A lot of great metal came out this year and it was hard to narrow it down to my Top 3. There were some great EPs released this year— Spiritbox’s The Fear of Fear, Brand of Sacrifice’s Between Death and Dreams and Knosis’s The Eternal Doom among them. Singles I enjoyed include: "On the Verge" by thrown, “Masterpiece” by The Anchor, “Enemy” by The Gentle Men (ft. Andy Cizek), “Weight of the World” by Harper (ft. We Came as Romans and Brand of Sacrifice), “Viking” by Slaughter To Prevail, "III" by DEATHPHONK (Nik Nocturnal's weird project); and Knocked Loose had the double, “Deep In the Willow”/“Everything is Quiet Now”.
My Top 5 honourable mentions: 5. [m]other by Veil of Maya, their newest does everything I want it to do, good riffs, cool effects, great vocals; 4. Soul Elegy by Termina, Nik Nocturna, Andy Cizek and friends deliver an awesome metal album; 3. Chaos Horrific by Cannibal Corpse is a strong entry and shows why they're still so loved after so long; 2. The Fox and the Bird by Ok Goodnight mixes folk, rock, metal and whatever else they want to create this really entrancing album; and 1. Take Me Back to Eden by Sleep Token is one of the albums I listened to the most because it's easy to put on when you're tired of being relentlessly pummelled by deathcore, but though its highs are super high, it just misses out landing on my top 3 because there are a few spots it lags
3. ...And Everything In Between - Unprocessed
Manuel Gardner Fernandes has quickly become one of my favourite guitarists between this release and Unprocessed's previous album Gold. The combination of styles on this album exemplify modern metal: bludgeoning heaviness, thumpy prog riffing (à la Animals As Leaders or Polyphia) and a mix of harsh and clean vocals. Despite the polish of these 9 tracks, some express such raw emotion and a ferocity that they really get me hyped up. The variety of tones and vocals kept me engaged throughout, and they blend and balance heaviness and melody so well. The guitar sounds so angry sometimes–especially the part of "Thrash" where Manuel beats the shit outta his guitar after screaming, "But you're just a fucking lie!" I love that. Other songs like "Blackbone" and "Die on the Cross of the Martyr" continue the trend of excellent instrumentation, the latter featuring guest solos by Polyphia's Tim Henson and Scottie Lepage. It's so well done and so engaging. In the short time I've had this album, it's become one of my favourites of 2023.
2. Periphery V: Djent Is Not A Genre - Periphery
When Periphery released "Wildfire" as a single I immediately bought into what they were selling. The way they transition through the various parts is seamless, the mix of vocal techniques and the jazzy interlude are all fantastic. It really captures the spirit of the whole record. Songs like "Dying Star" and "Zagreus" are also so hard. Periphery continues to show off their musical dexterity, and the band members prove once again they're not only some of the best musicians djenting their way through the world but as a collective they add up to more than the sum of their parts. My hottest take when it comes to this album is that I love "Silhouette" — it's like if you ran 80s soft rock and 90s/00s boy bands through a progressive music filter. I think they wrote this song and put it on the album just to prove they can do anything. And if Periphery is Djent, and Djent isn't a genre then why shouldn't they go in every genre direction they want to explore?
1. War of Being - TesseracT
In other years this top 3 could have been entirely deathcore or melodeath or metalcore, but this year it was djenty prog metal through and through. It's the music I gravitated to the most this year and nobody did it better than TesseracT. Daniel Tompkins vocals are incredible throughout, his cleans sounding particularly great on "Echoes" – giving us one of the best choruses before following it up with another great one on "The Grey". The album offers engaging lyricism throughout and the instrumentation is at a pedigree one would expect for a band in the vanguard of this genre. The album gives us atmospheric moments, synths, meditative passages before blasting us with metal. In many ways the whole album does what the best tracks on Sleep Token's Take Me Back To Eden do. Each song and the album as a whole provide an expansive experience. And that's why it's my number one. More than any other album released this year, TesseracT's War of Being makes me want to sit down and listen to it from beginning to end.
Other great albums: SUPERBLOOM by Silent Planet; Fatalism by Polaris; Feral by Left To Suffer; Foregone by In Flames; Ashen by Humanity's Last Breath; The Sin of Human Frailty by END; Symptoms of Survival by Dying Wish; and The Death We Seek by Currents.
