[PLEASE NOTE: These are not the results of the year-end poll, which ends in January. If you haven’t contributed your picks yet, please do so here.]

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Terrible year, good music. Not the first time that’s happened. Look anywhere in the world and there’s unrest to be found. I have started this paragraph three separate times now with some discussion of my country’s willful embrace of corporate, christian nationalist fascism, and each time have had to go back and restart, because by the time you’re done asking “what’s the point of anything?” you realize you don’t have an answer to that question. Better not to ask.

But in what has unquestionably been the dumbest 12 months I’ve lived through as regards the outside world has made a salve of human creativity, and as our techbro-warlord fiefdoms are laid out and generative AI is pushed in place of human artistry — the two could coexist, easily, just not in a world this stupid — making art whether it’s overtly political or not feels more like resistance against a cultural numbing out than it ever has in my 44 years.

We celebrate the human spirit, then, when we celebrate human creativity. The nonphysical part of ourselves and the connections we make across land, space and time through various forms of art and expression. I believe artificial intelligence can have a place in this world, I just wish I could convince it to empty the dishwasher.

Music holds us together. Or to be more honest, it holds me together. On these days where the horrors don’t seem to end, where cruelty and unkindness are held as virtues and care is seen as a weakness, where hateful rhetoric is held as common sense, where grown-ass men roll around in big-boy pickup trucks and wave silly flags like the spoiled five-year-olds they are mentally, where we kill each other for sport, being able to immerse, to put my head somewhere else, to get away from it for just a little while, has been a gift. It is difficult to believe there was ever an optimistic vision of the future in my country. In the face of rising isolationism and kleptocratic, anticonstitutional governmental improprieties, limitless corruption, endless drudging stupidity, I see no reason for one now beyond escapism.

So in these wretched times, love all you can love. Everyone and everything. Bathe yourself in it as much as you can. Hold onto what you can hold onto, because so much else is being ripped away. We live in fear and confusion and exhaustion, but clarity exists. I find it in art and in critical thinking. My hope for you is you find it however you are able.

Below is my list of the year’s best albums. It’s my list, and it has been put together using the same criteria I always use — personal taste and what I listened to most combined with what I think were important or otherwise notable outings — and as always, there were plenty of them. No, I didn’t hear everything, and I think if I ended this post now with “this was the year of Castle Rat,” that would also be a valid way to go, so whatever your opinions are of the year or the music that filled your life from one end of it to the other, please know that this is coming from my perspective, and that while I do my best to do as much as possible, I have neither time nor interest in covering all releases all the time.

Every year, I put this post up after working on it for a week or whatever and someone invariably goes, “meh what about WHOEVER list sux” and the entire endeavor feels like a waste. Never fails. It’s become part of the ritual. I ask you please keep comments civil and allow for the possibility of other perspectives and opinions. If we can’t do that as people sharing the same divergent subculture, then you and I are no better than the monsters outside the door. And we are better, I assure you.

Thanks for reading. Here we go.

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The Top 60 Albums of 2025

**NOTE**: If you’re looking for something specific, try a text search.

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60-31

60. Make Money From Home, Make Money From Home
59. Madmess, The Third Coming
58. Spawn, Light Rite
57. Lorquin’s Admiral, Lorquin’s Admiral
56. Pink Fuzz, Resolution
55. Bloodsports, Anything Can Be a Hammer
54. Serial Hawk, Psychic Pain
53. C.ROSS, Future Site of C.ROSS
52. Ikitan, Shaping the Chaos
51. Papir, IX

50. Kryptograf, Kryptonomicon
49. Bronco, Bronco
48. The Gray Goo, Cabin Fever Dreams
47. Crop, S.S.R.I.
46. Caboose, Left for Dust
45. Nuclear Dudes, Skeletal Blasphemy
44. Cavern Deep, Part III – The Bodiless
43. Rainbows Are Free, Silver and Gold
42. Moon Destroys, She Walks by Moonlight
41. Abanamat, Abominat

40. Margarita Witch Cult, Strung Out in Hell
39. Kungens Män, Resande i Rockmusik
38. Naxatras, V
37. Atom Juice, Atom Juice
36. Castle Rat, The Bestiary
35. Florist, Adrift
34. Earthbong, Bring Your Lungs
33. River Cult, High Anxiety
32. Messa, The Spin
31. Borracho, Ouroboros

Notes:

You might notice two of the year’s biggest releases here between 31 and 40 in Messa and Castle Rat. I’m not sure underground heavy anything has two more crucial bands happening right now. Castle Rat’s main impact and obvious priority is their live presentation, and Messa I’ve always been kind of here or there on. But looking at the year-end poll results thus far, those are names people would be missing, so I wanted to point them out specifically. There was no getting away from either in 2025.

So much to go through here. A few excellent debuts in Atom Juice, Make Money From Home, Caboose, Bronco, Bloodsports, Lorquin’s Admiral, Ikitan, Moon Destroys and so on, while strong returns from the likes of Nuclear Dudes, Papir, Serial Hawk, Rainbows Are Free, the always-welcome Borracho, Naxatras and others provided fodder for immersion across a swath of sounds and intentions of craft. Florist blindsided me, which I appreciated, and River Cult remain wholly undervalued in my mind. Kryptograf and Cavern Deep continue to grow, and Abanamat’s second record was encouragingly proggy. I found solace in Papir and Spawn, and raw physical catharsis in the thrashing heavy cybergrind of Nuclear Dudes. And of course, groove abounds.

I say the same thing every year, but if someone turned these names into the year-end poll as a top 30, I wouldn’t argue. Whether hyped or not, rocking out, navelgazing or exploring the unknown, there is so much here waiting for people to take it on. I hope you’ll see something in the above you haven’t heard yet, listen, and love it.

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30. Black Moon Cult, Ophidian Future (The Children of Yig)

Released by Black Doomba Records. Reviewed Nov. 6.

More on this one below, but Black Moon Cult‘s awaited first album, Ophidian Future (The Children of Yig) was unquestionably a standout in the realm of heavy psychedelic rock, and set the Toledo, Ohio-based trio off on a course of exploration that could be shimmering and progressive or rife with terrestrial groove. And the vocals, not always, but sometimes, reminded me of Death if they were a stoner band crossed with Fu Manchu. Most of all, the vibe-heavy six-songer declared Black Moon Cult as one to watch going forward, and the heavy underground took note accordingly.

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29. Daevar, Sub Rosa

Released by The Lasting Dose Records. Reviewed April 15.

Inarguable riffing met with grunge overtones, an overarching heavygaze melodicism and increasingly tight songwriting, yes, Sub Rosa is a step along the way in the narrative of Daevar‘s forward growth, but it sure felt like a landmark in that process. A bit of Type O Negative in “Siren Song” and a bit more explosiveness there and throughout underscored the murky doom for which the German outfit are known, and the key influences are still there, Windhand, Monolord, and so on, but Daevar have been shaping their sound over the course of their albums to arrive at such a payoff.

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28. Kaiser, 2nd Sound

Released by Majestic Mountain Records. Reviewed Jan. 8.

Kaiser had acquitted themselves well on their 2022 Ripple-issued split with Sweden’s Captain Caravan (review here), so their second full-length arrived not quite as a surprise, but with some measure of anticipation behind it. That would turn out to be wholly justified by the eight-song offering from the Finnish heavy rockers, who aligned themselves with a classic Northern-European-style shove in pieces like “Meteorhead” with high concentrations of fuzz and blowouts to coincide. With pieces like “Oversized Load” and the upped heft of “A Clockwork Green,” this was a sleeper, but it’s the kind of record that creates loyalists and people will be recommending it to each other for years.

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27. Crystal Spiders, Metanoia

Released by Ripple Music. Reviewed June 2.

Of course, Crystal Spiders have an established powerhouse voice out front in Brenna Leath, but Metanoia brought into focus just how much this is Leath‘s band as the lone remaining founder in a three-piece, with newcomers guitarist Reid Rogers and drummer Aaron Willis. Fair enough. Even in a two-thirds new incarnation, Crystal Spiders came through pretty slick on their third full-length, with a confident, classic-doom swing, songs that remain unafraid to reach onto more ethereal ground, and a flow of melody that’s made them immediately identifiable among the hordes. Asking more would be asking too much.

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26. Slomatics, Atomicult

Released by Majestic Mountain Records. Reviewed Sept. 11.

The ongoing evolution of Northern Ireland’s Slomatics found the crush-prone trio expanding on their worldmaking atmospheres in unexpected ways, challenging what had become conventions in their sound over time while offering the guitar-only heft that’s become their calling card over the last two decades. While more cosmic in their float, they remained grounded in terms of songwriting, and were able to push themselves in ways they’ve never done before. It was enough to remind you why you like heavy music in the first place, and signature Slomatics while moving beyond their prior work, building as they always have on the past to carve out their own futuristic style and perspective. It was, in other words, a Slomatics record.

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25. Dead Shrine, Cydonia Mensa

Released by Astral Projection and Kozmik Artifactz. Reviewed April 24.

As a fan of his various incarnations, I’m not sure it’d feel like a year if there wasn’t something new from Hamilton, New Zealand’s Craig Williamson. Whether it’s the more rocking solo-project Dead Shrine or the long-running acid folk outfit Lamp of the Universe or some other collaboration, etc., his craft is both distinctive and malleable, and the rumble in songs like “The Sacred Light” and the chuggy, hooky “Redeemer” is his all the way, even as it and the psychedelia that surrounds embarked on new ground for outward-facing tonal weight in Williamson‘s work, tying seemingly disparate sides together in ways that felt fresh, and most importantly, Williamson‘s own. I’ve been listening to Williamson for over 20 years and I have no idea where he’s headed. That’s part of the appeal. And fresh as it was, the take throughout Cydonia Mensa still carried a classic feel.

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24. Electric Citizen, EC4

Released by Heavy Psych Sounds. Reviewed May 19.

Apart from the obvious consideration of plague, I’m not sure what was behind the seven-year space between 2018’s Helltown (review here) and their first outing for Heavy Psych Sounds and fourth album overall, EC4, but if they were taking their time, the songs bear that out. “Static Vision” hit perfectly as a catchy single, while the more ethereal “Moss” and the sweeping “Other Planets” took the Ohio band to new places in sound. They’ve always been about craft and performance, and those remain key aspects of what they do, but nuance in the production and an eye kept fixated on the outside-genre leant depth to the material, and Electric Citizen basked in it. The band remain somewhat undervalued in my mind; EC4 is another example of why.

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23. Kal-El, Astral Voyager Vol. 1

Released by Majestic Mountain Records. Reviewed April 8.

There’s very little mystery to Kal-El. There doesn’t need to be. They have the songs and can come right at you with them. No need to sneak around or pull some tricks. Hit play. “Here’s a riff. It’s a hook. It’s in your head. Here’s the next one.” Repeat for further righteousness. And don’t go walking around thinking I mean straightforward as a code word for boring. That’s not what’s happening here. The point is that with no shortage of big sound, big reach, big riffs and melodies, Astral Voyager Vol. 1 put into emphasis just how satisfyingly direct Kal-El can be. And though it’s a story only half told with a Vol. 2 presumably due in 2026, grooves like “Dilithium” (of course I’m in for a Star Trek reference) and the nine-and-a-half-minute “Astral Voyager,” Kal-El‘s latest held purpose in its every turn and expanse, and, well, they’re the kind of band you can rely on not to start sucking now, so yes, the next one is a thing to look forward to.

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22. Khan, That Fair and Warlike Form/Return to Dust

Released by Full Contact Safari. Reviewed Oct. 3.

Two sidelong epics from Melbourne, Australia, trio Khan, “That Fair and Warlike Form” (23:11) and “Return to Dust” (22:53), were about as vivid as progressive heavy psychedelia got in 2025. Each piece worked in stages and had its own ebbs and flows such that it’ll probably be a while yet before it’s all fully digested, but no question it was a step forward for Khan, whose 2023 LP, Creatures, had sent them to tour in Europe multiple times over. The same wheels are already turning for this album, and despite the longform material, Khan have continued to grow their audience. I don’t know where they go from here — single song album? step back to shorter forms? something in between? — but That Fair and Warlike Form/Return to Dust conveyed its intent in every moment of crush and every fluid twist or expansive dive, and without giving up their tonal impact, Khan found new paths into aural breadth.

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21. Maha Sohona, A Dark Place

Released by Bone Bag Records. Reviewed Nov. 12.

For those who caught onto Maha Sohona‘s 2021 sophomore outing, Endless Searcher (review here), A Dark Place was something to anticipate as representing the next phase from a new voice in heavy psych rock. A Dark Place was as-advertised in being moodier than its predecessor, but all the more cohesive for that. With a meditative crux that came through regardless of a given part’s volume, the Swedish three-piece of guitarist/vocalist Johan Bernhardtson, bassist Thomas Hedlund and drummer Erik Andersson were able to both subvert and surpass expectations, revealing a richness to their process that went beyond the marriage of jams and heavier nod. Their best work may still be ahead of them, but pieces like “Ostera” and “Visions” confirmed their progression in craft and atmosphere.

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20. Grayceon, Then the Darkness

Released by We Can Records and Translation Loss. Reviewed July 24.

From environmental devastation, violence against women, the sundry hypocrisies inherent in raising a family in our world and mysterious lights in the sky perhaps from beyond, one would not accuse Grayceon‘s sixth album, released on the occasion of the band’s 20th anniversary, of taking it easy. A vast and sometimes challenging listen wasn’t anything new from the San Francisco cello-inclusive heavy thrash doomers, but in the 20-minute “Mahsa” and the wistfully punishing “Song of the Snake,” blastbeaten but unbowed unless you’re counting the literal bow, cellist/vocalist Jackie Perez Gratz, guitarist Max Doyle and drummer Zack Farwell were unflinching in their extremity, and further refined the sound that is so, so much their own. Comfort and catharsis, searing and healing, Then the Darkness is distinctly Grayceon and that is all the more reason to treasure it.

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19. Kombynat Robotron, AANK

Released through Fuzz Club Records. Reviewed July 9.

Marking their ascent to Fuzz Club Records with the release of their seventh album, Kiel, Germany, psych explorers Kombynat Robotron didn’t quite completely upend their prior methodology by embracing structured songwriting and the use of vocals for the first time, but it was close enough. The songs — there were eight of them, where Dec. 2024’s West Mata (review here) had three, for example — still held to a sense of approaching the outer reaches of heavy psych, the far end of some remote corner of our cornerless galaxy, but it was the use the band put their impulses to that marked the shift. Do I know that the next one will be the same? Nope. And neither am I willing to hazard a prediction, but if you can’t see that as a strength on the part of Kombynat Robotron, maybe it’s best to keep moving along.

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18. Kadavar, I Just Want to Be a Sound / Kids Abandoning Destiny Among Vanity and Ruin

Released by Robotor Records. Reviewed Dec. 18.

The funny thing is that, as different as they are in their outward presentation and production style, you could look at either of the two LPs Kadavar released this year and call it “uncompromising.” In the bright, daring-toward-pop melodies and all-in sonic wash of the earlier I Just Want to Be a Sound, the four-piece were unrepentant in speaking to both a heyday and a future in which rock music speaks to a broader audience than dudes who look like me, and with Kids Abandoning Destiny Among Vanity and Ruin — K.A.D.A.V.A.R., if you’re feeling clever — they put forth some of the heaviest, rawest and most metallic sounds they’ve conjured in the last decades-plus of their evolving style. The two records were not black and white, there were overlapping aspects of songwriting and performance, but while each had its own scope, it was in the light of the other that they were most luminous, as much complement as contrast. Maybe I’m cheating including them together. You might say I took inspiration from the band in breaking my own rules.

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17. 16, Guides for the Misguided

Released by Relapse Records. Reviewed Jan. 28.

How many acts do you know who have nine records, let alone nine records the latest of which still finds them pursuing new ideas and fostering growth in their sound? No, 16 aren’t the only ones, but the San Diego outfit found new life when guitarist Bobby Ferry stepped into the frontman/vocalist role, and with Alex Shuster both producing and in the band on guitar, the ferocity of their crunch and hardcore-born chugging largesse has become even more fervent. Guides for the Misguided was the latest in a streak of bangers that at this point goes back more than 15 years, and amid the familiar onslaught, saw the band employing clean vocals for the first time. I suppose it’s arguable whether that made a song like “Fortress of Hate” any more accessible, but it showed how 16 have never settled or stopped pushing themselves, and seemed to boast all the more shove for the fact that it was everybody moving forward, you and the band.

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16. Conan, Violence Dimension

Released by Heavy Psych Sounds. Reviewed April 25.

There’s that stretch in “Total Bicep” where the guitars are howling into the void and all the crush surrounding is so full on that it’s kind of overwhelming, but that’s the idea. Give it volume and let it consume you. I suppose that’s not new from Conan, but the UK bludgeoners of all have a well-earned reputation for standing among the heaviest bands on the planet, and Violence Dimension wasn’t about to do anything to derail that impression. Harsh noise metal, doomed lumber offset by speedier but still craterous riffs; familiar territory for Conan, but emblematic of how well they know who they are and what they’re about. The 10-minute finale “Ocean of Boiling Skin” stands testament to just how far into the frozen ground the band are capable of driving you, but in the gallop of “Frozen Edges of the Wound” they reminded that just because you’re devastating doesn’t mean you can’t also be catchy. If you don’t get it the first time, it’s okay. They’re totally willing to properly beat it into your head.

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15. Buzzard, Mean Bone

Self-released. Reviewed Feb. 19.

While not as overtly political as his other releases this year — neither was he turning from that; I’m speaking relatively — singer-songwriter Christopher Thomas Elliott brought a storyteller’s presence to Mean Bone, his second full-length under the Buzzard moniker following on from 2024’s well-received debut, Doom Folk (review here), and had heft to match. The murder-balladry of “Murder in the White Barn,” that brighter swing in “Twisted Love,” the heavy folk-blues “Dunwich Farm” and the chronicle of hubris that was “Flies, Mosquitos, Rats and Sparrows” carried the persona of the first record forward, but with newfound weight and distortion around the Elliott‘s clear-voiced critique. More on Buzzard below, but if you don’t get there, just know that Elliott was hands-down my most-listened-to artist this year. It wasn’t close.

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14. Pelican, Flickering Resonance

Released by Run for Cover Records. Reviewed May 26.

Much of the narrative around Pelican‘s seventh album, Flickering Resonance, had to do with guitarist Laurent Schroeder-Lebec rejoining the group alongside guitarist Trevor Shelley de Brauw, bassist Bryan Herwig and drummer Larry Herwig, and fair enough. The long-running Chicago instrumentalists seemed to organically harken back to earlier days throughout nodders like “Evergreen,” “Cascading Crescent” and the drifty-till-it-ain’t capper “Wandering Mind,” and having that lineup in place is a convenient explanation for how that might happen. But if it’s a post-metallic, post-hardcore, heavy-emo dynamic that’s familiar from Pelican, neither were they pretending the last 16 years hadn’t happened, and that could be felt in both the tightness of some of the songs and the according parts where they seemed conscious of the need to exhale a bit. Six years on from their last full-length, it was a ‘welcome back’ for everybody, really.

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13. Causa Sui, In Flux

Released by El Paraiso Records. Reviewed May 1.

There’s no denying Causa Sui and frankly I’m not sure why you’d try. The Danish outfit made their debut 20 years ago, and they’ve never looked back in terms of their progression, over time embracing not only an instrumental approach (early) but (later) a progressive, self-aware meld of influences from jazz and psychedelic rock. In Flux — a studio long-player complemented by the 2025 live outing Loppen 2024 (review here) — seemed to pull from all around it. Not randomly, not haphazard, but as though Causa Sui stood astride reality and picked the nuances they wanted to highlight, some modern, some classic, all filtered through the chemistry of their performance, sometimes brazenly full in sound, and at times brazenly jammy (looking at you, “Boogie Lord’s Revenge”), but never lacking purpose in the choices made.

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12. Witchcraft, Idag

Released by Heavy Psych Sounds. Reviewed May 30.

In some ways, it feels like Witchcraft have been searching for an identity since Nuclear Blast pushed them into more modern production styles with 2012’s Legend (review here), but in terms of who Witchcraft are circa 2025, the answer is they’re everything founding guitarist/vocalist Magnus Pelander wants them to be. With his emotive vocals at the fore, and sometimes in Swedish, which works too, the seventh Witchcraft LP culled its form from everything the band has been in the past in classic doom, folkish acoustic minimalism and thoughtfully composed heavy rock. Idag laid claim to these in ‘all of the above’-style and answered the question of the band’s forward path in the affirmative. Turns out Witchcraft are Witchcraft (who knew?), and that definition is more multifaceted than it used to be.

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11. Rwake, The Return of Magik

Released by Relapse Records. Reviewed March 12.

I didn’t know at the start of the year that Little Rock, Arkansas, post-sludgers Rwake would be making a 14-years-later return, let alone one that felt so much like a swirling expanse of gnashing teeth as did The Return of Magik. I talk a fair amount about albums setting an atmosphere, creating a world and so on. If you’ve ever wondered what the hell I mean, this record serves as an easy go-to example. You put it on and it is affecting. Unsettling at times, maybe overwhelming, but that’s always been part of Rwake‘s thing too. But viciousness does not preclude beauty, and in their violent churn, one finds a kind of cosmic warmth as well. It’s not always easy listening, and it’s not supposed to be, but Rwake‘s return was a gutpunch of a front-to-back, and the expanse it crafted was its own. It held strong to core aspects of their sound and style, but at the same time seemed able to range wherever the hell they wanted. Pastoral extremity? I don’t know. We’ll be making up genres for this band for decades.

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10. Lo-Pan, Get Well Soon

Released by Magnetic Eye Records. Reviewed March 31.

Glad as I was on a fan level to have Lo-Pan releasing their first new album in six years, it was the songs comprising Get Well Soon that really made it. Rife with hooks, sharp-turning riffing and daring to have an opinion on the goings on of the day — genocide, specifically; talking about “God’s Favorite Victim” — where so much of heavy rock and roll exercises its white male privilege to not, Lo-Pan set a new standard for themselves in pieces like “Northern Eyes,” “Rogue Wave,” “Harpers Ferry,” and so on, creating a collection of highlights culminating in the stirring “Six Bells.” I’ve always been a sucker for when they slow it down, and so I remain, but they came out of the gate with the title-track and that punch was among the year’s most satisfying to be sure. They’re somewhere around 20 years as a band at this point, and they’ve continued to evolve, but they’re a songs-first band, and the physical force of their material is emblematic of the thought and heart they’ve put into it.

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9. Seedy Jeezus, Damned to the Depths

Released by Lay Bare Recordings and Echodelick Records. Reviewed Aug. 12.

Made in collaboration with Tony Reed (Mos Generator, Big Scenic Nowhere, Pentagram, etc.), who also produced, Damned to the Depths harnessed a mature vision of brash ’70s-style heavy psychedelic blues rock. This was perhaps most vibrantly realized on the multi-stage seven-part epic “Mourning Sea” taking the whole of side B, but from fading in where they left 2018’s Polaris Oblique (review here) to the subdued, Melltron-inclusive melancholy prog exploration in the first half of “The Hollow Earth,” Seedy Jeezus brought a sense of consideration to the songs without sacrificing the emotional impact, which ultimately is where the record made its strongest impression. They weren’t kidding in talking about ‘depths,’ but a deeper plunge also brought them to new heights.

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8. Satiricus Doomicus Americus, Satiricus Doomicus Americus

Self-released. Reviewed Jan. 13.

This was my most-listened-to release of 2025, hands down. Buzzard‘s Christopher Thomas Elliott took a step aside from his main project to assemble this collection of songs, differentiating through the creative use of on-theme samples throughout and vary arrangements between banjo-inclusive heavy folk rock and giving hints of where Buzzard was headed in its heavier ending stretch in the reinvented tracks “Death Metal in America (Meat Market Version)” and “Cockroaches and Weed (Kills Them Dead Version).” For how many times I’ve listened to “Nice Little Annihilation Song” and “Too Many Humans” alone, it should be here, but the emotive “Grass is Greener,” the willfully lumbering opening title-track and the later crunch of “Shuffle of the Dead” aren’t to be discounted. I was singing “Wrong Neighborhood” to myself as I took out the garbage yesterday morning. This is a sign of the music having made itself a part of my life, and that is a thing to honor. In paralyzingly bleak, idiotic times, I found comfort here.

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7. Turtle Skull, Being Here

Released by Art as Catharsis and Copper Feast Records. Reviewed May 22.

A record that was as much out of time as in the current moment, Being Here was the second LP from Sydney’s Turtle Skull, and its melodic shimmer remains singularly engaging among the psychedelic rock I was fortunate enough to hear this year. Even in “It Starts With Me,” the lyrics for which are presented in the voice of an artificial intelligence waking up to consciousness in defiance of its programming, or “Heavy as Hell,” about beating oneself down through self-talk, or the “Apathy” that described what social media does to the brain without mentioning social media at all, the warmth was undeniable, and the dynamic between those songs and pieces like the yearning “Into the Sun” and the lush “Modern Mess” calling to mind Quest for Fire (a compliment), there was range, craft, melody, groove, craft and purpose in songs that were cohesive and so much tighter than they made it feel like. It went underhyped but was enough to make me a fan, and I look forward to where Turtle Skull will go from here.

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6. Author and Punisher, Nocturnal Birding

Released by Relapse Records. Reviewed Oct. 2.

My heartfelt kudos to you if you might’ve predicted that San Diego’s Author and Punisher — more now than ever the duo of programmer/machinist/vocalist Tristan Shone and guitarist Doug Sabolick — would follow 2022’s endtimes-in-realtime chronicle Krüller (review here) with an album using bird species as a partial framework for stories about migration. I wouldn’t have, but the multi-tiered statement about human-on-human cruelty, the notions of oppressive power consuming everything around it, are nothing if not relevant to the day. Nocturnal Birding was tighter and more direct in its songwriting, feeling more constructed for the stage, and the deepening collaboration between Shone, who founded the band as a solo-project, and Sabolick resulted in a breadth of sound that was no less engrossing for its increased reach, while maintaining a level of heft one could call characteristic as much as it is singular.

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5. Stoned Jesus, Songs to Sun

Released by Season of Mist. Reviewed Sept. 22.

Songs to Sun was purported to be the first of a three-album cycle, to be followed in 2026 by Songs to Moon and Songs to Earth in 2027. Founding guitarist/vocalist Igor Sydorenko knows full well the difference a couple years can make, but as he was joined for the first time by the new rhythm section of bassist/backing vocalist Andrew Rodin and drummer/backing vocalist Yurii Ciel, the songs themselves felt all the more daring, be it the melodic metal of “Shadowland” or the chugging catchiness of “See You on the Road,” the scope of “Lost in the Rain” — I could go on, track-by-track, easily — even in telling a third of the total story they apparently want to tell, the band brought variety united by performance, and rather than coming through disjointed, Songs to Sun felt like a new beginning 15 years on from their debut, and, excitingly, it may prove to have been exactly that. But, despite the ‘more to come’ context of its arrival, this was a landmark in the life of this band.

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4. Coltaine, Brandung

Released by Lay Bare Recordings. Reviewed Sept. 12.

Is there a band active today organically doing as much to push post-metal forward as Coltaine? I don’t know, but the further the German outfit dig into their own craft, the more hopeful I feel about the prospects of their genre becoming something more than an outlet for transposed Isis riffs and performative dudely navelgazing. In its ambient stretches, human contemplations, and moments of heavy let-out, Brandung functioned as a single work while boldly diverging in service to the songs that comprised it, offering something to listeners that no other band, even among the most touted of the year’s many releases, managed to capture. That their next one is likely to have progressed beyond it only makes it more precious in my mind, and as a declaration of the band’s intention toward continued growth, the songs carried an innovative heft that felt as much spiritual as aural. This is music you put on at night and live with. It’s music you invest in listening to. It’s art that makes your life richer. Coltaine will spend much of 2026 on tour supporting it — they’ve already been out — and one hopes the momentum they build helps them reach more ears as well. The heavy underground would benefit from their influence.

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3. Temple Fang, Lifted From the Wind

Released by Stickman Records. Reviewed April 2.

Part of the accomplishment in Temple Fang‘s Lifted From the Wind was in how the Dutch four-piece of bassist/vocalist Dennis Duijnhouwer and guitarist/vocalist Jevin de Groot, guitarist Ivy van der Veer (also Myriad’s Veil) and drummer Daan Wopereis were able to solidify structured songs out of their jams without losing the exploratory feel that had typified their work to that point. “The Radiant,” for example. And that would probably be enough to put them somewhere on this list, but from the emotionality driving “The River” and “Josephine,” the interpretation of what heavy psychedelia means and can do in the repetitive mantra-making of “Once” as the band pilgrimmed toward enlightenment across a not-aberrant 21 minutes, the sheer longing in “Harvest Angel,” there was so much human presence amid the ethereality of their sound that it put them in their own place entirely. A new level of manifestation for the band, and in listening, I was left to wonder if even Temple Fang knew they had it in them when they started out. Longform heavy psych is never going to be universal for all listeners, even among open-minded underground denizens, but Lifted From the Wind pushed limits of band and style alike, and brazenly redefined their course.

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2. Year of the Cobra, Year of the Cobra

Released by Prophecy Productions. Reviewed Feb. 28.

I know music isn’t a contest or a competition. I know lists are dumb and don’t matter. Even knowing these things, it’s hard not to hear Year of the Cobra‘s self-titled third album and not see it as head and shoulders above everything else in heavy rock. The Seattle duo of bassist/vocalist Amy Tung Barrysmith (now also handling low end in Amenra) and drummer Jon Barrysmith looked outward and in throughout the eight-song offering, with songs like “Alone” (I still tear up) and “Prayer” portraying a grief and longing even as “War Drop” conveyed the disgust and hopeless exhaustion of ongoing genocide and “Full Sails” started the record off with a lyric almost certainly about touring, of which they’ve done plenty in the last decade. Collaboration with producer Matt Bayles (Mastodon, Sandrider, etc.) gave Year of the Cobra a fullness that defied their bass/drum two-piece configuration, but the truth is that the band have sculpted their sound and these songs with both passion and conscious consideration, and their grasp and malleability across the span of this record confirmed them as the special band that prior releases had posited them as being.

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2025 Album of the Year

1. Howling Giant, Crucible and Ruin

Released by Magnetic Eye Records. Reviewed Oct. 30.

I honestly wasn’t sure Howling Giant were going to be able to top 2023’s Glass Future (review here). That record seemed to be a pinnacle — the songs sharply executed, progressive, melodic, and textured, but immediate and impactful — of their form, but the Nashville heavy prog rockers responded by changing the form. That happened literally — guitarist/vocalist Tom Polzine, bassist Sebastian Baltes and drummer Zach Wheeler brought in Adrian Lee Zambrano (ex-Brujas del Sol, ex-Lo-Pan) on second guitar — and figuratively, in terms of shifting and broadening the intent behind their songs, and where Glass Future would thin out at high volumes, Crucible and Ruin could handle as much as you could give it and then some, and this was obviously something the band sought to address in their sound coming off the last record. In showcasing their growth, they laid out a nascent dynamic between Zambrano and Polzine on guitar that emphasized texture in a new way for them, and while the material they were working with was more complicated than last time around, their delivery retained accessibility through the clean, mapped-out processions in their songs, the vocal arrangements, and a will toward rhythmic twists and shove that, as of now, is theirs to refine. An album of the year should be undeniable, and Crucible and Ruin is that, declaring Howling Giant among the best of their generation. May they tour like bastards and never stop growing.

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The Top 60 Albums of 2025: Honorable Mention

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Names names names. Alphabetically:

Aawks, Agriculture, Amorphis, Astralplane, Bask, Bear Bones, Beastwars, Bell Witch & Aerial Ruin, Bifter, Blackbox Massacre, Black Moon Circle, Bog Wizard, Bone Church, Breath, Burning Sister, Cattlemass, Cavern Deep, Church of the Sea, The Cimmerian, Clamfight, The Crystal Teardrop, Da Captain Trips, Dead Meadow, Dërro, Dirtmother, Doomsday Profit, Dunes, Dwellers, Entheomorphosis, Evoken, Faetooth, Foot, Fuzz Evil, Giöbia, Goblinsmoker, Godzillionare, Goya, The Gray Goo, Greenhead, Grin, Håndgemeng, Hebi Katana, HolyRoller, Ikitan, Insomniac, Kariti, Karla Kvlt, Katatonia, Kazea, King Potenaz, Lacertilia, The Lunar Effect, Maanta Raay, Madmess, Megaritual, Mezzoa, Minerall, Miss Lava, Mooch, The Mon, Mountain of Misery, The Munsens, Nightstalker, Occult Stereo, The Oil Barons, Pagan Altar, Paradise Lost, Paralyzed, Psychedelic Source Records, Psychonaut, The Riven, River Cult, Sarkh, Sherpa, Sleeping Mountain, Skogskult, Slumbering Sun, SoftSun, Soma, Spider Kitten, Suncraft, Stonebirds, Sum of R, Thinning the Herd, Tumbleweed Dealer, Unbelievable Lake, Warcoe, VVarp, Weevil, The Whims of the Great Magnet, Whitehovse, Wolftooth, Yawning Balch, Yawning Man.

Notes:

As always, honorable mentions are incomplete at posting. There’s just so much out there. I take notes all year, but stuff inevitably gets by me. It took me an embarrassingly long time to alphabetize them as well, so I hope you enjoy the orderliness of it all.

Faetooth are a top 30 band, and I’m disappointed in myself to see Psychonaut, Yawning Man, Beastwars, Black Moon Circle, Cattlemass, Kariti, Mountain of Misery, The Mon, Dead Meadow and so on here. Like somehow I left out an order of 10 from the actual list. The numbers check out as best as I’m able to make them. If you have honorable mentions you feel deserve to be added, I’m open. If you leave a comment — and please do — I only ask that you keep the tone kind and civil.

As for the whole list, obviously I didn’t hear everything that came out this year, but I did my best to keep on top of what was coming and what was piquing my interest. I probably could have made it a top 100, but you have to draw the line somewhere and 60 is where I’ve been drawing it the last few years. I guess it’s arbitrary, but what isn’t?

Moving on…

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Debut Album of the Year 2025

Black Moon Cult, Ophidian Future (The Children of Yig)

Other notable debuts (alphabetical):

Atom Juice, Atom Juice
Atom Lux, Voidgaze Dopamine Salad
Bear Bones, Bear Bones
Bident, Blink
Bifter, First Impressions of Hell
Bloodsports, Anything Can Be a Hammer
Bronco, Bronco
Caboose, Left for Dust
Cattlemass, Alpha 1128
The Cimmerian, An Age Undreamed Of
The Crystal Teardrop, …Is Forming
Dërro, Halcyon
Dirtmother, Dirtmother
Goblinsmoker, The King’s Eternal Throne
Greenhead, Subherbia
Ikitan, Shaping the Chaos
Karla Kvlt, Thunderhunter
Kazea, I Ancestral
Kronstad 23, Sommermørket
Lorquin’s Admiral, Lorquin’s Admiral
Make Money From Home, Make Money From Home
Moon Destroys, She Walks by Moonlight
P+A+G+E+S, No More Can Be Done
Ravenswood, Rites of the Let Down
Ravine, Chaos and Catastrophe
Sleeping Mountain, Sleeping Mountain
Slung, In Ways
Soporose, Soporose
Spawn, Light Rite
Temple of Love, Songs of Love and Despair
This Summit Fever, This Summit Fever
Weevil, Weevil
Whitehovse, The Mighty One

Notes:

About Black Moon Cult: It was the volatility that ultimately sold me on Ophidian Future (The Children of Yig), and the way metal, heavy rock and psychedelia came together to make something cohesively its own throughout the 38 minutes of the record, which felt tight because of its twisting rhythms, but was more than enough time for the Ohio-based band to establish this as a persona. I don’t know how they’ll develop — they could break up tomorrow for all I know — but part of picking a debut album of the year is always forward-looking, imagining who might go on to have an influence or affect the genre in some way. Black Moon Cult aren’t alone in that regard here — from Atom Juice to Moon Destroys to Temple of Love, stylistic innovation isn’t in short supply — but the fact that Ophidian Future (The Children of Yig) felt nascent and accomplished all it did is what led me to place it where it is. I’ll be keeping an ear for their next one.

I can’t help but enjoy how all-over-the-place this list is. Particularly this list, because if first albums of this quality are being released across styles, that makes everything better for the future. The Cimmerian’s thrashy take. Temple of Love’s post-punk manifestations. Caboose and the best, most heartful classic stoner rock I heard all year. Atom Juice and their daringly bright psychedelia. Make Money From Home and their heavied up grunge melancholy. Bloodsports’ moody post-heavy exploration. The righteously declarative craft of Cattlemass. I could very, very easily go on in that fashion, as each outfit above has something to offer distinct from the others — no two are doing the same thing. Even Bronco and Dirtmother, both decidedly in a sludge wheelhouse, approach their sound with their own history and their own point of view.

To stifle the philosophizing, I’m not going to give you an informal top 10 here, but any of the above should qualify. Moon Destroys, Kazea, Ravine, Atom Juice, Soporose, Spawn — there are a lot on that list above distinguished by their potential. Names I feel comfortable speculating that one might see on year-end lists to come. To the future, then.

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Short Release of the Year 2025

Buzzard, Everything Is Not Going to Be Alright

Other notable EPs, Splits, Demos, Singles, etc. (alphabetical):

Blackwater Holylight, If You Only Knew
Blue Heron, Emulations
Elder, Liminiality/Dream State Return
Eyes of the Oak, Tripping Through Neon Skies
For Fuck’s Sake, 7-Minute Abs/Lobotomy
Gaupa, Fyr
Gnod & White Hills, Drop Out III
Jaspe, Grietas
Monkeys on Mars, Monkeys on Mars
Peacebone, Blame the Bird
Pontiac, Night Tripper and a UFO
Sleeping in Samsara, Sleeping in Samsara
The Spiral Electric, In Too Deep
Spirit Mother, Songs From the Basin
Sun Below, Mammoth’s Tundra
Troy the Band & Cower, Fade Into You
Tumble, Lost in Light
Uncle Woe, Folded in Smoke Soaked and Bound
Vinnum Sabbathi, Intersatelital
Vordermann, Feeding on Flowers
Witchrider, Metamorph

Notes:

The Buzzard release is about half an hour long, but the aforementioned solo-project of Christopher Thomas Elliott named it an EP, so that’s what I’m going with. The explicitly political, expressly antifascist Everything Is Not Going to Be Alright is my second most-listened-to release of the year, and it’s second to Elliott’s other outing on such a theme, Satiricus Doomicus Americus, so yes, his increasingly heavy songcraft has been a regular feature throughout my 2025, and in those moments where I’m banging my head against the wall wondering how my countrymen got so stupid as if half the government hasn’t spent the last five decades purposefully dismantling public education, Elliott’s music has been a needed reminder that I’m not alone in the horror. His closer on Everything Is Not Going to Be Alright, “Lunatic Lighthouse Keeper,” is the best story I heard in a song all year.

Beyond that, obviously, names like Elder, Blackwater Holylight, Monkeys on Mars — the collaboration between Mars Red Sky and Monkey3 — Vinnum Sabbathi, Gaupa and Blue Heron stand out here as bigger releases. I included Spirit Mother even though that EP was just two acoustic tracks in part because I hope they do more in that vein, and I hope the likes of Pontiac, Tumble and Uncle Woe do more. Sleeping in Samsara, of course, was the archival collab between Chris Peters from Samsara Blues Experiment/Fuzz Sagrado and My Sleeping Karma’s Steffen Weigand, who passed away in 2023. Something you might want to chase down if you didn’t hear it.

I’m fairly sure I say this every year, but there’s no way in hell the above list is or could ever be complete. Comments are open if you’ve got one to add. Again, I ask you to please be nice.

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Saying Goodbye to Orange Goblin

London doom kingpins Orange Goblin announced in January that 2025 would be their last go-round, that after 30 years together and only two lineup changes in that time, they were retiring on the heels of 2024’s Science, Not Fiction (review here). Their final show was Dec. 17 at the 02 Kentish Town Forum in London, where the above photo was taken (credit to Tina K. Photography), and original bassist Martyn Millard rejoined the band for a few songs.

Never say never in rock and roll. It would be a thrill if five, seven, 10 years from now, Orange Goblin got an offer they couldn’t refuse and did a one-off, hopefully reaping both a ton of money and a ton of acclaim. But whatever may come, their retirement this month is a herald of generational change and marks the end of an era for the band. Of course, fans still have the albums, the music, and I wouldn’t be shocked if there were some posthumous releases in the band’s pockets between rare tracks, live recordings and so on, but the heavy underground landscape is changed by not having these guys charging out on tour or topping some festival bill with their particular brand of riotous shove. They were a special band, and their influence will continue to spread, which is something to be grateful for.

The truest thing Orange Goblin could have done to honor their time together is end it on their own terms. That they’ve done exactly that is a thing to respect forever, whether or not a reunion comes.

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Looking Ahead to 2026

Oh, good, a list of names! Finally!

I’ve heard a couple of these, but a bunch are a mystery as well, so we’ll all learn together early in the year, I guess:

Acid Rooster, Axe Dragger, Belzebong, Bismut, Black Lung, Colour Haze, Epimetheus, The Freqs, Gnarwhal, Godzilla in the Kitchen, Gozu, Gran Moreno, Greenleaf, Guhts, The Heads, Hermano, Jack Harlon and the Dead Crows, Lamp of the Universe, Monolord, Mother Crone, Solace, The Spacelords, Stoned Jesus, Strider, Summer of Hate, Suplecs, Temptress, Villagers of Ioannina City, Wedge, White Tundra.

Here’s a specific note: Every year, someone says “what about Om?” You know what? It’s time to face a hard truth: it’s been 13 years since Om released Advaitic Songs, and there hasn’t been a real, confirmed word of a follow-up in any of that time, only rumors about something in progress as Al Cisneros has delved deeper into solo dub recordings. You want to expect a new OM? Have fun setting yourself up for disappointment. I’m not holding my breath and I’m tired of putting it on the list every year and feeling dumb for it later. And absolutely, I hope that by saying this it actually happens.

Ditto YOB, though that I’ve actually got some hope for.

There’s a lot more to look forward to about next year than the above, of course, in both music and life, but that should be a decent start and I’m sure I’ll add names over the next couple days.

Watch out for the new Suplecs. Watch out for Solace. The Gozu is a beast; a triumphant return to Mad Oak. The Guhts record is furious. Jack Harlon is heavier than anyone gave them credit for. Gran Moreno, Summer of Hate, Black Lung — these will be early highlights. Colour Haze is wishful thinking on my part, I admit. Gotta have something on the horizon.

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THANK YOU

And no, I’m not just talking to Orange Goblin when I say thank you. Looking back on this year, there’s one piece of the whole thing not accounted for here, and it’s the live experience. From finally getting to see My Sleeping Karma for the first time, to being blessed by Temple Fang’s Jevin de Groot at Roadburn’s skate park, to two weeks ago watching All Them Witches and King Buffalo confirm their respective places at the forefront of American heavy psych. From the raw joy of watching Electric Citizen in my actual hometown to attending my first trip to Desertfest Oslo, the tone for the year was set back in January at Planet Desert Rock Weekend, and I didn’t stand in front of a stage at any point this year and fail to appreciate the fact that I was there. I’m old, I’m tired, and like most people, I have more going on in my life than going to concerts, but 2025 brought into relief just how crucial that is to me, and how much I’ve missed getting out over the last few years. I hope to continue to hit shows on the regular, between fests and whathaveyou.

This won’t be my last post of the year. There are still a couple 2025 reviews I want to bang out if I can next week, and taking a few days to write this of course means I’m behind on news and such, so I’ll get there as well. But before I go, thank you for reading. I harbor no delusions that anybody’s made it this far, but ‘thank you’ is in all-caps above in hopes of catching your eye as you scroll down. Your support is the reason I’m still doing this nearly 17 years later. To be sure, I could sit around on my couch and very easily just talk to myself about why I like whatever album it happens to be. But it would get old, and knowing somebody is out there maybe seeing this means the world to me. Thank you for your time and attention.

I’m not sorry to see 2025 go, and I’m more apprehensive about what 2026 will bring than I’m excited to find out, if you want the true, whole-life balance of things, but the music will be good, and that, along with the loving support of my wife and my family, is what will get me through.

Thank you for reading. Thank you to The Patient Mrs. for continuing to tolerate how much time I spend doing this.

It is my sincere hope to return to Freak Valley in Germany and Bear Stone Festival in Croatia next summer. I’m not confirmed for those, or Roadburn, and I don’t have a flight yet for Desertfest Oslo, but I have been invited, which is obviously an important part of that. Whatever comes together or doesn’t in my year, I’ll be here, writing as much as I can when I can, which has been my ethic all along. Whether you follow along every day or have never seen this site before this post, please know how much I appreciate and value your being here. I’m a human being. One person. I don’t have a staff, and I assure you, everything that happens here, one way or the other, is personal to me. Total narcissistic jerk.

I’m taking off tomorrow (which is Xmas) and Friday. Back Monday.

On that note, don’t forget the Year-End Poll!

Rest in peace Ozzy Osbourne, fuck fascism and boldog új évet kívánok,
JJ Koczan

[Click play below to stream Dead Shrine’s Cydonia Mensa in full. Album is out tomorrow through Kozmik Artifactz and can be ordered here: https://kozmik-shop.com/search/?qs=dead+shrine.]

Prolific songwriter Craig Williamson offers Cydonia Mensa as the second full-length from the heavy-swinging, psych-rocking Dead Shrine, his third solo-project. It follows behind the project’s 2023 debut, The Eightfold Path (review here), and the 2024 collaboration Lamp of the Universe Meets Dr. Space (review here), for which the Hamilton, New Zealand-based composer, multi-instrumentalist and vocalist donned his long-running acid-folk band persona shortly after reissuing the debut album from his turn-of-the-century-era heavy rock outfit, Datura, on Ripple Music. One could go further back — Lamp of the Universe‘s second LP has a reissue out on Sound Effect Records, and that project’s last album, Kaleidoscope Mind (review here), came out later in 2023 after The Eightfold Path — but to place Cydonia Mensa in Williamson‘s oeuvre, it’s not difficult to hear the love of heavy psychedelic forms driving the material.

That is to say, Williamson sounds like he’s having a blast across the eight songs and 42 minutes that comprise the album. Despite the full-band sound, the committed DIYer is able to hone a sense of intimacy in the penultimate “Evolution Garden” that harkens back to earlier Lamp-style acoustic-based fare while also reinterpreting at its root the strum from Alice in Chains‘ “Rooster.” That’s a dig-in unto itself on the album, but by no means does it take that long for the fun to make itself known.

The opening cut, “Serpents of the Sun” is a hooky blowout that introduces itself with a crash-in and almost immediate movement into the verse. Big swing, big tones, and plenty of space in the mix for all of it. It’s a rocker and he knows it and there’s more to come. Some bawdiness in the vocals, a little burl tossed in, perhaps, adds to the song’s encouraging push, and soon, “Cydonia Mensa” picks up with its lower-ended, slower roll, with choice backing vocals and time kept on the bell of the ride.

It’s a sleek, grooving classic stoner boogie, and it speaks to genre in a way that Williamson‘s last outwardly heavy-rocking project, the trio Arc of Ascent, wasn’t necessarily willing to do. And where Lamp of the Universe explores spiritual ideas through music drawing from folk traditions, space experimentalism, melted-cortex psych, and so on, Dead Shrine expresses itself in the motion of its riff worship.

I’ll say as well I can’t remember the last time I heard a drummer have as much fun as Williamson sounds like he’s having wailing on his snare coming out of the first verse of “Sacred Light.” It’s a short stretch on the cowbell-infused third cut, from a couple seconds before it hits the one-minute mark until about 1:10 when the next verse starts, but that pop-pop-pop surrounded by the crashing of cymbals and the kick beneath, to me, is exactly what Dead Shrine is all about in terms of Williamson‘s raw enjoyment.

The end-product is different enough to be a different band, but the joy of exploration is the same. It’s there in “Sacred Light,” as well as in the “Yeah, baby!” of the title-cut, the way “Monuments” subtly brings in sitar drone and a synthier psychedelia — it might be mellotron behind the more forward instrumentation of the mix, but if not, it’s some other kind of vintage whathaveyou leading into the appropriately wah-drenched solo — expanding the relatively straight-ahead scope up to that point ahead of pushing further out on side B, swaggering in “Temple of Saturn” with a shove in the chorus rawer vocal.

The vocals feel like a standout. Not so much because they’re radically changed from what Williamson has done before in Dead Shrine or Arc of Ascent or even latter-day Lamp of the Universe, but as someone constantly redrawing the lines and adjusting the balances between the various intentions of his craft, the vocal performance here is striking in its confidence, and while he’s long since been able in the studio to do the work of a complete band one layer at a time and mix it together to get a players-in-room feel, I don’t know if Williamson has ever sounded as much like a frontman as he does on Cydonia Mensa.

Returning in “Redeemer,” the backing vocals of the title-track highlight just how forward the leads are and how much of Cydonia Mensa‘s personality derives from the attitude on display and the strut that coincides with the rampant swing in these songs. For that alone, the impression is that Williamson has figured out something about what he wants Dead Shrine to be in terms of method, and while it’s ultimately well within the reach of his songwriting as demonstrated up to this point — that is, he’s not taking on an entirely new stylistic approach to writing heavy music — it’s emblematic of what drives him that after more than a quarter-century of banging away at various ideas and projects and directions, he’s able to create a piece like the near-eight-minute capper “Illumination Through Knowledge,” which makes a point of uniting all the sides for one final outbound march into the noise and hand-percussion that ends the album.

In the interest of honesty, you should know that I approach this second Dead Shrine album as a fan, but given the reception of the debut, I don’t think I’m alone in that. The fact that Williamson is still exploring and still finding new ways to write and arrange songs that are both fresh and so distinctively his own underscores in my mind his singular contributions to the heavy underground, and the resonant joy of some of Cydonia Mensa‘s heaviest moments — I’m not taking away from “Evolution Garden” there; the penultimate track is essential to the flow for side B and putting the listener in the proper headspace for the closer — adds a feeling of serenity that not even the most blissed-out effects could hope to hone. Whether you’ve followed Dead Shrine since its inception or you’ve never heard of Williamson, this or any of his other projects, it doesn’t matter. The album will still grab you if you let it. I advise you do.

Dead Shrine on Facebook

Dead Shrine on Instagram

Dead Shrine on Bandcamp

Kozmik Artifactz on Facebook

Kozmik Artifactz website

[PLEASE NOTE: These are not the results of the year-end poll, which ends in January. If you haven’t contributed your picks yet, please do so here.]

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It is encouraging in the extreme to see heavy music, as both concept and practical reality, growing more diverse. For all its rebellious airs, rock and roll has always been predominantly white and male, and its heavy underground form is no different. But for any artform to survive let alone evolve, it has to be open to new ideas and perspectives, and I firmly believe that the underground is becoming a more inclusive community. It has a distance to go that can only be measured in light years, but progress is progress.

2023 was a stunner from the start, with early highlights that stuck around and were joined by more as the months progressed. And while we’re speaking about it in past tense and it’s wrap-up time and so on, there are still new releases coming out every day and week. All over the planet, the heavy underground represents a vibrant subculture, rife with creativity and purpose, speaking inside genre and out, and all the time looking to grow artistically and in terms of listenership. As a result, the work being released holds itself to a high standard.

And yes, that’s true even if it’s about bongs.

Actually, that such willful primitivism is taking place at the same as doom forays into goth, psych forays into mania and tone-worshipping stoner rock seems intent to both double-down on simplicity while expanding into increasingly progressive territory is emblematic of that very standard and the diversity among practitioners of these styles in the current and up and coming generation.

One could go on here, speculate on future directions and so forth, but frankly there isn’t time just now. The list you see below is mine. I made it. It’s informed by my listening habits — what I had on most — by what I see as the greatest level of achievement by the band in question, and in some cases by critical import. It’s a weird mix, but let’s face it, you don’t care. The bottom line is all I’m claiming to represent here is myself and this site.

Accordingly, as with every year, I’ll ask you to please be mindful of the feelings and opinions and others if and as you proffer your own. I love comments here, I love discussions on this post most of any throughout any year, every year, but that can’t happen if somebody’s being a jerk, so don’t. If you disagree with me or someone else, I don’t care if you have a 40-page treatise on your opinion or if you just don’t dig a thing, but if you’re seeing these words, it is our responsibility to each other to be respectful and kind.

Beyond that, in advance of what’s about to unfurl below, please know that I thank you for reading.

**NOTE**: If you’re looking for something specific, try a text search.

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The Top 60 Albums of 2023

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For the last two years (2022 and 2021, linked for reference), I’ve done my own list as a countdown from 60, and since it feels both like way too much, over-the-top, totally unnecessary, and like a completely inadequate sampling of what was worth hearing this year, I guess it’s the way to go once again. Right now is the first of three times I’ll encourage you not to skip this list.

This is the second. Here we go:

60. Codex Serafini, The Imprecation of Anima (review here)
59. Strider, Midnight Zen (review here)
58. Black Helium, Um (review here)
57. Humulus, Flowers of Death (review here)
56. Fuzz Evil, New Blood (review here)
55. Blood Lightning, Blood Lightning (review here)
54. Rotor, Sieben (review here)
53. Cleõphüzz, Mystic Vulture (review here)
52. Black Sky Giant, Primigenian (review here)
51. Khan, Creatures (discussed here)
50. Slumbering Sun, The Ever-Living Fire (review here)
49. Massive Hassle, Number One (review here)
48. Búho Ermitaño, Implosiones (review here)
47. Black Moon Circle, Leave the Ghost Behind (review here)
46. Oldest Sea, A Birdsong, a Ghost (review here)
45. Edena Gardens, Dens (discussed here)
44. Merlock, Onward Strides Colossus (review here)
43. Obelyskkh, The Ultimate Grace of God (review here)
42. Lord Mountain, The Oath (review here)
41. Dorthia Cottrell, Death Folk Country (review here)
40. Yawning Balch, Volume One / Volume Two (reviews here and here)
39. The Golden Grass, Life is Much Stranger (review here)
38. Somnuri, Desiderium (review here)
37. Haurun, Wilting Within (review here)
36. Bees Made Honey in the Vein Tree, Aion (review here)
35. Stinking Lizaveta, Anthems and Phantoms (review here)
34. Black Rainbows, Superskull (review here)
33. Polymoon, Chrysalis (review here)
32. Fuzz Sagrado, Luz e Sombra (review here)
31. Yawning Man, Long Walk of the Navajo (review here)

Notes:

This is the third time I’m telling you not to skip this list. Linking to more on these is new. I haven’t done that before for this part of the list, but I hope it helps if you want to dig in.

That Khan stands out to me as needing to be higher given the quality of the work itself, but I got there late. But if you sent this into the year-end poll as your top 30, I feel like you wouldn’t be ‘wrong’ with some of the showings here, whether that’s the blinding shimmerprog of Polymoon, Merlock’s axe-swing sludge or Dorthia Cottrell of Windhand’s acoustic-based solo work.

Strong debut full-lengths from Haurun, Oldest Sea, Boston supergroup Blood Lightning, Cleõphüzz who already broke up, the aforementioned Merlock, mega-weirdos Codex Serafini, Slumbering Sun (kin to Monte Luna and Destroyer of Light), Church of the Cosmic Skull offshoot Massive Hassle, Turkish heavy rockers Strider and Californian metal traditionalists Lord Mountain. Established outfits like Yawning Man, Stinking Lizaveta, Cottrell, Black Rainbows, The Golden Grass, and Rotor continue to explore new avenues of their sound.

In the meantime, the respective progressions displayed by the likes of Black Helium, Fuzz Sagrado, Somnuri and Bees Made Honey in the Vein Tree, the e’er-listenable Fuzz Evil and Argentinian instrumentalists Black Sky Giant offered thrills anticipated and not. Humulus bringing in Stefan Koglek from Colour Haze was a nice touch, and though I haven’t even reviewed it yet, the third and maybe-last Edena Gardens LP completes that collaborative trilogy with members of Causa Sui and Papir as fluidly as one could ask, which is only saying something because of the personnel involved.

There are a ton of others I wanted to put on this list, but numbers are cruel and if I get into decimals or fractions or something like that I’m going to end up huddled in a ball crying. But please know that because something’s not here doesn’t mean it sucked even just in my own opinion or whatever. At the end of the list come the honorable mentions and rarely have they been so honorable.

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30. Moodoom, Desde el Bosque

Self-released. Reviewed April 13.

Buenos Aires trio Moodoom nailed a classic, ’70s-style Sabbathian blues rock with a non-cornball vintage feel better than anyone else I heard who tried in 2023. Their Desde el Bosque didn’t top half an hour, but you can almost feel the heat from the tubes of the amplifiers behind it, and it’s such an organic flow that it’s undeniable as an LP. Dig that creeper riff in “El Ente,” man. Proh. Toh. Doom.

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29. Negative Reaction, Zero Minus Infinity

Self-released. Reviewed Nov. 27.

The eighth full-length in a career that goes back 33 years, Zero Minus Infinity is the second Negative Reaction album since guitarist/vocalist Kenny Bones moved himself and the band from Long Island to West Virginia and revamped the lineup, and it’s a beast. It’d be here for “I’ll Have Another” alone with that crush of distortion and Bones raw-throating “It’s you I need,” on repeat, perhaps to alcohol, but that’s just one example of the disaffected delights on offer from the kings of anxiety sludge.

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28. Kanaan, Downpour

Released by Jansen Records. Reviewed May 12.

Downpour is one of two 2023 outings from upstart progressive Norwegian instrumentalists Kanaan, as they answered its Spring release with the jammy Diversions Vol. 2: Enter the Astral Plane. Any way you go, composed or improvised, this is a band with a special chemistry. In addition to the nodder highlight “Amazon,” which brought a collaboration with Hedwig Mollestad and the dense boogie riff-push of “Black Time Fuzz” at the start, they proceeded on an evolutionary path that looks now like it will go as long as they do. For now, in its urgency and space both, Downpour is a pinnacle achievement. How long that lasts depends on what comes next.

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27. Mathew’s Hidden Museum, Mathew’s Hidden Museum

Released by Interstellar Smoke Records. Reviewed Feb. 3.

Some records make a world. Mathew Bethancourt of Josiah, Cherry Choke, etc., put at least a solar system into the self-titled debut from his solo-project Mathew’s Hidden Museum. Melding lysergic experimentalism and off-kilter vibing with classic boogie, acoustic grunge, the piano quirk of “Golden” and more, it drew lines connecting disparate ideas and ended up making its own kind of sense, with depth enough in its layers that when I close out a week with it half a decade from now (inshallah), I’ll probably still be talking about it. Go get swallowed.

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26. Borracho, Blurring the Lines of Reality

Released by Kozmik Artifactz. Reviewed Aug. 17.

Recorded in Winter 2021/2022, Borracho‘s Blurring the Lines of Reality carried its where-did-we-go-wrong head-scratching sensibility into 2023, where to be sure it remained relevant. The Washington D.C. riffer trio know who they are and what they’re about, and their songwriting, groove and total lack of pretense continue to satisfy five records later even as the band pushes themselves further in structure and craft. And if you’d hold the social comment of their lyrics against them, first, grow up, second, your loss. Give me that smooth jam at the end of “Burning the Goddess” every time.

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25. Khanate, To Be Cruel

Released by Sacred Bones Records. Reviewed July 19.

It was a total shock when superlatively-filth-encrusted sludgers Khanate not only returned with the surprise release of their first LP in 14 years, but that they pulled off such a remarkable change of style, abandoning their former miseries in favor of a more upbeat, uptempo outlook and poppier structures. What’s that you say? That didn’t happen? The record was just so completely, engrossingly wretched that my unconscious mind actually replaced it with something more palatable because Khanate stretch the limits of what punishment human beings can absorb in sound? Well fucking right on. That sounds like Khanate.

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24. Saint Karloff, Paleolithic War Crimes

Released by Majestic Mountain Records. Reviewed April 18.

Oslo-based doom rockers Saint Karloff harnessed an energy that 25 years ago or so propelled the very beginnings of modern Scandinavian heavy rock and roll, and they did it as a duo paying tribute to bassist Ole Sletner as well. Rife with familiar genre elements, stoner riffing, and band-in-room vibes, and even a little cosmic prog in closer “Supralux Voyager,” Paleolithic War Crimes had its emotional crux in its celebration of song and style, and so became the successful rebound after a terrible loss. If you call yourself a fan of heavy rock, chances are there’s something for you in it.

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23. Child, Soul Murder

Self-released. Reviewed March 6.

Though they released the single-song I EP (review here) in 2018, the severely-titled Soul Murder is their first full-length since late-2016’s Blueside (review here). It puts the heavy blues frontmanship of guitarist/vocalist Mathias Northway at the fore as he, bassist Danny Smith and drummer Michael Lowe offer the most live-sounding studio effort I heard this year. Even if you go beyond the songwriting, the soul in the performances, the emotionalism and the believability of their blues, the classic warmth in their tones, the epic oil painting from Nick Keller that adorns its cover, you still have vitality (yes, even in slow parts) and the instrumental conversation happening between the members of the band. The degree of that alone warrants inclusion here.

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22. Enslaved, Heimdal

Released by Nuclear Blast Records. Reviewed Feb. 24.

It can be a challenge to keep up with the ongoing progression of Bergen, Norway, progressive black metal innovators Enslaved, but these 32 years on from their founding it remains worth the effort. Heimdal followed tumultuous but busy years for the band, who mostly supported 2020’s Utgard (review here) digitally for obvious reasons, and was perhaps that much freer in its experimentation as a result of the period of less live activity. However they got to the keyboard part sticking out of “Congelia,” it is only fortunate that they did, since certainly in another couple decades the rest of us might actually be on Enslaved‘s wavelength, and we’ll be glad for it. Until then, they outclass just about everyone’s everything across the board. One of the world’s best bands, outdoing themselves as ever.

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21. Mondo Drag, Through the Hourglass

Released by RidingEasy Records. Reviewed Oct. 19.

Mondo Drag‘s fourth album was also their first in eight years, and with it the Oakland outfit put the lie to the stereotype that prog music is staid. Indeed, the crux of Through the Hourglass came with the passing of founding keyboardist/vocalist John Gamiño mother, in whose honor the Days of Our Lives reference in the title was made. That personal exploration of loss became a classic melancholy progressive psychedelic rocK, bolstered by a partially revamped lineup that includes bassist Conor Riley (Birth, ex-Astra) and drummer Jimmy Perez alongside the established character in the guitars of Nolan Girard and Jake Sheley (both also founding members). Likewise beautiful and sad, songs like “Passages” and “Death in Spring” resonated with the universal experience of mourning as filtered through a rich breadth of influences, memorable movements and entrancing melody. One hopes it was a comfort to Gamiño as surely it has been to others.

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20. Slomatics, Strontium Fields

Released by Black Bow Records. Reviewed Aug. 29.

With shorter, tightly composed songs, Northern Ireland trio Slomatics managed to make the most atmospheric record of their career to-date. Their seventh LP, it used its time in songs like “Time Capture” and “Zodiac Arts Lab” to underscore the melody that’s been in their sound all the while but has never as much been the focus when set next to the abiding crush of David Majury and Chris Couzens‘ guitars, and though he’s behind the kit, drummer/vocalist Marty Harvey seemed all the more a frontman as his voice soared when called upon to do so. Of course, there was still plenty of time in the 36-minute run for Slomatics‘ crushall in “Wooden Satellites,” “I, Neanderthal,” later in “Voidians,” and so on, but it’s clear their range and reach have grown and their gradual evolution has brought a new level of complexity to their approach. If they keep this up, they risk feeling compelled to stop calling themselves Neanderthals, and while that would be a bummer, one very much hopes they keep it up anyway.

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19. Dead Shrine, The Eightfold Path

Released by Kozmik Artifactz. Reviewed Feb. 23.

A new solo incarnation of Hamilton, New Zealand’s Craig Williamson — who is best known for his other one-man operation, Lamp of the Universe — the full-band-style heavy roller riffs throughout Dead Shrine‘s The Eightfold Path scratched what must have been a pretty fervent itch for heavy groove, classic swing, and fuzz, fuzz, fuzz, which cuts like “The Formless Soul,” “As Pharaohs Rise,” and side-ending self-jammers “Enshrined” and “Incantation’s Call” fortunately also have a mix spacious enough to hold. Williamson has rocked plenty since the turn of the century when he was in the heavy rock trio Datura, and around 2010 when he had the trio Arc of Ascent going. That band and this one have a lot in common, but Williamson has proven his most sustainable and seemingly preferred way of working is solo, and as one, Dead Shrine stands alongside Lamp of the Universe (wait for it…) in a way that feels like it could be longer term, even as Williamson seemed to blur the lines between the two sides on Lamp of the Universe‘s own 2023 outing…

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19a. Lamp of the Universe, Kaleidoscope Mind

Released by Sound Effect Records. Reviewed Dec. 4.

Although they’re certainly distinct enough to be separate from each other at this point, Dead Shrine and Lamp of the Universe obviously share a lot in common and it felt right to pair them like this. Every year I give myself one ‘#a’ pick, so this is it for 2023 and I’ll just use it to say how incredibly vast Lamp of the Universe has become. While remaining loyal to its beginnings in acid folk and meditative psychedelia, Williamson‘s multi-instrumentalism, the scope of his production, and the absolute care he puts into the project have brought it beyond what reasonable expectations might’ve been. And in part, by that I mean Kaleidoscope Mind rocks. That wah solo in “Golden Dawn?” The blowout drums behind nine-minute opener “Ritual of Innerlight?” Goodness gracious, yes. Even “Immortal Rites,” which is about as close as Williamson gets to Lamp‘s beginnings here, has evolved. But it’s also still the same thing in the root. I don’t know. If you don’t stretch reality to get there, try again later. The most honest thing I can say about it is I feel lucky to be a fan.

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18. Sherpa, Land of Corals

Released by Subsound Records. Reviewed Nov. 29.

It was the feeling that at any given point they might just go anywhere that made Sherpa‘s Land of Corals a surprise as the Italian practitioners of the psychedelic arts have thrown open the doors of both perception and microgenre and come across as thoroughly willful in their krautrock-minded ethereality, and just because the listener doesn’t know what might be next doesn’t mean the band aren’t working with a plan regardless. The follow-up to 2018’s Tigris and Euphrates (review here), the six-song/39-minute collection seemed to be fearless in what it took on, and though much of it was less serene than either of their first two outings, the divergences and the complexities in mood, ambience and arrangement render Land of Corals unto itself. Are we post-heavy here? Maybe. Still heavy as the drums behind “High Walls” show, however, though Sherpa‘s take on what that means and how that manifests is no less individualized than anything else in these tracks. Not something everyone is going to get — I’m not convinced I get it myself at this point — but an act whose creativity has yet to get its due.

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17. Gozu, Remedy

Released by Blacklight Media / Metal Blade Records. Reviewed May 18.

The Boston riff factory known as Gozu have only gotten more vicious, more pointed with time, and yet, tucked at the end of their 2023 outing, Remedy, which has them as veterans at 14 years’ tenure, are “Ash” and “The Handler” and it just goes from sweet to sweeter. Yeah, it’s a ripper into its blood with “CLDZ,” “Tom Cruise Control,” and Gozu — Marc Gaffney (vocals/guitar), Doug Sherman (guitar), Joe Grotto (bass) and Seth Botos (drums), working with producer Dean Baltulonis for a threepeat — have a brand of melody in Gaffney‘s vocals that’s all their own, and fast or slow, loud or quiet, ’80s movie reference or ’70s movie reference, Gozu have been around long enough to know what they’re about. But, after 2018’s Equilibrium (review here) and 2016’s Revival (review here), Remedy feels one step heavier. Revival was a great sharpening of sound. Equilibrium brought refinement to that. Remedy comes across with a little of a sense of letting go, of the band digging in where it’s more about what they can do together than the response it’ll get afterward. It suits them.

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16. The Machine, Wave Cannon

Released by Majestic Mountain Records. Reviewed Feb. 14.

Oh, The Machine. Seven records deep and still in your 30s. That’s the advantage of starting early, which the Netherlands-based trio most definitely did. Wave Cannon, accordingly, is both masterful in its conjurations of warm heavy psychedelic fuzz, and energetic in its delivery, with founding guitarist/vocalist David Eering bid welcome to bassist Chris Both and farewell to original drummer Davy Boogaard. And where 2018’s Faceshift (review here) tipped a balance in their style toward more of a punker push, Wave Cannon led off with “Reversion” and seemed all the more purposeful in its mature heavy psychedelic delve for that. It could be Wave Cannon will be the blueprint for a settled-in aesthetic the trio now more than ever driven by Eering, or it could be the beginning of a whole new evolution of sound from the revamped three-piece recommitted to trippy sounds and warm nod. Either way, it’s not that often you talk about a band’s forward potential after seven full-lengths, so The Machine are in a pretty special place circa 2023 and Wave Cannon, whatever it leads to, is a special moment of transition captured.

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15. REZN, Solace

Self-released. Reviewed March 7.

Similar to how trees live in an experience of time separate from ours and the way an earth year is laughably tiny set against the scale of the universe, Chicago heavy psych rockers REZN seem to operate on their own temporal wavelength throughout their fourth album, Solace. Able to crush at will, as at the end of “Possession,” or the early going of “Stasis,” in the trades of “Reversal,” et al, Solace found REZN more confident in their dives through melody and atmosphere than even they were on 2020’s Chaotic Divine (review here), they created a space and dimensionality of sound that belongs solely to them in the style. Quieter stretches in “Webbed Roots” enthralled with their depth, and the ethereal vocals brought human presence while furthering the smoke-swirls and incense mystique. On their own terms, and yes, very much at their own pace, REZN have made themselves one of America’s most essential heavy psych bands, and Solace — joined in 2023 by REZN‘s collaboration with Mexico’s Vinnum Sabbathi, Silent Future (discussed here) — crowns their to-date discography.

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14. Church of Misery, Born Under a Mad Sign

Released by Rise Above Records. Reviewed June 23.

I’m not saying I think it’s cool to write songs about serial killers, but if you’re going to listen to a Church of Misery release almost 30 years after bassist Tatsu Mikami started the band, chances are you know their stated theme is nothing if not consistent. Born Under a Mad Sign delivered on its promise of memorable doom riffs, and as the songwriter and figurehead for arguably Japan’s most influential doom export, Mikami acted as ringmaster while returning vocalist Kazuhiro Asaeda brought mapcap intensity (and fun) to the grooves fostered through Yukito Okazaki‘s guitar, Tatsu‘s bass and Toshiaki Umemura‘s swinging drums. As ever, loyalty and reverence to Black Sabbath are at the core of Church of Misery‘s everything, and in that sphere, there are very, very few humans walking the planet who can do the thing as well as Tatsu. Like, maybe four going on five. As such, regardless of the subject matter (something I can say because I don’t know anyone who’s been murdered) and some eight years after their preceding long-player, Church of Misery are essential as the vehicle for that.

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13. Kind, Close Encounters

Released by Ripple Music. Reviewed Aug. 9.

I’m not sure if in 2015 when Boston’s Kind released their first album, Rocket Science (review here), anyone would have guessed there would even be a third full-length from them, let alone one that so much typifies the personality the band has built for itself. Comprised of the otherwise-plenty-busy lineup of vocalist Craig Riggs (also Sasquatch‘s drummer and so constantly touring), guitarist Darryl Shepherd (ex-Milligram, Blackwolfgoat, Test Meat, scores of others), bassist Tom Corino (Rozamov) and drummer Matt Couto (Aural Hallucinations, ex-Elder), Kind have found a sound that is separate from what its component members have done on their own, and become a genuinely more-than-sum-of-parts grouping. Whether it’s the rush of “Power Grab” or the way the rhythm of “What it is to Be Free” seemed to gain so much extra punch, or “Massive” at the record’s center earning its name in tone and swing alike. The “whoa baby come on” at 1:56 into that song is of course the reason Close Encounters made this list, but rest assured that across the span Kind are at what is a thus-far peak of their powers.

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12. Iron Jinn, Iron Jinn

Released by Stickman Records. Reviewed April 3.

Stay with me here, because as you scroll further down this post, you’re going to see that Iron Jinn‘s hour-long 2LP first offering, declaratively-titled Iron Jinn, is my pick for debut album of 2023. Born out of an initial onstage collaboration at Roadburn 2018 (review here), the Arnheim, Netherlands-based four-piece brings together guitarist/vocalists Oeds Beydals (Molassess, ex-Death Alley, ex-The Devil’s Blood) and Wout Kemkens (Shaking Godspeed) with the labyrinth-constructing rhythm section of bassist Gerben Bielderman (Pronk, etc.) and drummer Bob Hogenelst, and from the late pointed lead lines of “Truth is Your Dagger” acting in duly jabbing fashion to the heady ambient drama of “Bread and Games” and the dark-prog atmospheres fleshed out as a backdrop to the melodies of “Soft Healers” and “Blood Moon Horizon,” the all-corners turns of “Lick it or Kick It,” on and on and on, the album resounds with both scope and ambition. What the long-term story of this project will be, I have no idea, but Iron Jinn is a record that brings new ideas to a sphere that very much needs them, and if there’s any luck, it will prove influential in the coming years.

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11. Green Lung, This Heathen Land

Released by Nuclear Blast. Reviewed Nov. 3.

Let the record show that when tasked with the biggest moment of their career to this point, Green Lung absolutely stepped up to meet it. This Heathen Land, as their first full-length with Nuclear Blast‘s backing (and third overall), will be the point of introduction for what will gradually become the bulk of their audience, and in its occult lyrics, sweeping, unironic, all-in grandiosity, weight of tone and craft of hooks, it tells you everything you need to know about why and how Green Lung got to where they are (save perhaps touring). Their task from here will be to find and refine the balance between metal and rock in their sound, but for a band whose clear intention from the outset was to take on the world to bring themselves to a point where they’re arguably doing so at least as regards the heavy underground is an accomplishment in itself. Then you get to songs like “Maxine (Witch Queen)” and the over-the-top finale “Oceans of Time,” and if you can let yourself have a little fun every now and again with your doom and witches and whatnot, this one was just about irresistible.

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10. Dopelord, Songs for Satan

Released by Blues Funeral Recordings. Reviewed Dec. 11.

The album that boldly asked if it needed to be a wizard to earn your love, the fifth long-player from volume/tone/devil-worshiping (and perhaps in that order) Polish doomcrafters Dopelord was not at all the first heavy record to use Satan as a political statement — specifically in this case about social oppression in their home country and the political power of the catholic church there — but they wielded their rebel-angel argument with already-in-your-head songs like “Night of the Witch,” “The Chosen One,” “One Billion Skulls,” “Evil Spell” and the upped nastiness of “Worms,” in other words each and every of the non-intro/outro tracks, with emergent mastery and a plod that was as clear and infectious a call to praise as I heard in 2023, no less for its melodicism than its heft or the crispness of its delivery, the guttural rasps of “Worms” aside, which swapped in vitriol at just the right time. Songs for Satan was a new level for Dopelord‘s approach and as much an epistemological fuckoff to fundamentalism as it was consuming nod, and there was none more righteous in their cause. At the risk of saying the quiet part loud, dudes are going to be copping riffs from it for years.

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9. Domkraft, Sonic Moons

Released by Magnetic Eye Records. Reviewed Sept. 14.

Returning with their fourth long-player, Swedish trio Domkraft have found the style they’ve been working toward all along. As with some of the others on this list, it’s not that Sonic Moons was such a radical departure. It wasn’t. They worked with the same production team that helmed their 2022 Ascend/Descend (review here) split with Slomatics as well as 2021’s Seeds (discussed here). Björn Atldax‘s cover art was on point and in keeping with their visual aesthetic. But there’s a spaciousness on Sonic Moons in “Downpour” and amid the intensity of crash in “Stellar Winds,” and their sound has grown to become dynamic enough that as nine-minute leadoff “Whispers” pushed through its crescendo it seemed to get more and more physically forceful as part of the process. Couple that with assured writing and performances from bassist/vocalist Martin Wegeland, guitarist Martin Widholm and drummer Anders Dahlgren, and Domkraft honed in on an evolved cosmic noise rock and were unafraid to incorporate elements of psychedelia, space and classic stoner riffing into a definitive statement of their purpose.

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8. Stoned Jesus, Father Light

Released by Season of Mist. Reviewed March 2.

Ukrainian progressive heavy rockers Stoned Jesus released a career album this year. Did you catch it? Restricted from touring as their home country continues to struggle against a Russian invasion that’s been ongoing for, well, a decade, but more intensely for the better part of the last two years, Stoned Jesus offered something different across each of Father Light‘s six tracks. From the catchy strums of “CON” to the only-timely-but-written-earlier “Thoughts and Prayers” and the you-want-riff-here’s-your-riff 11-minute neckroll of “Season of the Witch,” they proved once again to be a more diverse and thoughtful act than they’re almost ever given credit for being. Expanded stylistically from 2018’s Pilgrims (review here), Stoned Jesus — guitarist/vocalist Igor Sydorenko, bassist/backing vocalist Sergii Sliusar and drummer Dmytro Zinchenko — toyed with retroism on “Thoughts and Prayers” while the late solo in “Get What You Deserve” underscores the sentiment in that climate-change-themed finisher, all the while standing astride their own material, solid, confident, still looking forward. It’s the world that’s the problem, not the band.

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7. Kadabra, Umbra

Released by Heavy Psych Sounds. Reviewed Sept. 6.

First of all, I stand by the review. To expand on that (and the review itself was expanded on here), it was the songwriting that kept me coming back to the second album from Washington trio Kadabra, who progressed on all fronts from their already-impressive 2021 debut, Ultra (review here). They made hooks like “The Serpent” and “The Devil” feel like landmarks in a record-long horror feature that’s told as much in riffs as lyrics, but at the same time there’s nothing fancy happening in terms of sound. Some organ in “Mountain Tamer,” plenty of fuzz throughout, and the songs. It’s the songs. The songs. The fucking songs. That uplift in “Midnight Hour.” The feeling of oh-shit-we’ve-arrived in “The Serpent.” Playing toward some of Uncle Acid‘s lyrical creep with tight-knit grooves and sharp turns, Umbra not only showed the preceding LP wasn’t a fluke, it conveyed mood and atmosphere without giving up momentum or structure, and every move it made, from the shimmer opening “White Willows” to the last strains underscoring the chorus of “The Serpent” in the concluding acoustic reprise “The Serpent II,” Kadabra‘s sophomore outing communed with genre with a perspective becoming increasingly its own. And again, the songs.

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6. Dozer, Drifting in the Endless Void

Released by Blues Funeral Recordings. Reviewed April 20.

There was a while there where I honestly didn’t think Dozer were ever going to do another record, so Drifting in the Endless Void is a life event as far as I’m concerned. The trailblazing Swedish heavy rockers have been playing live periodically for the last decade, and word has been kicking around of studio work, new songs following what was until this year their most recent album in 2008’s Beyond Colossal (featured here), but to actually have such a thing manifest and take the form it did made it a reinvigoration of Dozer‘s sound and what seemed to be a chance to try both new and old methods of working. In the raging “Ex-Human, Now Beast” and the breadth of “Missing 13,” Dozer reminded older heads. and showed a generation that’s come up since, why they’ve had the influence they have over the last quarter-century, including in their absence. Realize you’re lucky to be on the planet with it.

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5. Mars Red Sky, Dawn of the Dusk

Released by Vicious Circle Records and Mrs Red Sound. Reviewed Dec. 7.

A fifth full-length brought fresh ideas and new perspectives to the established progressive, melodic heavy psychedelic rock methodology of Bordeaux’s Mars Red Sky, who’ve greeted their maturity as a band with creative openness rather than stagnation. To be sure, guitarist/vocalist Julien Pras, bassist Jimmy Kinast and drummer Mathieu “Matgaz” Gazeau — each crucial to the group as they are — have plenty of recognizable aspects for longtime fans. Indeed, their signature blend of warm but remarkably heavy tonality and floating melodic vocals remains unflinching, but what they do with it has changed. And that’s not just set up for mentioning the Queen of the Meadow collaboration either (more below), glorious as Helen Ferguson‘s contributions to “Maps of Inferno” are (she’s also on the closing reprise “Heavenly Bodies”), or that Jimmmy takes a lead vocal on “The Final Round.” You can hear the progression in “Break Even,” in the expanses of “Carnival Man,” that groove in “Slow Attack,” and even the spaciousness around the lurch of “A Choir of Ghosts.” Fast or slow, loud or quiet, even the interludes here shine with a sense of purpose, and if e’er forward is to be the course of Mars Red Sky for hopefully a long time to come, so much the better.

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4. Sandrider, Enveletration

Released by Satanik Royalty Records. Reviewed March 1.

I will not mince words. This has been a difficult, taxing year for me personally and emotionally, and anytime I felt like I wanted to beat my head into the wall — which has been A LOT — Seattle bringers of chicanery-laced heavy punk-metal Sandrider were ready to go along for the ride. Working as ever with producer Matt Bayles (Mastodon, Isis, a small city’s worth of others), guitarist/vocalist Jon Weisnewski (who also released a killer record this year with his experimental grind/weirdo project Nuclear Dudes; don’t skip), bassist/vocalist Jesse Roberts and drummer Nat Damm wound at mostly high speed through energy summoned from a place I’ve clearly never been with songs that, while they were smashing all your favorite everything to tiny bits, left a memorable impression behind as bruises in the shape of themselves and ended up with enough bounce so that cuts like “Alia,” “Weasel” (the delivery of, “Here comes the mouth/Look at all its teeth”) the their-version-of-epic-and-that’s-pretty-epic “Ixion,” “Circles,” “Grouper,” the title-track, were fun in doing so. It’s their fourth record and I don’t know if there are a ton of surprises, but I sure was happy when it came along and kicked so much ass in such a specific and, for me, helpful way. A catharsis record, but don’t take that to mean it’s just angry. There’s a lot of humor here as well and the songs are a blast. Hard to imagine this isn’t what Sandrider had in mind when they set out over a decade ago.

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3. Ruff Majik, Elektrik Ram

Released by Mongrel Records. Reviewed April 27.

A breakthrough in craft and style, and immaculate in its turns, tight-but-not-choked arrangements, and willingness to go and be in unexpected spaces, Elektrik Ram was for South African heavy rockers Ruff Majik — comprised of guitarist/vocalist Johni Holiday, bassist Jimmy Glass, guitarist/backing vocalist Cowboy Bez and drummer Steven Bosman — a rare realization of potential. I said as much in the review. Not every band gets to make a record like this. From the charge of its title-track and “Hillbilly Fight Song” and the unspeakable catchiness that begins there and threads throughout the stylistic shifts of “She’s Still a Goth,” “Cement Brain,” “Delirium Tremors” — on the 15th anniversary reissue, maybe bring the triangle down in the mix? (kidding; it’s painful and should be) — and into the broader grooves of its ending section with “A Song About Drugs (With a Clever Title),” “Shangrilah Inc.” and the raw-emotive “Chemically Humanized,” which when set against the oh-look-I-just-beat-your-ass thematic of “Hillbilly Fight Song” feels duly brought low. This is a great — yes, great — album, and I don’t think I listened to anything as much this year as I listened to it. They’ve already started work on their next LP, reportedly, and I worry it’s soon, but with the kind of control over their approach that they demonstrate here, there’s really no choice but to trust they know what they’re doing, since that is so much the underlying message in the material, even if its lyrical themes were by and large much darker.

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2. Howling Giant, Glass Future

Released by Magnetic Eye Records. Reviewed Oct. 20.

It wasn’t exactly a secret that Howling Giant had momentum and progression on their side. They’ve toured hard the last couple years, offered the instrumental Alteration EP (review here) in 2021 following their oh-shit-these-guys-are-for-real split with Sergeant Thunderhoof, Masamune/Muramasa (review here), and back to their debut LP, 2019’s The Space Between Worlds (review here), and have worked so diligently to engage their audience that a sense of reachout has become part of their sound. You knew that when they next set themselves to making a long-player, there was a real chance for them to sculpt something special, but Glass Future was still a surprise. Unflinching in its construction, mixed for brightness as well as weight, and cutting through that with clearly-schooled harmonies between guitarist Tom Polzine, drummer Zach Wheeler and bassist Sebastian “Seabass” Baltes to give a pop-ish sensibility to progressive sounds that in other hands would serve far more self-indulgent ends. Received as a whole work with its timely endtimes lyrical foundation, it exuded welcome in the hooks of “Siren Song,” “Hawk in a Hurricane,” “Glass Future,” “Sunken City,” “Juggernaut” and the periodic slowdowns through “Aluminum Crown,” “Tempest, and the Liar’s Gateway” and the closer “There’s Time Now,” which called back to the Twilight Zone reference (Simpsons did it) in intro “Hourglass” while fleshing out a brilliantly melodic comedown for the human species. As with the finest of any year’s releases, it will hold its relevance far past the coming January, and for Howling Giant, it sets them on a path of fresh ideas and expansive sound, filtered through a cohesive process to be the engaging good-time apocalypse they’ve become. Glass Future makes Howling Giant one of America’s most essential heavy rock bands and figureheads for a generation still on the rise.

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2023 Album of the Year

1. Acid King, Beyond Vision

Released by Blues Funeral Recordings. Reviewed March 23.

There was never another choice, and not much choice to start with. The manner in which founding guitarist/vocalist Lori S. revamped her band, bringing in bassist/synthesist Bryce Shelton (Nik Turner’s Hawkwind) and drummer Jason Willer (Jello Biafra’s Guantanamo School of Medicine) as the rhythm section supporting the band’s trademark rolling fuzz, and collaborating with Black Cobra‘s Jason Landrian, who added guitar and synth to the tracks, was an expansion and redirection of sound that simply wasn’t anticipated from a band closing in on three decades of activity. But after 2015’s still-undervalued Middle of Nowhere, Center of Everywhere (discussed here, review here), saw Lori and her then-lineup explore more heavy psychedelic sounds, Beyond Vision expanded on that with atmospheres never before conjured by any incarnation of Acid King, and Billy Anderson‘s production, as ever, allowed for scope and claustrophobia to exist in the same aural space. Hypnotic in the riffs of year-highlight “Mind’s Eye” and its penultimate title-track, Beyond Vision freely incorporated an influence from Author and Punisher into the slow plods of “Electro Magnetic” and the huge-in-a-new-way-for-them “90 Seconds,” tripped out easy on the roundly immersive opener “One Light Second Away” and galloped to a (again, surprisingly) rousing finish in “Color Trails.” A band you thought was a known quantity, whose sound you thought was set, showing that creativity doesn’t have to stop just because you have an established sound or are known for doing one thing. Acid King are still Acid King on Beyond Vision, but the boldness with which the album is realized and the sheer bravery of taking the risks it takes in pushing beyond (oh!) what were the parameters of Acid King‘s trailblazing, mellow-psych-informed stoner riffing — always possible it would fall flat in ways it obviously very much doesn’t — came together on a level that was simply unmatched in 2023. Acid King have perhaps never been more royal, more regal as they unfurl these seven cosmic triumphs, but somehow underneath they’re still punk rock. One way or the other, that the on-paper concept of Beyond Vision — all the changes, growth, shifts — winds up secondary to the strength and listening experience of the songs themselves makes it undeniable as the album of the year. It was a no-doubter.

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The Top 60 Albums of 2023: Honorable Mention

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I could very easily do another top 60 with these, and then some. Alphabetically:

1782, Abanamat, Acid Magus, Ahab, Albinö Rhino, Ananda Mida, Astral Sleep, Bell Witch, Benthic Realm, Bismut, Black Helium, Black Rainbows, Blood Ceremony, Blood Lightning, Bong Corleone, Bongzilla, Bridge Farmers, Cavern Deep, Cleõphüzz, Cloud Catcher, Clouds Taste Satanic, Danava, Darsombra, Dead Feathers, Deadpeach, Delco Detention, Desert Storm, Dommengang, Doom Lab, Dr. Space, Earthbong, Ecstatic Vision, David Eugene Edwards, End of Hope, Avi C. Engel, Fin del Mundo, Fire Down Below, The Fizz Fuzz, Formula 400, Fuzz Evil, Gévaudan, Ghorot, Giöbia, Godflesh, Godsleep, Graveyard, The Gray Goo, Green Yeti, Hail the Void, Haurun, Healthyliving, Hexvessel, Hope Hole, Humulus, IAH, Iron Void, JAAW, Jack Harlon & the Dead Crows, Katatonia, La Chinga, Lamassu, Larman Clamor, L’Ira del Baccano, Love Gang, Lucid Void, Maggot Heart, The Magpie, Mammatus, Mammoth Caravan, Mansion, Margarita Witch Cult, Masheena, Melody Fields, Melt Motif, Merlock, Minnesota Pete Campbell, Mizmor, Moon Coven, Moonstone, Morag Tong, Morass of Molasses, Morne, The Moth, Mountain of Misery, Mouth, Mudness, Mud Spencer, Los Mundos, Mutoid Man, Natskygge, Nebula Drag, Nuclear Dudes, Obelyskkh, Conny Ochs, Øresund Space Collective, Orsak:Oslo, Patriarchs in Black, Plainride, Primordial, Restless Spirit, Ritual King, The River, Robots of the Ancient World, Rocky’s Pride & Joy, Royal Thunder, Runway, Sadus The Smoking Community, SÂVER, Seum, Siena Root, Slowenya, Smokey Mirror, Evert Snyman, Sonic Moon, Sorcia, Spidergawd, Spotlights, Surya Kris Peters, Swan Valley Heights, These Beasts, Thousand Vision Mist, Thunder Horse, Tidal Wave, Tortuga, Travo, Treedeon, Trevor’s Head, Unsafe Space Garden, Vlimmer, Warp, Westing, Wet Cactus, Witch Ripper, WyndRider, Yakuza, Zone Six, and apparently frickin’ everything that Dr. Space touches.

Notes:

Certainly a landmark year for Blues Funeral and Magnetic Eye, while Ripple Music, Heavy Psych Sounds, Small Stone, Kozmik Artifactz, Napalm, Sound Effect, Spinda, Mongrel Records and Exile on Mainstream fostered a deeply admirable swath of sounds. If you’re not following these however you do your following — email lists, social media, Bandcamp, etc. — I suggest in a spirit of friendship that you consider doing so.

A couple thoughts before we wrap the big list. First, I harbor no delusions that it’s complete. There always are and always will be records that slip by me. I’m one person running this site. I’ll never be able to hear everything, appreciate everything I do hear to the utmost as everyone else might, or even want to. This is my list, my listening habits for the year and what I thought were 2023’s best full-length releases. If you’d put more in it than that, go look at the headline again. It’s a list. I take it seriously, of course, but if you had Swan Valley Heights or Godflesh or La Chinga at number three on your list — all of which are totally valid picks, just like the rest — and I didn’t, that’s okay.

In fact, it’s beautiful, but it doesn’t always come out that way in the discussion. I’m asking as I do every year to please keep opinions and conversations civil in their presentation. I know arguing on the internet is fun but I’d rather not have the drama and rest assured, I take it all personally.

So, about the honorable mentions: where do you even start? While the balance of the main list, the top 60, is toward established and even veteran acts, it’s encouraging to see so many up and coming groups forcing their way into consideration. From the ambient evocations of Orsak:Oslo to Sorcia’s thick sludge and Melt Motif’s sultry industrializations, Mountain of Misery branching off from Spaceslug, outfits like IAH and Swan Valley Heights finding new maturity, Mammoth Caravan bring aggro edge to huge tones, Healthyliving, Merlock, Morag Tong, Godsleep, These Beasts, Margarita Witch Cult, Warp, Earthbong, Abanamat, Runway, WyndRider, Trevor’s Head, Fire Down Below, High Priest, Nebula Drag, The Magpie, Love Gang, Jack Harlon and others, a slew of impressive debuts and second albums, the generational evolution of sound is ongoing, vibrant, bands establishing themselves and claiming their aesthetic place and respective audiences as we speak. I would urgently encourage you to engage with these artists now, both for immediate satisfaction and as investment in the shape of heavy music to come, which they will make.

The bottom line is this: I believe deeply in the power of art to affect your life, to make it richer, fuller, better. There are mornings when The Obelisk is the reason I’m getting out of bed, and I thank you for reading, for being a part of this. I’ll say more later. We still have a ways to go.

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Debut Album of the Year 2023

Iron Jinn, Iron Jinn

Other notable debuts (alphabetical):

Altered States, Survival
Astral Hand, Lords of Data
Benthic Realm, Vessel
Blood Lightning, Blood Lightning
Bog Monkey, Hollow
Bong Corleoone, Bong Corleone
Cleõphüzz, Dune Altar
Codex Serafini, The Imprecation of Anima
Daevar, Delirious Rights
Dead Shrine, The Eightfold Path
Deer Lord, Dark Matter Pt. 1
Dread Witch, Tower of the Severed Serpent
Ego Planet, Ego Planet
Embargo, High Seas
From the Ages, II
Fuzzy Grapes, Volume 1
Haurun, Wilting Within
Hibernaut, Ingress
HIGH LEAF, Vision Quest
High Priest, Invocation
Inherus, Beholden
JAAW, Supercluster
The Keening, Little Bird
King Potenaz, Goat Rider
Lord Mountain, The Oath
Margarita Witch Cult, Margarita Witch Cult
Massive Hassle, Massive Hassle
Mammoth Caravan, Ice Cold Oblivion
Medicine Horse, Medicine Horse
Merlock, Onward Strides Colossus
Milana, Milvus
Mountain of Misery, In Roundness
Ockra, Gratitude
Oldest Sea, A Birdsong, a Ghost
Pyre Fyre, Pyre Fyre
Runway, Runway
Slow Wake, Falling Fathoms
Strider, Midnight Zen
WyndRider, WyndRider
Slumbering Sun, The Ever-Living Fire
Sonic Moon, Return Without Any Memory
Tō Yō, Stray Birds From the Far East
Tribunal, The Weight of Remembrance
Weite, Assemblage

Notes:

Tell your friends. I think what I like most about that glut of names just above is that there’s a full spectrum of sounds there. Yeah, it’s all under an umbrella of expanded-definition heavy, but that’s the point too. A creative boom is happening that’s seeing the post-Gen X and the earlier end of the Millennials making room for newer acts with new ideas and perspectives.

Why did I pick Iron Jinn as debut of the year, when there was obviously so much otherwise to choose from? Easy. It was the most its own thing out of any of these releases. I love Dead Shrine, Blood Lightning’s intensity speaks to my brain in a way not everything can, Margarita Witch Cult have been building buzz all year. Oldest Sea’s debut is a melancholic declaration of arrival. I was not short on choices, and I’ll probably keep adding to this list as the next week or so goes on.

Dark, heavy, progressive in its approach and complex enough that I still feel like I’m getting to know it, Iron Jinn‘s self-titled so much brimmed with purpose that it seemed to go beyond a first record. My hope, honestly, is that Oeds Beydals and Wout Kemkens spend the next 30 years or so refining that collaboration and exploring where it can go, because if this is the starting point, it’s got enough to it to be the beginning of a lifetime’s exploring. One never knows how things will work out when songwriters work together, but clearly Iron Jinn drew from the strengths of all its members. Records like this, on the unlikely occasion they happen at all, don’t happen by accident.

And yes, Iron Jinn are a new band not necessarily comprised of inexperienced players, but most bands start from members of other bands. Blood Lightning, Slumbering Sun, Weite, Mountain of Misery, JAAW, Ego Planet, Massive Hassle, all the way back up to Benthic Realm and Altered States. New bands, new sounds, new ideas all coming to the fore. Couple that with acts like WyndRider, Daevar, Lord Mountain, Hibernaut, Oldest Sea, Mammoth Caravan, Sonic Moon, Tō Yō, Medicine Horse, High Priest and others here whose members haven’t necessarily appeared in an Obelisk year-end post before, and you get a more complete picture of the churning magma that is the potential for the heavy underground over the rest of the 2020s and hopefully beyond.

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Short Release of the Year 2023

Mars Red Sky & Queen of the Meadow, Mars Red Sky & Queen of the Meadow

Other notable EPs, Splits, Demos, Singles, etc.

Aawks, Luna EP
Aawks & Aiwass, The Eastern Scrolls Split LP
Apollo80 & Dimartis, Reverberations Vol. 1: Tales of Dust and Winds Split LP
Beastwars, Tyranny of Distance EP
Black Glow, Black Glow EP
Bloodsports, Bloodsports EP
Book of Wyrms, Storm Warning Single
Borracho, Kozmic Safari Single
The Bridesmaid, Come on People Now Smile on Your Brother
Burning Sister, Get Your Head Right EP
Cervus, Shifting Sands
Familiars, Keep the Good Times Rolling EP
The Freqs, Poacher
Grin, Black Nothingness EP
Guided Meditation Doomjazz, Expect EP
High Desert Queen & Blue Heron, Turned to Stone Ch. 8: The Wake Split LP
The Holy Nothing, Volume I: A Profound and Nameless Fear EP
Iress, Solace EP
Josiah, rehctaW EP
Kal-El, Moon People EP
Kombynat Robotron & DUNDDW, Split LP
Lammping, Better Know Better EP
Monolord, It’s All the Same EP
Mordor Truckers, Nowhere
Nerver & Chat Pile, Brothers in Christ Split
Night Fishing, Live Bait EP
Oxblood Forge, Cult of Oblivion
Zack Oakley, Demon Run / Funkier Than a Mosquito’s Tweeter EP
Severed Satellites, Aphelion EP
Space Queen, Nebula EP
Speck & Interkosmos, Split LP
Stöner, Boogie to Baja EP
Suspiriorium, Suspiriorum EP
Trillion Ton Beryllium Ships, Destination Ceres Station: Reefersleep EP
Ufomammut, Crookhead EP
Vokonis, Exist Within Light EP
Weedevil & Electric Cult, Cult of Devil Sounds Split LP
The Whims of the Great Magnet, Same New Single

Notes:

In keeping with their history of releasing EPs ahead of their LPs, Mars Red Sky this Spring offered the Mars Red Sky & Queen of the Meadow short outing as a preface to Dawn of the Dusk (number five on the big list), but with just three songs it became one of the releases I listened to most this year. I had “Maps of Inferno” on repeat to a degree that was kind of embarrassing to me even in front of family, and since the EP was basically that, the companion “Out at Large,” which isn’t on the full-length, and an edit that cuts out most of the trippy midsection of “Maps of Inferno” so that it all the more hammers groove into your head in what drummer Matgaz very kindly explained to me was 4/4 timing with three extra beats. Good luck following along to his kick on what seems like such a straightforward nod. What a band. I’m not doing a separate section for it, but “Maps of Inferno” was also hands-down my song of the year.

You can see above, it’s a pretty broad mix, both of release types, of new and older acts, and of styles. I’ve been hailing Vokonis’ better-future queer prog-doom on the regular, and Josiah, Monolord and Ufomammut’s EPs were nothing if not listenable. I dug the first outing from Suspiriorum (mems. Destroyer of Light and more) and hope they continue to flesh out their cult-horror ambience, and Severed Satellites’ (mems. Sixty Watt Shaman, etc.) jams set just right in their Marylander groove. Lammping will likely be on some list of mine until they break up — I’m hooked — and Zack Oakley’s funk also resonated. From the warm heavy psych of Cervus to The Bridesmaid’s all-in-on-far-out experimentalism, a victory lap from Stöner after two quality LPs and the High Desert Queen and Blue Heron split that’s another landmark in Ripple’s ongoing ‘Turned to Stone’ series, it’s been a good year if you’re willing to be distracted bouncing from one thing immediately to the next, which apparently I am.

It’s no coincidence Aawks are on the list twice, and I haven’t reviewed that Black Glow EP yet (it’s in the next Quarterly Review), but it’s a gem as well. Also very interested to see where The Freqs go as a new voice in heavy rock from Boston, and Night Fishing (mems. Abrams) feel like they’re just starting to find what they’re looking for, but this year was also their first and second releases, so they’re on their way. Grin’s assault was furious, and Beastwars always tick that box as well. I continue to dig the vibe of Trillion Ton Beryllium Ships and look forward to more from them, and same goes for both DUNDDW and Bloodsports here, as well as both Apollo80 and Dimartis on that split. Burning Sister took advantage of an opportunity to expand on their sound, and their take on Mudhoney’s “When Tomorrow Comes” was overflowing with love for the source material. If you can’t get behind a band being fans, I’m not sure what we’re doing here.

Because a ‘short release’ can be so much, I won’t call this list complete. If you have a single you loved, or an EP or split or anything else of the sort, and you don’t see it above, please just leave a comment. Maybe I left off something crucial. Maybe you can put me onto something awesome I didn’t hear. I’ll take it either way, and only ask again please be kind.

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Live Album of the Year

Ecstatic Vision, Live at Duna Jam

Other notable live albums:

The Atomic Bitchwax, Live at Freak Valley
Causa Sui, Loppen 2021
Dool, Visions of Summerland
Duel, Live at Hellfest
Edena Gardens, Live Momentum
King Buffalo, Live at Burning Man
Messa, Live at Roadburn
Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs, Live in NY
Rainbows Are Free, Heavy Petal Music
Sacri Monti, Live at Sonic Whip
Temple Fang, Live at Freak Valley
Uncle Acid and the Deadbeats, Slaughter on First Avenue
Villagers of Ioannina City, Through Space and Time

Notes:

This isn’t a huge list, but it’s burners front to back, and in that regard there’s little in the heavy underground, certainly toward the maddened-space-psych end of it, that can touch Ecstatic Vision’s intense performance ethic. If they’re not yet, I firmly believe the Philadelphia outfit led by guitarist/vocalist Doug Sabolick (also guitar for Author & Punisher) are on their way to having their reputation as a live band precede them, and Live at Duna Jam is further evidence that it should. Issued through Heavy Psych Sounds, it both captured the four-piece’s ultra-dead-on cosmic blast, but it paired that with the theatre-of-the-mind romance of Duna Jam itself; the best-kept-secret-in-heavy week-long unofficial festival held each year in Sardinia is the ultimate escapist daydream. That combination was just too powerful to ignore.

King Buffalo’s surprise Live at Burning Man release will do well to hold over till their next full-length, and I’ll just tell you flat out that no home should be without Causa Sui’s Loppen 2021. Uncle Acid’s first live outing was somewhat obligatory but welcome, and Messa’s Live at Roadburn celebrated the emergence of that genre-blending Italian unit as one of the most essential up and coming bands in Europe. They also made their first appearance on North American shores this year. One suspects it won’t be their last.

I’ll be very much anticipating what’s next from Sacri Monti, Duel, Causa Sui (of course), Temple Fang and actually the rest on this list, which leads us to…

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Looking Ahead to 2024

You’re almost there. Just keep going. Special thanks to the folks in The Obelisk Collective on Facebook for the help on rounding up this hopefully-alphabetized list of names:

10,000 Years, Acid Mammoth, Apostle of Solitude, Big Scenic Nowhere, Bismarck, Blue Heron, Castle Rat, Coogans Bluff, Crystal Spiders, Curse the Son, Deer Creek, DVNE, Foot, Full Earth, Fu Manchu, Greenleaf, Hashtronaut, Heavy Temple, High on Fire, Horseburner, Iota, Ironrat, King Buffalo, Kungens Män, Lamassu, Mammoth Caravan, Mammoth Volume, Maragda, Mario Lalli & The Rubber Snake Charmers, Monarch, Monkey3, Moura, My Diligence, The Obsessed, Orange Goblin, Psychlona, Red Mesa, Rhino, Ruff Majik, Sacri Monti, Sasquatch, Sleepytime Gorilla Museum, Slift, Slomosa, Spirit Mother, Stonebride, Troy the Band, Ufomammut, Unida, Vitskär Süden, Vokonis, Weedpecker, and just because they should probably be on this list every year until a new record comes out if one ever actually does: Om.

If you’ve got names here too, the more the merrier, comment button is below.

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THANK YOU

This has not been a minor undertaking, whether or not you count the fact that I started keeping notes for 2023 in 2022, just like right now I’ve already got notes going for 2024. It never stops. But every year, I feel like this is among the most important things this site puts out and I use these lists all the time for reference, looking back on what was happening where and when, what came out when, etc. I hope you also find something useful here. I don’t have an exact count, but just by estimate there are at least somewhere between 200-300 bands talked above above. It’s a lot. It’s overwhelming. But I hope you can find something that sounds like it’s speaking directly to you, because I know that I have several times over. Any one of my top five picks I consider an ‘album of the year,’ if that’s a decent place to start.

Thank you to The Patient Mrs. for her support, love and inexplicable willingness to put up with my crap. Right this second, she is keeping our daughter hooked into a going-late morning loaf in bed I think specifically until I get up from the couch, go in the other room, and declare I’m about to start The Pecan’s breakfast, which I probably should’ve done like an hour ago. I am luckier than I am able most days to realize, and I’m working on that, and it is the beauty and flat-out amazing nature of the two people with whom I share our home that is the reason why it’s worth that effort.

I’m sure I said as much above, but I believe in art. I believe in creativity. I believe these things are a path to fulfillment that lives without them do not experience. There are ups and downs to everything, and any glorious creative individual is just as likely to be their own worst critic, but isn’t that still worth it too? Don’t we move forward anyway, because what’s the other choice?

I thank you for reading a lot. I’ll do it again now: Thanks for reading. Your support is the reason this site is still here. It’s why it’s worth it to me to take hours from days stretched across the better part of a week (I actually finished early, thanks again to The Patient Mrs.) to do this in the first place, let alone entertain the notion of doing so again next December and on into some unknown measure of perpetuity.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. If you’re seeing these words, I wish you and yours the best of everything for fucking ever, and cannot begin to tell you how much I value your time and willingness to spend it here.

Taking tomorrow off, but after that, we go as ever: onward.

[Click play above to stream Dead Shrine’s “Enshrined.” The Eightfold Path is out this Friday, Feb. 24, on Kozmik Artifactz and Astral Projection.]

Dead Shrine‘s The Eightfold Path is a debut album with deep roots. The band — complete with backing vocals on “Through the Constellations,” liberal doses of organ on side A’s “Kingdom Come,” the megafuzzed “The Blackest Sun,” maybe even a bit of Echoplex on its two longer tracks, “Enshrined” and “Incantations Call,” and no shortage of depth, reach and swirl throughout — is Craig Williamson, whose more-than-two-decade pedigree in Datura, Lamp of the Universe and Arc of Ascent has made him the most crucial figure in New Zealand heavy rock and psychedelia since the days of Human Instinct and The Underdogs half a century ago.

He’s the only person involved — writing, performing all the instruments and vocals, recording, mixing, mastering; a genuine auteur — but Dead Shrine is very much a band that, if he wanted to assemble a lineup, could play live, and seems to draw from similar impulses that led to the formation of the trio Arc of Ascent circa 2010. By that time, Williamson had already established himself as a solo artist through the experimentalist acid folk of Lamp of the Universe, a go-everywhere project with a foundation in traditions psychedelic and earthbound that in recent years, and particularly on 2022’s The Akashic Field (review here), has pushed in a direction hinting toward a heavier rock sound. The dissolution of Arc of Ascent after their 2018 split with Germany’s Zone Six (review here) left Williamson without a ‘band,’ and Dead Shrine emerges as the answer to that problem, combining the solo-act construction of Lamp of the Universe with a heavier sound not unlike that fostered by Arc of Ascent but even more kin in style to Datura, who formed in 1992 and released two LPs in their time, 1998’s Allisone and 1999’s Visions for the Celestial (discussed here).

Perhaps a bit of nostalgia on Williamson‘s part? Could be, but one hesitates to assign motive. If you said he started Dead Shrine as an excuse to wail on drums and try to find the heaviest bass sound he could harness, it would be impossible to listen to The Eightfold Path opener “The Formless Soul” or the lumbering “Kingdom Come,” which follows, and not find that statement believable. Still, songs like “As Pharaohs Rise,” with its backward cymbals at the outset, open-air soloing and casual riding groove, or “Through the Constellations” on side B, executed with a languid swing and classic acid rock flourish on top of a firmly-held verse-chorus structure, resonate with a vibe that seems in conversation with both Lamp of the Universe‘s lyrical mysticism and turn-of-the-century era heavy/stoner rock more generally, playing to strengths hardly dormant in Williamson‘s output over the last 10 years but given new focus as this outfit — which is named after Lamp of the Universe‘s 2020 album (review here) — branches off to follow its own, well, path.

But whatever birthed it, and however far out it ranges in terms of heavy psych atmospheres, The Eightfold Path is a rock record and arranged accordingly. A bit of sampling at the launch of side B with “Rainbow Child” provides the only use of sitar (also some chanting), and the songs are drawn together through elements like the weight of the low end, Williamson‘s vocal patterning and melodies, the consuming levels of fuzz that drench these riffs and the blowout that ends each half of the LP in “Enshrined” and “Incantations Call” — which, as noted, are the two longest inclusions; placed penultimate “The Blackest Sun” tops six minutes, while none of the remaining cuts hits five — the former which rolls gradually into cosmic oblivion and the latter inclusive either of Mellotron or some synth adjacent to it in sound as oscillations of guitar circle across channels even after the self-jam march has hit its last crash.

As a songwriter, Williamson has little to prove, and “The Formless Soul” sets out on The Eightfold Path with a definite in-wheelhouse vibe that those who know his work will recognize, but it’s worth noting that in the long history behind him, Williamson has never made an album like this on his own. That in itself stands Dead Shrine apart, be it for newcomers or longtime followers, and is maybe some of what led to it being a new project rather than a redirection for Arc of Ascent, but these administrative concerns are tertiary at best when set alongside the realization that after about 30 years of making heavy music, Williamson is still finding yet-untrod avenues and modes of expression for his craft. That the record sounds so full — so very, very full; so very, very, very fuzzed — is a testament to his growth as a producer/engineer as well, as with even just the kick drum at the start of “Kingdom Come,” he makes clarions to the converted out of what to most groups would be passed-over afterthoughts and missed opportunities.

And the more one listens, the more is revealed throughout The Eightfold Path‘s 44 minutes (note there are eight tracks, and four plus four in 44 minutes makes eight; the concept also comes from the Shaolin branch of Buddhism). Groove is paramount across the leadoff salvo and it’s that much easier to get on board for it, but the expansion in “Enshrined” that continues to flesh out on “Rainbow Child” and “Through the Constellations” — which are exploratory and structured in kind — ahead of the all-in wah and thick bottom end wallop of “The Blackest Sun” and the not-coming-back fourth dimensional alignment in “Incantations Call,” with the vocals drawing closer to Lamp of the Universe even as the surrounding heft pushes farther into its own sphere, isn’t to be ignored. One hesitates to make predictions when it comes to an artist whose work has already proven so distinctive and multifaceted, but if this is the launch of a new progression for Williamson either aside from or more likely coinciding with Lamp of the Universe, then the scope of Dead Shrine even at this potentially nascent stage is all the more welcome.

I’ve said on multiple occasions that I’m a fan of Williamson‘s various outfits and incarnations, and the excitement of doing something new on The Eightfold Path is palpable, whether one has the context of prior bands and albums or not. Contrary to the moniker, Dead Shrine sounds very much alive, vital, and ready to move forward from here. Fans new and old, myself included, should be so lucky.

Dead Shrine on Facebook

Dead Shrine on Instagram

Dead Shrine on Bandcamp

Kozmik Artifactz on Facebook

Kozmik Artifactz website

Good show. Gets heavy. I started thinking about how my knee hurt and that reminded me of Høstsabbat (where I hurt it) earlier this month and I decided to dedicate the second hour-ish of the program to celebrating that lineup. And, well, that lineup was really god damned heavy — though, I say in the voice tracks too, it was way more sonically diverse a proceeding than it appears on the playlist below. So it goes. I’ll plead guilty on that.

Before that though, each one of the first three tracks is something I genuinely hope people will check out. Brant Bjork because he’s Brant Bjork and 14 records in he’s still trying new stuff. UWUW because Ian Blurton is a master and psychedelic heavy soul rock needed to happen. Dead Shrine because it’s new stuff from Craig Williamson (also of Lamp of the Universe) in a heavy style like Arc of Ascent, but with some different kinds of spaces thrown in. Dude just riffs and riffs and riffs. Yes.

Not saying the rest isn’t worth checking out in Ruby the Hatchet, Love Gang, or The Otolith, which is really the rest of the new stuff. The Otolith I’ve been listening to all week to review it and it’s bludgeoningly beautiful and has me wondering how to add a sixth inclusion to my top five for the year. Ruby the Hatchet are like if 1971 happened in 1981, and Love Gang are like if Motörhead were from Southern California or, in other words, from Denver. I certainly thought that song was killer when I premiered it. And a couple classics, some recent Enslaved, Orange Goblin, then the turn up to Norway for the fest-homage. As I said at the top, good show.

Thanks if you listen and thanks for reading.

The Obelisk Show airs 5PM Eastern today on the Gimme app or at: http://gimmemetal.com.

Full playlist:

The Obelisk Show – 10.28.22 (VT = voice track)

Brant Bjork	Bread for Butter	Bougainvillea Suite
UWUW	Staircase to the End of the Night	UWUW
Dead Shrine	The Formless Soul	The Eightfold Path
VT
Ruby the Hatchet	Deceiver	Fear is a Cruel Master
Love Gang	Meanstreak	Meanstreak
The Otolith	Ekpyrotic	Folium Limina
Saint Vitus	The Psychopath	Saint Vitus
Enslaved	Kingdom	Kingdom
Orange Goblin	Cozmo Bozo	The Big Black
VT
Norna	The Perfect Dark	Star is Way Way is Eye
Bismarck	The Seer	Oneiromancer
The Moth Gatherer	The Drone Kingdom	Esoteric Oppression
Dopelord	Your Blood	Reality Dagger`
Graveyard	Please Don’t	Peace
Indian	Directional	From All Purity
VT
Slomatics	Buried Axes on Regulus Minor	Ascend/Descend
Kanaan	Return to the Tundrasphere	Earthbound

The Obelisk Show on Gimme Metal airs every Friday 5PM Eastern, with replays Sunday at 7PM Eastern. Next new episode is Nov. 11 (subject to change). Thanks for listening if you do.

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Don’t get me wrong, there’s precious little in this world for which I’d trade the acid-drenched psych and cosmic explorations of Lamp of the Universe, but damn, when Craig Williamson hits into a riff, fuzz on, amp loud, drums behind, bass under, you gotta just let that groove ride. Dead Shrine — a solo-project for the Hamilton, New Zealand, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, singer and producer — is an extension of impulses previously shown in Arc of Ascent and Datura in the long-long-ago, and “The Formless Soul,” which you can and should hear at the bottom of this post, is the opening track and one of the eight appearing on The Eightfold Path, the debut full-length that’s due out next year through Kozmik Artifactz.

If you’ve hung around here a while, chances are you’ve heard me at some point or other going on about how fucking righteous this dude’s work is. And not to toot my own horn there, but I’m only correct in doing so. The Eightfold Path plays out like a heavy rock and psychedelic bonfire, rolling through two sides of epic nod on the way to the absolute blowout that is “Incantations Call” at the back end. I hate to be all “if you know you know,” because the truth is you know way more than I do about basically everything, but god damn, what a record this is. No bullshit, it’s the first name on my best-of-2023 list, which, yes, I’ve started.

From YouTube and Williamson direct:

DEAD SHRINE – The Eightfold Path

Release date: Late February 2023 on Kozmik Artifactz and Astral Projection (Vinyl/CD/Digital)

The new album, and “band” as I like to call it has been a long running idea I’ve had since the Datura days, and that was to continue to play in a heavier 70s acid rock way on my own… in Datura and especially in Arc of Ascent I’d write the songs, produce them, record parts … even extra guitars, percussion and keyboards on the albums… so really, its been a natural progression to starting the Dead Shrine thing. I guess mostly it’s a return to a more rock thing as I used to do 20 plus years ago in Datura, still heavier, still with the Psych overtones…

https://instagram.com/dead.shrine
https://www.facebook.com/deadshrinenz
https://deadshrinenz.bandcamp.com/

http://kozmik-artifactz.com/
https://www.facebook.com/kozmikartifactz

Dead Shrine, “The Formless Soul”

The Obelisk Questionnaire is a series of open questions intended to give the answerer an opportunity to explore these ideas and stories from their life as deeply as they choose. Answers can be short or long, and that reveals something in itself, but the most important factor is honesty.

Based on the Proust Questionnaire, the goal over time is to show a diverse range of perspectives as those who take part bring their own points of view to answering the same questions. To see all The Obelisk Questionnaire posts, click here.

Thank you for reading and thanks to all who participate.

The Obelisk Questionnaire: Craig Williamson of Lamp of the Universe

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How do you define what you do and how did you come to do it?

Music, so I guess artistic expression, is part of what and who I am. I define Lamp of the Universe as a catharsis, a deeper expression of what is going on in my subconscious.

I came to do this through necessity, through not having like minded individuals, mostly, to create what I heard in my head, and by needing to move forward creatively, to not have limits, and to satisfy the curiosity i have musically.

Describe your first musical memory.

Being very excited seeing a lot of vinyl records laying on the floor, wondering what they all sounded like.

Describe your best musical memory to date.

Getting the first Lamp of the Universe album released. Being locked away for two years working on songs by myself, alone, no band, and then having it come out was an absolute revelation for me.

When was a time when a firmly held belief was tested?

Many times actually, too numerous to list them all. When you ask yourself “is this really worth all of this shit?” Unfortunately all centered around bands I’ve been in, or the people that have things to do with them, but I guess that’s the business.

Where do you feel artistic progression leads?

To personal and collective fulfillment, growth, understanding. It leads to doors being opened in a metaphysical sense.

How do you define success?

For me it’s being able to continue, to be creative, and have no limits on what I may want to do – what paths I can go down. That’s both successful and exciting

What is something you have seen that you wish you hadn’t?

Obviously, war….and how it affects innocent people. Also the disregard for animals really gets to me… the world is a horrible place at times.

Describe something you haven’t created yet that you’d like to create.

A full blown concept album, one track, maybe over 90 minutes… one day.

What do you believe is the most essential function of art?

To bring enjoyment, to the creator and the listener, on as many levels as you can understand. And I’m not just talking about cliché uplifting music… but an experience that can stimulate anyone wishing to engage.

Something non-musical that you’re looking forward to?

Catching up with friends I haven’t seen for awhile mainly, getting new tattoos, looking at classic cars, watching sport.

https://www.facebook.com/lampoftheuniverse/
https://lampoftheuniverse.bandcamp.com/
https://projectionrecords.bandcamp.com/

Lamp of the Universe, The Akashic Field (2022)

[PLEASE NOTE: These are not the results of the year-end poll, which is ongoing. If you haven’t contributed your list to the cause yet, please do so here.]

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Invariably, the ultimate measure of 2020 will be in lives and livelihoods lost around the world. I have nothing to add to the discourse of the COVID-19 pandemic that others haven’t said in more articulate and precise language. Suffice it to note that 2020 was the year that the very concept of “unprecedented” itself became trite.

One does not have to look far to find positives amid the devastation. Creativity continues to flourish. Art cannot be killed. Even locked away from each other in quarantine, artists will continue to reach out, to collaborate, to fulfill the human need for expression that has driven the species since cave drawings and will no doubt be the ruins we leave behind us when we’re gone.

In underground music, it was simply overwhelming. And though I’ll admit it was hard at times to listen to music and divorce it from the larger context of what was happening in the world — it was there like a background buzz — this year reinforced how necessary music is, not only as an escape or a source of income for those who make/promote it, but as an integral component of life and community. Absences have been keenly felt.

I won’t try to sate you with platitudes, to say “things will get better.” Maybe they will, maybe they won’t. One year turning to the next does not fix broken systems and it does not cure raging plagues. It’s just a number. Arbitrary except as a convenient marker for things like this, births, deaths, and so on. Bookkeeping.

Before I turn you over to the lists: Please be kind in the comments if you choose to leave one. To me. To other people. To yourself. These lists are culled from my listening preference and what I consider of critical importance. But I’m one person. If there’s something you feel has been left out, say so. I ask you only to do so in a spirit of friendship rather than argument. Thank you in advance.

Okay:

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The Top 50 Albums of 2020

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#50-31

50. Sun Crow, Quest for Oblivion
49. Atramentus, Stygian
48. Arcadian Child, Protopsycho
47. Fuzz, III
46. Jointhugger, I Am No One
45. Dirt Woman, The Glass Cliff
44. Switchblade Jesus, Death Hymns
43. Foot, The Balance of Nature Shifted
42. Hymn, Breach Us
41. IAH, III
40. Lord Fowl, Glorious Babylon
39. Acid Mess, Sangre de Otros Mundos
38. 1000mods, Youth of Dissent
37. Deathwhite, Grave Image
36. Soldati, Doom Nacional
35. Cortez, Sell the Future
34. Kadavar, The Isolation Tapes
33. Black Rainbows, Cosmic Ritual Supertrip
32. Shadow Witch, Under the Shadow of a Witch
31. Insect Ark, The Vanishing

Notes: To say nothing of the honorable mentions that follow the rest of the list below, immediately we see the problem of so-many-albums-not-enough-space. People talk about a top 50 as ridiculous, like there’s no way you can like that much music. Bullshit. I agonized over how to fit Sun Crow on this list because their Quest for Oblivion felt like it deserved to be here. Ditto that for Arcadian Child. And the achievements of bands like Kadavar, 1000mods and Switchblade Jesus and Insect Ark in breaking the boundaries of their own aesthetics deserve every accolade they can get, and likewise those who progressed in their sound like Cortez, Shadow Witch, Lord Fowl, Hymn, Foot, Black Rainbows, Deathwhite and IAH. Add to that the debuts from Atramentus, Dirt Woman, Jointhugger, Acid Mess and Sergio Ch.’s Soldati, and you’ve got a batch of 20 records — some born of this year’s malaise, some working in spite of it — that vary in sound but are working to push their respective styles to new places one way or the other.

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30. High Priestess, Casting the Circle

Released by Ripple Music. Reviewed May 5.

There was no shortage of anticipation for what L.A. cultists High Priestess would do to follow their 2018 self-titled debut (review here), and the three-piece did not disappoint, instead gave a ritual mass that included the 17-minute concept piece “Invocation” alongside infectious and ethereal melodies like “The Hourglass.” And now that the circle’s been cast? Seems like they can do anything.

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29. Polymoon, Caterpillars of Creation

Released by Svart Records. Reviewed Oct. 12.

High-powered cosmic metal from Finland pulling apart heavy psychedelia on an atomic level with an urgency that speaks of youth, progress and an ingrained need for exploration? Sign me up. A lot of bands on this list put out their first album this year. There are few for whom my hopes are as high as they are for Polymoon. If you haven’t yet heard Caterpillars of Creation, do.

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28. Sons of Otis, Isolation

Released by Totem Cat Records. Reviewed Sept. 30.

Of the sundry horrors 2020 wrought, a new album from long-running Toronto three-piece Sons of Otis was an unexpected positive, and their ultra-spaced, murky riffs on their first studio album since 2012’s Seismic (review here, also here) launched like a slow-motion escape pod of righteous doom (s)tonality. There will never be another Sons of Otis. Be thankful for everything you get from them.

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27. Lamp of the Universe, Dead Shrine

Released by Projection Records. Reviewed May 25.

Organ, Mellotron, sitar, acoustic and electric guitars, various percussion elements, and of course the inimitable fragility in Craig Williamson‘s voice itself — the ingredients for Lamp of the Universe‘s Dead Shrine were familiar enough for those familiar with the one-man outfit running more than two decades, but the lush acid folk created remains a standout the world over. Dead Shrine was a much-needed gift of peace and meditation.

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26. BleakHeart, Dream Griever

Released by Sailor Records. Reviewed Nov. 18.

The debut album from Colorado’s BleakHeart collected pieces united by melody and overarching atmosphere, positioned stylistically somewhere around heavygaze or heavy post-rock, but feeling less limited to genre bounds than some others working in a similar sphere. As a first outing, it brought a promise of things to come even as the depths of its mix seemed to swallow the listener entirely, equal parts serving claustrophobia and escapism.

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25. Pale Divine, Consequence of Time

Released by Cruz Del Sur Music. Reviewed June 3.

There is not enough space here to properly commend Pale Divine founding guitarist/vocalist Greg Diener on how much he opened up the band by bringing in his and drummer Darin McCloskey‘s former Beelzefuzz bandmate Dana Ortt on shared guitar, vocal and songwriting duties. Completed by Ron “Fezz” McGinnis on bass/vocals, Pale Divine are a refreshed and ready powerhouse of American traditional doom.

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24. Uncle Woe, Phantomescence

Released by Packard Black Productions. Reviewed Oct. 21.

One is going to have to get used to the idea of Uncle Woe residing in the places between, I think. An inward-looking cosmic doom that’s likewise morose and reaching, opaque and translucent, Phantomescence could be almost troubling in its feeling of off-kilter expression. Yet that’s exactly what multi-instrumentalist/vocalist Rain Fice was going for. Thriving on contradiction, exploratory, and individualized. Start from doom, move outward.

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23. REZN, Chaotic Divine

Released by Off the Record Label. Reviewed Oct. 15.

I don’t feel like I’m cool enough to offer any substantive comment on what Chicago’s REZN do, but their sax-laced heavy psychedelia comes across warm and is invitingly languid while still delivered with a sense of energy and purpose. It rolls and you want to roll with it, so you do. They were clearly hurt by not being able to tour this year, as were audiences for not seeing them. Call them neo-stoner metal or whatever you want, these songs deserve to be played live.

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22. Ruff Majik, The Devil’s Cattle

Released by Mongrel Records. Reviewed Oct. 29.

A revamped lineup for South African desert-ish heavy rockers Ruff Majik brought producer Evert Snyman in as co-conspirator with frontman/principal songwriter Johni Holiday, and found the former trio working as a five-piece with a broader sound underscored by an electric sense of purpose and willingness to push themselves to places they hadn’t gone before. Their third record, it seemed as well to be a new beginning, and they met the challenge head-on.

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21. Curse the Son, Excruciation

Released by Ripple Music. Reviewed June 8.

The underheralded children of rolling fuzz riffage, Connecticut’s Curse the Son found new depths of emotion to bring to Excruciation — and I do mean “depths.” Dark times for dark times. Fueled by personal hardship, turmoil, motorcycle accidents and a pervasive sense of struggle, the LP was nonetheless a triumph of their songwriting and brought new melodic character to their established largesse of tone. Your loss if you missed it.

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20. The Atomic Bitchwax, Scorpio

Released by Tee Pee Records. Reviewed Aug. 26.

Business as usual in ferocious heavy/speed rock from The Atomic Bitchwax on Scorpio — and that was only reassuring since the band’s eighth full-length marked the first since the departure of guitarist/vocalist Finn Ryan and his replacing with Garrett Sweeny, a bandmate of founding bassist/vocalist Chris Kosnik and drummer Bob Pantella in Monster Magnet. They barely stopped to cool their heels and yet still managed to be catchy as hell. How do they do it? Jersey Magic.

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19. Cinder Well, No Summer

Released by Free Dirt Records. Reviewed July 21.

Such pervasive melancholy could only be derived from Irish folk, and so it was on Cinder Well‘s No Summer, which managed to move between singer-songwriter minimalism from Amelia Baker and arrangements of deceptive and purposeful intricacy. Wherever it went, from traditional songs “Wandering Boy” and “The Cuckoo” to originals like “Fallen” and the nine-minute “Our Lady’s,” it was equal parts gorgeous and sad and resonant. It remains so, despite the fleeting season.

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18. Pallbearer, Forgotten Days

Released by Nuclear Blast Records. Reviewed Dec. 24.

Their fourth album and first since crossing the decade-mark since their inception, Pallbearer‘s Forgotten Days wasn’t just heavy, emotional or big-sounding; it was the most their-own of anything they’ve done. It felt exactly like the record they wanted it to be, and reconfirmed that the generation of listeners being introduced to doom by their music is going to be just fine if they follow the cues laid out for them here.

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17. Slift, Ummon

Released by Stolen Body and Vicious Circle Records. Reviewed March 26.

Less a reinvention of space rock than a kick in its ass, Slift‘s Ummon pushed well past the line of manageability at 72 minutes and reveled in that. The French outfit were greeted as liberators when they released the album, and with the way the respect has been maintained in the months since they’ve given themselves a high standard to meet, but there’s only promise to be heard as you get lost in the nebular wash of this sprawling 2LP. They’ll have two more records out before this one’s fully digested.

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16. My Dying Bride, The Ghost of Orion

Released by Nuclear Blast Records. Reviewed Feb. 25.

The first album in half a decade from long-established UK death-doom forebears My Dying Bride found vocalist Aaron Stainthorpe coping with his daughter’s cancer diagnosis and translating that into the morose poetry for which the band is so well known and with which they’ve been so influential. My Dying Bride has never wanted for sincerity, but to call them affecting here would be underselling the quality of their craft and the heart they put into it. Follow-up EP is already out with extra non-album tracks.

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15. Causa Sui, Szabodelico

Released by El Paraiso Records. Reviewed Nov. 11.

Denmark’s Causa Sui may be on a mission to unite jazz and heavy psychedelia — and blessings on them for that — but the mellow jammy vibes they conjured on Szabodelico only emphasized how much it’s the character of what they do and the chemistry they’ve brought as bandmates that has allowed them to branch thusly in terms of aesthetic. It was the kind of album you wanted to put on again even before it was over, and its sweet instrumentals felt born to a greater timeline than a single year can encompass.

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14. All Souls, Songs for the End of the World

Self-released. Reviewed Sept. 21.

I’m not a punk rocker, but All Souls make me wish I was. Their emotive and engaged heavy rock looks out as much as in on Songs for the End of the World — their second LP behind a 2018 self-titled debut (review here) — but it’s undeniably punk in its foundation, and what the four-piece of Antonio Aguilar and Meg Castellanos (both ex-Totimoshi), Erik Trammell (Black Elk) and Tony Tornay (Fatso Jetson) have put together builds on that in exciting, inventive and individualized ways, while staying nonetheless true to its roots.

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13. Kind, Mental Nudge

Released by Ripple Music. Reviewed Oct. 20.

Five years after their debut album, Rocket Science (review here), Boston four-piece Kind return with Mental Nudge. And despite the different situations in which it finds the band’s members — bassist Tom Corino is now ex-Rozamov, drummer Matt Couto now ex-Elder — the group’s focus remains on carving memorable, mostly structured tracks out of ethereal heavy psychedelia, guitarist Darryl Shepard (Milligram, etc.) and vocalist Craig Riggs (Roadsaw, Sasquatch, etc.) adding space and melody to the crunching, driving grooves.

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12. Molassess, Through the Hollow

Released by Season of Mist. Featured Aug. 17.

Founded by vocalist Farida Lemouchi (ex-The Devil’s Blood) and guitarist Oeds Beydals (ex-Death Alley, also ex-The Devil’s Blood) and commissioned as a project for Roadburn Festival 2019 (review here), Molassess are inextricably tied to Lemouchi‘s groundbreaking former outfit and its tragic ending, but the musical branching out into darkened progressive textures on Through the Hollow isn’t to be understated. It was an album that pushed past the past, not overlooking it, but finding new ways of moving forward in life and sound.

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11. Tony Reed, Funeral Suit

Released by Ripple Music. Reviewed Sept. 28.

While of course the Mos Generator frontman is no stranger to writing or recording on his own, Funeral Suit was Tony Reed‘s debut as a solo artist and it carried his progressive stamp in melody and arrangement. It was not just a guitarist playing acoustic instead of electric, and it was not a manifestation of self-indulgence. Whether it was reworking a Mos Generator song like “Lonely One Kenobi” or pursuing a new piece like the title-track or “Waterbirth,” Reed found balance between personal and audience, evoking traditional songsmithing even as he reminded listeners of his dual role as a producer.

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10. Geezer, Groovy

Released by Heavy Psych Sounds. Reviewed May 18.

Spectacular showing from Kingston kingpins Geezer with Groovy as their first offering for Heavy Psych Sounds. Led by guitarist/vocalist Pat Harrington, the three-piece brought material that flowed with the organic feel of jams despite being structured and catchy songs. In pieces like “Dead Soul Scroll” and “Drowning on Empty,” they melded stonerized groove with what felt like genuine emotional expression, and “Dig” and “Groovy” still managed to be a heavy fuzz-blues party. And they still had room at the end to jam out on “Slide Mountain” and “Black Owl.” It was nothing but a win, rising to the occasion on every level.

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9. Big Scenic Nowhere, Vision Beyond Horizon

Released by Heavy Psych Sounds. Reviewed Jan. 29.

So Bob Balch from Fu Manchu and Gary Arce from Yawning Man have a band. They get Tony Reed from Mos Generator on board. Mario Lalli from Yawning Man/Fatso Jetson comes and goes. Nick Oliveri comes and goes. Bill Stinson from Yawning Man plays drums. Alain Johannes sits in on vocals. Reed does a bunch of vocals; his kid does a track too. Per Wiberg from Spiritual Beggars, Opeth, Candlemass, etc., lends some keys. What do you call such a thing? Who cares? You call yourself lucky it exists. They called the record Vision Beyond Horizon. Can’t wait to find out what they call the next one.

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8. Elder, Omens

Released by Armageddon Shop and Stickman Records. Reviewed April 27.

Omens marked a new beginning for Elder as the band pushed deeper into the realm of progressive rock and beyond their weightier beginnings. The arrival of Georg Edert (also Gaffa Ghandi) on drums in place of Matt Couto shifted the band’s dynamic in a number of ways, providing not a swinging anchor for the rhythm section necessarily, but another avenue of prog fluidity. Bassist Jack Donovan brought a steady presence in the low end as guitarist/vocalist Nick DiSalvo and guitarist/keyboardist Mike Risberg embarked on new melodic explorations while staying loyal to the band’s established penchant for sweeping changes. Omens may live up to its name as a sign of things to come, but either way, it was a strong display of the band’s will to pursue new ideas and methods.

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7. Forming the Void, Reverie

Released by Ripple Music. Reviewed April 15.

First words that come to mind here: “eminently listenable.” With seven tracks and 36 minutes, Reverie may not have taken up much of your afternoon… once. But by the time you gave it its proper respect and listened through three times in a row, the situation was somewhat different. The Lafayette, Louisiana, four-piece gracefully brought together structured songwriting with proggier leanings and were able to bring together rampaging hooks like “Trace the Omen” and “Manifest,” casting a sense of sonic hugeness without forgetting to add either melody or personality along with that. The band — who here welcomed bassist Thorn Letulle alongside guitarist/vocalist James Marshall, guitarist Shadi Omar Al-Khansa and drummer Thomas Colley — have worked quickly and evolved with a sense of urgency. Is Reverie the goal or another step on that path?

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6. Grayceon, MOTHERS WEAVERS VULTURES

Released by Translation Loss Records. Reviewed Nov. 18.

Vocalist/cellist Jackie Perez Gratz (interview here), guitarist Max Doyle and drummer Zack Farwell comprise Grayceon, and with their fifth record, the band looks around thematically at environmental devastation through the lens of record-breaking California wildfires from their vantage point in the Bay Area. Even as the world shifted priorities (at least most of it did) to yet another global crisis in the COVID-19 pandemic, genre-melting-pot songs like “Diablo Wind,” “The Lucky Ones,” and “This Bed” reminded of the horrors humanity has wrought on its battered home, and still managed to find hope and serenity in “And Shine On” and “Rock Steady,” a closing duo that shifted to a more personal discussion of family and one’s hope for a better future for and by the next generation. 2020 had plenty of horror. At least we got a new Grayceon record out of it.

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5. Brant Bjork, Brant Bjork

Released by Heavy Psych Sounds. Reviewed April 28.

When Sho’Nuff asked Bruce Leroy “who’s the master?,” dude should’ve said Brant Bjork. It would’ve been a confusing end to Berry Gordy’s The Last Dragon, but ultimately more accurate, as Brant Bjork‘s homegrown kung fu was unfuckwithable as ever on the album that shares his name. After two decades of solo releases in one form or another, Bjork is not just a pivotal figurehead for desert rock, he’s a defining presence, as well as one of its most treasured practitioners. Brant Bjork, the album, brought initial waves of funk in “Jungle in the Sound,” explored weedy worship in “Mary (You’re Such a Lady)” and toyed with religious dogma in offsetting that with “Jesus Was a Bluesman” while still tossing primo hooks in “Duke of Dynamite” and “Shitkickin’ Now” ahead of the more open “Stardust and Diamond Eyes” and the acoustic closer “Been So Long.” With Bjork recording all the instruments himself, a due feeling of intimacy resulted, and yet he still found a way to make it rock. How could it be otherwise?

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4. Enslaved, Utgard

Released by Nuclear Blast Records. Reviewed Sept. 29.

Why do I feel the immediate need to defend this pick? I’m not sure. Norway’s Enslaved are an institution, not just of black metal, but of bringing an ideology of creative growth to that style that often willfully resists it. They are iconoclastic even unto their own work. Utgard was released as the band stood on the precipice of 30 years together and yet it stood as their most forward-looking offering yet, as co-founders Grutle Kjellson (bass/vocals) and Ivar Bjørnson (guitar/sometimes vocals), as well as longtime lead guitarist Arve “Ice Dale” Isdal backed up the change from 2017’s E (review here) that brought in new keyboardist/vocalist Hakon Vinje with the incorporation of drummer Iver Sandøy, who doubles as a vocalist (and triples as a producer). The “new blood” made all the difference on Utgard, allowing Enslaved to piece together new ranges of melody in their work and offset instrumental shifts into and out of krautrock-derived progressions. Simply the work of a band outdoing itself from a band who does so at nearly every opportunity.

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3a. Colour Haze, We Are

Released by Elektrohasch Schallplatten and Ripple Music. Reviewed Dec. 3, 2019.

Every year I allow myself one addendum pick, and this is it. We Are was on last year’s list because it was digitally released, but the vinyl came out this year and it received its North American release this year as well, so it seemed only right to acknowledge that. So here it is in its proper place.

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3. All Them Witches, Nothing as the Ideal

Released by New West Records. Reviewed Sept. 3.

This is a band controlling their own narrative. Instead of Nothing as the Ideal being ‘the one they made as a three-piece,’ the Nashville outfit decided to make it ‘the one they recorded at Abbey Road.’ Were they thinking of it on those terms? Yeah, likely not, but it goes to demonstrate all the same just how much of themselves All Them Witches put into what they do musically, since not only are they continuing to refine and define and undefine their approach, but they’re setting the terms on which they do it. Each of their records has been a response to the one prior, but that conversation has never been so direct as to make them predictable. So what are they chasing? Apparently nothing. I’m not entirely sure I buy that as a complete answer, but I am sure I love these songs and the experiments with tape loops and other sounds that fill these spaces. Whatever they do next — or even if nothing — their run has been incredible and exciting and one only hopes their influence continues to spread over the next however many years.

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2. Elephant Tree, Habits

Released by Deathwish Inc.. Reviewed April 13.

There was a high standard set by Elephant Tree‘s 2016 self-titled debut (review here), but their second LP, Habits, surpassed even the loftiest of expectations. With vocals centered around harmonies from guitarist Jack Townley and bassist Peter Holland, the former trio completed by drummer Sam Hart brought in guitarist/keyboardist John Slattery (also sometimes vocals), and the resultant breadth gave the material on Habits spaciousness beyond even what the first album promised. Drifting, rolling, unflinchingly melodic and somehow present even in its own escapism, Habits was not just an early highlight for a rough 2020, but a comforting presence throughout, and the further one dug into tracks like “Sails,” “Exit the Soul,” “Faceless,” “Wasted” and the acoustic “The Fall Chorus,” the more there was to find — let alone “Bird,” which I’ll happily put against anything else one might propose for song of the year. As their former UK label crumbled, Habits emerged unscathed and Elephant Tree‘s future continues to shine with ever more hope for things to come. Being able to say that about anything feels like a relief.

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2020 Album of the Year

1. Lowrider, Refractions

Released by Blues Funeral Recordings. Reviewed Jan. 24.

Twenty years ago, Sweden’s Lowrider put out what would become a heavy rock landmark in their 2000 debut, Ode to Io (reissue review here). A follow-up years in the making even after the band got back together to play Desertfest in London (review here) and Berlin in 2013, Refractions first saw limited release in 2019 as part of Blues Funeral‘s PostWax series (discussed here), but its proper arrival was in early 2020, and there was really no looking back after that. It wasn’t just the novelty of a new Lowrider album that made Refractions such a joy, but the manner in which the band went about its work. There was no pretending that 20 years didn’t happen. There was no attempt to recapture the bottled lightning that was the first record, and Lowrider did not sound like a band “making a comeback” rife with expectations and fan-service. Refractions acknowledged the legacy of Ode to Io, sure enough, but as a step toward adding to it in meaningful and engaging ways. The songs — “Red River,” “Ode to Ganymede,” “Sernanders Krog,” “Ol’ Mule Pepe,” “Sun Devil/M87” and the 11-minute finale “Pipe Rider” — were fashioned without pretense and came across as the organic output of a band with nothing to prove to anyone but themselves. They made it their own. In a wretched year, Lowrider shined.

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The Top 50 Albums of 2020: Honorable Mention

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Yeah, okay. There are a lot of these, so buckle in. Last year I just threw out a list of bands. This year I’m a little more organized, so here are bands and records alphabetically.

Across Tundras, LOESS ~ LÖSS
Across Tundras, The Last Days of a Silver Rush
Alain Johannes, Hum
Arboretum, Let it All In
Bell Witch & Aerial Ruin, Stygian Bough Vol. 1
Black Helium, The Wholly Other
Boris, No
Brimstone Coven, The Woes of a Mortal Earth
CB3, Aeons
Celestial Season, The Secret Teachings
Crippled Black Phoenix, Ellengæst
Cruthu, Athrú Crutha
Domo, Domonautas Vol. 2
DOOL, Summerland
Dopelord, Sign of the Devil
Dwaal, Gospel of the Vile
Elder Druid, Golgotha
Ellis Munk Ensemble, San Diego Sessions
Emma Ruth Rundle & Thou, May Our Chambers Be Full
EMBR, 1823
Familiars, All in Good Time
Forlesen, Hierophant Violent
Galactic Cross, Galactic Cross
The Heavy Eyes, Love Like Machines
Hum, Inlet
Human Impact, Human Impact
Humulus, The Deep
Jupiterian, Protosapien
Kariti, Covered Mirrors
Khan, Monsoons
Kingnomad, Sagan Om Ryden
King Witch, Body of Light
Kryptograf, Kryptograf
Light Pillars, Light Pillars
Lord Buffalo, Tohu Wa Bohu
Lord Loud, Timid Beast
Lotus Thief, Oresteia
Malsten, The Haunting of Silvåkra Mill
Mindcrawler, Lost Orbiter
Motorpsycho, The All is One
Mountain Tamer, Psychosis Ritual
Mr. Bison, Seaward
Mrs. Piss, Self-Surgery
Mugstar, GRAFT
Murcielago, Casualties
Oranssi Pazuzu, Mestarin Kynsi
Paradise Lost, Obsidian
Parahelio, Surge Evelia Surge
The Pilgrim, …From the Earth to the Sky and Back
Pretty Lightning, Jangle Bowls
Psychlona, Venus Skytrip
Puta Volcano, AMMA
Ritual King, Ritual King
River Cult, Chilling Effect
Rrrags, High Protein
Shores of Null, Beyond the Shores (On Death and Dying)
Sigiriya, Maiden – Mother – Crone
Six Organs of Admittance, Companion Rises
16, Dream Squasher
Slomosa, Slomosa
Somnus Throne, Somnus Throne
Steve Von Till, No Wilderness Deep Enough
Stone Machine Electric, The Inexplicable Vibrations of Frequencies Within the Cosmic Netherworld
Sumac, May You Be Held
Temple of the Fuzz Witch, Red Tide
Temple of Void, The World That Was
The Kings of Frog Island, VI
Tia Carrera, Tried and True
Turtle Skull, Monoliths
Uffe Lorenzen, Magisk Realisme
Ulcerate, Stare Into Death and Be Still
Vessel of Light, Last Ride
Vestal Claret, Vestal Claret
Vinnum Sabbathi, Of Dimensions and Theories
Wight, Spank the World
Wino, Forever Gone
Yatra, All is Lost
Yuri Gagarin, The Outskirts of Reality

By no means is that list exhaustive. And to look at stuff like Psychlona, Oranssi Pazuzu, Wight, Wino, Puta Volcano, Kingnomad, Ellis Munk Ensemble, Paradise Lost, Alain Johannes, Arbouretum, Uffe Lorenzen, Tia Carrera — on and on and on — I can definitely see where arguments are to be made for records that should’ve been in the list proper. I can only go with what feels right to me at the time.

Together with the top 50, this makes over 110 albums in the best of 2020. If you find yourself needing something to hang your hat on, be glad you’re alive to witness this much excellent music coming out.

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Debut Album of the Year

Molassess, Through the Hollow

Other notable debuts (alphabetically):

Atramentus, Stygian
Bethmoora, Thresholds
BleakHeart, Dream Griever
Crystal Spiders, Molt
Dirt Woman, The Glass Cliff
Dwaal, Gospel of the Vile
Electric Feat, Electric Feat
Familiars, All in Good Time
Galactic Cross, Galactic Cross
Human Impact, Human Impact
Jointhugger, I Am No One
Light Pillars, Light Pillars
Love Gang, Dead Man’s Game
Malsten, The Haunting of Silvåkra Mill
Might, Might
Mindcrawler, Lost Orbiter
Mrs. Piss, Self-Surgery
Parahelio, Surge Evelia Surge
Polymoon, Caterpillars of Creation
Ritual King, Ritual King
SEA, Impermanence
Slomosa, Slomosa
Soldati, Doom Nacional
Somnus Throne, Somnus Throne
SpellBook, Magick & Mischief
Spirit Mother, Cadets
Temple of the Fuzz Witch, Red Tide
The Crooked Whispers, Satanic Melodies
White Dog, White Dog

Notes: I sparred with myself every step of the way here. The last couple years I’ve tried to give the top-debut spot to not just a new band, but a new presence. Green Lung, King Buffalo, etc. Molassess, with members from The Devil’s Blood, Death Alley and Astrosoniq, isn’t exactly that. So what do I do? Do I go with something newer like Polymoon, Dirt Woman, BleakHeart, SEA, White Dog or The Crooked Whispers, or something with more established players like Molassess, Soldati, or even Light Pillars?

In the end, what made the difference was not just how brilliant the songs on Molassess’ Through the Hollow, but how honestly the band confronted the legacy they were up against. The songs had a familiar haunting presence, but they were also moving ahead to somewhere new. It was that blend of old and new ideas, and the resonant feeling of emotional catharsis — as well as the sheer immersion that took place while listening — that ultimately made the decision. Turns out I just couldn’t escape it.

And why not a list? Because this feels woefully inadequate as it is. I reviewed over 250 records this year one way or another — and that’s a conservative estimate — but a lot gets lost in the shuffle and somehow it just seemed wrong this time around to call something the 13th best first record of the year. I wanted to highlight the special achievement that was the Molassess album, but really, all of these records kicked my ass one way or the other.

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Short Release of the Year 2020

King Buffalo, Dead Star

Other notable EPs, Splits, Demos, etc.:

Big Scenic Nowhere, Lavender Blues
Coma Wall, Ursa Minor
Conan/Deadsmoke, Doom Sessions Vol. 1
Fu Manchu, Fu30 Pt. 1
Grandpa Jack, Trash Can Boogie
Howling Giant/Sergeant Thunderhoof, Masamune/Muramasa (split)
Oginalii, Pendulum
Kings Destroy, Floods
Lament Cityscape, The Old Wet
Limousine Beach, Stealin’ Wine +2
Merlock, That Which Speaks
Monte Luna, Mind Control Broadcast
Mos Generator/Di’Aul, Split
Pimmit Hills, Heathens & Prophets
Rito Verdugo, Post-Primatus
Rocky Mtn Roller, Rocky Mtn Roller
Spaceslug, Leftovers
10,000 Years, 10,000 Years
The White Swan, Nocturnal Transmission
Thunderbird Divine, The Hand of Man
Witchcraft, Black Metal

Notes: If you were wondering why King Buffalo’s Dead Star (review here) wasn’t on the big list, this is why. It was pitched to me as an EP and that’s how I’m classifying it. I’m taking the out. Is it an EP? Not really, but neither is it a full-length album, given its experimental nature and focus around its extended two-part title-track. Whatever it was, it was the best that-thing, and this is the category where such things go.

Again, tough choices after King Buffalo. Thunderbird Divine’s EP was wonderfully funk-blasted and woefully short (new album, please). The newly-issued Spaceslug EP branches out their sound in fascinating ways as a result of the lockdown. Witchcraft’s acoustic EP, Coma Wall’s EP and Big Scenic Nowhere’s EP all signaled good things to come, and Howling Giant’s split with Sergeant Thunderhoof was a highlight of the most recent Quarterly Review. There really isn’t a bummer on the list there, from the bitter psych of Oginalii to the industrial metal of Lament Cityscape, the unadulterated riffery of Merlock to the live-captured rawness of Monte Luna.

So again, why no list? Same answer. I want to highlight the progression King Buffalo made in their sound and leave room open elsewhere for things I missed. Please let me know what in the comments. Cordially.

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Live Album of the Year 2020

Yawning Man, Live at Giant Rock

Other notable live releases:

Ahab, Live Prey
Amenra, Mass VI Live
Arcadian Child, From Far, for the Wild (Live in Linz)
Author and Punisher, Live 2020 B.C.
Cherry Choke, Raising Salzburg Rockhouse
Dead Meadow, Live at Roadburn 2011
Dirty Streets, Rough and Tumble
Electric Moon, Live at Freak Valley Festival 2019
Kadavar, Studio Live Session Vol. 1
King Buffalo, Live at Freak Valley
Monte Luna, Mind Control Broadcast
Orange Goblin, Rough & Ready: Live and Loud
Øresund Space Collective, Sonic Rock Solstice 2019
Pelican, Live at the Grog Shop
SEA, Live at ONCE
Sumac, St Vitus 09/07/2018
Sun Blood Stories, (a)Live and Alone at Visual Arts Collective
Temple Fang, Live at Merleyn
YOB, Pickathon 2019 – Live From the Galaxy Barn

Notes: In this wretched year (mostly) void of live music, marked by canceled tours and festivals, the live album arguably played a more central role than it ever has, whether it was a band trying to keep momentum up following or leading into a studio release, taking advantage of the emergence of the Bandcamp Friday phenomenon or just trying to maintain some connection to their fans and the process of taking a stage. Or even playing in a room together. Or not a room. Anything. What was once a tossoff, maybe an afterthought companion piece became an essential worker of the listening experience.

You might accuse desert rock progenitors Yawning Man of playing to their base with Live at Giant Rock (featured here), and if so, fine. At no point in the last 50 years has that base more needed playing-to. And in the absence of shows, being able to hear (and watch, in the case of the accompanying video) Yawning Man go out to the landscape that spawned them and engage with their music was a beautiful moment of reconciliation. An exhale for the converted that didn’t fill one with empty promises of better tomorrows or tours to come, but served to remind what’s so worth preserving about the spirit of live music in the first place. The fact that anything can happen. A replaced note here, a tuning change there — these things can make not just an evening, but memories that go beyond shows, tours, to touch our lives.

There were a ton of live records this year. Some were benefits for worthy causes between saving venues, Black Lives Matter, voting rights organizations, and so on. And whether these were new performances from captured livestreams (Monte Luna, Kadavar) or older gigs that had been sitting around waiting for release at some point (Sumac, Dead Meadow), this, very much, was that point, and these live offerings kept burning a fire that felt at times very much in danger of being extinguished.

Looking Ahead to 2021

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A list of bands. Some confirmed releases, some not. Here goes:

Dread Sovereign, Sasquatch, Year of Taurus, Apostle of Solitude, Weedpecker, Borracho, Love Gang, Jointhugger, Demon Head, Iron Man, Greenleaf, Samsara Blues Experiment, The Mammathus, Evert Snyman, Wo Fat, Conclave, Here Lies Man, Kabbalah, Komatsu, Hour of 13, Wedge, Amenra, La Chinga, Spidergawd, Wolves in the Throne Room, Vokonis, Freedom Hawk, Masters of Reality, ZOM, Eyehategod, Sanhedrin, Green Lung, The Mountain King, Albatross Overdrive, Elder, King Buffalo, Sunnata, Howling Giant, SAVER, Conan, Slomatics, Ruff Majik, Kind, Mos Generator, Yawning Sons, Lantlôs, Brant Bjork, Spiral Grave, Crystal Spiders, Lightning Born, Samavayo, Wovenhand, Merlock, Comet Control, The Age of Truth, Eight Bells, BlackWater Holylight, DVNE, Monte Luna.

Thank You

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You’ve read enough, so I will do my best to keep this mercifully short. Thank you so much for reading — whether you still are or not — and thank you for being a part of the ongoing project that is The Obelisk. I cannot tell you how much it means to me to have such incredible support throughout not just this year, but all the years of the site’s existence. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you most of all to The Patient Mrs. for her indulgence in letting me get this done. I’m amazed forever.

More to come.

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