Some words on the music I found most moving from 2023 AD
Its that time of year, I always look forward to getting to look back on a year, and really just take in how much good music is released every year in all of my favourite genres. I’ve been thinking and saying this for a while, but I truly believe right now is the best time to be a fan of extreme metal. Every day new and exciting takes on established genres, or completely new musical formulations are being released, and it’s so rewarding to be even a small part of.
Whether it was the triumphant return of 2018-era old school death metal in Tomb Mold, Blood Incantation and Outer Heaven, the poster year dissonant death metal has had in the form of Baring Teeth, Acausal Intrusion, Altarage, and Paroxysm Unit or the breakout excellence of Caio Lemos, this year was great for music I like.
Honorable Mentions
Imperial Crystalline Entombment – Ancient Glacial Resurgence
One of the most fun releases of the entire year, this honestly makes me wish it was colder and snowier so I could go for a walk and blast this. Do not miss.
Blood Incantation – Luminescent Bridge
It’s nice to hear Blood Incantation make death metal again, when these four musicians play together, they simply cannot miss.
Outer Heaven – Infinite Psychic Depths
I had completely written this band off after an uninspiring debut album. This album is spectacular, just riff after riff after riff, what a comeback.
Majesties – Vast Reaches Unclaimed
Not only does this album rule, it also introduced me to A Canorous Quintet who also rule. That Gothenburg melodeath riffing style combined with more modern metal sensibilities, especially drumming, is so, so tasty.
Wayfarer – American Gothic
I’m very embarrassed to say I completely slept on this album, and only listened to it in the past week. Its quite good, and I’m glad they’ve gone with a more americana sound rather than just “cowboy black metal”.
And now, in an order that only makes sense to me, my favourite albums of this year.

The most Nails since Nails, (who are apparently releasing a new album in 2024, so we will see if Nails can out-Nails Scalp), this feels like an album I’ve been waiting to hear for a long time. The world of hardcore-death metal is an absolute dumpster fire, managing to consistently transform cool sounding bands into horrible imitators of a sound that doesn’t exist. I’m looking at you Vomit Forth. SCALP are apparently the only band around who understand that what actually works is a huge drum sound, really dirty guitar tone and pinch-harmonic slam breakdowns. Its not exactly a new formula, but SCALP manage to put it together all so well that it feels just as satisfying as the first time you heard Dead in the Dirt. What makes me really like SCALP is all of the details that they get right, starting with the excellent artwork by Sawwarwarsaw, perfectly evoking the helpless misery that this album rages against, and continuing with great samples in songs like Consumer Ethics. While Nails and their peers can sometimes feels like music for being pissed that your friend talked to the girl you had a crush on, there is a sense that SCALP’s fury is better articulated (Another trait they share with Dead in the Dirt, RIP my GOATs). Be it pollution, drug addiction or diabetes, the subjects SCALP address are altogether more quotidian, and consequently more incisive, more relevant to your own life. Everyday we are confronted with the reality of living in a pointlessly cruel world, and some times the only reasonable response is anger, which is best sonically described in a breakdown with feedback.

Paroxysm Unit – Fragmentation // Strategem
I saw Defeated Sanity earlier this year, I know what I’m talking about when I say a brutal death metal release produced by Colin Marston is good. Furthermore, this album wasn’t just produced it was played on by the man himself. Paroxysm Unit are born from the smouldering ruins of 7.H Target, featuring members such as bassist Konstantin Korolev and drummer Vladislav Vorozhtsov, and absolutely rip. I always associated Marston with Krallice’s flowing black metal song structures, but he’s been playing some of the most envelope pushing brutal tech-death as Encenathrakh’s bassist and guitarist for almost 10 years now. The result of Marston’s fearless experimentation and the Russian duo’s consummate chops is a triumph of technical, spasmodic death metal. Vorozhtsov’s drumming is a huge highlight, his kick drum sounds spectacular, and his snare pings just enough to make songs like Data Mess or IKU Runner stick in your brain. This is such a cool collaboration, where it feels like I’m getting to hear each of these artists show off just how damn good they are.

Acausal Intrusion – Panpsychism
The esoteric and the arcane side of black and death metal will always have a place close to my heart, some of my first favourite extreme metal bands were among this cadre, be it Auroch, Mitochondrion, or Hexeth. Acausal Intrusion come at this genre from a very interesting direction, being categorized as “technical death metal” by Metal Archives (who are gospel obviously), but sounding a lot more like Haunter than Necrophagist. At the same time though, they have an undeniably death metal performance, and a very technical one at that. The tone of the guitars, the drumming and the odd, stop-start song structures make it something more than either of those genres though, a serpentine heaviness unto itself. It took me a while to realize this, but what they really remind me of is the weird tonality of Ad Nauseam, combined with the riffing and guitar-drum interplay of early Tomb Mold, and a little bit of Aeviterne to taste. The clattering drums in particular are a huge standout, they occupy this fascinating space, not fully slicing through the mix, but never being submerged either. They sort of heave and jerk alongside these wild and off-kilter guitar notes, and you can never quite tell what is coming next. It feels to me like this band has finally come into their own, finding that perfect sweet-spot of technicality and weirdness, making something remarkable. 2023 was a triumphant year for dissonant death metal, between Baring Teeth, Altarage, and this, I’m really excited about the future of this genre.

Torture Chain – The Reign of Deimos
I like something that knows exactly what it is, and doesn’t have any illusions about that character. Torture Chain is the fun type of black metal, AKA it’s one of the non-Nazi ones that doesn’t take itself too seriously. I have been pleasantly surprised by this album time and time again, hell it even manages to have a good interlude track, something only Ascended Dead managed to pull off this year. Perhaps my favorite part of this entire release though is their wonderful embrace of the drum machine. There was a time in my life, a very stupid time, where I thought the drum machine was only for hacks who couldn’t play the drums or find a cool drummer, then I heard Mortician. Thankfully I have been cured of these juvenile notions and I now understand that drum machines are actually awesome, and are a musical instrument that can be used to evoke ideas and feelings in the same way that drums can. (Check out this video for an excellent discussion of this idea) Torture Chain do the cool thing, and take these drum machines completely over the top, with some chuckle-inducing fills on songs like Falling, We All into Erebus. Combine this over-the-top drum production, with airy synths, and just the right amount of campy guitar sound and you get a perfect illustration of bombast. That’s what this album nails for me, black metal at its most endearing level of bombast, at that goldilocks level of campiness, great riffs, and of course drum machine fills. As an extra little surprise for me that I didn’t know until writing this list, Torture Chain is put out through the excellent Hopsital Productions (founded by Dominic Ferrow of Prurient and Rainforest Spiritual Enslavement), and features just one member, who goes by the name of Torturer (awesome). This Torturer is a member of like a million trad metal bands, most notably Sumerlands, as well as powerviolence warriors Mind Eraser, which is quite the resume. Well Torturer, whoever you are (I don’t want to ruin the mystery by finding out their name), thank you for leaving behind duelling guitar solos and two-steps to make this black metal spectacle.

This release was really hard to categorize for me, and honestly I’m as surprised as you are that it made it this high. That’s not to say I think it’s trashy or low-brow, quite the opposite, but it has just kept sneaking up on me. I was lucky enough to see 100 gecs in Vancouver this year, and was listening to them pretty much the entire time I was in the city, and I was shocked by just how good the songs were. Now looking back, I am shocked by how great these songs are. They are totally irreverent and silly, but simultaneously genuine and excellent. Whenever I talk or think about 100 gecs I’m always nervously toeing this line where I feel as though I’m reading too much into it, but also can’t shake the impression that there is so much more going on here than just silly hyperpop. Beyond the stunningly catchy moments of Doritos and Fritos or I Got My Tooth Removed, there are these moments of crystal clear sincerity and emotion, be it the chorus of Hollywood Baby or some of the verses on mememe. I think this intertwines with this metanarrative that I’ve been talking about this entire list, though I concede that this might be just my personal schema taking over. 1000 gecs felt like it was being devoured by its own irony, a crazed and alienated regurgitation of pop’s most catchy hits, dialed to 11. 10,000 gecs on the other hand feels more composed, more at ease, and actually having fun rather than just lashing out. They still invoke mostly dead cultural affects, be it the stadium sized nu-metal riffs of Hollywood Baby, or the ska-punk-ballad of I Got my Tooth Removed, it feels like they are digging up the graves of these 2000’s cultural moments with joyful abandon. These sounds are mutated and twisted through the lens of Les and Brady, erupting into enormous glitch-feedback drenched breakdowns that put Knocked Loose to shame on Billy Knows Jamie, or the zany bass line + twitchy guitars of Doritos and Fritos, its so much damn fun. That’s a good lesson that this album imparts, that even if you’re stuck disinterring and reanimating the cultural affectations of bygone eras, you should at least have fun doing it.

One of my more listened to releases of this year, despite being only three songs, on one half of a split release, I cannot get enough Worm. I’m not going to discuss the Dream Unending side of the release because they simply do not move me. Worm on the other hand are absolutely one of my favourite discoveries of recent years, and a massively positive influence on the world of metal. Something that I’ve been grappling with, and really I think our entire culture is grappling with, is the tension bewteen sincerity versus irony, which is in part what I’m trying to get a handle on in writing here. From my perspective it feels like we have, for a while, been in a paradigm of maximal irony, that basically no expression is meant fully authentically, and true intent or affect is concealed behind successive redoubts of ironic sarcasm. If I were to put on my best Mark Fisher (RIP) hat here, I would say that these switchbacks of sentiment work to conceal an inner emptiness, a lack of presence, in much the same way the cultural artifacts and political dramas of our time conceal the fact that, similar to Adorno and Horkheimer’s observations, there is only capital. I sense that the pendulum has begun to swing the other way now though, that instead of maximalist irony, those inclined to express themselves do so in language of maximalist authenticity, that every deed and utterance is actually so truthful of their inner lifeworld, that it is functionally the same as endless irony in its concealment of that emptiness. Before I completely lose the plot, I now have to make the acrobatic connection between this idea and death metal.
It’s hard to take death metal seriously, but you’re missing out if you don’t take it seriously at all. I’ve found that death metal demands you take it’s over-the-top silliness dead seriously, in a word, you’ve gotta own it. This is what Worm do better than anyone else. They call themselves Phantom Slaughter and Wroth Serpentrion, dress up like black metal geeks, and rip Yngwie Malmsteen solos, its completely absurd. But this absurdity wouldn’t work if you thought they were just laughing at it, with Worm there is a sense that you’re laughing at it together, and enjoying it for what it is. Just listen to the first riff off of Ravenblood, its absolutely hysterical, but thats exactly what makes it so great. What I’m trying to get at is that Worm’s self serious silliness is indicative of a sort of liberating ethos, that you should do what you think is cool, even if its a bit funny, and do it really well.
So, thank you Phantom and Wroth (we’re on first name basis), for vastly inflating the word count of this list, and helping find a better way to sincerely express oneself in a world of insincerity.

Altarage – Worst Case Scenario
Somewhat similar to Tomb Mold, Altarage have made a full 180 in my estimation of them, managing to arise from an odd but unsatisfying vortex of Portal levels of distortion and technical chops, into something truly remarkable. Instead of sounding like an Encenathrakh imitator, they are truly their own beast on this record, an overwhelming creative force. Something I’ve started to realize and also uncover as I’ve thought about music, and done writing like this, is that what I enjoy most in art is its ability to open up worlds of imagination, to hint at an entire, hidden aesthetic realities of feeling. This is hard to pull off, and when I talk about music achieving this, it has to happen in conjunction with everything it appears alongside. Altarage manage to pull together everything from their cover art, to song titles, to vocal production into a piece of art that suggests so much more than just the sum of its parts. When I read the song title Case of Putrid Stars, and hear the foaming, billowing guitars, and see the haunting blues and greys of the cover art, an entire mental world is unfolding before me. It is eerie and alien and grim and menacing, and more feelings that I can’t quite capture, like trying to describe a colour. In a word, it’s thrilling, it invites me into more experiences and emotions, all while being heavy as fuck. It’s an exercise in show, don’t tell, at every moment I’m confronted with the oppressive and spiralling horror of their unique expression, shared with me in the familiar language and grammar of death metal. Thanks Altarage for not only the wonderful chugs in the last half of Gift of Awakening, but for the entire mental world I get to build alongside you.

Tomb Mold – The Enduring Spirit
Tomb Mold have done something really remarkable in the historiography of my musical preferences and taste, and that’s fully bring me back around on their sound. I was a huge fan of 2018’s Manor of Infinite Forms, and was the perfect mark for the triumph of old school death metal that we were all in the throes of during that time. Bands like Blood Incantation, Krypts, Cruciamentum and Dead Congregation felt like they ruled the world that I was ensconced in at the time, and Tomb Mold were on the cutting edge of that. Canadian, and referencing Fromsoft games, I couldn’t help but love them, and it’s not like Manor didn’t bang hard as fuck. For whatever reason I found myself becoming somewhat tired of that entire genre and scene of music, maybe it was all those horrible early Maggot Stomp releases that people were obsessed with like Encoffinized or maybe it was just my taste changing. Whatever the case, I really didn’t care for Tomb Mold’s sophomore album Planetary Clairvoyance, it felt like there was no coherence to the songs, and without any of the same vital intensity that coursed through Manor.
Somehow, 4 years later, Tomb Mold have fully recaptured that vitality, and brought with it not just the intensity of earlier releases, but also a deep sense of sincerity and compassion that is infectious to me. It seems odd to say than an album full of blast beats, guttural vocals and distorted guitars could transmit a message of love and grace, but the tender moments on Will of Whispers or Servants of Possibility make this completely undeniable to me. This love feels manifested throughout the entire experience of the album, the messaging and reception of the album has been a sort of joyful reunion, a reminder of how much fun music is, and the horizons it opens up. Thanks Tomb Mold, this is one of my favourite albums from this year.

Brasilia’s Caio Lemos might be the breakout artist of the year for me, whatever that means. Be it my discovery of Kaatayra, or the debut of his new band Vestigios, it feels like all of his work that reached my ears this year has been astonishingly good, lord knows Vestigios will have its own entry here. But far and away his crowning achievement this year is his fearless alchemy of electronic trance music and raw black metal, transmuting into Bríi who released Último Ancestral Comum. As I’ve talked about throughout this list, and touched on in other articles, the vision and ambition inscribed into a musical release is what elevates the good to great. This vision resonates throughout Bríi’s passages, to find this bizarre parallel in sound between lo-fi trance beats, and howling raw black metal is a stroke of genius that makes my hair stand on end. It would be one thing to make this connection, and even to use this in a song, but to execute it so deftly, while maintaining so much of the Caio Lemos character you hear throughout his discography is sublime. The push and pull of psychedelic disco beats, softly sung vocals, or that ineffable Caio Lemos drum tone resolves into one of the most unique and energizing black metal releases I’ve heard in my life. This is like a shot of adrenaline directly into the arm, both of myself and black metal generally, its the sort of thing that makes me listen to music.

It’s hard to exactly describe what “ambition” sounds like in a musical project, it’s almost tautological in my mind. Something is ambitious because in order to have done it, you must have had incredible ambition, you set out to do something that was singular in sound and character. It’s about going further than your peers, it’s about calling your shot and making it too. Without sounding too much like a high school football coach, this is what I sense when I listen to Matt Kilner’s brutal death metal masterpiece Agonal Hymns. The last time I felt something really like this was when Mithras’ On Strange Loops finally clicked, and I realized that Leon Macey had done something similar, something fully obsessed with an aesthetic and musical vision and undertaking whatever needed to be done in order to realize that. For Nithing that is equal parts preternatural understanding of the form of brutal death metal, and an effortless ability to remain surprising and fresh, be it through songwriting, production, or overall aesthetic. This album is yet another affirmation of my half-joking (but regularly reinforced) belief that the less members a band has, the better they become, its genuinely astonishing to think one guy played all of these instruments, voiced those gutturals, and produced this thing, it really makes a creatively inclined person like me want to die. In a good way.