Metalligator’s Favorite Albums of 2023

I am always hungry for Carcass. When the genre greats have not released anything in a long time, what is a famished music cannibal to do? Luckily, Exhumed have us covered, with some extra helpings of the brutal side of death metal to go. This EP cuts in quickly and drapes the floor with its dirty grooves and winding riffs. Live tracks tacked on an EP are always take it or leave it, but the main course satisfies plenty.

The end of The Dillinger Escape Plan as a band was a bitter pill to swallow. Yet here Greg Puciato is back at it with musicians from Every Time I Die and Fit For An Autopsy. And it sounds somewhat like DEP to boot! I can't lie, even though I hope this project eventually finds its own style (the thrashy drums already feel like a departure from DEP), it's a blast to hear Puciato in his element again. I was not overly fond of his solo projects and felt worried that his creativity was lost with DEP. Not so, as here he sounds as animated as ever.

Before knowing what to even expect from Sarmat, Dubious Disk showed up like an enigma. Supposedly an improvised version of one of the songs on their upcoming album, it turned out that it is actually a clever shitpost and excellent musical adventure all in one. Taking a battle theme from one of the Pokemon games and letting jazz and metal musicians have at it without labelling it as such is a stroke of genius. And the joy of it all is evident as the original composition just shines when performed by these talented musicians. Don't miss these seventeen and half minutes of absolute bonkers fun. The best EP I have heard in years.

Fun in music is a complicated subject. Straight up humor often trumps writing and flow in a way that chops up a piece of music's function. King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard nimbly dodge this trap by channeling the fun in the energy they bring to their music. The absurd premises of their songs let the music shine, unhindered. As a band, their wham-bam-done approach to writing and recording produces a lot of failed experiments, but sometimes lightning strikes. PeteroDragonic is one such case. Essentially a heavy metal album, there are enough shades of grunge, thrash drumming, and progressive rock groove to make this release stand out. I'll make this pitch easy on you. Want to hear heavy metal songs about giant lizards eating witches and growing until they get big enough to destroy planet Earth? Jump right in.

Nightmarer have made a tight and warm sounding album this time around, where the production serves the whole. Later in the year they even offered us a way to observe this by releasing a redone version of the album which showed how much of a difference production really makes. Deformity Adrift is a curious work that sounds like a groove obsessed version of Ulcerate, while leaning on palm-muted riffs to give the songs teeth. It is a death metal album that is smooth and easy to listen to, not aiming for dissonant discomfort but rather to create the grand sounding pulse of a moving machine. The music takes on an industrial character in this way, without actually adhering to genre rules. The tight grooves are sure to appeal to any death metal fan.

The murky depths of The Approaching Roar felt compelling enough to land it in the middle of my list in 2019. Altarage felt inscrutable, offering plenty of curveball ways to twist a song without telegraphing their direction. Two unfortunately meandering albums later, Altarage finally find their footing again with Worst Case Scenario, an album that takes a more grindcore approach to what worked on The Approaching Roar, yet uses their forays into drone and ambient to add the correct amount of seasoning to the album. The result is a progressive death metal album that buzzes, hits hard and pulls you into that maelstrom of noise once again.

If you trained an algorithm on nothing but Cynic albums for years and then showed it a Haken album and asked it to write an original album in that style, you might get something like The Kvlt of Glitch. The mix of progressive metal and EBM industrial hesitates and strikes out like a computer trying to mimic human speech, but Vvon Dogma I reveal themselves in their adherence to groove and a decidedly soft, human production and instrumentation. The result is an album which starts and stops, twists and turns with grooves pulling your way through it. Progressive metal has made a pastiche of itself in recent years. Thankfully, VVon Dogma I prefer to party alone.

Lately, I am a casual enjoyer of slam. The genre's low brow image and feel appeals to my reptilian brain, yet I would be hard pressed to call most slam "good" in the traditional sense. Creative or progressive slam sounds like a contradiction, but 7H. Target shove their middle finger at that opinion. Enormous slamming grooves trade blows with progressive and melodic guitar leads. Songs with folk music instruments and chanted mantras float over the surface of a grumbling electric guitar. Yantra Creating is, despite the Buddhist gimmick, a weird album that dances to its own tune. Brutal death metal and slam tend to be very hit-and-miss, but some progressively minded bands have managed to find unique expressions. Logistic Slaughter come to mind, and so will 7H. Target from now on.

I only had a cursory knowledge of Shining apart from having heard and liked V: Halmstad before. But, in trudging through their discography when reviewing their self-titled album, I have a newfound appreciation of the band's creative ups and downs and their life-or-death approach to progressive metal. They are like the musical version of Lars Von Trier's Melancholia, a constant feeling that the world is ending in any moment. The dark and severe message the band peddles is perfectly echoed in the music, and this is what gives it its allure. No stranger to despairing depression in my early years, there is something that rings very true about the music itself. Albums like V: Halmstad and VII: Född Förlorare are masterpieces in this regard. The later made me realize that the band excel when they strike a balance between the dominance of oppressive black metal, and the soft progressive rock, and classical influences. This album uses calmer moments to make the lyrics hit home, and also features dirges that drape a layer of doom across its surface. It reaches far in this regard, with a focus on the coming end of life as seen from older eyes that have never quite found a way to live other than just merely existing. "What remains from years of temporary decisions", indeed.

I am not a Tomb Mold fan. Most parts of the old school death metal revival flow gracefully (brutally?) over my head. I have been told that Tomb Mold are at the tip of the spear for this modern resurgence and I would not believe it until now. The progressive nature of The Enduring Spirit took me by surprise. This is not the strict adherence to the greats of old that I see in bands like Horrendous, and indeed in past Tomb Mold albums. This is something new, something truly progressive. Part of what makes The Enduring Spirit tick for me is the lean into something my colleague and I have dubbed relaxing death metal, RXDM for short. Bands like Sweven, Golden Spire and Afterbirth try to combine relaxing sounding progressive rock or jazz with the meat-headed grooves and pummelling of death metal. The melodies lull one into chill appreciation of ethereal moods and soaring lead guitar before the drums massage with knuckle duster-fists. I find that Tomb Mold have somehow produced death metal that is nice to have sitting in the background, without that being meant as an insult. Yet, should you choose to listen closely you will be rewarded with complex songs that are far from easy to parse.

At the face of it, combining sludge and grunge should be a no-brainer, yet Desiderium took me completely by surprise. The heavy groove of massive sludge riffs support perfectly Justin Sherrell's unshaved voice and skillful, drawling refrains. It is the peanut butter-chocolate combo I did not know I needed, making it the second chorus-heavy album I'm enjoying this year. With music like this, the mix of sounds ratio is important, and I think that Somnuri handles that well, even if I would have preferred a slight additional tip towards the sludge. This is the other album on my list that I find to be a tad loud in production as well. But what ties it all together and makes it work like a charm is the downcast existential vibe to the vocals. While vocals are key here, the lead guitar nimbly shifts between heavy metal swagger and some downtrodden tones in songs like "Hollow Visions" and "The Way out". Serving as a sort of palate cleanser between the more complex and intense albums I've drifted towards this year, Desiderium taps into a kind of depressive expression I can't get enough of whenever it rings true.

Gridlink don't fuck around despite being absent for nine years. If you want a shot of adrenaline fueled grindcore this is your best bet in 2023. Coronet Juniper jumps for your throat from the start and does not let go until it's done. There is a good helping of melodic death metal injected into the formula this time around, but amazingly the album loses none of its intensity for it. When Alice and I reviewed this previously, my main sore point with the album was the production. In short, it is fucking loud. While it is still so, Coronet Juniper is compelling in its ferocity and well worth engaging with. And the vinyl mix offers a better way to hear the details. like the mournful violin at the end of "Ocean Vertigo" that displays an apt hand at injecting just the right amount of melody to add flair to the train constantly going off the rails. Gridlink still hugely appeal to the most primal desires genres like grindcore and metal go for. This is none more apparent than with the howling madman Jon Chang as he sounds vicious on this release, his drawn out screams in songs like "Pitch Black Resolve" being a highlight. Over faster than I had the time to finish this blurb, look no further than Coronet Juniper if you need a forceful kick to your ass.

Rather than being jazz-influenced death metal, Determined to Strike often feels like it is both at the same time. This is the most chaotic album on my list and both genres contribute amply to that impression. The album is very avant-garde in this way, producing something I am not used to hearing in death metal. At 35 minutes it is no doubt one of the most challenging works I have heard this year and probably won't appeal to everyone. Still, Sarmat gives me a lot of Voivod vibes, from the album cover to the odd phrasing of riffs and sense of uplifting fun – the music feels like it is produced by people wearing a constant grin on their faces. With members from Imperial Triumphant and Artificial Brain making up Sarmat, that expression comes as no surprise, same with the quality of the performances. I am particularly glad to see bands like this start to show up in I, Voidhanger's roster, leading the way with experimentation that feels meaningful. The New York death metal scene seems to be the gift that keeps on giving, and a new leg has sprung forth from its morbid appreciation of jazz.

Most of the time when a black metal band suggests that they make atmospheric music, this is just an excuse for poor songwriting, expecting the listener to fill in the blank that occurs with the endless tremolos and shitty production. But what if a band would actually use production as another instrument instead of a way of hiding their flaws? On Formløse Stjerner, Tongues do exactly that. The waterlogged drums produce a humid mist for the guitars to cleave through with their laments. The expression is anxious, dour, and rain-soaked in a way that makes the songs hit harder, producing the second best black metal album I have heard this year. Of course, production is not all Tongues have going for them. A good helping of psychedelic rock and the odd death metal freakout show that they don't stay in the same spot for long. This is the most clear grower of the bunch in 2023, as when I started listening to the promo copy I could instantly hear that there was something special about it, but it took me a good three months before the full extent of the album sank in. As the latter half of Formløse Stjerner steers into dirge territory, it ends on a hugely impactful note as the music is pulled under the waves, and I always sit in awe at how this band plays with sound.

This list entry is both a statement of quality and a sort of mea culpa. When I first heard and reviewed Blossom, I had a knee-jerk reaction to its pop leaning aspect that made me gloss over how nasty it actually is. But it stuck around in my playlist and eventually the album's hooks sunk their teeth in. While it does not surpass Mirrors in my estimate, Pupil Slicer still impress on their sophomore outing with a mix of pop leaning post-hardcore and the same screeching mathcore that made the debut so memorable. Pupil Slicer experiments with different styles, like the mechanical Meshuggah groove of "No Temple" and the bright sounding title track, that sounds like a mathed up version of the alternative pop band Garbage (give me a Pupil Slicer cover of "I'm Only Happy When it Rains"). If there is one of my criticisms from the review that still stands, it is that the vocal hooks of the softer material does not live up to the absolutely rabid vocals of Kate Davies's normal style. I hope the band iterates on this on their coming albums, but that is a nitpick that belies just how well the contrast between these two styles work on Blossom.

Horrendous are masters of sound with their albums always butter-smooth to the ear. Also, they always offer up a range of great songs written in established styles—progressive—not so much progressive as in seeking out the uncharted, but iterating on old genres to produce albums that could sit among the greats of yore. One of the aspects of their writing that I love is that they are unafraid to mix in outside influences into their death metal like the classical bands did before there were hard borders between the genres. As I stated in my review, Ontological Mysterium merges the different skinless faces of Horrendous' sound to great success. There are the highly emotional goth vocals and lead-work from spinoff band The Silver, the heavy metal influence that surged through Ecdysis, the labyrinthine writing of Anareta, and a new thirst for pounding faces in with a tech thrash influence. Yet Ontological Mysterium is a sleek piece of work that does not break the 40 minute mark. It is great to hear Horrendous roaring back with this much energy after the more contemplative Idol and a long silence. Despite all this I feel like they still have their best work ahead of them. Let us hope that we don't have to wait another five years to find out.

As Yob are taking their time between releases and Pallbearer have failed to live up to their first two albums for some time now, the throne for emotional Black Sabbath-worshipping doom metal has been empty in recent years. Slumbering Sun saw this as a challenge and sat down on it so hard they broke the damn chair. The progressively developing themes on The Ever-Living Fire are sublime and sound like the most honest emotional content I have heard in a while in metal. Yet while performers are skilled and mix and match a few genres, the flow and direction of the music is always clear. I am shocked to hear a band operate on this level on their debut, and it felt like it came out of nowhere. Usually, what ends up at the top of my yearly lists are albums that have complex writing, are experimental, and highly individual in their expression. But there are also times when a band masters the art of creating deep hooks and a good sense of what a song needs throughout its runtime. It is this skill that propels The Ever-Living Fire to near the top of my list, as it has some fantastic vocal hooks (courtesy of Ozzy sound-alike James Clarke), and the band always strike the iron when it is hot if a song needs to switch it up. Most albums on this list have made me doubt whether I like them as much as I think I do, but I had no such issue throughout the year with The Ever-Living Fire. Easy to listen to and fall in love with, it is simply a debut that every doom metal lover needs to hear.

Classical piano, electronica, second wave black metal, post rock, and jazz, by your powers combined—no, not a trainwreck, it's Dødheimsgard! Black Medium Current is the most captivatingly odd piece of music I have heard in 2023. It has been a long while since I have intensely hated an album on hearing it and then been unable to stop listening to it. That is usually a sign that I have found something great and Dødheimsgard do nothing to falsify this rule for me. A big part of this album's success lies in the production: the bass rumbles nimbly but audibly below everything, and the overall impression is that the sound has been tuned to give the classical and electronic elements a full range. This then has the effect of letting the Darkthrone-esque black metal melt into the rest of the sound. This is not a grimy, dissonant or rousing sound with teeth, but rather a relaxing odyssey through space and esoteric (fondly pretentious) existentialism. Black Medium Current drifts between blasting metal, doomy dirges, soothing electronica, and classical piano in an effortless way and it is always a trip to experience. One could think that the concept would get old past the 69 (nice) minute runtime but Dødheimsgard always find a way to switch it up with their curveball songwriting. Black metal bands land with me when they take on a progressive mindset and refuse to paint within the lines of perceived ideas of the traditional tools of the genre. Is there a better way to describe what Dødheimsgard accomplish with Black Medium Current?