50-31 | 30-11 | 10-1 | EP/Live/Compilation

50. Urne – A Feast On Sorrow

[Bandcamp] // [Spotify]

“Like Mastodon but not like Mastodon” is one of my favorite genres. –Egarran

Has some old-school Sepultura/Slayer/Coroner tones — with an upgraded sound, of course. Worth the listen. –Astaroth666

49. Chepang – Swatta

[Bandcamp] // [Spotify]

Let’s make one thing really clear: Swatta is absolutely not for the faint of heart; but if you’re the type of person that seeks thrills, do yourself a favor and listen to this record. It’s hard for me to describe this album without resorting to a bunch of oxymoronic platitudes like “chaotically precise” or “brilliantly raw,” but the fact of the matter is that I don’t think any band brought more unrestrained ferocity to the table than Chepang did in 2023. Swatta is not just a triumph for grind, it’s a triumph in heavy music — and it’s the kind of album that follows the mantra of shooting on sight and taking no prisoners. Don’t be lulled by the disarmingly-satisfying-to-say names, either: Swatta will systematically break every bone in your body before torching you to a cinder. Oh, and you’re going to enjoy every fucking second. –Manatea

48. Panopticon – The Rime of Memory

[Bandcamp] // [Spotify]

An entirely new level for Panopticon. This is the album Austin Lunn has been capable of the entire time. Puts everything since Autumn Eternal to shame and even gives Collapse a run for best album in his discography. –Comatorium.

“Cedar Skeletons” is probably song of the year; holy fuck, what a track. –Kusangii

One of Rime‘s strongest qualities (if not the strongest) is the perfect cohesion of very different elements. One moment, you are listening to unreleased material from The Witcher 3‘s soundtrack; the next, Agalloch-ian prose masterfully delivered; then, you are thrown into a Mgla-like black metal passage with violins in the background; and all of a sudden, you end up in a shoegaze/Isis post-metal interlude, only to be back again in a Martrod-esque black metal frenzy. Everything is delivered so smoothly that your mind is confused at the strange, yet pleasant, taste of the plate. –Frost15

47. Thantifaxath – Hive Mind Narcosis

[Bandcamp] // [Spotify]

Back after a decade of full-length album inactivity, Thantifaxath cooked up a masterpiece straight from whatever Canadian underground lair they dwell in. Hive Mind Narcosis stood at the top of the off-key spiraling despair metal this year with an all-killer, one-filler-but-also-killer black metal experience. Opener “Solar Witch” displays exactly the kind of mind-boggling maelstrom that’s delivered throughout the entire record, with no shortage of weird staccato rhythms and key manipulation. Ingredients of solid production, impressive songwriting, and visceral all-around performances contribute greatly to the satisfying chaos, but what makes it stand out most is the record’s masterful attention to pacing. Nearly every passage or motif is ridden out to a length that lets all of its potential weight be felt. One would expect the frequently spiraling instrumentation to wear out naturally, but the more chaotic passages never lose their freshness with all their demented twists and turns. With this record now in their already strong resume, Thantifaxath sit with the best of the modern dissonant black metal wave with one of their best creations to date. –BlazinBlitzer

46. Sigur Rós – ÁTTA

[Bandcamp] // [Spotify]

Ask anyone to think of the most stereotypical Sigur Rós album, and I imagine they will dream up something akin to ÁTTA. With the pretty orchestral arrangements, soft ambience and dreamy ethereal vocals from Jónsi, it ticks all the usual Sigur Rós boxes. It’s an interesting contrast with their last pre-hiatus album Kveikur, which followed the departure of key member Kjartan Sveinsson and showcased the sound of a rejuvenated band eager to explore intensity never associated with them before. Now, after a rather turbulent hiatus and the return of the aforementioned Sveinsson, Sigur Rós seem keen to stick to their familiar guns. While this lack of adventure could be considered a bad thing, ÁTTA is a masterful showcase of their best abilities. The orchestration performed by the London Contemporary Orchestra is not only beautiful, but also rich and easy to get lost in: the composition feels so light and airy that it’s almost like the album could float on clouds, and Jónsi’s vocals sound even more angelic than usual. ÁTTA might be Sigur Rós comfort food, but it is so damn gorgeous that I don’t want to have it any other way. –Pangea

45. Katatonia – Sky Void of Stars

[Official site] // [Spotify]

“Author” is my favorite track, although it’s tough to pick a favorite. Are these guys capable of making a bad album? Compare any other band of 30 years or more to their discography. They have to be pretty proud of their legacy at this point. –nickg42084

Very bands have the ability to build into an album the way Katatonia do. First listen always comes with a thought of, “Aw, man, the magic has weakened, this isn’t as good as previous albums;” four or five listens later, it’s “Yeah, this is brilliant.” –Kopkiwi

While The Fall of Hearts has some tracks that are perhaps superior to everything on this record, the way all the tracks on this one interlink to make something greater than the sum of its parts is pretty remarkable. This album flows and fits together really well. –BladeRunner

44. Phoxjaw – notverynicecream

[Bandcamp] // [Spotify]

There’s an impressive amount of variety. I liked a few tracks quite a bit at first, but after spinning this a few more times, I’m really digging a few others that didn’t stick out on first listen. The back half of “thelastmackerel” goes so damn hard, and “icecreamwitch” and “sungazer” are incredible. Not sure if these guys will ascend to any higher levels of notoriety, but the building blocks are there. Very reminiscent of Exotic Animal Petting Zoo. –Tgreenz455

43. Paramore – This Is Why

[Facebook] // [Spotify]

This Is Why effectively serves as the yang to the yin of After Laughter. I love the way this album continues the new wave influence from After Laughter while adding more experimental and even math-y touches on cuts like “The News” and “Figure 8”. I’d go as far as to say that This Is Why has even more inner-band chemistry and connectedness than its predecessor. The three-piece is so incredibly tight and focused here, powering through these tracks near-effortlessly while adroitly switching styles at a moment’s notice, alternating between dreamlike echo-swathed chords and tight new-wave-meets-funk grooves. Really good stuff. –Koris

There’s things I could nitpick about this if I really wanted to, but this is still the best Paramore/Hayley have sounded in years. –JoyfulPlatypus

Honestly, this album piledrives After Laughter into oblivion. It combines the yesteryear of the band and the new direction into an insanely consistent listen. The performances are much more confident on this one. Definitely the best of ‘modern’ Paramore. –ShadowOfTheCitadel

42. MSPAINT – Post-American

[Bandcamp] // [Spotify]

Every year, it seems, there’s at least one artist conspiring to make Steve Ignorant’s near-50 year old pronunciation of punk’s mortality seem, well, ignorant. MSPAINT has it all: barked slogans, filthy guitars, neanderthal drums, pulsing, uh, synths. This exuberant, boisterous little attitude-shiv keeps its party boy charisma on tap for way longer than might be ever expected from a synth-hardcore-by-way-of-rap-rock act that are just on their first full outing as a band. It’s an album with just enough tricks in its bag to keep the fists pumping throughout, enough weirdness to distance it from the pack, enough goofiness and righteous fury combined to leave you checking your cupboard for the old Molotov supplies. Post-American is a wonderfully scrappy shin-kicker of a debut from these Mississippi underdogs, and hopefully an indicator of great things to come. –DadKungFu

41. Swans – The Beggar

[Bandcamp] // [Spotify]

It’s almost a shock that the resurrected iteration of Gira and friends has been slowly subsiding in both wave-making capabilities and volume. A band for whom the release of new music was nearly a cosmic event has finally slid into the legacy act era with all the grace to be expected of a man who’s had the end of all things in mind from near day one. The Beggar bears this burden staidly, sedately — all the crooked paths made straight, all the unquiet graves long since disinterred and little left to do but gently croon out your mortality into the setting sun. This hardly feels like a coda for Swans; the only true surprise about this act would be if they didn’t have some last great trick up their sleeves before they went supernova, but nonetheless, it feels like an acceptance, and an embrace of the inevitability that Gira has spent much of his life peeling back and confronting the world with. –DadKungFu

40. Lana Del Rey – Did You Know That There’s a Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd 

[Artist site] // [Spotify]

Did you know that Lana del Rey doesn’t actually give a fuck? If a decade of misquotations and fauxsonas has done little to sway you, enter Did You Know That There’s a Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd, which features a 77-minute runtime inflated by enough interludes and features to power a debut hip-hop LP. The album by all accounts originated from Lana mumbling melodies — “automatic singing” in her words — into her smartphone and zapping them across the interweb to her various co-composers. Led by instinct and impulsivity, the final product is a sprawling, obtuse, and often brilliant record that, by no coincidence, is her most personal to date.

“A&W”, the obligatory highlight, smashes the maximalist leanings of her crown jewel, Norman Fucking Rockwell, up against the woozy beats of Honeymoon. Her sledgehammer delivery of lines like “It’s not about havin’ someone to love me anymore / This is the experience of bein’ an American whore” thread the line between melodrama and confessionalism to such a degree it nearly becomes camp, inviting the audience into her conflicted headspace rather than begging for pity. “Paris, Texas” finds her in the opposite extreme — a straight-laced piano ballad that beautifully narrates a bittersweet life in transition. The record’s back-half increasingly finds her pushing the borders of her sound, but even at its most ridiculous, her earnestness shines through. …Ocean Blvd is an incredible album that undoubtedly showcases Lana at her most comfortable, loose, and natural. With any more restraint, we could’ve lost the magic. –neekafat

39. Gridlink – Coronet Juniper

[Bandcamp] // [Spotify]

Back like they never left, Gridlink return after their breakup nearly a decade prior with a frantic, riff-laden grind monstrosity that doesn’t relent for a single second of its runtime. The lightning speed of the instrumentation is hideously intimidating from the instant “Silk Ash Cascade” opens, with its vaguely power metal-esque introduction a playful hint at what’s soon to follow. Waspish, contorting rhythms and a consistently excessive bpm count provide the backdrop for galloping 5th-gear punk riffs that serve as a continuation of the band’s already-established sound; incessant and powerful, with tongue firmly planted in cheek.

Despite the grind pigeonhole Gridlink operate within, Coronet Juniper is remarkably varied in its influences and songwriting, providing nasty spikes of pure bile for succinct cuts, but also huge, frenzied behemoths that toy with convention and create a textured, surprisingly nuanced grind collection. The sheer chaos of the package is borderline overwhelming, with shrill vocals keeping pace against the trilling, crunching guitar tone. Listening to it is the work of a moment, but it’s in the re-listens that the superficially buried moments on individual tracks really start to shine, and this isn’t something that can typically be said of grind releases. A worthy addition to the band’s catalog and the best grind record of the year. –PumpBoffBag

38. Invent Animate – Heavener

[Bandcamp] // [Spotify]

There’s something remarkably refined about Heavener. Sure, it doesn’t stray too far from the tropes Invent Animate had previously established, and its brand of prog-metalcore songwriting is hardly the height of originality. Yet, the amalgam of atmospherics and music on display here is suspended in a deft balance; by turns crushingly heavy and disarmingly beautiful, the combination is wonderfully orchestrated. There’s a catchiness to the clean nature of the overall experience, with rapturous highs of almost otherworldly vibrancy, punctuated with abrasive shunts into fitful breakdowns and chugalug goodness. Considering the somewhat contained nature of the music itself, it’s especially impressive that the sound feels so expansive, and that’s thanks in no small part to the volume of movements crammed into almost every track.

The glue holding the component pieces together is vocalist Marcus Vik, whose garbage disposal lows and soaring, vibrant highs are the perfect complement to the experience. He is able to cement both the sense of energetic bombast and the ethereal airiness together and allow the songs, despite being quite standard in length, to feel like self-contained epic multi-part compositions. Somehow the caustic balance between ‘weighty’ and ‘light’ is able to sustain itself throughout the entire album, and the release is almost entirely made through this songwriting feat. The rapturous music is offset by a poetic, almost spiritual focus in the lyrics, and although this can quite often be the undoing of an album such as this, the cheese is weathered admirably by just how damn solemn the whole experience is. By turns rousing, serene, and headbangingly aggressive, but always extremely compelling. –PumpBoffBag

37. PJ Harvey – I Inside the Old Year Dying

[Bandcamp] // [Spotify]

As someone who spent the greater part of 2023 gorging on PJ Harvey’s back catalog, the release of I Inside the Old Year Dying came as something of a shock. While she’s certainly no stranger to the stripped-back, rough, or raw, even Harvey’s most earnest previous attempts at minimalism featured some shade of melodrama. Harvey’s caterwauls are still prevalent as ever, but the instrumentation settles into an easy rhythm and rarely threatens to overpower. Sure, the odd thudding drumbeat or electronic chittering may break in, but more often than not, it’s Harvey and her guitar crooning away. Stripped of nearly everything except excellent production and her enchanting voice, Harvey’s lyrics take center stage like never before. Actually comprehending her impenetrable phrasing and literary references goes far beyond my pay-grade, but the crackling elemental power of these combinations of words is undeniable. The incantations roll off her tongue like forbidden fruit over gentle instrumentation that strives for the same opacity as her poetry.

This all probably sounds dreary, and I suppose it is, but it’s also alluring in an indescribable way. It’s dreary like a wet autumn day, with damp boots and an unfriendly sky. And for some reason, I believe those days should be treasured with the same reverence as any sunny day. –neekafat

36. Ne Obliviscaris – Exul

[Official site] // [Spotify]

At the risk of sounding like I am completely missing the point, Ne Obliviscaris’ Exul makes me want to laugh in the same way that John Wick 4 or Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning Part One also did this year: it simply whips too much ass not to. Perhaps that’s minimizing just how impressive the end result of a long six year wait was between albums for the Australian six piece, because there is much to opine about. Like the aforementioned action movies, the album starts off huge with career-highlight “Equus” and spends the rest of its sub-hour runtime concerned with topping itself with one ridiculous white-knuckle moment after another. The few moments of relative peace still don’t relent on the tension, instead intelligently moving the pieces for yet another breathtaking moment. Exul is a bold answer to the question of, “What if a prog metal album with a string section cut out all the bullshit?” But even without getting into the nitty-gritty of the dizzying compositions and masterful pacing that beg to be fully picked apart with repeat listens, you can appreciate this prog masterpiece in a primal way that precious little in the genre can muster: big thing go boom. –Odal

35. Tomb Mold – The Enduring Spirit 

[Bandcamp] // [Spotify]

It was always going to be interesting to see how Tomb Mold followed up 2019’s excellent Planetary Clairvoyance, particularly now that they seemed to have finally settled comfortably into an intuitive balance between old school and new school in their death metal sound. It would appear that the answer we finally got was ‘more of the same, and then some.’ Contrasting their previous style with some interesting production choices in which the band diversify their sound somewhat, particularly with the more epic scope of both the songwriting and execution, The Enduring Spirit still shreds through the expected maelstrom of good ole death metal heaviness, which is to say, absolutely loaded with riffs, brimming with savage gutturals and rife with breakneck instrumentation.

The door that Planetary Clairvoyance opened with its more progressive edge has been capitalised on here, and in perhaps a more intuitive way, retaining the elements introduced on their previous record that worked and pushing those boundaries even further, maximising opportunities for sonic texture and verve that the band’s earlier releases didn’t allow for in quite so impressive a manner. It occasionally suffers from the sense of overstuffing that comes with trying to do too much, but these moments are fleeting at worst, and if Tomb Mold continue along this path, they’ll be able to stake their claim to an even more unique niche than the impressive one they had already carved out for themselves in modern death metal. –PumpBoffBag

34. Jessie Ware – That! Feels Good!

[Official site] // [Spotify]

That! Feels Good! is an album just as loud, proud, and rapturous as its two-exclamation mark title would suggest. With some of the biggest-sounding songs of the year in singles like “Begin Again” or “Free Yourself”, your voice will be shot and your legs will be mush by the time the end credits roll, but this ode to a good time will make damn sure that it’s worth it. That’s not to say the album is a one trick pony, either. “Hello Love” makes a strong case for being the most comforting and sweet song of the year, but why stop there? Let’s say ever. That! Feels Good! is an album with a spartan commitment to hyperbole and living in the moment. As she commands on the title track: pleasure is a right! –Odal

33. North Central – K9 Frequencies

[Bandcamp] // [Let’s just move past it.]

32. Empty Country – Empty Country II

[Bandcamp] // [Spotify]

Joseph D’Agostino is a magician. His masterful storytelling can shrink the world to the palm of your hand or make vacant strip malls like the one that adorns the cover of Empty Country II seem impossibly large. His greatest trick of all, however, was making me weep at a goddamn Sputnik comment of all things when he stopped by earlier this year to let us know that the kind words about his solo debut had found him at a vital point in his life and directly helped the fire that lead to II’s creation. Fitting, then, that the album is ultimately about connection — however small and tattered — in the face of insurmountable horrors found in the endless decline of the American Empire. The ghosts that star in the stories throughout continue to haunt across time and space, but ultimately contribute to a distinctly human tapestry that crosses any distance. –Odal

31. Stimming – Elderberry

[Bandcamp] // [Spotify]

Hamburg-based producer Martin Stimming’s sixth full-length not only continues his trend of high-quality deep house, but maybe also out-smarts his previous achievements. By maximising the use of hardware and minimising software applications, Elderberry boasts a sound that correlates as much with minimal techno as it does with his classic material. Those yet to acquaint themselves can imagine a fusion of the lush melodies/driving beats of early Aphex Twin and the refrigerated atmospherics of Cinemascope-era Monolake while boasting a fully organic sonic palate in place of the latter’s regimented mechanicals.  Listeners are consumed by impossibly massive bass, pulsating rhythms and shimmering techno frills, all enhanced by exceedingly pristine production.

Although laudable compositionally and from a production perspective, a large part of Elderberry‘s success can be attributed to how its structure makes you feel like you have embarked on a journey in real-time, allowing it to take you to different places with each listen.  The ambient bookend pieces act as a gradual take-off and gentle landing from the elevated centre that morphs its way through forty minutes of chilled-out yet stimulating deep house/techno, hitting you with a few anxiety-inducing moments to keep you on your toes.  Listen and indulge in a true immersive experience, like a stroll through a deserted, frosty woodland.  Best digested alone, in its entirety, and in the full absence of distraction. –BitterJalapenoJr

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