Ted Nubel's Top Albums of 2023

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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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