#10 ACT of IMPALEMENT Infernal Ordinance
WTF I might just repeat WTF 666 TIMES because the new Act of Impalement album
Infernal Ordinance via Caligari Records so beyond SICKKKK AAAFFF!!!! They kick off this filthy Death Metal party with “Summoning the Final Conflagration,” and this song will crush your reality and stomp on your nightmares. It has a menacing groove to it that never lets up and Ethan, the vocalist, kills it! Honestly, I’m so stoked for this band because they have knocked out Banging Death Metal for over a decade and they are in a zone! On the OSDM anthem “Creeping Barrage,” the band shows us that they can get low and slow while decapitating the listener at the same time. What’s evident while blasting Infernal Ordinance on repeat that these humans are having fun and it comes out in all of their tunes! The last song on the album, “Erased,” is one of the illest Death Doom songs of 2023. Act of Impalement has totally shown and proved with this album and I know for a fact it is one of the top Death Metal albums of 2023. I love the putrid sonic atmosphere that reeks on every riff and growl on Infernal Ordinance. If Act of Impalement reads this, I want them to know: don’t stop because y’all can’t stop!
#9 FOSSILIZATION Leprous Daylight
Unholy hell yes, the new Fossilization record Leprous Daylight out on Everlasting Spew Records is a mammoth slice of Death Doom majesty. As I blast their tune “The Night Spoke The Tongue Of Flames” I find myself saying damn this fucking knows how to write an insanely rad Death Doom song that makes you feel good to be alive! I love the way that they are able to enclose their unhinged rage in these cloaks of empathy and passion. “Eon” is one of the gnarliest songs that I have heard all year. I’m super stoked for Fossilization for manifesting a Death Doom record that will stand the test of time for sure!
#8 VASTUM Inward to Gethsemane
We all know that VASTUM is next level when it comes to creating UNREAL Death Metal!!! Their new album Inward to Gethsemane only proves that fact more than ever! From the moment you press play this band will take you deep down into their world of rotting RIFFS!!!
#7 NEGATIVE VORTEX Tomb Absolute
On the fifty-plus-minute monolith of total death, Negative Vortex unveils a world of endless pain and misery, constructing nine, enormous slabs of 90’s-reminiscent death and doom ascending from a pain-devoured abyss. You won’t hear any copycat revivalism or gimmicks in these tracks. These are songs that appear as if sourced from the primal material of the golden age of extreme metal’s origins. Times when Celtic Frost was laying the first stones in a dark and evil frenzy of Sabbathian riffs and ominous tempo increases, which were then standardized and carved into stone by bands like Nihilist, Obituary, and Cathedral. Chainsawing, gut-wrenching riffs riding an onslaught of pachydermic mid-tempos, regularly punctuated by rapid bursts of fiery rage reminiscent of early Scandinavian black metal blasting, and then Iintervalled again by slow, time-stretching descents into the pits of doom, as we’ve seen pioneered by bands like Candlemass and Winter. The whole album sounds, looks, and feels like an encyclopedic celebration of death metal’s most pioneering age, adorned with all its most timeless declinations as far as diversity in tempos, moods, styles, and sound.
#6 KOMMAND Death Age
Kommand’s sophomore slasher lurches right out of the gates, eructing and steaming, a massive, shifting, lurching pile of bile and blackened Death brutality. “Final Virus” is intent on bludgeoning you into the ground. It isn’t reinventing any rules or doing anything spectacularly innovative, but it sure knows how to punch you in the face and stomp on your guts. It’s a bit like getting run over by a heavy tank, one not content with simply mashing you beneath its weight, but committed to backing up, turning around, and doing it all over again and again until there is nothing left but squelched meat and blood. And so it goes for most of the album, an unrelenting and steady assault, one that never picks up much speed but continues onward, fixed and precise in its blunt cruelty. “Global Death” begins with some stellar, harmonic doom, slowly sliding the listener down a dark embankment before plummeting them into a black, cavernous abyss. “Polar Holdout” in particular brings a swinging heft to the headbang, catching the listener on some filthy riff hooks before the shredding truly begins. “Fleeing Western Territories” is filled with dread and fear, panic informing every riff, every drumbeat, permeating the gruff, demonic vocals. Each song here is different, and yet, they form a cohesive whole, united in their power and ruthlessness.
#5 VILE RITUAL Caverns of Occultic Hatred
The formula is staggering in that it eliminates the predictability and traditionalism of adherence to subgenera, sprawling instead from end to end of the spectrum and devouring every extreme notion death metal has ever explored, from the primitive violence of Blasphemy to the contorted abstractions of Immolation, all the way to the gruesome prog-infused weirdness of Autopsy. The obvious “bedroom project” nature of the band conceived by sole mastermind LM has also given Vile Ritual free range in the studio to wander across an immense spectrum free from the writing constriction of conceiving songs with the live performance as their main genesis priority. This has materialized an album of truly unsettling and dismal traits, packed with overdubs and all kinds of studio tricks and atmospherics which greatly enhance its psychedelic load and its humongous aura of surrealism.
#4 MORSCH s/t
Disgustingly awesome the new self-titled release from MORSCH is a Death Metal underground GEM! Real talk if y’all love that grimy shit then y’all better not miss this record!
#3 LEFT CROSS Upon Desecrated Altars
WTF WTF WTF LEFT CROSS’s Upon Desecrated Altars is fucking off the meat rack it’s UNREAL! Every freaking tune on this album is a towering inferno of PURE RAGING SONIC HATE!!! Get with the program and blast this motherfucker until all HELL BREAKS LOOSE!!!
#2 ALTARAGE Worst Case Scenario
Hell fucking YES ALTARAGE’s Worst Case Scenario is all fucking that and then some! This band is on some straight otherworldly shizz and I’m here for it!!!
I’ve never lived in a place where tornados hit, but I imagine that ALTARAGE could be the soundtrack to the fury, fear, and devastation they wreak. This band takes death metal far beyond what the genre ever imagined, into a universe of relentless chaos and scathing pain!
CVLT Nation
#1 BRODER Skarpretterfossilet
WTF! BRODER rules so fucking HARD! From the very first moment I pressed play, I was like, what the hell, this is RAD! The maggot-filled vocals decay inside my eardrums, turning into spores of sonic black bile. All of their songs are infused with this sense of chaos that is totally fucking captivating! Their 15-minute death anthem “Byldemor” is a fucked in the head journey into the underworld. BRODER’s riffs are dense and filled with the blackened vomit of zombies. Real talk, their record Skarpretterfossilet out via Extremely Rotten Productions is my favorite Death Metal releases of 2023.
