Finally time for me to literally face the music, albeit in the best way possible. I always love this time of year, and as much as writing all the lists I do fills me with task-avoidance, I do look forward to looking backward. This year was an awful lot of peak highs and unfathomable lows, but, unlike years past, a lot of positive change has taken place at the end of it all, and I feel like that has colored my tastes a little bit. It was harder than ever to pick out the things I liked best this year because I didn’t fall back on a few select comfort albums to get me through the rough times. I kept myself moving, and that helped me take in and appreciate a wider variety of music than I normally do. I also, as usual, got the chance to review a LOT of awesome music that I was already looking forward to anyway, so you’re going to see a lot of my own reviews pop up in this and future lists. Sorry, not sorry. That’s just the perks of the job. Anyway, without further ado, let’s dive into the first of several attempts at bringing 2023 to a close…
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Mizmor – Prosaic
New Mizmor is always a cause for celebration, but it can be hard to know where to go after stunning pieces like Cairns, Wit’s End and Myopia sweep me off my feet. Never one to rest on his laurels, though, ALN came back with a more aggressive and less philosophically dense record that is almost light and breezy in comparison to the slogging doom epics of his past several releases. The result is something that manages to tweak the Mizmor formula just enough to offer new nuances to entice the uninitiated as well as repeat customers, and I think it works about as well as any Mizmor release has; which is, to say, quite well.
One of quite a few I have had the pleasure of reviewing this year. If you’re interested, extended thoughts are here.
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Botanist – VIII: Selenotrope
If you know, you know. And if you don’t, did you know you can make black metal without any guitars at all? Did you know you can use hammered dulcimers instead? Did you know you can write lyrics about your favorite species of plants and it turns out to be the most beautiful black metal I’ve heard in a long time? Well, now you do. Selenotrope returns Botanist back to a solo project (for the time being), but the work on improving the sound and the level of focus and attention to detail on Selenotrope makes it a joy to listen to. That, and the fact that it is absolutely gorgeous.
The hardest part of writing these lists is figuring out new and clever ways of saying “I wrote this review”! Anyway, I wrote this review too.
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Aara – Triade III: Nyx
Man, I really did listen to a lot of black metal this year, huh? And all of it seems to be tied together by the thread of breaking black metal down, taking the parts, bashing them with hammers into dust and filling in the many cracks with whatever the hell you feel like. Aara has been one of my favorite modern black metal acts since 2020’s En Ergô Einai was my ATOY, and since then they haven’t lost an ounce of fire or passion. Putting the end of their trilogy celebrating Melmoth the Wanderer on this list seems like a good way to honor all that they have been up to since then, in the same way that Return of the King won an Oscar that ceremoniously applied to the whole trilogy.
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Pyramid Mass – Monolith
I knew next to nothing about Pyramid Mass when I checked out Monolith on the advice of Vince and Anton (I’m pretty sure, it was a long time ago at this point), but the allure caught me almost immediate, and with a vengeance to boot. Wildly untraditional, experimental black metal will always get my attention, but Monolith goes beyond that. There are sounds here that are barely recognizable as coming from instruments, there are moments of panic-inducing atonal noodling, there are big beefy bass breaks, and all of it pushes the boundaries of black metal in the best way possible. The purists are going to puke over this one, and I am here for it.
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Liturgy – 93696
I think this is when I finally *get* Liturgy, in a cosmic sense. I’ve always wanted to get Liturgy, ever since people were raving about Aesthetica, but something intangible has always stopped me from getting fully invested. And then, just like magic, 93696 just…clicked. For a different, intangible reason, this record hits me in a way that its siblings just don’t. Maybe it’s because I had a lot more time to sit down and digest it, maybe it just hit me at the right time in the right place, but I think I finally understand what HHH and Company are on to. Maybe I’ll even *get* the rest of their discography. Who knows where I’ll go from there? There’s a whole section of my brain that I feel is only now starting to decalcify.
If you want to read the thoughts of someone who very tangibly *gets* Liturgy, check out D. Morris’s review right here.
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Pupil Slicer – Blossom
When Mirrors came out way back in 2021 (Way back? Holy shit, time flies…) I thought I had seen everything I needed to see from grindcore, but to say Pupil Slicer blew me away is an understatement. I was enamored from the first listen, so I had really high expectations for Blossom, and I can say it is nothing at all like I expected it to be in the best way possible. While I normally balk at bands toning down the aggression and moving in a more, dare I say, conventional direction, I think it suits Pupil Slicer perfectly. Blossom shows off a wider range of what the trio can do in a variety of contexts without sacrificing what made them great in the first place. Everything is enhanced, everything is polished, everything is turned up to eleven, and also there’s aliens out to get you. So, you know. There’s that.
You know the drill. Just click the link.
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Horrendous – Ontological Mysterium
And now we get into the section of my honorable mentions where I feel genuinely bad that I had to make a cut somewhere in the top spots. I like to keep it to nine on each list, for the brand, but if I didn’t impose that limitation on myself, Ontological Mysterium would be up there with a bullet. I love this album unabashedly, and that comes after me almost outright dismissing it. “Cult of Shaad’oah” did nothing for me, but thank goodness for Buke encouraging me to go back to it, because I almost missed one of the most fun and exciting death metal albums in recent memory. Monster performances all around, but huge shout outs to Alex Kulick for giving me inspiration to practice my craft like never before.
Not one, but two audio things about this album: we named it our Album of the Month for August, and Alex and Damian were gracious enough to sit down with Buke for an interview!
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Cryptopsy – As Gomorrah Burns
Long have we waited, and the payoff was oh so delicious. Cryptopsy are a name synonymous with aggressive, technical and extreme death metal, but their teeth have not been this sharp and their bite this strong in, well, quite a long time. Long before their last release, at the bare minimum, but on As Gomorrah Burns, there is new life breathed into each member. Of course, the charge is led by the inimitable Flo Mounier, whose sound is as signature to the band as any other instrument, but the real standout here is Matt McGachy’s vocal performance. The man has an attitude about him that has been sorely missing from Cryptopsy, and it’s what makes this album sound practically like a return to form.
Lucky me, I got the chance to review this just in time for my birthday. My birthday, no one else’s.
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Bell Witch – Future’s Shadow, Part I: The Clandestine Gate
If you’ve listened to the newest episode of our Album of the Month chats, you’ll hear Buke pointedly ask if anyone was going to put this specific album on their list. Well…here it is. Is it another Bell Witch album? Yes. Do you know what you’re going to get here? Pretty much, but I do think there are enough twists here to elevate this release from the mire that a lot of people have relegated it to. You just don’t see a lot of other bands out here doing what Bell Witch are doing, and I think they made a bold choice to follow up Mirror Reaper with a triptych of albums that are also one long album when played end to end, and also repeat infinitely. It’ll take some years for the payoff to really arrive, but I for one an eagerly awaiting the next sequence, because The Clandestine Gate continues to highlight just why I think Bell Witch are one of the most creative and ambitious bands out there right now.
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夢遊病者 (Sleepwalker) – Skopofoboexoskelet
I’m not sure what I’m even listening to. I don’t know how I feel about it. I don’t think I understand it at all. But it has an undeniable hold on me, and I am fascinated by it all the same. There is so much to break down here, that even for a 25 minute EP, repeated listens still uncover something I missed the first six times I put Skopofoboexoskelet on. Jazz meets avant garde meets black metal, maybe, meets I don’t even know. I don’t know! I find myself saying that over and over when I listen to this EP, but somehow I still find myself putting it back on.
Hera came out of their well to shame mankind into listening to this release. Check out what a good review looks like here!
One down, several more to go, but the ball is rolling now and I’ve had a blast going back and re-listening to some favorites for this year. The real stuff will be coming very soon, but now that I’m in it, it’s gonna be hard for me to stop spinning these albums to get a hold on anything else. Well, until then.
-Ian
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