AOTY 2023
In no particular order:
Agriculture — Agriculture
Hailing from Los Angeles, black metal band Agriculture represents the bleeding edge of a new wave of American black metal seeking to subvert the long-entrenched tropes and themes of the genre. Where the second wave of black metal — the era that most typifies the genre for most listeners, represented by Norwegian bands such as Mayhem, Emperor, Burzum, and more — portrayed physical and psychic landscapes of cold desolation, lurking evil, and an overwhelming hatred for one’s fellow man, Agriculture and their American contemporaries blaze a new path. Referring to themselves as “ecstatic black metal,” Agriculture turns the shrieking chaos of the genre towards the sublime — that feeling of unbridled wonder, joy, or yes, even love. Don’t be mistaken, Agriculture is anything but soft. Fans of black metal will find all the tremolo guitar, all the blast beats, all the hoarse screaming the genre is known for. It’s just that here, Agriculture sets their sights not on the darkest pits of the human soul, but on the airy heights of emotion and, somewhat improbably, they succeed. Agriculture, like much of black metal, may not be for everyone, but for fans of the genre I can’t recommend it enough.
Zulu — A New Tomorrow
What can be said about Zulu that hasn’t been said countless times by critics more discerning and more knowledgeable than I? Zulu is, if not a darling of the current hardcore scene, at least something of a fascination for music writers and fans alike. In particular, critics tend to fixate on Zulu’s politics, and not without reason. An all-Black hardcore band, Zulu have been outspoken about the racial makeup of the hardcore and punk scenes and the lie of a truly progressive and open scene that many (white) hardcore fans have convinced themselves of. Not so surprisingly, then, Zulu has also seen plenty of pushback from those same fans, who are quick to dismiss the band as a mere fad or, worse yet, potential sellouts in the making. This preamble is missing something important, though: A New Tomorrow fucking rules. Loaded with samples drawn from soul music, reggae, funk, Zulu draws on a powerviolence tradition (where Zulu is or is not “actually powerviolence” is not particularly relevant here) in making this album short, chaotic, and utterly brutal. Gentle wah-wah guitar suddenly cuts into death metal growls and blast beats, a sludgy riff turns into a hip-hop drum chop turns into a spoken word piece. Vocalists shriek and howl, basses grind, guitars chug and buzz, and the hardcore kids of the world are offered up the tastiest two-step imaginable before they are utterly disarmed by Anaiah Lei’s lyrics. Equal parts furious and joyful, Lei manages to tap into something of the sublime, that sense of beauty or joy so great it verges on a limb-trembling terror. A New Tomorrow is tight in its pacing and it wears its influences on its sleeve, but it is nothing if not expansive and relentlessly forward-thinking. A new tomorrow, indeed.
Caroline Polachek — Desire, I Want to Turn Into You
Caroline Polachek is probably used to making waves at this point. Making her start in the indie-darling synthpop band Chairlift — you might have heard their track “Bruises’’ in the late 2000’s — Polachek’s subsequent solo career has been given the blessing of all the latest and greatest pop legends, from Charli XCX to Grimes and even, shockingly, Beyonce, on whose 2013 self-titled album Polachek carries a writing credit. And there’s a reason for this acclaim. Boasting an ethereal, powerful voice, Caroline Polachek practically soars over the instrumentation of her tracks, a quality on full display in Desire, which feels airy and dynamic in all the right ways. Indeed, “dynamic” might be the best word to describe this album, particularly for the ways that it ranges freely over the entire territory of pop and dance production past and present, interpolating Dido (who has a feature on the album) over tinny early 2000’s stock cymbals before launching into bassy synth lines and half-rapped lyrics sure to make any modern hyperpop producer proud. There really isn’t much left to say here, Polachek’s clever songwriting and beautiful voice are being trumpeted by just about every music critic around, and for good reason. If you’re a fan of pop in any capacity you’d be doing yourself a disservice to skip on this album.
boygenius — the record
No surprises here, sad girl indie supergroup boygenius is sure to appear on just about everyone’s year end list, and for good reason. Composed of Lucy Dacus, Julien Baker, and Phoebe Bridgers — each an indie pop superstar in their own right — boygenius is a musical collaboration so apparent that it comes as something of a shock that the record is their first full-length release. Indeed, this album sounds like boygenius has been performing comfortably together for decades, a record that oozes with languid melodies and mournful, folksy harmonizing that — despite the veritable license to print money that boygenius represents — contains a genuine sense of pathos. Look, I don’t have to tell you how good the record is, you’ve almost certainly been hearing it at festivals, in painfully cool cafes, on earnest Spotify playlists named things like “Sapphic Yearning” or hesitantly plucked out on the guitars of awkward queer teens in countless bedrooms. Your local indie band is learning a cover of a boygenius right this second, I guarantee it. It seems like boygenius is everywhere right now and, frankly, they deserve to be.
JPEGMAFIA & Danny Brown — SCARING THE HOES
It’s hard to say whether a collaboration between Detroit rapper Danny Brown and Los Angeles producer and rapper JPEGMAFIA is a stroke of genius or a chaotic mess. Indeed, it is this very tension that drives much of SCARING THE HOES, blending JPEG’s ear for unusual sampling and mixing with Brown characteristically off-kilter flow and paranoid lyricism, resulting in an album that is in equal parts catchy and entirely inexplicable. In particular, the album has a penchant for a kind of wall-of-sound mixing style that pushes all channels — be they percussion, modulated samples, or the rapping itself — to the very front, creating a cacophonous noise that can be hard to sort out on a first listen. At times, tracks are bass boosted beyond all comprehension, at others, songs cut out entirely to play intrusive cell phone chirps or tinny drum machines. Sometimes both of these things are happening at once, somehow. It is chaos, and perhaps that’s the point. SCARING THE HOES feels so wide-ranging in its samples and inspirations it becomes almost meaningless, a wash of pop cultural trash that, as if through strange alchemies, is transmuted into something countercultural and eminently listenable. JPEGMAFIA and Danny Brown are two of the most unique artists working in hip-hop today, something that is made readily apparent by the beautiful noise that is SCARING THE HOES.
Yaeji — With A Hammer
NYC-via-Seoul house producer Yaeji has had a notable presence in the DJing world for some time, evidenced by Boiler Room sessions, major festival appearances, and a feature on Charli XCX’s 2019 album Charli, among other things. Despite the list of accomplishments, however, this year’s With A Hammer represents Yaeji’s studio album debut, and oh what a first release it is. With A Hammer, like much of Yaeji’s music, defies conventional description — not for any particularly abrasive qualities, mind, Yaeji is eminently enjoyable. Rather, Yaeji is one of those artists who, you start to suspect, has heard everything, and it shows in the music. With A Hammer could be described as ambient house, dream pop, bedroom pop, chillwave, chillout, lofi hip-hop, indie pop, drum and bass, and more — Yaeji weaves the sounds of the electronic underground together with more skill than any single producer has a right to — but With A Hammer manages to have a unique sound all its own. Yaeji’s vocals, delivered in a free-flowing mix of Korean and English, are languid and breathy, so low as though a conspiratorial murmur to a private listener. Even more compelling are the production and mixing choices that seem to carve out a tangible space within the soundscape, freely moving between or even combining spacey reverb with a dry aural intimacy that really allows one to imagine Yaeji in the places she and her music inhabit — bedrooms, warehouses, festival grounds, basements, hell maybe outer space for all I know. It is an album that is, for lack of a better term, deliberate, every choice carefully considered, every note painstakingly selected or otherwise stripped down until the whole thing is lean, efficient, beautiful. Treat yourself today, go give With A Hammer a listen.
Tomb Mold — The Enduring Spirit
With new music by bands like Blood Incantation, Undergang, Torture Rack, and Phobophilic, it’s been a big year for a particular style of reverb-drenched, riff-laden death metal known as cavernous death metal, caverndeath, or (for the more high brow among us) new wave of old school death metal. Despite being something of a surprise album, then, it feels almost inevitable that we’d get a new Tomb Mold to go along with it all. What is perhaps more genuinely surprising, though, is the direction their new album The Enduring Spirit takes. Where other cavernous death bands have been comfortable to exist within the niche they’ve carved out, Tomb Mold’s latest release sees an enthusiastic embrace of progressive death metal elements their previous work has only hinted at. Evoking classic prog death artists such as Rivers of Nihil, Edge of Sanity, or even the death-jazz stylings of Cynic, The Enduring Spirit makes excellent use of smooth, bright guitar tones that gleefully noodle over syncopated drum comping (played alongside a snare blast rather than a ride pattern, natch) and articulated bass work. That doesn’t mean Tomb Mold has nothing to offer their old school death fans, though; The Enduring Spirit harbors riffs and growls galore, rooting Tomb Mold’s classic death sound in a chugging, head-banging wall of noise that sits only just under the more expansive melodic work that makes this album such a departure from previous releases. This is one that I think fans of Tomb Mold’s iconic album Planetary Clairvoyance may have to sit with for a while, and I have no doubt that metal forums will be full of metalheads decrying Tomb Mold’s “betrayal” of their classic sound. Nevertheless, The Enduring Spirit is an astonishing death metal release, one that, with time, I believe will sit firmly amongst the classics of the prog death genre.
100 gecs — 10,000 gecs
I’ve been hearing for a while now that hyperpop is dead and surely, considering they are practically elder statesmen of the genre, 100 gecs is interred alongside it. And yet here I sit bobbing my head (my hair, absurdly, bleached to a similar shade of the gecs themselves) to the chipmunk-esque vocals and cheap drum machine beat of “mememe.” Look, even at the height of hyperpop’s popularity the inclusion of 100 gecs on an AOTY list would raise some eyebrows. 100 gecs, like the genre of hyperpop itself is something of…well acquired taste might not even be the phrase here. You get it or you don’t. Ludicrously pitch-shifted voices, machine-made instrumentals pulled from the cheapest hardware available, lyrics so sophomoric, so mind-numbingly stupid you have to wonder if it’s an elaborate prank? It’s all here. 10,000 gecs, like its predecessor 1000 gecs, is not so much musical trash, but rather a damn monument made of garbage, made to garbage, even. The genius of gecs comes in their nuanced grasp of all the things that make up our current cultural moment — -the techniques, the trends, the cynical recycling of old ideas and sounds. All of it appears here cobbled together into something strange, something sharp-edged and biting and, at times, weirdly vulnerable. 10,000 gecs is not just hyperpop (whatever that even is), it is pop punk, rap, nu metal, electronica, video game music. Hell, “Frog On The Floor” is practically a Wiggles-esque children’s tune, if not for the references to keg stands and identity crises. It is all of these things pieced together and mixed with a keen ear, each beat and each note carefully tuned to be, for lack of a better word, maximal: maximally loud, maximally thin, maximally crunchy or crusty or bleepy or round or dry or whatever other term you can come up with. It is everything, all at once, chopped and blended and cranked up to be something absurd, unlistenable, utterly compelling. Fuck it, hyperpop is dead and 100 gecs is carving the most beautiful headstone you’ve ever seen.
Yeule — softscars
I’ll admit that this one came out of nowhere for me, which is a shame considering the Singaporean artist yeule released their first album almost 5 years ago now. I’m happy I did find them though, because softscars is incredible, a noisy, dense, texturally rich piece of…well I don’t know what to call this. Art pop? Hyperpop? Cyber-grunge? Gothcore? No combination of traditional genre and Gen Z lingo will really do the trick, so singular is yeule’s work on this album. At times, softscars manages an almost saccharine level of pop, such as on the track “sulky baby,” where yeule alternates between breathy, rhythmic verses and a sweet, childish chorus delivered in almost Cardigans-esque high tone. At other times, yeule practically punishes the listener with blown-out drum machines, noisy static washes, and a frighteningly powerful scream that is often processed into something utterly inhuman. And yet, somehow this all coheres into something not just enjoyable but, well, cool, the slightly impenetrable sound of a culture you don’t and never will belong to, no matter how hard you try. Trying, though, is imperative. This is a demanding album, not necessarily in its lyrical content, but in the sheer density of sound and texture on display. There are listeners who will bounce off this one, I imagine, but for the ones willing to sit down and really absorb the subtle ways the whole thing moves, between gritty, sharp-edged fuzz and silky smooth synth glides, for instance, or between songs of tender longing and inhuman violence, there is a lot to take in. Give this one a shot, you may just be surprised.
Mil-Spec — Marathon
If there was one word to describe Mil-Spec’s latest release it would have to be: nostalgic. Indeed, there is a sense of the “throwback” to Mil-Spec’s particular brand of melodic hardcore, a hoarse, desperate sound that evokes a mid-2000s scene championed by bands like Have Heart or Defeater — themselves a loose throwback to the earliest days of “emotional hardcore.” In this sense, Mil-Spec are quite deliberately treading old ground as a means of underscoring the thematic throughline of Marathon: memory both sweet and sorrowful. Indeed, there is something painfully regretful in this album, an explicit remorse about having never achieved the lofty ambitions of the young punk mind, about losing oneself to a “know-it-all Bohemian dream,” about not appreciating the friends you had when you had them. This is perhaps best demonstrated in the track “Belle Époque,” which takes a break from the album’s usual reverb-drenched riffs and percussive shouts for, of all things, a quiet spoken word piece about seeing Riley Gale, late vocalist of legendary thrash act Power Trip, for the last time. Amidst all this reminiscing, however, there is something new and triumphant — three decades of melodic hardcore perfectly distilled into a thing that is powerful and tuneful and utterly entrancing.
Year of the Knife — No Love Lost
Earlier this year, Delaware metalcore outfit Year of the Knife were in a brutal accident in their tour van that injured every member of the band and left vocalist Madi Watkins in a medically-induced coma. The event sparked a major crowdfunding effort amongst fans of the band and members of the hardcore community more broadly, many of whom wondered at the fate of the band moving forward. It came as something of a surprise to me, then, to see No Love Lost released on schedule in October of this year, and oh what a release it was. Their first full-length release with Madi on vocals, No Love Lost comes out of the gate swinging. Opening on a gnarly chugging guitar riff, No Love Lost rapidly descends into a death-metal-esque mix of blasting chaos and distorted grooves, a sound helped along by features from fellow extreme metallers Devin Swank of Sanguisugabogg and Dylan Walker of Full of Hell. It’s Watkins herself who really shines here though, delivering powerful, rhythmic screams and growls that cut through the mix perfectly. Did I mention the mix? I don’t often associate straightedge hardcore acts with a rich mix — this is, after all, the same year that saw the Weapon of Pleasure EP push the hardcore “ping pong snare” to its absolute limits — but here Year of the Knife embraces a full, warm sound that is at times shockingly beautiful despite the deliberate ugliness of the genre. The drums, in particular, are tuned and recorded in a way that captures their full resonance, a nice counterpoint to the over tuned snares and deadened toms that have become so popular lately. Year of the Knife has, apparently, managed to make it back to the practice studio recently, joined even by a rehabilitating Watkins, and it’s a good thing because, if this album is anything to go by, the band is going to be quite busy with a legion of new fans.
Ruin Lust — Dissimulant
You want to talk about a hell of a year? Extreme metal label 20 Buck Spin is all but defining the metal genre this year, with releases by Gravesend, Torture Rack, Tomb Mold (another artist on my AOTY list, natch) and more, now joined by this latest effort by New York war metal outfit Ruin Lust. True to the war metal genre (sometimes referred to as bestial black metal), Ruin Lust has produced an album that is as relentless as it is compact, a scant half-hour-long production that gallops, blasts, and howls along with the best of them. What sets Ruin Lust apart from their bestial brethern, however, is their keen sense of space and dynamics, as well as producer Nolan Voss’s judicious touch when it came to mixing the album. War metal, you see, tends to revel in the overdriven and blown out — a true wall of sound that often devolves into a crunchy, staticky, tragically homogenous noise. Not so for Ruin Lust, who aren’t afraid to occasionally let up on their blistering pace for moments of relative quiet, allowing the full power of the cavernous mix to shine in trudging, doom metal-esque sections that make for the albums most haunting passages. In this vein, Ruin Lust fits more easily among their 20 Buck Spin contemporaries — Tomb Mold, Witch Vomit, Cerebral Rot — than they do among the cacophonous wash of war metal forefathers like Blasphemy or Revenge. Make no mistake, Ruin Lust is just as chaotic, just as cold, just as heavy as anyone out there, it’s just that with Dissimulant, I finally have a war metal album worth recommending.
Bull of Apis Bull of Bronze — The Fractal Ouroboros
It’s pretty well established metal lore at this point that the second wave black metal scene — if you don’t know black metal, these are the church-burning Norwegian guys in corpse paint — was chasing a specific aesthetic, one that emphasized something other than the skeevy glam machismo offered by mainstream 80’s metal. Rather, black metal began to chase a sense of surreptitious eavesdropping on something truly sinister, as though the thin, crunchy howls blasting through your speakers were part of a satanic field recording rather than the amateurish experiments of edgy teenagers. Black metal’s ascendancy to, if not mainstream, at least critically-accepted status has largely stripped away this air of mystery. You’d be hard-pressed to find a black metal fan who believes their favorite band is full of dyed-in-the-wool occultists, no matter how many spikes adorn their stage outfits. Bull of Apis Bull of Bronze, though, well…they’re different. Debuting in 2019 with the phenomenal album Offerings of Flesh and Gold, the Colorado and Washington-based outfit boasted some seriously eerie tracks, and their latest album does not disappoint in this department. Less straightforwardly Satanic and more nebulously occult, Bull of Apis embraces a sense of ritual in their music through stripped down riffs and blast-beats that spool out into hypnotic droning passages or even quiet ambience. Make no mistake, though, there’s a heavy sense of menace here. In a move that echoes the unusual mixing choices of their black metal forebears, Bull of Apis often flips elements of the mix, boosting a floor tom so that its thunderous boom contrasts the cold mixing of the drums, or pushing the vocals behind the guitar so that Achaierai’s guttural howls take on the quality of distant chanting. On occasion, the use of more traditional folk instruments like harmonium lends the tracks a solemn, devotional tone, eerily dissonant against the electric growl of guitars and synths. In short, The Fractal Ouroboros is a return to form for Bull of Apis, an album that goes beyond the satanic posturing of early black metal, and instead invites its listener to participate in something truly chilling.
Anohni and the Johnsons — My Back Was A Bridge For You To Cross
You’re going to see this album on a lot of year-end lists right now, and for good reason: it’s fucking astounding. Working in something of a 60s soul music mode, English musician Anohni delivers an album that is in equal measures shocking and shockingly gorgeous. Inspired by queer/trans icon Marsha P. Johnson, who Anohni herself had met shortly before Johnson’s death, and whose image graces the cover of the album, it’s perhaps no surprise that My Back is alternately mournful and outraged. In particular, Anohni seems to have a talent for haunting and dissonant lyrics, perhaps exemplified here by the opening of “Scapegoat,” which has Anohni crooning “You’re so killable” over sparse jazz chords and languid drumming. Much of this album proceeds in this way, an experience of being lured in by the smooth groove of the instrumentation, only to be swiftly disemboweled by Anohni’s sharp lyricism, itself juxtaposed against her genuinely beautiful and expressive voice. My Back Was A Bride For You To Cross is like being ripped apart and put back together, a singular experience of pain and healing that really can’t be described. If you listen to any album on this list (I mean, you should listen to them all), make it this one.
Underdark — Managed Decline
I really can’t say it enough, 2023 has been huge for black metal of all stripes, with releases from bonafide legends like Blut Aus Nord and Immortal as well as more left-field entries like those from cowboy black metal outfit Wayfarer or the noodly blackened prog stylings of Krallice. In such a crowded field, how’s a band to stand out? UK-based Underdark answers with their latest entry, Managed Decline, a moody, expansive piece of post-black metal sure to impress even the most discerning of extreme metal aficionados. There is real black metal credibility here, with extensive tremolo picking and blast beats galore, all delivered just under a genuinely pained sounded howl. But it is in their more experimental moments — the mournful opening notes played on a horn, or the fuzzy slacker chords that seem plucked from the recent grunge revival, for instance — that Underdark really shines. And, somehow, Underdark makes it beautiful, makes all of it beautiful, with even those most abrasive shrieking moments captured in a cold, cavernous high fidelity that almost makes one feel as though the band were playing in an empty opera house. It sounds, in short, big, a project that sounds like it should come from a band with more members, playing to bigger audiences, a kind of consummate professionalism only managed by a band with genuine talent. Underdark always manages to impress with their releases, but this one is something that I believe is truly special, a sign of big things to come. Keep an eye on Underdark, you don’t want to miss a single note.
Honorable Mentions and EPs
Trespasser — ἈΠΟΚΆΛΥΨΙΣ
Anklebiter — To Live And Withstand EP
Terror Cross — Bleeding Metal Skull EP
Warchrist — Deafening Silence EP
Sufjan Stevens — Javelin
Noname — Sundial
Billy woods / Kenny Segal — Maps
Oli Howe — Six
No Cure — The Commitment to Permanence
Fuming Mouth — Last Day of Sun
Lowest Creature — Witch Supreme
Wednesday — Rat Saw God
Olivia Rodrigo — Guts
Full of Hell / Nothing — When No Birds Sang
The Hirs Collective — We’re Still Here
KNOWER — KNOWER FOREVER
