis (Dark Descent, US)
12. Vastum – Inward to Gethsemane (20 Buck Spin, US)
11. Gravesend – Gowanus Death Stomp (20 Buck Spin, US)
...
Was it just us, or did Grime Stone Records jump the shark this year? Increasingly becoming a boutique label for soundtracks to Commodore 64 games about jousting [Editor's Note: There's a market for that!], listeners were forced to look elsewhere for a dose of black metal with renaissance fair sprinkles.
Enter Idaho’s Weald & Woe, who deploy a heaving, hooky interpretation of black metal with a layer of medieval fantasy that nails the actually very tough balancing act of doing service to both, with their ‘medieval’ instrumentation and melodies primarily used to weave a lightness into the otherwise dense brickwork of Weald & Woe’s musical castle. Not to cause a panic, but For The Good of The Realm is the first of several albums in this list that will be described as FUN, in each instance the intention being a compliment.
Listen here.
For those who worship at the altar of the brothers Skarstad, experimentation and heaviness have been an equal part of the sermon for some time, with stylistic shifts typically flowering off into other named projects. Here though is something else, a mainline Yellow Eyes album (another is promised next year) that partially sheds the genre trappings of black metal, and instead invites the listener to lose themselves in a stone sculpted, wicker adorned village of their creation.
Cardinal sin coming up, but with Master’s Murmur Yellow Eyes have created such an interesting sense of place that once familiar with its pacing and structure: try listening to it out of sequence; the album not only survives but thrives through this kind of reinterpretation, new avenues and alleyways opening up each time. It feels like Master’s Murmur has so much substance to give, and many more stories to tell than we’ve yet extracted in our scant time with it.
Listen here.
Mmm, forbidden fruit. Everybody reading this list (and certainly everybody writing it) has a period of a couple of weeks in the summer when all they listen to is Blind Guardian, it’s okay! It’s good! Power metal is such an unusual proposition - complex but cheesy, celebrated but maligned; and an individual’s relationship with the subgenre is often just as multilayered.
As a musical language however, power metal is plainly ripe for experimentation and cross pollination, so when Moonlight Sorcery released this perfectly pitched power/black mashup in the mid year, we all threw ourselves at its feet before we even properly considered what it was, and had an incredible amount of fun doing it.
Listen here.
Youth is often venerated for the wrong reasons, but sometimes creators and bands earlier in their careers enter the room with such zeal and such armfuls of ideas and things to simply try, that you can only smile and be swept along by the energy.
So it was with the self titled full length by Agriculture, who begin with a brew of black metal and stir in contemporary social themes, structures and arrangements culled from classical music, playing the same song twice in succession in a different style! And flaming swords; somehow making all this cohere, and somehow making it feel like it’s over in minutes. They are also the nicest gang in black metal. Everyone fell in love with Agriculture a little bit in 2023, and were right to do so.
Listen here.
As an awful music nerd, one of the rarer, more interesting phenomena of the music world to witness is when an act with basically zero obvious commercial potential just breaks out, thus it was for Mandy, Indiana in 2023.
If you’ve put off listening to their scraping, imploding, industrial decrees because of their seeming ubiquity, get past it, this is some of the most intimidating music released all year, in a scathing, oblique way that other types of music, including metal, rarely achieve.
As a former Manchester resident, it is also cathartic to see success for an act that sounds fuck all like the traditional idea of that city, which is so obsessed and in love with the romance of its own musical legacy that it often threatens to choke on it.
Listen here.
There was a real sense this year that some of the most celebrated acts in the underground had been to a meeting, a bit like the Ents, and decided unilaterally that 2023 was going to be twenty percent more prog than usual - (look no farther than the rest of this list for evidence) and it felt like Tomb Mold were at the absolute forefront of this movement.
If you’ve spent years reveling in the complexity of Tomb Mold’s riffs and beats, it was probably not that much of a surprise to hear them extending that complexity into new territories - arrangement and sound. This is still inarguably Tomb Mold, as soon as Max Klebanoff’s gargle pierces through the opening verse of “The Perfect Memory (Phantasm Of Aura)” that is apparent, but it is Tomb Mold expanded; they have always had one eye to the stars, and now in addition to the alien crust and filth they captured on Planetary Clairvoyance, they’ve captured those other elements of the cosmos - space and light.
Listen here.
Every time the author has seen Spirit Possession play, something has gone wrong - sound and equipment failures, venue management stuff, it feels now almost an integral part of watching the band. What is utterly fantastic about the band’s music, black metal and punk which feels roughly hewn and nailed together, all crunchy surfaces and dreadful sculpture, is that it can withstand all of this and still knock a crowd to the floor.
Of The Sign… is a terrifying step up from Spirit Possession’s debut, it’s the sound of a band confidently realizing ideas they had when they first started to write and rehearse, and its snarling arrogance suggests that they too are fully aware of this.
Listen here.
Ulthar released two albums simultaneously in 2023, Basic Ulthar (Anthronomicon) and Advanced Ulthar (Helionomicon), and the reason (beyond the author’s immutable basic-ness) Anthronomicon stands here is that it contains the pure distilled essence of talented musicians doing two things: being talented and having fun, this album is a blast.
We get a sense of the band looking at one another smiling, struggling to believe they are physically capable of spawning the rhythms and melodies poured forth over the entirety of this album. There is such skill in translating immense complexity into something that can not only be understood but enjoyed by people who are not experts, and on Anthronomicon Ulthar spend 40 minutes doing so unrelentingly.
Listen here.
It seemed as though huge underground acts were announcing, releasing, touring and shadow dropping new music constantly in 2023 in a way that left even less time than usual to spend charting an independent path, scouring for satisfying chunks in the gutters of metal’s fringes. Thank you then, dark forces, for Venusberg Cardinal’s Atlas Of Dungeons. The premise is simple; recorded by members of Departure Chandelier, around the same time as their classic Antichrist Rise To Power, but thematically and musically distinct from that work. Atlas Of Dungeons is fuzzy, punked out black metal that not only sounds the part, but contains songs that ‘explore medieval and ancient tortures’ - which is so incredibly metal that it essentially u-turns and becomes brilliantly fun. Murky, scuzzy production is difficult to do right (look how the Whole Internet has seemingly denounced Këkht Aräkh overnight) but Venusberg Cardinal make it work by keeping the music simple, and letting the mid paced melodies rise up from beneath the static.
Listen here.
For the average KRALLICE listener there has been a point in time that the sentiment around a new release from the band shifted from ‘this is incredible’ to ‘well done’. Never lacking in technical force or musicianship, several of the band’s recent releases have nevertheless failed to hit the same emotional highs as in canonized classics like Years Past Matter.
Porous Resonance Abyss changes this, with its clarity of concept (four part space opera!), of musical impetus, and of form. It would be disingenuous to say this is the first time KRALLICE have incorporated synth parts into their work, but never before have they served such a key melodic purpose, bringing a joyous new voice that first skims across and then plunges into the deep well of musical dark matter that the band is known for. In the relentless hunt for the new and inspiring, sometimes the biggest surprise leaps not out in front of you but from over your shoulder, and this year KRALLICE gave us an album that could only have come from an act with their maturity and confidence.
Listen here.
Luke Jackson’s Top Albums of 2023
Sometimes over the course of the year, The List falls naturally into place, pulled noisily into alignment like pieces in a game of Connect 4: a long awaited release from a revered artist - CLUNK, a black metal loner does a dungeon synth tape - CLAK, a member of Pissgrave records literally one note on any instrument - CLUN-KLIK.
Other years, and this was one of them, you need to check the receipts, do a little accounting. Which is not to say the sum total of releases in 2023 was lacking in some way, on the contrary so much powerful music was released this year that it would instead be quite easy to miss an artist you had a dizzying fling with in the spring, because the deluge of music released during the musical cuffing season of October onwards has been so strong.
It was a fun process, an unnecessary but welcome reminder that heavy music remains in rude health, if perhaps continually consolidating into a smaller number of labels that seem able to balance commercial instinct and artistic cohesion (if I’m wrong call me out!). The hope of any list maker is that you’ll glance below (having naturally skipped these opening words, it’s cool, you came back) and in recognising that which you enjoy and is familiar, become at once curious about that which is new. There should be lots of metal below that meets this criteria, there’s also a little not-metal, though less than initially intended, put that down to cowardice on the author's part. The point of these inclusions is not for the sake of being contrary, but to get across a sense of heavy music as an idea first and a complicated family of genres second - I know you’ll check out the riffs, I hope you’ll check out the rest.
...
Honorable Mentions:
20. Yohualli – Turquoise Stars and Night Skies (Night of the Palemoon, US)
19. Woe – Legacies of Frailty (Vendetta Records, US)
18. Wayfarer – American Gothic (Profound Lore, US)
17. Model/Actriz – Dogsbody (True Panther, US)
16. JPEG Mafia & Danny Brown – SCARING THE HOES (AWAL Recordings America, US)
15. Lamp Of Murmuur – Saturnian Bloodstorm (Argento Records, Netherlands)
14. Body of Light – Bitter Reflection (Dais Records, US)
13. Thantifaxath– Hive Mind Narcosis (Dark Descent, US)
12. Vastum – Inward to Gethsemane (20 Buck Spin, US)
11. Gravesend – Gowanus Death Stomp (20 Buck Spin, US)
...
Was it just us, or did Grime Stone Records jump the shark this year? Increasingly becoming a boutique label for soundtracks to Commodore 64 games about jousting [Editor's Note: There's a market for that!], listeners were forced to look elsewhere for a dose of black metal with renaissance fair sprinkles.
Enter Idaho’s Weald & Woe, who deploy a heaving, hooky interpretation of black metal with a layer of medieval fantasy that nails the actually very tough balancing act of doing service to both, with their ‘medieval’ instrumentation and melodies primarily used to weave a lightness into the otherwise dense brickwork of Weald & Woe’s musical castle. Not to cause a panic, but For The Good of The Realm is the first of several albums in this list that will be described as FUN, in each instance the intention being a compliment.
Listen here.
For those who worship at the altar of the brothers Skarstad, experimentation and heaviness have been an equal part of the sermon for some time, with stylistic shifts typically flowering off into other named projects. Here though is something else, a mainline Yellow Eyes album (another is promised next year) that partially sheds the genre trappings of black metal, and instead invites the listener to lose themselves in a stone sculpted, wicker adorned village of their creation.
Cardinal sin coming up, but with Master’s Murmur Yellow Eyes have created such an interesting sense of place that once familiar with its pacing and structure: try listening to it out of sequence; the album not only survives but thrives through this kind of reinterpretation, new avenues and alleyways opening up each time. It feels like Master’s Murmur has so much substance to give, and many more stories to tell than we’ve yet extracted in our scant time with it.
Listen here.
Mmm, forbidden fruit. Everybody reading this list (and certainly everybody writing it) has a period of a couple of weeks in the summer when all they listen to is Blind Guardian, it’s okay! It’s good! Power metal is such an unusual proposition - complex but cheesy, celebrated but maligned; and an individual’s relationship with the subgenre is often just as multilayered.
As a musical language however, power metal is plainly ripe for experimentation and cross pollination, so when Moonlight Sorcery released this perfectly pitched power/black mashup in the mid year, we all threw ourselves at its feet before we even properly considered what it was, and had an incredible amount of fun doing it.
Listen here.
Youth is often venerated for the wrong reasons, but sometimes creators and bands earlier in their careers enter the room with such zeal and such armfuls of ideas and things to simply try, that you can only smile and be swept along by the energy.
So it was with the self titled full length by Agriculture, who begin with a brew of black metal and stir in contemporary social themes, structures and arrangements culled from classical music, playing the same song twice in succession in a different style! And flaming swords; somehow making all this cohere, and somehow making it feel like it’s over in minutes. They are also the nicest gang in black metal. Everyone fell in love with Agriculture a little bit in 2023, and were right to do so.
Listen here.
As an awful music nerd, one of the rarer, more interesting phenomena of the music world to witness is when an act with basically zero obvious commercial potential just breaks out, thus it was for Mandy, Indiana in 2023.
If you’ve put off listening to their scraping, imploding, industrial decrees because of their seeming ubiquity, get past it, this is some of the most intimidating music released all year, in a scathing, oblique way that other types of music, including metal, rarely achieve.
As a former Manchester resident, it is also cathartic to see success for an act that sounds fuck all like the traditional idea of that city, which is so obsessed and in love with the romance of its own musical legacy that it often threatens to choke on it.
Listen here.
There was a real sense this year that some of the most celebrated acts in the underground had been to a meeting, a bit like the Ents, and decided unilaterally that 2023 was going to be twenty percent more prog than usual - (look no farther than the rest of this list for evidence) and it felt like Tomb Mold were at the absolute forefront of this movement.
If you’ve spent years reveling in the complexity of Tomb Mold’s riffs and beats, it was probably not that much of a surprise to hear them extending that complexity into new territories - arrangement and sound. This is still inarguably Tomb Mold, as soon as Max Klebanoff’s gargle pierces through the opening verse of “The Perfect Memory (Phantasm Of Aura)” that is apparent, but it is Tomb Mold expanded; they have always had one eye to the stars, and now in addition to the alien crust and filth they captured on Planetary Clairvoyance, they’ve captured those other elements of the cosmos - space and light.
Listen here.
Every time the author has seen Spirit Possession play, something has gone wrong - sound and equipment failures, venue management stuff, it feels now almost an integral part of watching the band. What is utterly fantastic about the band’s music, black metal and punk which feels roughly hewn and nailed together, all crunchy surfaces and dreadful sculpture, is that it can withstand all of this and still knock a crowd to the floor.
Of The Sign… is a terrifying step up from Spirit Possession’s debut, it’s the sound of a band confidently realizing ideas they had when they first started to write and rehearse, and its snarling arrogance suggests that they too are fully aware of this.
Listen here.
Ulthar released two albums simultaneously in 2023, Basic Ulthar (Anthronomicon) and Advanced Ulthar (Helionomicon), and the reason (beyond the author’s immutable basic-ness) Anthronomicon stands here is that it contains the pure distilled essence of talented musicians doing two things: being talented and having fun, this album is a blast.
We get a sense of the band looking at one another smiling, struggling to believe they are physically capable of spawning the rhythms and melodies poured forth over the entirety of this album. There is such skill in translating immense complexity into something that can not only be understood but enjoyed by people who are not experts, and on Anthronomicon Ulthar spend 40 minutes doing so unrelentingly.
Listen here.
It seemed as though huge underground acts were announcing, releasing, touring and shadow dropping new music constantly in 2023 in a way that left even less time than usual to spend charting an independent path, scouring for satisfying chunks in the gutters of metal’s fringes. Thank you then, dark forces, for Venusberg Cardinal’s Atlas Of Dungeons. The premise is simple; recorded by members of Departure Chandelier, around the same time as their classic Antichrist Rise To Power, but thematically and musically distinct from that work. Atlas Of Dungeons is fuzzy, punked out black metal that not only sounds the part, but contains songs that ‘explore medieval and ancient tortures’ - which is so incredibly metal that it essentially u-turns and becomes brilliantly fun. Murky, scuzzy production is difficult to do right (look how the Whole Internet has seemingly denounced Këkht Aräkh overnight) but Venusberg Cardinal make it work by keeping the music simple, and letting the mid paced melodies rise up from beneath the static.
Listen here.
For the average KRALLICE listener there has been a point in time that the sentiment around a new release from the band shifted from ‘this is incredible’ to ‘well done’. Never lacking in technical force or musicianship, several of the band’s recent releases have nevertheless failed to hit the same emotional highs as in canonized classics like Years Past Matter.
Porous Resonance Abyss changes this, with its clarity of concept (four part space opera!), of musical impetus, and of form. It would be disingenuous to say this is the first time KRALLICE have incorporated synth parts into their work, but never before have they served such a key melodic purpose, bringing a joyous new voice that first skims across and then plunges into the deep well of musical dark matter that the band is known for. In the relentless hunt for the new and inspiring, sometimes the biggest surprise leaps not out in front of you but from over your shoulder, and this year KRALLICE gave us an album that could only have come from an act with their maturity and confidence.
Listen here.
Luke Jackson’s Top Albums of 2023
Sometimes over the course of the year, The List falls naturally into place, pulled noisily into alignment like pieces in a game of Connect 4: a long awaited release from a revered artist - CLUNK, a black metal loner does a dungeon synth tape - CLAK, a member of Pissgrave records literally one note on any instrument - CLUN-KLIK.
Other years, and this was one of them, you need to check the receipts, do a little accounting. Which is not to say the sum total of releases in 2023 was lacking in some way, on the contrary so much powerful music was released this year that it would instead be quite easy to miss an artist you had a dizzying fling with in the spring, because the deluge of music released during the musical cuffing season of October onwards has been so strong.
It was a fun process, an unnecessary but welcome reminder that heavy music remains in rude health, if perhaps continually consolidating into a smaller number of labels that seem able to balance commercial instinct and artistic cohesion (if I’m wrong call me out!). The hope of any list maker is that you’ll glance below (having naturally skipped these opening words, it’s cool, you came back) and in recognising that which you enjoy and is familiar, become at once curious about that which is new. There should be lots of metal below that meets this criteria, there’s also a little not-metal, though less than initially intended, put that down to cowardice on the author's part. The point of these inclusions is not for the sake of being contrary, but to get across a sense of heavy music as an idea first and a complicated family of genres second - I know you’ll check out the riffs, I hope you’ll check out the rest.
...
Honorable Mentions:
20. Yohualli – Turquoise Stars and Night Skies (Night of the Palemoon, US)
19. Woe – Legacies of Frailty (Vendetta Records, US)
18. Wayfarer – American Gothic (Profound Lore, US)
17. Model/Actriz – Dogsbody (True Panther, US)
16. JPEG Mafia & Danny Brown – SCARING THE HOES (AWAL Recordings America, US)
15. Lamp Of Murmuur – Saturnian Bloodstorm (Argento Records, Netherlands)
14. Body of Light – Bitter Reflection (Dais Records, US)
13. Thantifaxath– Hive Mind Narcosis (Dark Descent, US)
12. Vastum – Inward to Gethsemane (20 Buck Spin, US)
11. Gravesend – Gowanus Death Stomp (20 Buck Spin, US)
...
Was it just us, or did Grime Stone Records jump the shark this year? Increasingly becoming a boutique label for soundtracks to Commodore 64 games about jousting [Editor's Note: There's a market for that!], listeners were forced to look elsewhere for a dose of black metal with renaissance fair sprinkles.
Enter Idaho’s Weald & Woe, who deploy a heaving, hooky interpretation of black metal with a layer of medieval fantasy that nails the actually very tough balancing act of doing service to both, with their ‘medieval’ instrumentation and melodies primarily used to weave a lightness into the otherwise dense brickwork of Weald & Woe’s musical castle. Not to cause a panic, but For The Good of The Realm is the first of several albums in this list that will be described as FUN, in each instance the intention being a compliment.
Listen here.
For those who worship at the altar of the brothers Skarstad, experimentation and heaviness have been an equal part of the sermon for some time, with stylistic shifts typically flowering off into other named projects. Here though is something else, a mainline Yellow Eyes album (another is promised next year) that partially sheds the genre trappings of black metal, and instead invites the listener to lose themselves in a stone sculpted, wicker adorned village of their creation.
Cardinal sin coming up, but with Master’s Murmur Yellow Eyes have created such an interesting sense of place that once familiar with its pacing and structure: try listening to it out of sequence; the album not only survives but thrives through this kind of reinterpretation, new avenues and alleyways opening up each time. It feels like Master’s Murmur has so much substance to give, and many more stories to tell than we’ve yet extracted in our scant time with it.
Listen here.
Mmm, forbidden fruit. Everybody reading this list (and certainly everybody writing it) has a period of a couple of weeks in the summer when all they listen to is Blind Guardian, it’s okay! It’s good! Power metal is such an unusual proposition - complex but cheesy, celebrated but maligned; and an individual’s relationship with the subgenre is often just as multilayered.
As a musical language however, power metal is plainly ripe for experimentation and cross pollination, so when Moonlight Sorcery released this perfectly pitched power/black mashup in the mid year, we all threw ourselves at its feet before we even properly considered what it was, and had an incredible amount of fun doing it.
Listen here.
Youth is often venerated for the wrong reasons, but sometimes creators and bands earlier in their careers enter the room with such zeal and such armfuls of ideas and things to simply try, that you can only smile and be swept along by the energy.
So it was with the self titled full length by Agriculture, who begin with a brew of black metal and stir in contemporary social themes, structures and arrangements culled from classical music, playing the same song twice in succession in a different style! And flaming swords; somehow making all this cohere, and somehow making it feel like it’s over in minutes. They are also the nicest gang in black metal. Everyone fell in love with Agriculture a little bit in 2023, and were right to do so.
Listen here.
As an awful music nerd, one of the rarer, more interesting phenomena of the music world to witness is when an act with basically zero obvious commercial potential just breaks out, thus it was for Mandy, Indiana in 2023.
If you’ve put off listening to their scraping, imploding, industrial decrees because of their seeming ubiquity, get past it, this is some of the most intimidating music released all year, in a scathing, oblique way that other types of music, including metal, rarely achieve.
As a former Manchester resident, it is also cathartic to see success for an act that sounds fuck all like the traditional idea of that city, which is so obsessed and in love with the romance of its own musical legacy that it often threatens to choke on it.
Listen here.
There was a real sense this year that some of the most celebrated acts in the underground had been to a meeting, a bit like the Ents, and decided unilaterally that 2023 was going to be twenty percent more prog than usual - (look no farther than the rest of this list for evidence) and it felt like Tomb Mold were at the absolute forefront of this movement.
If you’ve spent years reveling in the complexity of Tomb Mold’s riffs and beats, it was probably not that much of a surprise to hear them extending that complexity into new territories - arrangement and sound. This is still inarguably Tomb Mold, as soon as Max Klebanoff’s gargle pierces through the opening verse of “The Perfect Memory (Phantasm Of Aura)” that is apparent, but it is Tomb Mold expanded; they have always had one eye to the stars, and now in addition to the alien crust and filth they captured on Planetary Clairvoyance, they’ve captured those other elements of the cosmos - space and light.
Listen here.
Every time the author has seen Spirit Possession play, something has gone wrong - sound and equipment failures, venue management stuff, it feels now almost an integral part of watching the band. What is utterly fantastic about the band’s music, black metal and punk which feels roughly hewn and nailed together, all crunchy surfaces and dreadful sculpture, is that it can withstand all of this and still knock a crowd to the floor.
Of The Sign… is a terrifying step up from Spirit Possession’s debut, it’s the sound of a band confidently realizing ideas they had when they first started to write and rehearse, and its snarling arrogance suggests that they too are fully aware of this.
Listen here.
Ulthar released two albums simultaneously in 2023, Basic Ulthar (Anthronomicon) and Advanced Ulthar (Helionomicon), and the reason (beyond the author’s immutable basic-ness) Anthronomicon stands here is that it contains the pure distilled essence of talented musicians doing two things: being talented and having fun, this album is a blast.
We get a sense of the band looking at one another smiling, struggling to believe they are physically capable of spawning the rhythms and melodies poured forth over the entirety of this album. There is such skill in translating immense complexity into something that can not only be understood but enjoyed by people who are not experts, and on Anthronomicon Ulthar spend 40 minutes doing so unrelentingly.
Listen here.
It seemed as though huge underground acts were announcing, releasing, touring and shadow dropping new music constantly in 2023 in a way that left even less time than usual to spend charting an independent path, scouring for satisfying chunks in the gutters of metal’s fringes. Thank you then, dark forces, for Venusberg Cardinal’s Atlas Of Dungeons. The premise is simple; recorded by members of Departure Chandelier, around the same time as their classic Antichrist Rise To Power, but thematically and musically distinct from that work. Atlas Of Dungeons is fuzzy, punked out black metal that not only sounds the part, but contains songs that ‘explore medieval and ancient tortures’ - which is so incredibly metal that it essentially u-turns and becomes brilliantly fun. Murky, scuzzy production is difficult to do right (look how the Whole Internet has seemingly denounced Këkht Aräkh overnight) but Venusberg Cardinal make it work by keeping the music simple, and letting the mid paced melodies rise up from beneath the static.
Listen here.
For the average KRALLICE listener there has been a point in time that the sentiment around a new release from the band shifted from ‘this is incredible’ to ‘well done’. Never lacking in technical force or musicianship, several of the band’s recent releases have nevertheless failed to hit the same emotional highs as in canonized classics like Years Past Matter.
Porous Resonance Abyss changes this, with its clarity of concept (four part space opera!), of musical impetus, and of form. It would be disingenuous to say this is the first time KRALLICE have incorporated synth parts into their work, but never before have they served such a key melodic purpose, bringing a joyous new voice that first skims across and then plunges into the deep well of musical dark matter that the band is known for. In the relentless hunt for the new and inspiring, sometimes the biggest surprise leaps not out in front of you but from over your shoulder, and this year KRALLICE gave us an album that could only have come from an act with their maturity and confidence.
Listen here.
Luke Jackson’s Top Albums of 2023
Sometimes over the course of the year, The List falls naturally into place, pulled noisily into alignment like pieces in a game of Connect 4: a long awaited release from a revered artist - CLUNK, a black metal loner does a dungeon synth tape - CLAK, a member of Pissgrave records literally one note on any instrument - CLUN-KLIK.
Other years, and this was one of them, you need to check the receipts, do a little accounting. Which is not to say the sum total of releases in 2023 was lacking in some way, on the contrary so much powerful music was released this year that it would instead be quite easy to miss an artist you had a dizzying fling with in the spring, because the deluge of music released during the musical cuffing season of October onwards has been so strong.
It was a fun process, an unnecessary but welcome reminder that heavy music remains in rude health, if perhaps continually consolidating into a smaller number of labels that seem able to balance commercial instinct and artistic cohesion (if I’m wrong call me out!). The hope of any list maker is that you’ll glance below (having naturally skipped these opening words, it’s cool, you came back) and in recognising that which you enjoy and is familiar, become at once curious about that which is new. There should be lots of metal below that meets this criteria, there’s also a little not-metal, though less than initially intended, put that down to cowardice on the author's part. The point of these inclusions is not for the sake of being contrary, but to get across a sense of heavy music as an idea first and a complicated family of genres second - I know you’ll check out the riffs, I hope you’ll check out the rest.
...
Honorable Mentions:
20. Yohualli – Turquoise Stars and Night Skies (Night of the Palemoon, US)
19. Woe – Legacies of Frailty (Vendetta Records, US)
18. Wayfarer – American Gothic (Profound Lore, US)
17. Model/Actriz – Dogsbody (True Panther, US)
16. JPEG Mafia & Danny Brown – SCARING THE HOES (AWAL Recordings America, US)
15. Lamp Of Murmuur – Saturnian Bloodstorm (Argento Records, Netherlands)
14. Body of Light – Bitter Reflection (Dais Records, US)
13. Thantifaxath– Hive Mind Narcosis (Dark Descent, US)
12. Vastum – Inward to Gethsemane (20 Buck Spin, US)
11. Gravesend – Gowanus Death Stomp (20 Buck Spin, US)
...
Was it just us, or did Grime Stone Records jump the shark this year? Increasingly becoming a boutique label for soundtracks to Commodore 64 games about jousting [Editor's Note: There's a market for that!], listeners were forced to look elsewhere for a dose of black metal with renaissance fair sprinkles.
Enter Idaho’s Weald & Woe, who deploy a heaving, hooky interpretation of black metal with a layer of medieval fantasy that nails the actually very tough balancing act of doing service to both, with their ‘medieval’ instrumentation and melodies primarily used to weave a lightness into the otherwise dense brickwork of Weald & Woe’s musical castle. Not to cause a panic, but For The Good of The Realm is the first of several albums in this list that will be described as FUN, in each instance the intention being a compliment.
Listen here.
For those who worship at the altar of the brothers Skarstad, experimentation and heaviness have been an equal part of the sermon for some time, with stylistic shifts typically flowering off into other named projects. Here though is something else, a mainline Yellow Eyes album (another is promised next year) that partially sheds the genre trappings of black metal, and instead invites the listener to lose themselves in a stone sculpted, wicker adorned village of their creation.
Cardinal sin coming up, but with Master’s Murmur Yellow Eyes have created such an interesting sense of place that once familiar with its pacing and structure: try listening to it out of sequence; the album not only survives but thrives through this kind of reinterpretation, new avenues and alleyways opening up each time. It feels like Master’s Murmur has so much substance to give, and many more stories to tell than we’ve yet extracted in our scant time with it.
Listen here.
Mmm, forbidden fruit. Everybody reading this list (and certainly everybody writing it) has a period of a couple of weeks in the summer when all they listen to is Blind Guardian, it’s okay! It’s good! Power metal is such an unusual proposition - complex but cheesy, celebrated but maligned; and an individual’s relationship with the subgenre is often just as multilayered.
As a musical language however, power metal is plainly ripe for experimentation and cross pollination, so when Moonlight Sorcery released this perfectly pitched power/black mashup in the mid year, we all threw ourselves at its feet before we even properly considered what it was, and had an incredible amount of fun doing it.
Listen here.
Youth is often venerated for the wrong reasons, but sometimes creators and bands earlier in their careers enter the room with such zeal and such armfuls of ideas and things to simply try, that you can only smile and be swept along by the energy.
So it was with the self titled full length by Agriculture, who begin with a brew of black metal and stir in contemporary social themes, structures and arrangements culled from classical music, playing the same song twice in succession in a different style! And flaming swords; somehow making all this cohere, and somehow making it feel like it’s over in minutes. They are also the nicest gang in black metal. Everyone fell in love with Agriculture a little bit in 2023, and were right to do so.
Listen here.
As an awful music nerd, one of the rarer, more interesting phenomena of the music world to witness is when an act with basically zero obvious commercial potential just breaks out, thus it was for Mandy, Indiana in 2023.
If you’ve put off listening to their scraping, imploding, industrial decrees because of their seeming ubiquity, get past it, this is some of the most intimidating music released all year, in a scathing, oblique way that other types of music, including metal, rarely achieve.
As a former Manchester resident, it is also cathartic to see success for an act that sounds fuck all like the traditional idea of that city, which is so obsessed and in love with the romance of its own musical legacy that it often threatens to choke on it.
Listen here.
There was a real sense this year that some of the most celebrated acts in the underground had been to a meeting, a bit like the Ents, and decided unilaterally that 2023 was going to be twenty percent more prog than usual - (look no farther than the rest of this list for evidence) and it felt like Tomb Mold were at the absolute forefront of this movement.
If you’ve spent years reveling in the complexity of Tomb Mold’s riffs and beats, it was probably not that much of a surprise to hear them extending that complexity into new territories - arrangement and sound. This is still inarguably Tomb Mold, as soon as Max Klebanoff’s gargle pierces through the opening verse of “The Perfect Memory (Phantasm Of Aura)” that is apparent, but it is Tomb Mold expanded; they have always had one eye to the stars, and now in addition to the alien crust and filth they captured on Planetary Clairvoyance, they’ve captured those other elements of the cosmos - space and light.
Listen here.
Every time the author has seen Spirit Possession play, something has gone wrong - sound and equipment failures, venue management stuff, it feels now almost an integral part of watching the band. What is utterly fantastic about the band’s music, black metal and punk which feels roughly hewn and nailed together, all crunchy surfaces and dreadful sculpture, is that it can withstand all of this and still knock a crowd to the floor.
Of The Sign… is a terrifying step up from Spirit Possession’s debut, it’s the sound of a band confidently realizing ideas they had when they first started to write and rehearse, and its snarling arrogance suggests that they too are fully aware of this.
Listen here.
Ulthar released two albums simultaneously in 2023, Basic Ulthar (Anthronomicon) and Advanced Ulthar (Helionomicon), and the reason (beyond the author’s immutable basic-ness) Anthronomicon stands here is that it contains the pure distilled essence of talented musicians doing two things: being talented and having fun, this album is a blast.
We get a sense of the band looking at one another smiling, struggling to believe they are physically capable of spawning the rhythms and melodies poured forth over the entirety of this album. There is such skill in translating immense complexity into something that can not only be understood but enjoyed by people who are not experts, and on Anthronomicon Ulthar spend 40 minutes doing so unrelentingly.
Listen here.
It seemed as though huge underground acts were announcing, releasing, touring and shadow dropping new music constantly in 2023 in a way that left even less time than usual to spend charting an independent path, scouring for satisfying chunks in the gutters of metal’s fringes. Thank you then, dark forces, for Venusberg Cardinal’s Atlas Of Dungeons. The premise is simple; recorded by members of Departure Chandelier, around the same time as their classic Antichrist Rise To Power, but thematically and musically distinct from that work. Atlas Of Dungeons is fuzzy, punked out black metal that not only sounds the part, but contains songs that ‘explore medieval and ancient tortures’ - which is so incredibly metal that it essentially u-turns and becomes brilliantly fun. Murky, scuzzy production is difficult to do right (look how the Whole Internet has seemingly denounced Këkht Aräkh overnight) but Venusberg Cardinal make it work by keeping the music simple, and letting the mid paced melodies rise up from beneath the static.
Listen here.
For the average KRALLICE listener there has been a point in time that the sentiment around a new release from the band shifted from ‘this is incredible’ to ‘well done’. Never lacking in technical force or musicianship, several of the band’s recent releases have nevertheless failed to hit the same emotional highs as in canonized classics like Years Past Matter.
Porous Resonance Abyss changes this, with its clarity of concept (four part space opera!), of musical impetus, and of form. It would be disingenuous to say this is the first time KRALLICE have incorporated synth parts into their work, but never before have they served such a key melodic purpose, bringing a joyous new voice that first skims across and then plunges into the deep well of musical dark matter that the band is known for. In the relentless hunt for the new and inspiring, sometimes the biggest surprise leaps not out in front of you but from over your shoulder, and this year KRALLICE gave us an album that could only have come from an act with their maturity and confidence.
Listen here.
Luke Jackson’s Top Albums of 2023
Sometimes over the course of the year, The List falls naturally into place, pulled noisily into alignment like pieces in a game of Connect 4: a long awaited release from a revered artist - CLUNK, a black metal loner does a dungeon synth tape - CLAK, a member of Pissgrave records literally one note on any instrument - CLUN-KLIK.
Other years, and this was one of them, you need to check the receipts, do a little accounting. Which is not to say the sum total of releases in 2023 was lacking in some way, on the contrary so much powerful music was released this year that it would instead be quite easy to miss an artist you had a dizzying fling with in the spring, because the deluge of music released during the musical cuffing season of October onwards has been so strong.
It was a fun process, an unnecessary but welcome reminder that heavy music remains in rude health, if perhaps continually consolidating into a smaller number of labels that seem able to balance commercial instinct and artistic cohesion (if I’m wrong call me out!). The hope of any list maker is that you’ll glance below (having naturally skipped these opening words, it’s cool, you came back) and in recognising that which you enjoy and is familiar, become at once curious about that which is new. There should be lots of metal below that meets this criteria, there’s also a little not-metal, though less than initially intended, put that down to cowardice on the author's part. The point of these inclusions is not for the sake of being contrary, but to get across a sense of heavy music as an idea first and a complicated family of genres second - I know you’ll check out the riffs, I hope you’ll check out the rest.
...
Honorable Mentions:
20. Yohualli – Turquoise Stars and Night Skies (Night of the Palemoon, US)
19. Woe – Legacies of Frailty (Vendetta Records, US)
18. Wayfarer – American Gothic (Profound Lore, US)
17. Model/Actriz – Dogsbody (True Panther, US)
16. JPEG Mafia & Danny Brown – SCARING THE HOES (AWAL Recordings America, US)
15. Lamp Of Murmuur – Saturnian Bloodstorm (Argento Records, Netherlands)
14. Body of Light – Bitter Reflection (Dais Records, US)
13. Thantifaxath– Hive Mind Narcosis (Dark Descent, US)
12. Vastum – Inward to Gethsemane (20 Buck Spin, US)
11. Gravesend – Gowanus Death Stomp (20 Buck Spin, US)
...
Was it just us, or did Grime Stone Records jump the shark this year? Increasingly becoming a boutique label for soundtracks to Commodore 64 games about jousting [Editor's Note: There's a market for that!], listeners were forced to look elsewhere for a dose of black metal with renaissance fair sprinkles.
Enter Idaho’s Weald & Woe, who deploy a heaving, hooky interpretation of black metal with a layer of medieval fantasy that nails the actually very tough balancing act of doing service to both, with their ‘medieval’ instrumentation and melodies primarily used to weave a lightness into the otherwise dense brickwork of Weald & Woe’s musical castle. Not to cause a panic, but For The Good of The Realm is the first of several albums in this list that will be described as FUN, in each instance the intention being a compliment.
Listen here.
For those who worship at the altar of the brothers Skarstad, experimentation and heaviness have been an equal part of the sermon for some time, with stylistic shifts typically flowering off into other named projects. Here though is something else, a mainline Yellow Eyes album (another is promised next year) that partially sheds the genre trappings of black metal, and instead invites the listener to lose themselves in a stone sculpted, wicker adorned village of their creation.
Cardinal sin coming up, but with Master’s Murmur Yellow Eyes have created such an interesting sense of place that once familiar with its pacing and structure: try listening to it out of sequence; the album not only survives but thrives through this kind of reinterpretation, new avenues and alleyways opening up each time. It feels like Master’s Murmur has so much substance to give, and many more stories to tell than we’ve yet extracted in our scant time with it.
Listen here.
Mmm, forbidden fruit. Everybody reading this list (and certainly everybody writing it) has a period of a couple of weeks in the summer when all they listen to is Blind Guardian, it’s okay! It’s good! Power metal is such an unusual proposition - complex but cheesy, celebrated but maligned; and an individual’s relationship with the subgenre is often just as multilayered.
As a musical language however, power metal is plainly ripe for experimentation and cross pollination, so when Moonlight Sorcery released this perfectly pitched power/black mashup in the mid year, we all threw ourselves at its feet before we even properly considered what it was, and had an incredible amount of fun doing it.
Listen here.
Youth is often venerated for the wrong reasons, but sometimes creators and bands earlier in their careers enter the room with such zeal and such armfuls of ideas and things to simply try, that you can only smile and be swept along by the energy.
So it was with the self titled full length by Agriculture, who begin with a brew of black metal and stir in contemporary social themes, structures and arrangements culled from classical music, playing the same song twice in succession in a different style! And flaming swords; somehow making all this cohere, and somehow making it feel like it’s over in minutes. They are also the nicest gang in black metal. Everyone fell in love with Agriculture a little bit in 2023, and were right to do so.
Listen here.
As an awful music nerd, one of the rarer, more interesting phenomena of the music world to witness is when an act with basically zero obvious commercial potential just breaks out, thus it was for Mandy, Indiana in 2023.
If you’ve put off listening to their scraping, imploding, industrial decrees because of their seeming ubiquity, get past it, this is some of the most intimidating music released all year, in a scathing, oblique way that other types of music, including metal, rarely achieve.
As a former Manchester resident, it is also cathartic to see success for an act that sounds fuck all like the traditional idea of that city, which is so obsessed and in love with the romance of its own musical legacy that it often threatens to choke on it.
Listen here.
There was a real sense this year that some of the most celebrated acts in the underground had been to a meeting, a bit like the Ents, and decided unilaterally that 2023 was going to be twenty percent more prog than usual - (look no farther than the rest of this list for evidence) and it felt like Tomb Mold were at the absolute forefront of this movement.
If you’ve spent years reveling in the complexity of Tomb Mold’s riffs and beats, it was probably not that much of a surprise to hear them extending that complexity into new territories - arrangement and sound. This is still inarguably Tomb Mold, as soon as Max Klebanoff’s gargle pierces through the opening verse of “The Perfect Memory (Phantasm Of Aura)” that is apparent, but it is Tomb Mold expanded; they have always had one eye to the stars, and now in addition to the alien crust and filth they captured on Planetary Clairvoyance, they’ve captured those other elements of the cosmos - space and light.
Listen here.
Every time the author has seen Spirit Possession play, something has gone wrong - sound and equipment failures, venue management stuff, it feels now almost an integral part of watching the band. What is utterly fantastic about the band’s music, black metal and punk which feels roughly hewn and nailed together, all crunchy surfaces and dreadful sculpture, is that it can withstand all of this and still knock a crowd to the floor.
Of The Sign… is a terrifying step up from Spirit Possession’s debut, it’s the sound of a band confidently realizing ideas they had when they first started to write and rehearse, and its snarling arrogance suggests that they too are fully aware of this.
Listen here.
Ulthar released two albums simultaneously in 2023, Basic Ulthar (Anthronomicon) and Advanced Ulthar (Helionomicon), and the reason (beyond the author’s immutable basic-ness) Anthronomicon stands here is that it contains the pure distilled essence of talented musicians doing two things: being talented and having fun, this album is a blast.
We get a sense of the band looking at one another smiling, struggling to believe they are physically capable of spawning the rhythms and melodies poured forth over the entirety of this album. There is such skill in translating immense complexity into something that can not only be understood but enjoyed by people who are not experts, and on Anthronomicon Ulthar spend 40 minutes doing so unrelentingly.
Listen here.
It seemed as though huge underground acts were announcing, releasing, touring and shadow dropping new music constantly in 2023 in a way that left even less time than usual to spend charting an independent path, scouring for satisfying chunks in the gutters of metal’s fringes. Thank you then, dark forces, for Venusberg Cardinal’s Atlas Of Dungeons. The premise is simple; recorded by members of Departure Chandelier, around the same time as their classic Antichrist Rise To Power, but thematically and musically distinct from that work. Atlas Of Dungeons is fuzzy, punked out black metal that not only sounds the part, but contains songs that ‘explore medieval and ancient tortures’ - which is so incredibly metal that it essentially u-turns and becomes brilliantly fun. Murky, scuzzy production is difficult to do right (look how the Whole Internet has seemingly denounced Këkht Aräkh overnight) but Venusberg Cardinal make it work by keeping the music simple, and letting the mid paced melodies rise up from beneath the static.
Listen here.
For the average KRALLICE listener there has been a point in time that the sentiment around a new release from the band shifted from ‘this is incredible’ to ‘well done’. Never lacking in technical force or musicianship, several of the band’s recent releases have nevertheless failed to hit the same emotional highs as in canonized classics like Years Past Matter.
Porous Resonance Abyss changes this, with its clarity of concept (four part space opera!), of musical impetus, and of form. It would be disingenuous to say this is the first time KRALLICE have incorporated synth parts into their work, but never before have they served such a key melodic purpose, bringing a joyous new voice that first skims across and then plunges into the deep well of musical dark matter that the band is known for. In the relentless hunt for the new and inspiring, sometimes the biggest surprise leaps not out in front of you but from over your shoulder, and this year KRALLICE gave us an album that could only have come from an act with their maturity and confidence.
Listen here.
Invisible Oranges’ Overall Top 20 of 2023
We come to the end of our year-end coverage (browse the rest here) with the traditional list of lists: a mathematical extrapolation of what, apparently, were our favorite records this year. It's an interesting list, and it may hold some surprises or far-too-obvious favorites depending on your perspective. In any case, I've dropped streaming links for each entry below plus some basic info on how these scored.
We haven't changed our approach to scoring, but in summary: an album ranked at #1 gets 20 points, an album ranked at #20 gets 1, and for the one person who decided to list their honorable mentions unranked, we assigned an average of 5.5 points. In the case of a tie, since all ties had the same number of inclusions, we listed both at the higher number.
Included below are our Critical Top 20, including total score, frequency of list inclusion, and average score based on frequency of placement and total score. Enjoy!
-Ted Nubel
1. Tomb Mold - The Enduring Spirit (20 Buck Spin, Canada)
70 points / 6 lists = 11.67 average points.
2. Lamp of Murmuur - Saturnian Bloodstorm (Argento/Not Kvlt Records, USA)
61 points / 6 lists = 10.17 average points.
3. HEALTH - RAT WARS (Loma Vista Recordings, USA)
58 points / 4 lists = 14.5 average points.
4. Katatonia - Sky Void of Stars (Napalm, Sweden)
45 points / 3 lists = 15.0 average points.
5. Miserere Luminis - Ordalie (Sepulchral Productions, Canada)
43 points / 3 lists = 14.33 average points.
6. Spirit Possession – Of the Sign… (Profound Lore, USA)
41 points / 3 lists = 13.67 average points. Note: Two-way tie with Panopticon for #6.
6. Panopticon – The Rime of Memory (Bindrune Recordings, United States)
41 points / 3 lists = 13.67 average points.
8. Dødheimsgard – Black Medium Current (Peaceville, Norway)
40 points / 3 lists = 13.33 average points.
9. Malokarpatan - Vertumnus Caesar (Invictus Productions, Slovakia)
39.5 points / 4 lists = 9.88 average points.
10. Krallice - Porous Resonance Abyss (Self Released)
39 points / 2 lists = 19.5 average points.
11. Vastum – Inward to Gethsemane (20 Buck Spin, US)
38 points / 3 lists = 12.67 average points. Note: Two-way tie with Majesties for #11.
11. Majesties - Vast Reaches Unclaimed (20 Buck Spin, USA)
38 points / 3 lists = 12.67 average points.
13. Moonlight Sorcery - Horned Lord of the Thorned Castle (Avante Garde Music, Italy)
37 points / 4 lists = 9.25 average points.
14. Urfaust - Untergang (Ván Records, Netherlands)
33 points / 2 lists = 16.5 average points. Note: Two-way tie with Thantifaxath for #14
14. Thantifaxath– Hive Mind Narcosis (Dark Descent, US)
33 points / 3 lists = 11.0 average points.
16. Hellripper – Warlocks Grim & Withered Hags (Peaceville, Scotland)
32 points / 3 lists = 10.67 average points. Note: Two-way tie with Agriculture for #16
16. Agriculture - Agriculture (The Flenser, US)
32 points / 3 lists = 10.67 average points.
18. Century - The Conquest of Time (Electric Assault, Sweden)
31 points / 3 lists = 10.33 average points.
19. Gel - Only Constant (Convulse, USA)
30 points / 2 lists = 15.0 average points. Note: Two-way tie with End for #19.
19. End - The Sin of Human Frailty (Closed Casket Activities, USA)
30 points / 2 lists = 15.0 average points.
…