...Stay... - tears of happiness

Highlights of 2023: part 1

I am (sort of) back, with plans to restart writing about music in 2024. As a teaser, I have some albums from 2023 I really enjoyed to share with you. In lieu of a top ten list, or an Album of the Year post, you instead get a small selection of albums I think were stand outs in the past year.

First up is ...Stay..., a depressive suicidal black metal one-man project in the vein of Sadness and None (one word dsbm band titles seem to be a through-line in my album picks).

I am a sucker for this type of dsbm. Depressive Suicidal Black Metal essentially comes in two forms: Goth dsbm, focused on mood and texture and calm despair; and school shooter dsbm, focused on shrieking anthems to, well, shoot up a school to. Both have their place in my rotation, but the gothier end of things is what I dig most.

Call it griefcore - music that attempts to lure you into drowning yourself in a swamp, to wandering into the woods alone never to be seen again. The sort of album that doesn't wonder if it can get the cops to shoot it once its shot all its classmates, but wonders if it kills itself inside a dumpster, would that inconvenience less people than if it did so in a bathtub.

This is a more metal focused offshoot of Fernando Mejía, the force behind A Rose Dying In The Rain, one of the best blackgaze projects going these days. Viva Guadalajara, Viva muerte

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Coffin Lurker - Foul and Defiled

Industrial sludge death doom funeral noise from Oakland. Maurice De Jong is the most prolific dude in music, I am certain. Gnaw Their Tongues , Cloak of Altering , De Magia Veterum , Dodenbezweerder are just a few of his projects. Apparently Rene Aquarius from Imperial Cult decided that he would challenge Maurice to a doom-off, and the loser would have to sweep up after the planet was destroyed. This is the sonic record of that planetary destruction. It is also one of the best doom records I've ever heard. Thankfully free of Sabbath worship and lazy rehashing of every boring stoner riff imaginable, this is actually a brand new thing. Suffocatingly vile and planetarily heavy, this is the answer to the unasked question "what would happen if Sunn 0))) were from New Orleans. Foul and Defiled by Coffin Lurker

SPECTRAL WOUND - A Diabolic Thirst

TRVE KVLT BLEK METAL. Black Metal Without Adjectives. However you want to signal that a band or an album is orthodox, foundational, traditional, what have you - this is it. 100% blast beats, tremolo picking, and wraith-rasp shrieks. This is crudeness as an art form. Spectral Wound are now the keepers of the black flame. There is zero nostalgia here. This is true modern black metal, but also exactly what 90's black metal was. I'm going to go ahead and predict that this will be my black metal AotY. It would take truly herculean effort to make better black metal than this. A Diabolic Thirst by SPECTRAL WOUND

Perturbator - Lustful Sacraments

This album answers an incredibly important question: What if Rick Deckard was a goth? A goth replicant that could pass the Voight-Kampff test easily. More importantly, it provides a stunning backdrop to the writing I am supposed to be doing, but keep avoiding. French composer James Kent has always been something of a polarizing figure. Much of his earlier work has been very HOTLINE MIAMI style synthwave. This is most definitely NOT THAT. Instead you a weird robot sex soundtrack - a post-punk mood piece cloaked in goth rock nihilism and sexual malevolence. Gritty, misanthropic, but still atmospheric and ambient, this is some nice stuff! Lustful Sacraments by PERTURBATOR

Trumpet of Amdusias

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