Colin Williams' Top Albums of 2023

Torpor seized my attention several years ago with Rhetoric of the Image by using methodical post-doom to sculpt a sheer cliff of sound, and in the intervening four years, that cliff has only risen. Abscission finds the London three-piece circumscribing the edges of an abyss of grief with towering riffs and rich basslines. Augmenting these more brutal touches with bits of spoken and clean vocals only heightens the effect—Abscission, like other records on this list, is brimming with emotion and warmth despite its cataclysmic scale.

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For a solo project, Ushangvagush convey a remarkable amount of grandiosity. Pestmo’qon (“starvation” in the Mi’kmaq language) is raw black metal at its core, but songwriter and multi instrumentalist D. has turned those basic ingredients into a layer cake of contemplative music that draws from a deep well of Indigenous suffering to sculpt a picture of the present. Part I is all fire and fury, but Part II is much more sentimental, intermixing as it does darkness and light. The range of this sophomore release has me excited to see what’s next for this mysterious Bostonian.

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Afterbirth have gone fully beyond the fourth dimension of death metal, as I covered earlier this year. While past releases showed flashes of the genre-defying brilliance that characterizes In But Not Of, their latest is packed with such moments. The record sees Afterbirth fully inhabiting their hallucinogenic side, with more frequent excursions into instrumental sections and spacy ambience, but their underlying death metal transmissions come through loud and clear nonetheless. Like Voyager II, it will be interesting to see what else they discover as the Long Islanders venture further beyond what’s already known.
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Master’s Murmur is apparently a semimetal preview of what’s to come from the band next year, yet the fact that this hypnotic, synth-driven record stands so well on its own is a testament to Yellow Eyes’ artistic prowess. Ritualistic, moody, and by turns sparse and glimmering, the New Yorkers’ “sinister industrial folk” is wholly in keeping with the band’s repurposing of black metal for their own esoteric ends (Burzum could never). These songs don’t need to be 20 minutes long to be simultaneously somber and ecstatic, as tracks like “Winter Is Looking” demonstrate. Yellow Eyes have set a high bar for themselves ahead of 2024’s metal full-length, but if it’s of a piece with Master’s Murmur, it’ll probably be on my list next year.

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Agriculture delivered on the promise of The Circle Chant and then some with their self-titled Flenser debut. Functioning less like a traditional album and more like a chamber-music suite, the Los Angeles four-piece effortlessly shift between moments of earnest folksiness and some of the most blistering black metal of the year. I liked The Circle Chant well enough, but I fell hard for this record the first time “The Well” spilled into “Look” in my headphones. I, too, can now say, “I love the spiritual sound of ecstatic black metal by the band Agriculture.” If you told me five years ago that Los Angeles would soon be home to some of the most forward-thinking black metal around, I wouldn’t have believed you, but here we are.

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I’ve been experiencing the blissful suffering of Vastum’s music since demo Carnal Law, but Inward to Gethsemane just might be the band’s best effort to date, which is truly something given their discography. Leila Abdul-Rauf and Daniel Butler’s dueling vocal approach is more balanced and sinister than ever, the songwriting is impeccable, and the band have found their way to some very dark lyrical places indeed with their infusion of theological elements, as I discussed with the band last month. Amid a contemporary abundance of gross, envelope-pushing death metal, Vastum have always been a force to reckon with. Inward to Gethsemane makes a strong case for them as the hardest-hitting “old-school” death metal band around and one of the best metal bands working, period.

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Being prolific can be a blessing and a curse. Sometimes, constant artistic output can drown out individual works; other times, there are misfires. Yet Full of Hell seem always to have held themselves to a high standard whatever the project. Ever the open-minded collaborators, their recent LP with Philly shoegaze nihilists Nothing, When No Birds Sang, arrived just in time for list season—and just in time to soundtrack the emotional raggedness of a long year.

Part of why this record works so well is that, in theory, it shouldn’t. Full of Hell are perhaps best known for whiplash-inducing grindcore, while Nothing are purveyors of rock that sounds like a pleasant ketamine trip in unpleasant surroundings. But, as ever, Full of Hell have proven their versatility, and the two bands meet perfectly in the middle. The record is equal parts gauzy beauty and keening rage and uses every second to wrap listeners in itself. I imagine this is what it feels like to walk into the black goo in Under the Skin, the object of your desire just beyond reach.

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Dormant since 2009, Miserere Luminis reemerged this summer with Ordalie, a pathos-driven black metal record that is as musically exquisite as it is soul-rending. Piercing guitars wheel above undulating bass and immaculate drumming, with all of it held in place by Annatar’s scorching vocal delivery. It’s a breathtaking album with tracks that both cohere and stand on their own—I sometimes listen to “La felure des anges” just for the ride clinks, but Ordalie is a rewarding listen no matter how you do it and gripping enough for back-to-back, goosebump-inducing listens.

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Sprain called it quits in somewhat hilarious fashion this year shortly after releasing one of 2023’s most challenging listens. As with other records here, particularly my number one pick below, Sprain set themselves apart with a head-on approach to the psyche, but in this case that head feels like it went through plate glass and then rolled around in the shards.

The Lamb As Effigy proved divisive on its release and for good reason. Its constituent songs run the gamut from heartbroken, maudlin of the Well-style musings to outrageous noise. This, I would argue, perfectly serves what Sprain did for my ears: run through the entire spectrum of negative human emotions with astounding accuracy. If Khanate perfectly channeled physical pain this year, Sprain did the same for emotional pain, and apparently that was their final word on the matter.

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From the opening sample of Saint-Saëns to the final dissipating chords, Siege of Self finds Bandit plunging headlong into a musical distillation of personal crisis. This is grindcore at its most punishing. Like EP Warsaw, Siege of Self is also that much more devastating for its unflinching intimacy and raw, vulnerable lyrics.

As someone who has struggled with mental health for eons, Siege of Self is highly relatable. This was far and away my most-listened-to record of 2023. Early spins felt like a combination of reading my own embarrassing diary entries and watching a friend have a nervous breakdown. That I kept going back for more is a testament to the ways Bandit made this experience almost fun (something mirrored in their gonzo live show). In essence, Bandit’s evolving songwriting and kickass riffs ultimately serve the purpose of making me not feel so alone—and isn’t that what music is all about, after all?

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