#10 BONE WEAPON THRIVE OR STARVE
BONE WEAPON’s new tape THRIVE OR STARVE out on Transylvanian Recordings is so freaking killer!!! This is why we are championing them today and they deserve all of the shine that they get! Imagine straight grim Death Doom created through the lens of early GODFLESH. As the first song “The Hunt” pounds my skull I realize that this band is on some next shit and I love it! “Spoils of Savage War” has these fucked in the head audio caverns in them that will make you feel like you are reliving a nightmare while you are awake. BONE WEAPON uses Death Doom as a weapon of feral destruction that leaves nothing but bones in their wake!
#9 DEVIL’S GATEWAY Mastery of Nature
If you are a Death Doom fan and have not heard DEVIL’S GATEWAY’s Mastery of Nature now this is your chance to set things right! To say finding out about this project made my day is a gross understatement!!! Join us in celebrating the grim lurching sounds of DEVIL’S GATEWAY because they are truly that FUCKING AWESOME!!!
#8 BANISHED REALM Impious Rumination
WTF do we have here? BANISHED REALM’s Impious Rumination new record is GNARLY AF!!! I so feel honored that I get to turn y’all on to them and I’m so stoked on them that they had to make our Death Doom EOTYL. Their song “Forsaking Of The Empyrean” will crawl its way into your brains and impregnate your skull with filthy audio maggots! All HAIL BANISHED REALM, they fucking RULE!!!
#7 SKULLS Void of Misery
Hot damn, sonic misery and torment has never sounded so fucking good! SKULLS new record Void of Misery is a masterclass Death Doom Putrid Majesty!!! Real talk, this band shows that some of the sickest D-Tuned Death Metal can come from the sunny streets of Santa Monica, CA. If SKULLS are reading this, I want them to know that I’m beyond impressed with Void of Misery. Every tune on this record is HEAVY AF and only makes me even more of a fan!!!
#6 WORM Nights in Hell
WORM’s Nights in Hell is an album that is pure LO-FI genius!!! Yes, it sounds like it was recorded on a shitty track and that’s why it’s pure sonic gold. This record has morbid vibes that could only be created by WORM!!!
#5 VISIONS FROM BEYOND Portal To Inertia
If you don’t know, now you know that VISIONS FROM BEYOND’s Portal To Inertia is a Death Doom must-have tape from 2023!
The songwriting is grimy without a doubt, but it’s the morbid valley of death-filled empathy that really makes me love this band. It’s like they want to create a universe of Death Doom where Blues is the master of the world. What I’m trying to convey is that Visions From Beyond knows how to inject their compositions with the right amount of filthy melody that’s very enchanting to my ears!
CVLT Nation
#4 ORDER OF DECAY Mortification Rites
While the name may be new, these guys are no newcomers, rather veterans of their scene, remaining voluntarily anonymous, so as to let the music be the sole thing that shall speak on their behalf and convey their talents and visions. Mortification Rites packs in forty-six minutes of tenebrous, colossal, and crushing death metal. But “death metal” is a highly simplistic tag to use for this band. The atmospheres are sprawling and imposing, the tempos at times reach the comatose, dragging misery of doom, and the esoteric mutterings that scar the work throughout bring to mind the ominous and sinister ways of black metal. In essence, yes, Mortification Rites has it all: the neck-breaking animalistic intensity of death metal, the contemplative and hopeless abysses of doom, and the darkness of black metal, all beautifully interwoven into a cryptic heirloom of esoteric, occult sonic surrealism.
#3 GATEWAY Galgendood
WTF — I write this from a disgusting place of praise for the new GATEWAY album Galgendood via Transcending Obscurity Records. I say this with my chest: this band has manifested one of the strongest Death Doom records of 2023, real talk. The vocal tones on this record are freaking sensational in a putrid and morbid way. On the musical tip, this band’s songs will put you in a sonic headlock and never let you go! How long have I been a fan of GATEWAY? A long time, from day one actually, and “Galgendood” has only made me a STAN!
#2 NEKUS Sepulchral Divination
To assemble this hideous slab of mummified sepulchral slow-moving DEATH, Nekus has conceptually envisioned, accessed, and unlocked a world of perpetual, abyssic darkness, lost far below the earth we walk on. Inspired by the works of bands like Moss, Grave Upheaval, and Encoffination, Sepulchral Divination evokes visions of a subterranean realm where light is banished, death permeates everything, and life is impossible. A death-ruled domain of lost sepulchers and labyrinthine caverns where rotting life being dragged under from the surface to decompose, endless fossilization, and magmatic tectonic upheaval all play their role in inspiring an extreme metal work of absolutely suffocating heaviness. With guitars downtuned into a flattening, deformed rumble, earth-shaking drums, tortured vocals, and atmospheres of absolute rot and oblivion, Sepulchral Divination is a cinematic work in contemporary slow atmospheric death metal that attempts to – and succeeds – in siphoning absolute dread and endless death into the sorry ear canals of any living thing that dares to cross its path.
#1 BLACK WOUND Warping Structure
WTF WTF WTF BLACK WOUND is back with another sick AF release entitled
Warping Structure via Dry Cough Records! I’m truly amazed at how fucking insanely rad this band is. They are able to manifest these slow-moving pits of sonic quicksand. The next thing you know is that within the same song, they will conjure up a whirlwind of putrid audio speed that will push your wig back for sure. Trust me when I say that every song on Warping Structure is un-fucking-real. The last song on the record “Vermin Firstborn” is a 10 minute Death Anthem that infects your whole reality and afterlife, only to point eternal violence toward those who deserve it! I know for HUGE FACT that Black Wound has created the number one sickest Death Doom release of 2023!!!
