Brandon Corsair's Top Albums of 2023
Another year has come and gone already, damn! Crazy how fast it’s gone by–feels like only yesterday that I was writing my list for 2022 and struggling about what to include in it, but it also feels like it’s been far longer. Does that make sense? Are we on the same page here about the flow of time?
This year was weird for me. Without opening up too much about my personal life to a bunch of strangers who like heavy metal enough to read my list, I had some personal stuff going on that made me miss a lot of the year (and not just with regards to new music)—maybe five months of it, actually—and though I’ve been catching up, it means my normal pool that I’d draw from is seriously limited. Some albums that are on here probably would be ranked a lot higher if I’d been able to spend more time with them, and other ones aren’t here at all but probably would be in a normal year just because of that missing time.
Really sucks but hey, my editor gave me a deadline, so I guess we’re just going to have to live with it. [Editor's note: Deadlines build character!] Albums that in particular I feel like were really slighted by this include the new Malokarpatan, Mortuary Drape, Excarnated Entity, Cruciamentum, Hellwitch, Wytch Hazel, Cirith Ungol (though that one is really Metal Blade’s fault for not shipping out my diehard on time–c’mon guys, how the hell did it take so long to get it?) and a few others that I listened to but didn’t get to really absorb. I haven’t even had a chance to hit some stuff that I feel would be obvious inclusions given the bands’ track records and my own tastes–see: Varathron, Witchtower, High Spirits, Meurtrières, Voltax, Freeroad, Tomb Mold, Left Cross… it just goes on and on.
Since this list is just going to be focused on full-lengths, I want to give some quick shoutouts to EPs and demos that really impressed me before we get started. The new Savage Oath mini-LP is my clear debut short-length of the year, and I am listening to it as I type this up. I am just beside myself with excitement for their first full-length that’s slated for sometime next year. Tales of Medusa’s new demo is absolutely insanely good, and the debut Dolmen Gate demo is incredible as well.
Amethyst are off to a fantastic start with Rock Knights, and the Hemorrhoid demo is killer. I haven’t hit it yet (figured I’d grab a copy blind at Never Surrender and then spent most of the weekend sick in my hostel, so I never got around to buying it!) but I can’t wait to try out the new StarGazer EP. The new Puriel demo rules, and you should grab it if you like melodic black metal. Mournful Congregation did two different EPs this year that you should pick up. Short lengths are alive and well, and Invisible Oranges should let me write a separate album of the year list just about those–but since I’m not doing that, just listen to all the stuff I just mentioned if you’re not a coward.
As with every year I am not going to include anything that I released on my record label on any format (including an extraordinarily close contender for my number-one slot, the new Helms Deep album– hot mama, is that some good stuff) or anything that a bandmate played on, so if you’re wondering why an obvious shoe-in like the new Vastum isn’t on my list, well, maybe that’s why. Maybe your obvious shoe-in just sucks. Could be either. I am alI also pretty lazy, so if I already wrote about a release earlier this year I am not going to do it again and will just link that article instead with a very short blurb.
My honorable mentions section is basically totally unordered other than being alphabetical by band. It’s just favorites that for whatever reason aren’t in my top 10, be that a lack of proper listening (SEE ABOVE) or not liking them quite as much as the top 10, but still loving them.
Without further ado, let’s get to it!
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Honorable Mentions:
Autopsy – Ashes, Organs, Blood and Crypts (Peaceville Records, USA)
Cirith Ungol – Dark Parade (Metal Blade, USA)
Cruciamentum – Obsidian Refractions (Profound Lore, International)
Excarnated Entity – Mass Grave Horizon (Nuclear Winter Records, USA)
Hellwitch – Annihilational Intercention (Listenable Records, USA)
Malleus – The Fires of Heaven (Armageddon Label, USA)
Malokarpatan – Vertumnus Caesar (Invictus, Slovakia)
Mortuary Drape – Black Mirror (Peaceville Records, Italy)
Raven – All Hell’s Breaking Loose (Silver Lining Music, USA)
Rope – Rope (Independent, USA)
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It was exceedingly obvious to me from the second I saw the announcement that this album was going to be great just based on Tanner Anderson (Obsequiae) being involved. Tanner has been a vocal proponent in the past of old 1990s melodic death metal of the riffy variety (AKA the only type I care about) and one of his biggest stated influences in Obsequiae is Fall of the Leafe’s first record, so it felt like a no brainer that his new band playing melodic death metal would be great- and hey, shocker, here it is in my AOTY list. Shocker!
Laden with obvious references to our favorite In Flames and At The Gates songs, it’s easy to see why some fans would dismiss this album as worship and move on- but it’s certainly not. It feels like a lost album from back in the day in the best possible of ways, and like the continuation of that scene I always wished had happened rather than the reality of uninspired metalcore and power metal with growls that we got. Fans of old melodeath rejoice, for Majesties is here.
Listen here.
Russ Tippins knows how to write a catchy song and a cool riff and everyone knows it, so more Tanith was of course very welcome news. The resulting album is even better than I thought it’d be, though–dense and creative in a way that not only was I blindsided by coming from the more straightforwardly catchy debut album, but grippingly adventurous and creative with an energy that defies Tippins’ age. The dude is a genius, and this album is the result—certainly less immediate than In Another Time was, but even more rewarding, and still just as stuck in the 1970s as I could ever want.
Voyage is a perfect intersection of stellar musicianship, songwriting ambition, long experience, and an obsession with, if you’ll forgive the pun, another time, all coming together in a way I doubt another songwriter could have pulled off. Definitely an album that I think I will continue to like more and more with each passing year rather than one I’ll look back on and go “yeah, that definitely deserved to be #8.”
Listen here.
A band that have to be seen live to really be understood, Spirit Possession are the result of one maniac master musician, Steve Peacock, possibly the only guy in the entire black metal scene talented enough to pull off one man black metal with LIVE DRUMS at a gig (JUST LOOK AT THIS FUCKING CRAZY SHIT)–apparently deciding that his other bands didn’t adequately showcase his devotion to old school black metal.
Of the Sign…, the band’s second record, showcases the same affection for Negative Plane and for frenetic fingerpicked guitar (that’s right, motherfuckers, Steve doesn’t need a pick to shred- seriously, catch them live if you can, it’s mesmerizing) as the debut but rather than leaning as far into the more aggressive side of his influences, he hits something a bit more heroic, adding in more bits of psychedelia and heavy metal to make something truly unique.
Listen here.
I find it deeply offensive that none of the obvious suspects have snapped this band up for a full-package record release (and that my own label partner didn’t like it, thus barring me from offering myself), because Blood Python are absolutely amazing. There are some strange as hell iconoclastic records on this end of year list, but none of them match Blood Python for sheer uniqueness of sound, to the point that it’s sort of hard to even really describe Thunder City.
What if Eternal Champion really wanted to go all in on their synth influences, but didn’t own any synths, could only rent them for 20 second intervals, and were really into atmospheric black metal? What if Ghost were huge fans of 1940s pulp magazine stories and needed a few Manowar riffs per song? What if Warlord was really, really into film score soundscapes and Blade Runner?
If you think you have any idea what you’re getting into from what I just described, I promise, you absolutely don’t—but I bet once you give Thunder City a listen, you’ll be like, yeah, fair enough, buddy. It’s all of those things. It’s none of those things. I am absolutely obsessed.
Listen here.
When I was describing Power Castle, a band he’d recommended to me, to Vision Master drummer/bassist Reuben Storey, I said something to the general vein of “weirdo charisma metal.” That very easily could have been aimed at Reuben’s own band though and strikes me as the quickest way to convincingly talk about Sceptre, so Power Castle will have to forgive me for appropriating that for use a second time.
Falling somewhere between the fanatically off-kilter neuroticism of The Lord Weird Slough Feg’s most out-there songs, a tough sneer that feels like that of a hard-bitten gumshoe in a neo-noire spaceport courtesy of vocalist/guitarist Dan Munro (who played some years ago in a great defunct death metal band called Funerot with Storey), and a hard rockingness seemingly inherent to the entire tiny-but-dedicated Olympia heavy metal scene, Vision Master makes music that doesn’t fall into a lot of the same boring traps plaguing other modern heavy metal bands.
It’s catchy without being cheesy, cheesy without being saccharine, and gloriously familiar without being sappily nostalgic; this is one of those albums that only genuine rocking heavy metal fiends could possibly make, and though its general air of bizarre DIY bar rock is sure to prevent Vision Master from being a hit with fairweather great-tenor-and-clean-production-or-else fans, it also makes it stand out in the crowded field that is modern heavy metal. This is a welcome breath of fresh air and an absolutely killer record- buy it or pose forever.
Listen here.
Chaotic death metal is almost impossible to pull off for most bands. On top of the inherently high musicianship required to do it- frankly, already an insurmountable barrier for quite a bit of the current scene—There needs to be a level of songwriting acumen far beyond that required to grunt and make Tom Warrior noises (which, don’t get me wrong, is one of my favorite things, and is not something I am categorically knocking) to keep songs from blending together, as well as the good sense to toss in enough variety and hooks for listeners to actually latch on. Even after getting that far, the production needs to be clear enough to understand what’s going on, but not so clean as to suck away the power that this already unlikely combination of elements has collided to create.
Ascended Dead managed it once with Abhorrent Manifestation, and it brought them enough notoriety on the world stage to tour with Merciless, play festivals around the world, and to piss off fans that wanted another new album right away, so it was with bated breath that we all gave Evenfall of the Apocalypse a shot. Thankfully, it not only totally lives up (and then some) to their debut but also manages to alter a very finicky formula in a way that leaves them sounding like Ascended Dead but makes the two records stand very much apart, a feat I hadn’t thought likely going in for the first time to Evenfall of the Apocalypse. The most easily explainable takeaway is a massive influx of melodicism and influence from Molested, adding to the swirling insanity of their sound and expanding on it, going from something relatively narrow and angular to something that’s more of a storm than a single vortex: punishing, proud, and very much stylistically singular in a world of thick downtuning and mid-paced riffing.
Listen here.
I’m getting tired and close to my editorial deadline on this one, so thank God, The Honorable Reverend, and Brother Jeffrey that I already interviewed this band and covered this album so I don’t have to write something new for it! Praise be the glory that set me free of all the demons of journalism that have been pulling at me!
Read the interview here.
Listen here.
To put it simply, this is an album for the ages—a modern classic that we will all still be listening to in ten or 20 years that I very strongly believe will stand the test of time in a way that very few albums do. This is power metal of the highest echelon, and easily my favorite album in its style in the last 10 or 15 years, perfectly hitting the same mark that 1990s albums from Blind Guardian or Virgin Steele (my favorite period of glossy power metal) hit for me with aplomb without repeating any particular band enough for it to feel stale. Riffs for days, a godly vocal performance from Daniel Heiman, great musicianship all around, and incredibly rewarding songwriting all come together here to form something genuinely special. This may not appeal to people less into this side of power metal, and that’s fine- but if you see those comparisons and are intrigued, don’t hesitate, just throw on Towers of Gold and let yourself get carried away.
Listen here.
I said that I’m not going to write here about an album I already covered elsewhere, but I’m going to break that a bit for this one because it’s both a very special album and topping this list—I feel I owe it to the LP to give some more than I might otherwise. If you want to skip the following writeup, just check out this interview instead. Otherwise read on.
The other weekend I was trapped in a hostel room in Berlin, too sick to go party and not too sick to listen to music, listening to Smoulder albums on a loop as I laid miserably in the top bunk of the first bunk bed I’d slept in since I was a kid. The experience really gave me some much-needed time to really reflect on what it is about Smoulder that speaks to me so deeply, and it was in hindsight thinking about how comforting Violent Creed of Vengeance was in my time of need that I decided that this is my album of the year.
Gloriously triumphant, recklessly confident, fearlessly and dangerously nerdy, loudly competent, destructively powerful—Violent Creed of Vengeance is an album that accomplishes a lot in a relatively short time, and Smoulder are a band that merges a lot of disparate elements with the level of enviable ability that has rapidly propelled them so far and so fast. Smoulder are a band that can tease me with extremely-specific lyrics about Moorcock novels in a way that even Blind Guardian wouldn’t have dared (preferring largely simpler lyrics to aim at maximum catchiness instead, which… you know, fair enough) while also handily navigating deceptively clever songwriting, ripping riffs and melodies that stay in my head for days, songs that manage to dance between speed and doom without feeling ever out of place, and creating a very unique sound that is instantly identifiable despite how the band loudly proclaim their influences whenever given half an opportunity.
There are certainly albums from this year that have more “wow” factor than Smoulder’s do; there are albums that have unworldly shredding, vocal performances that’d make the statue from Larmes de héros cry from both eyes instead of just the one, arrangements that boggle the mind with their complexity, and choruses that latch in the brain like an unwashed touring musician onto the first available bed and shower they see two weeks into a tough run. A lot of the albums are on this list. None of them touched me in the way Violent Creed of Vengeance does. It’s an album that could have been written directly to try and get me to fall in love with it. That’s exactly what I did.
Listen here.
