My 20 Favorite (Non-Black Metal) Albums of 2023

 

2023 was the year that I realized that my tastes have become hopelessly out of touch with relevancy. I did like some of this year's more hyped records -- Caroline Polachek and Boygenius spring to mind -- but all of my favorites have absolutely nothing to do with the cultural conversation. And I'm starting to suspect that everyone else is wrong and I'm the only one who's right. So yes, I will be bringing that Principal Skinner energy to this list.

P.S. I didn't feel that the album as a whole was super-strong, but Diners made a bittersweet, timeless, perfect power pop song called "Someday I'll Go Surfing" that instantly became an all-time favorite of mine, and I feel like I have to mention it here.

#20

trajedesaliva + Maud the Moth

Bordando el manto terrestre

Ethereal darkwave in the lineage of some of the best of the genre -- Dead Can Dance/Lisa Gerrard and black tape for a blue girl in particular. Droning synths, cello, classically-inspired vocals, and various noise/SFX sources. Beautiful and haunting.

#19

Fire! Orchestra

Echoes

Slow-burning, big band psych-jazz in two sprawling halves. Explores too much sonic territory for me to effectively cover in a half-assed writeup such as this.

#18

Mansion

Second Death

A best-case scenario for Candlemass-style doom metal in 2023. Crushing riffs, layered male and female vocals, and Christian horror.

#17

Greg Foat & Gig Masin

Dolphin

One of my favorite jazz musicians and one of my favorite ambient/new age musicians come together to make gorgeous, tranquil sounds that hover in the sweet, sweet liminal space between jazz and ambient/new age. It's like an answered prayer.

Gig Masin & Alessandro Monti - The Wind Collector (1991)

Gaussian Curve - The Distance (2017)

#16

Sense Fracture

Landscape of Thorns

Dystopian industrial/power electronics/EBM. Throbbing rhythms, warped samples, distorted screams, fragmented synths, and an overwhelming sense of anxiety.

#15

Boris & Uniform

Bright New Disease

Y'all know I love Boris, and Bright New Disease plays mostly like a continuation of the thrash-y hardcore Boris was making on No, but with denser industrial production. Of course, there's some phenomenal art-sludge in there ("The Look Is a Flame"), plus there's a total curveball of synth-driven darkwave.

Boris - Amplifier Worship (1998)

Boris - The Thing Which Solomon Overlooked (2004)

#14

Bernice

Cruisin'

80s-style sophisti-pop deconstructed. Dated synths and whimsical twists-and-turns provide the backdrop to some surprisingly open-hearted, wistfully beautiful songs -- see "Underneath My Toe" or "Begin Again".

#13

Tujiko Noriko

Crépuscule I & II

Lulling, nocturnal ambient synth pieces with vocals occasionally interspersed throughout. Evocative of a massive, dimly lit, heavenly space that I'd like to live in. It really says something that this album made me tear up despite a near-complete lack of knowledge of its lyrical content.

#12

Hammock

Love in the Void

I had been almost completely disengaged from the world of post-rock for over a decade. Sometime around when Explosions in the Sky started making soundtracks, it was over for me. That all changed when I sunk into a horrible depression at the beginning of 2023 (see also: me crying to Tujiko Noriko.) A random on the internet recommended Love in the Void, I gave it a spin, and it was so beautiful, it broke my goddamn heart. Guess there's still some life left in the ol' crescendo-core tank.

#11

Nithing

Agonal Hymns

Non-stop wall-of-sound brutal death. It all happens so quickly and relentlessly, it's easy to miss that it's also tech-y as fuck. Reminds me of Last Days of Humanity -- not so much in sound, but in its dizzying, brain-annihilating impact.

#10

Squid

O Monolith

Hey, look! I'm with it! I'm hip! Daka-daka-daka-daka! Pretty sure the youths like this one -- at least the Fantano/RYM youths. Post-punk/art rock for your anxiety, ennui, overstimulation, and modern malaise.

#9

Nourished by Time

Erotic Probiotic 2

My dad had a really shitty year. Cancer scares, major surgery, and debilitating back and leg pain really took it out of him, both physically and otherwise. (He's doing way, way better now.) I'm pretty sure this is his AOTY; he said it was like a balm for him. One of my favorite musical moments of the year is sitting with him in his computer room, listening to "Quantum Suicide" really loud, just being completely absorbed in the sound.

#8

Khanate

To Be Cruel

The opposite of a musical balm. Drone-doom deconstructionists Khanate are back and possibly even more spiritually disturbing than ever! For instance, "It Wants to Fly" is a 21-minute long nightmare in which our narrator slowly takes a person apart piece by piece, instructing them not to look away as the light leaves their body. Musically, it's almost like free jazz in its aversion to rhythm or structural predictability -- an absolute masterclass in sustained, skin-crawling tension. I'm only ranking it this low because I really can't see myself listening to this more than a few times per year.

Khanate - Things Viral (2003)

#7

Jonah Yano

portrait of a dog

Heartfelt songs about love, family, and love and family lost over an impossibly pleasant instrumental bed of chilled-out but dynamic, gently psychedelic jazz, courtesy of BADBADNOTGOOD. It feels kinda funny sandwiching Khanate between these two very nice, chill records, but that's the way the cards were dealt.

#6

MSPAINT

Post-American

Hardcore minus guitars, plus synths that hit way harder than you'd ever think they would, plus a vocalist who rides the line between shouting and rapping. "Titan of Hope" is a banger's banger among bangers -- a fucking sledgehammer to the noggin of complacency.

#5

The Murder Capital

Gigi's Recovery

It's very tempting to make this little writeup extremely reductive, and say something like "The Murder Capital sound like the post-punk version of Radiohead" but that's dumb because 1) that's kinda what The Smile is, and b) they're much more than that. And ultimately what's great about them isn't just that they make cerebral, knotty, guitar-driven art rock sound accessible -- even anthemic -- but that they write truly great songs about the ways dreams die and values corrode in the thrum of day-to-day survival. My favorites are "Ethel", which mourns the loss of a never-conceived child, and "The Lie Becomes the Self", whose bleak portrayal of self-conception unexpectedly falls into a wistful, heartbreakingly tender coda.

#4

Devendra Banhart

Flying Wig

My favorite Banhart record by a comfortable margin, Flying Wig finds him channeling the enveloping, synthesized darkness of Julee Cruise. One of those records that makes me think I must have bad taste because everyone else's take on it goes something like, "huh, sounds pretty cool, have you heard Cripple Crow?" But me? I love the subtle doo-wop rhythm on the title track, I love the off-kilter groove of "Nun", and I positively adore the beautiful simplicity of the lyrics. "You can love someone wrong / But you can't love by mistake"? "When I said I didn't need it / That's when I knew that I would need it"? "I go to the party / But it don't go to me"? My heart.

#3

Westerman

An Inbuilt Fault

Artful, impressionistic songs that recall Joni Mitchell circa Night Ride Home, sung in a honeyed voice that recalls Arthur Russell. But as sweet as he sounds, the gnarled arrangements and sudden blasts of synth are signposts for the anger and alienation lurking just below the surface. The brilliant animated music video for "A Lens Turning" is a handy visual representation for this whole album's vibe -- an abstract figure dances while its form and reality relentlessly distorts and shifts.

#2

Lisa O'Neill

All of This Is Chance

"Feathered friend, dig up and resurrect me / I long to live among the song of birdies / A lawless league of lonesome, lonesome beauty / Skies and skies and skies above duty."

Lisa O'Neill is one of those artists that make me half-believe in some form of divinity or reincarnation. There are moments and songs on here that truly sound like she's channeling memories of the afterlife or something. Or, as a friend put it (in reference to "Coast to Coast" by Elliott Smith"): it's "cosmic knowledge." Like, I don't always get it, but goddamn do I feel it. This is perhaps best exemplified by "Old Note", a song that I'm not sure I fully understand but -- and I say this without a single hint of irony -- I want to be played at my funeral when I die. And to close it all out is "Goodnight World", which functions as both an ode to lost loved ones and a simple, sweet lullaby that you could sing to a newborn.

#1

Hamish Hawk

Angel Numbers

"I'll starve / I will not stifle my appetite."

I forget how I stumbled across Hamish Hawk, but I know that my first exposure was the music video for "Money", and that I was immediately reminded of Jarvis Cocker/Pulp and Morrissey. I am not alone in this. However, here in 2023, he's outpacing them both. There's a certain melancholy to Angel Numbers, but there's no self-pity -- one key lyrics goes "I was ill-shapen clay / And suffering didn't fit me." Money is a recurring theme -- it's mentioned directly in "Bill" and, well, "Money", and it's in the peripherals of a handful of other tracks -- and there are many references to careerism, the grim absurdity of modernity, and fumbling romances. But to me, Angel Numbers is, above all else, a collection of sharp, often humorous songs by way of warm, muscular indie rock, courtesy of a crooner that has a much bigger heart than he might like to admit, and that's all it has to be.

My 20 Favorite Black Metal Records of 2023

 

This really should be a top 40 or 50, as there were a ton of black metal records that I fucking loved this year. But now that I'm an official business office boi, I 100% do not have the time for all that, so ruthless editing is a must. And honorable mentions are the coward's way out, so there'll be none of that. You may notice, however, that my writeups are even shittier than normal. Regardless, these are the black metal albums that I spent the most time with this year, whether it was while pumping iron, laying in a meditative state with all the lights off, sitting in rush hour traffic, or grimly doing the dishes.

#20

Black Shaman

Tradition

Atmospheric hypnotism in slow motion from a one-man Czechian project. Paced like doom metal but the feel is 100% black. If I was still addicted to kratom, this would definitely be higher on the list.

#19

Nadir

Extinction Rituals

Riff-y/thrash-y in a way that clearly has something to do with crust (and maybe sludge metal) but only really leans into those elements in small bursts -- see the chug-y breakdown in "The Old Wind" or the mid-paced intro to "Beyond the Shadow of Death" for evidence.

#18

Gryftigæn

Wurmwaldgaistoz

Sounds like this guy was watching The Fellowship of the Ring, got to the part where they're on the pass through the Misty Mountains and Saruman is bellowing incantations and conjuring an ice storm to destroy them, and thought, "OK but what if, instead of a scene in a movie, this was a raw atmospheric black metal album?"

#17

Nemesis

Nemesis

One of the hardest Google searches of 2023 (adding "black metal Norway" helps). For some reason I listen to this a lot when I'm doing pushups. Is there a shorthand for the kind of black metal that sounds like it's emanating from behind the crumbling walls of a haunted old castle? Can I just call it "OCBM" from now on?

#16

Calligram

Position | Momentum

More black metal with apparent roots in punk/hardcore, this time with a deeper sense of atmosphere, a more cohesive, cerebral aesthetic, and more mature songcraft. The tremolo-picking breakdown on "Frantumi In Itinere" through to the end of the song is one my favorite sections of music in recent memory. 

#15

Ildganger

Wanderer of Fiery Planes

Raw black metal perfection. Sorrowful epics for nomadic ghosts. As I make this list, I'm noticing that literally every single album that comes up, I think, "Fuck, this should really be higher."

#14

Vosbúð

Heklugjá

Looks like Vosbúð edged out Ildganger in the battle of the raw-atmospheric-black-metal-records-with-volcanoes-on-the-cover this year. I suppose it's fitting, as Vosbúð staked their claim by dubbing themselves "Volcanic Black Metal". Sounds like Paysage d'Hiver channeling the majestic aura of Twilight of the Gods-era Bathory. Manages the difficult task of keeping very long songs consistently dynamic and engaging without ever really taking the foot off the gas.

#13

Profane Order

One Nightmare Unto Another

Stupefyingly heavy black/death destruction with stupidly heavy production. Gravity blasts, bonehead riffs, and levels of bestial, chaotic precision that we haven't heard since Anaal Nathraak went on Radio 1.

#12

ὁ Μέɣας

κ​​​ή​​​ρ​​​υ​​​ξ π​​​ῦ​​​ρ

This one's a real oddity: a vicious raw black metal album about Alexander the Great with conspicuously layered folk instrumentation. There's a lot of what sounds like a mandolin and some kind of woodblock percussion, but it's all devoid of any sense of quirkiness or self-consciousness: it just adds to this anonymous project's sense of mystery.

#11

Kringa

All Stillborn Fires, Lick My Heart!

In which Kringa realize their full potential, taking liberally from death-doom, post-punk, and psychedelia, but remaining firmly grounded in grainy, occult BM. All Stillborn Fires definitely sounds like it was recorded live in-studio with minimal overdubs, which further enhances the sense that the whole album is some sort of ritual that we're privileged to be listening in on.

Kringa - Total Mental Desecration (2013)

#10

Afsky

Om hundrede år

After liking but not loving Afsky for years, Om hundred år finally made me a believer. Patiently crafted, melodic DSBM played with passion and urgency.

#9

Wells Valley

Achamoth

The queasy dissonance of Blut Aus Nord intertwined in the murk of Portal with the deliberate pacing and anxious groove of Cult of Luna. This year, I learned to love post-BM again, and Wells Valley led the charge.

#8

Helleruin

Devils, Death and Dark Arts

Helleruin brings a lot to the table -- the odd folk-ish melody, some ethereal guitar layering that suggests an awareness of modernity, one instance of cowbell -- but ultimately, what you're looking at is epic, vicious, true black metal in absolute peak form.

#7

Austere

Corrosion of Hearts

Depression has a way of feeding off of itself. It comes and goes over the years, but every time it returns in earnest, it feels that much heavier with the knowledge that it's never really been gone. Austere, who I had assumed was gone for good until recently, is one of the few bands capable of really embodying that weight.

#6

Uzlaga

The Sunken Seer

Utterly crushing down-tuned power chord riffs, hovering layers of high-frequency drone, one-two beats, hissing vocals, and ambient interludes worthy of one of NIN's Ghosts albums. A truly singular vision courtesy of a dude who runs a black metal memes IG.

#5

Sól án varma

Sól án varma

One-and-done project from members of Misþyrming, Carpe Noctem, Árstíðir Lífsins, 0, Skáphe, and more. The vortex-like heaviness of Icelandic black metal filtered through later-Celtic Frost-esque psychedelic-death-doom. Iceland, man. Iceland.

#4

Runespell

Shores of Náströnd

In which Runespell takes on a full-time drummer and a keyboardist, catapults their sound into lusher, vaster realms, leans into their more mournful, melodic tendencies, and creates some of the greatest pagan black metal I've ever heard. The most excited I've gotten about Runespell since Unhallowed Blood Oath.

#3

Entropia

Total

I've liked this band for years, but for me, Total is absolutely in a class all its own in the band's discography. It's somewhere between progressive and post-metal, but both labels feel misleading. The way the riffs seem to just repeat over and over until you notice that they're constantly melting and morphing into new and strange shapes, removing sections, taking on new layers, or otherwise distorting: I've just never heard anything quite like it. And it's all done so fluidly, it's honestly pretty mind-blowing. I'm also seemingly the only one who thinks so highly of Total, so proceed with caution.

Entropia - Vesper (2013)

#2

Hasard

Malivore

One of the most effective takes on the dissonant French style I've ever heard. Malivore is a nightmare emerging from the void as if conjured by forces beyond all mortal understanding or control, bred only to consume light and negate life. On a somewhat related note, I ordered this LP last Saturday and about half an hour ago, the mail carrier literally frisbee-ed it up from the street -- our front door is up a flight of stairs -- and it hit the door so hard that both of my cats ran and hid. Thanks guy.

#1

Thantifaxath

Hive Mind Narcosis

An absolute fucking masterpiece from start to finish, and I will happily die on that hill. Unflinchingly inventive avant-garde mastery. Queasy guitars vomit, convulse, and sculpt terrifying, amorphous structures. A faceless figure croaks acid-soaked prophecies of bottomless hunger and deathless horrors. Our world spins, slows to a crawl, chokes, and folds back in on itself. Parallel universes glow like embers then melt into nothing. Songs so dense and labyrinthine, I can't even conceive of how they were composed or recorded. Like, what the fuck is going on in "Solar Witch"? Are those guitars? How does it sound so utterly disjointed yet completely cohesive? Who are these mysterious Canadians, and how did they figure out how to bend time?

Steve Khan • Rob Mounsey - Local Color (1987)

Great collaboration between guitarist Steve Khan, who I discovered years ago when I bought his album Arrows based solely on its artwork, and keyboardist/synth-guy Rob Mounsey, who I don't think I've listened to outside of this record. Khan's jazz background certainly shines through, but the dated synths and drum sequencers make Local Color feel predominantly like a new age record.

Track listing:

1. Tafiya

2. The Blue Rose

3. I See a Long Journey

4. Gondolas

5. Intruder

6. The Hunt

7. Mahana

Keep on loving while your love is strong

Keep on loving 'til your love is gone away

Also listen to:

Mark Isham - Vapor Drawings (1983)

Barry Cleveland - Voluntary Dreaming (1990)

François-Eudes Chanfrault - À l'intérieur (Inside) (2008)

I've been known to refer to Inside as the scariest movie I've ever seen, with the caveat that my viewing experience was very much enhanced by context. After finally giving it a rewatch a couple weeks back, the jury may be out, but I'm not retracting my statement. I can say for sure that it is insanely brutal. 

Also, the soundtrack's great. Very subtle and minimal. Dark synths, serrated drones, pulsing rhythms, elegiac chamber pieces. There's an extended dialogue-free sequence near the end of the movie where a bunch of terrible things happen without any dialogue, and it's soundtracked entirely by a two-chord synth figure. It's sick as fuck. Go watch it if you can find it -- I torrented it.

Track listing:

1. Arctic Love

2. Memories, Part I, II, & III

3. Dark Beats

4. Discovery

4. Low/High

5. Memories (Redux)

6. Memories (Final)

7. Square Pads for an Eternal Dawn

Open the door, Sarah.

More scary shit:

Jay Chattaway - Maniac (1982)

Mark Korven - The Witch (2016)

Ludicra - Hollow Psalms (2002)

Got a request for this classic, which has apparently become hard to come by in this dead space we once called the blogosphere. Progressive black metal with a DIY punk heart. Still a fucking phenomenal record. Also worth mentioning: their drummer, Aesop Dekker, ran Cosmic Hearse, which more than any other blog inspired me to start this one. Relatedly, I started at a 9-to-5 recently -- still can't believe I landed what's essentially my ideal position after just about a month of looking in earnest -- so don't expect a resurgence of activity on here anytime soon.

Track listing:

1. Tomorrow Held in Scorn

2. Hollow Promise

3. The Final Lamentation

4. Userpent

5. Heaped Upon Impassive Floors

6. Damn the Night

7. Tragaedia

8. Awake to Grey

A bog of dirt which bears your name

You should also listen to:

Inure - Inure (Rough Mixes) (2003)

Teen Cthulhu - Teen Cthulhu (2003)

Ancient Ceremony - P.uritan's B.lasphemy C.all (2004)

German melodic black metal that also takes liberally from gothic, and death metal. For me, everything this band has done lands in the good-to-pretty-great range, with the exception of P.uritan's B.lasphemy C.all, which completely blows the rest of their discography out of the water. Maybe it's the new drummer, who gives them a much-needed ass lift; maybe it's the guitars, which are way gnarlier than before; maybe it's the beefier yet raw-er production. Who knows. Maybe it's the weirdly emotional-hardcore-sounding vocals. Whatever it is, this is a perfect example of that things bands do where they all of a sudden perfect their sound on their last release before splitting up. Strangely, the last track on here is actually a remaster of a track from their debut EP, suggesting that they always had this in them.

Track listing:

1. Te Deum

2. P.uritan's B.lasphemy C.all

3. Raped Paradise

4. The Black Flame

5. Diabolos Temptation

6. God and Idol

Let us kill our enemies

Vengeance is yours and mine

Drunken from this triumph

Their blood it tastes like wine

More along these lines:

Graveworm - As the Angels Reach the Beauty (1999)

Siebenbürgen - Delictum (2000)

thisquietarmy - Blackhaunter (2008)

Guitar-based ambient drone for ghosts. Second full-length from what has turned out to be a very prolific project. Found this CD lost in the understock at my old job, knew I was gonna love it on sight. 

Track listing:

1. Black Haunters

2. In the Breathing Forest

3. Vampyr

4. Taming the Beast

5. Hunting Demons

6. Stranger Than the Sea

Old pang, so faithful to us

You should also listen to:

School of Emotional Engineering - School of Emotional Engineering (2004)

Belong - October Language (2008)

Bestial Mouths - Bestial Mouths (2013)

Propulsive, synth-heavy post-punk/darkwave with droning, tribal-industrial percussion and a lo-fi, horror-fueled aesthetic that was clearly influenced by the short-lived but sorely missed Witch House scene. The vocals -- trembling, reverb-drenched, Siouxsie-esque incantations -- really tie the room together. 

Track listing:

1. Ceased

2. Reunion

3. Faceless

4. Vatic Vision

5. In Empathy

6. Earth

7. Cloaked

8. Movement

9. Death Rattle

Hell is behind that door

Also listen to:

Death Ride '69 - Death Ride '69 (1989)

The KBV - Subjection/Subordination (2011)

Girls Names - Dead to Me (2011)

Where the beach meets the graveyard. The shimmering, reverb-drenched sounds of surf rock applied to the murderous, self-destructive themes of post-punk and gothic rock. Of the many indie-related micro-genres that popped up around this time -- chillwave, witch house, blog house -- surf-indie was one of the micro-est, and it never really took off, but it was fun while it lasted.

Track listing:

1. Lawrence

2. I Could Die

3. When You Cry

4. No More Words

5. Nothing More to Say

6. I Lose

7. Cut Up

8. Bury Me

9. Kiss Goodbye

10. Séance on a Wet Afternoon

When they lay me down in the ground

Bury me in a wall of sound

You should also hear:

Flesh World - Flesh World (2013)

Single Lash - Soft as Glass (2014)

Irmin Schmidt - Musk at Dusk (1987)

Strange, sinister art rock solo outing from Irmin Schmidt, who you know as Can's keyboardist. Queasy, minor-key, island music/soft rock-inspired songs with lurking hints of violence and horror, sung in a quavering, Bowie-esque croon. In fact, Musk at Dusk could be likened to a more fully realized, artistically satisfying take on the canned, vaguely tropical nocturnes of Bowie's Tonight.

Track listing:

1. Cliff Into Silence

2. Love

3. Roll On, Euphrates

4. The Great Escape

5. Villa Wunderbar

6. The Child in History

7. Alcool

Dancing in the limelight

Champagne after midnight

If you like this, try:

Steve Hillage - For to Next (1982)

Obywatel G.C. - Obywatel G.C. (1986)