Steve Lampiris's Top Albums of 2023

Obituary’s excellent eleventh album, and first since 2017’s self-titled, offers nothing new or inventive—in other words, the way it’s s’posed to be. Obituary have spent four decades playing a minimalist brand of boogie-esque death metal, and it works for them. Ain’t broke ’n all that. 

Tidy songwriting with economical riffing continues to be their North Star, proving that well-written and tightly-played material works every time. Indeed, a handful of these songs (“The Wrong Time,” the title track, and “Torn Apart”) can stand next to their best ever. Meanwhile, one of the best sounds in death metal—the Frankenstein’s monster-esque growl of John Tardy—hasn’t aged a day, and you’re forced to believe him when he snarls that “I’ll take you to war” and that “You’ll find your only choice is death.” Beyond that, Tardy’s delivery proves that the scariest shit on Earth can be time, hate, and insanity, confirming that the true horror of existence can sometimes be life itself.

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Much like the New Zealand quintet’s previous album, 2021’s Nightmare Withdrawals, their marvelous fourth offering is a purposefully difficult listen. 

Patience is required to appreciate their brand of avant garde tech-death. You’ll need a handful of listens before it starts to make (any) sense, because there’s some seriously high-level thinking going on here. The tasteful songwriting and playing aren’t done in a pretentious or conspicuous way, however, so you’re not made to feel stupid for not understanding all of it. Crushing heaviness often slams into aching beauty—like finding a rose in the middle of a hurricane—as on the challenging yet gratifying journeys of “Cicada” and “The Waves.” Even the solos are fascinatingly strange—the one from “Hands of Contrition,” for example, sounds like a Slayer solo being strangled by a psychotic lover. 

Rejecting Obliteration is a record of contradiction: it’s beautiful and ugly; it’s inviting but distancing, it’s extreme music made with delicate care. After six-plus months, I’m not sure I get all of it. And that’s OK because albums like this always offer something new to discover on the next spin.

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The decade between Man Must Die’s last record, Peace Was Never An Option, and this one didn’t dull or diminish the ferocity of the Scottish quintet’s grindy tech-death. For The Pain Behind It All, the band dials back the hyperspeed steamrolling and proggy songwriting of Peace for a streamlined and gnarlier mode. Here, they seamlessly weave groove metal (the title track, “In the Hour Before Your Death”), metalcore/NHOAHM (“Enabler”), and thrash (“War Is My Will”) into their sonic attack. This allows longtime vocalist Joe McGlynn to spleen-vent the anger, bitterness, and paranoia that’s built up for ten years: “Out of touch and left behind,” he seethes, “The skin I wear, it clings too tight.”

 And while McGylnn’s free swing at religion (“We spend our lives afraid / Confide in fairytale faith / We seek patterns in the chaos / You don’t want the truth”) may initially scan as stale, it’s an unfortunately succinct summation of our current politics. The Pain is probably the angriest album I heard this year, which is to say: this is the best workout music of 2023.

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As I said in April, Raider are the “the middle ground between DevilDriver and The Black Dahlia Murder.” It’s a nasty combination of melodeath and groove metal—call it “melo-groove,” I guess. There’s no wheel-reinventing going on here. There is, however, tight songwriting with clever arrangements—e.g., the neat tumbling drum fills during the chorus of “New Dominion” that mimic the crumbling of society—which elevates Trial by Chaos beyond just another galloping melodeath record. (Example: the neat tumbling drum fills during the chorus of “New Dominion” mimic the crumbling of society.) 

If our destruction by technology, as the album discusses and catalogs, is imminent, and our future is enslavement by technology via misinformation that’s filled with “violent paranoia flooding through [our] dreams,” at least these dudes made it sound really fucking cool.

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Vocalist Trevor Phipps spends Unearth’s eighth full-length breathing fire over the impending (self-)destruction of humanity via climate change, nuclear weapons, and famine, and he’s blisteringly honest about it: We’re “smashing past the tipping point;” we’re diving to our death; we’re dancing with atomic bombs, etc. Funny thing is, these are precise descriptions of both The Wretched; The Ruinous in specific and Unearth in general. 

Indeed, the band write and play with more focus and confidence than on anything they’ve done since 2008’s The March, so the record’s intensity burns with the “radiance of a thousand suns.” Hitting your peak a quarter century into your career takes dedication, perseverance, and conviction, and all of those are on impressive display. Or, as Phipps puts it: “I won’t turn my back on my own / Never give in, never retreat, never kneel.”

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The third and best full-length from Hellripper finds James McBain, the multi-instrumentalist behind the cocaine-giddy solo project, opening at peak capacity. Since the project’s inception, McBain’s goal seems to be perfecting a blackened version of Kill ’Em All. Hellripper’s first two outings, 2017’s Coagulating Darkness and 2020’s The Affair of the Poisons, used “Motorbreath” and “Hit the Lights” as songwriting guides. This time, a supremely confident McBain expands into progressive territory, using “No Remorse” and “Four Horsemen” as touchstones, instead. 

Warlocks Grim & Withered Hags is chock-full of neat and satisfying riffs, flashy leads, and shit-hot soloing, making its 43-minute runtime sprint by. Lyrically, McBain’s still mining familiar evil—Satan, witches, cursed offspring—but his writing has sharpened, offering striking imagery like, “Prayers roam skyward, my cross held high / Claws swing violently like bloody scythes / Black blood courses through yellow veins / Unforgiving is the curse of fate.” If Coagulating was McBain calling upon Hell, and The Affair was him asking for its gates opened, then Warlocks is what happens when those “horned tormentors, frothing and foul” storm through.

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Cattle Decapitation, 2019: “Bring back the plague.” Welp, they certainly got their wish. On the San Diego quintet’s eighth album, Terrasite, however, it seems they’re disappointed with the results. Having an entire record where vocalist and lyricist Travis Ryan channels Agent Smith—“We are infections / We are pathogens”—would be a real downer if not for his pithy, hyperliterate criticism (“The most insidious species that’s capable of sentience”) and pitch-black humor (“Welcome to a new world / This, the new mundane, our physical plane / That rewards the constant smoothing of the human brain”). 

In addition to being among the best writers in extreme music, he’s also among its best vocalists, continuing to find new ways to contort his phlegmy gremlin-growl into grotesque shapes and sounds, making clever sing-songy melodies beautifully ugly. Meanwhile, the musicianship is as dazzling as it’s ever been, and the band’s still capable of playing at lightspeed with clock-precise pivots at any moment. Is it selfish to hope humanity doesn’t learn from its mistakes, just so Cattle Decap can continue making music this fucking good?

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After three-plus decades, Ed Simons’ and Tom Rowlands’ ability to bend and mold their electronica weirdness into infinitely danceable pop music is still a goddamn magic trick. On For that Beautiful Feeling, the duo’s tenth album as The Chemical Brothers and first since the C-word, the songs are a bit more insular and tentative because…well, you know why. The album’s production has a nervous vibrancy to it, and they paint it in hazy pastels, mirroring the uncertain optimism of the post-pandemic era. 

There’s still jubilation to their music—there always will be, natch—but here it’s expressed as pent-up energy from being stuck inside and alone. The record pulses and buzzes and chirps, like a beacon in the abyss guiding you away from despair and towards hope. Perhaps the Caroline Ellis sample sums it up best: “Let your heart see the colors all around you / And the darkness that you fear will disappear.”

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This insanely enjoyable debut LP from this insanely stacked side project—Allegaeon guitarist Greg Burgess combined with Havok’s rhythm section of bassist Nick Schendzielos and drummer Pete Webber—is the balm for the apathy and anger and nihilism of the last few years, its absurdist humor a refreshing summer breeze. Burgess’ continues to write stellar riffs and leads that are somehow techy and catchy; Schendzielos’ basslines are the warm, gooey center; and Webber’s still among the most inventive drummers in metal—indeed, this is a career peak for him. While there’s superb and flashy musicianship throughout, room is always left for the songs to breathe and for melodies to shine through. The neon-drenched, coke-dusted synths were a smart addition, allowing another delivery system for gleaming hooks. Wet Ass Plutonium is the most entertaining record I heard this year, and it’s not even close.

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This sludgy, burly monstrosity was love at first listen back in March. I was instantly addicted. At the end of each successive listen, I had the same reaction: “It’s over already?” The Flight After the Fall is (still) a stunning and stunningly cohesive work. Don’t let the song lengths intimidate you, though. Every song has a satisfying beginning, middle, and end, both internally and relative to the record as a whole, demonstrating the band’s expertise at structure and arrangement. It’s an impressive feat to make a handful of seven- and eight-minute songs fly by, and it’s even more so with a sixteen-minute closer. (A sign of a truly great album: the longest song is its most rewarding.) 

And then there’s the ambitious, bonkers sci-fi story regarding wormholes and lost love that, like all good fiction, contains relatable images and feelings like “Grinding my teeth, scratching my sleeves / Sedatives coursing, can’t even sleep / Walls closing in.” In April, I said The Flight was “my gold standard for 2023 until proven otherwise.” That didn’t change over the course of the next eight months, and the explanation of why is simple: this is the pinnacle of metal in 2023.

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