Here we are, once again, at the end of another strange year (or more accurately, at the beginning of yet another year, because time is a strange thing; call it a flat circle, a plate of spaghetti or an electrocardiogram), trying to inject some sense and order into the gigantic pile of excellent new music that was released in the past 12 months.

As always, the list of my favorite albums is not limited to LPs, but also includes EPs (including longform single-track EPs), because the length of a release relates to the aforementioned peculiar nature of time. Moreover, if you succeed in leaving your mark and thoroughly impressing me with an EP, you have done something that deserves praise. The number of albums on my end-of-year list always varies, and for 2023 I chose 18 releases, based on the votes each of us writers submitted for our collective, aggregated mother of all lists.

These lists normally provide an opportunity to wax poetic about the previous year. I’d like to believe that I am finally regaining a healthy work-life balance, after a non-stop onslaught (weekends and holidays included) at the office since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic which severely limited my contributions here at the website and in our podcast. I hope that this long-overdue increase in free time will result in more frequent appearances and writings here, because metal is what I love and the guys and gals who do it for the blog and podcast are absolute treasures, as are you, dear readers, so many thanks for being you. Before I get too sentimental, let’s dig in, shall we?