Best metal of 2013

2013 is almost over and everyone and their grandmother is making shitty best of metal lists. I've been making mine since forever on CF so who am I to fuck with tradition?

Every time I make these journals I'm crossing my fingers hoping I don't have some huge missers :p. For example in 2009 I missed like both Vektor AND Nokturnal Mortum (easy #2 and #1 spots), that was pretty epic. Anyways I think I listened to alot more stuff this year, so the missers will probably be less. Don't blame me, metal is a really fucking huge music genre with MANY hidden gems! I had some absolutely incredible finds this year, many of them landed in my top 20, so I think I did good after all. Missed top albums will be posted on a later comment.

Oh and if you don't see your favourite picks, I started my original list as a top 100 which then I trimmed to a top 50 by picking whatever felt more right. I honestly think that the bottom 60 picks were all of about the same (high) quality, the top 40 outshined them though. So chances are they were trailing close behind.

This year I wrote some small reviews/summaries of the top 5, to make this a bit more personal than just a numbered list.

Lastly, 2013 is the first year of a death metal renaissance, especially OSDM, it was really hard to put any other genre here, of the other 50 picks like 30 were DM. Blah blah who cares, scroll down bitches (and use right click)!


50. VHÖL - VHÖL (hardcore punk/black)
49. Keldian - Outbound (power)
48. The Ruins of Beverast - Blood Vaults - The Blazing Gospels of Heinrich Kramer (doom/atmospheric black)
47. Immolation - Kingdom of Conspiracy (death)
46. Soilwork - The Living Infinite (melodic death)
45. Blindead - Abscence (progressive/atmospheric sludge/rock)
44. Vulture Industries - The Tower (progressive/avant-garde)
43. Vallendusk - Black Clouds Gathering (atmospheric black/blackgaze)
42. The Ocean - Pelagial (sludge/progressive)
41. Thy Light - No Morrow Shall Dawn (black)
40. Haken - The Mountain (progressive)
39. Oranssi Pazuzu - Valonielu (black/psychedelic)
38. Inter Arma - Sky Burial (sludge/black)
37. Aosoth - IV : Arrow in Heart (black)
36. Windhand - Soma (doom)
35. Death Angel - The Dream Calls for Blood (thrash)
34. Grave Miasma - Odori Sepulcrorum (death)
33. Alter Bridge - Fortress (alternative/hard rock)
32. Revocation - Revocation (thrash)
31. Atlantean Kodex - The White Goddess (A Grammar of Poetic Myth) (epic/heavy)
30. In Solitude - Sister (heavy)
29. Cult of Luna - Vertikal (atmospheric sludge)
28. Ataraxie - L'Etre et la Nausee (death/doom)
27. Fates Warning - Darkness in a Different Light (progressive)
26. Oathbreaker - Eros|Anteros (sludge/crust punk)
25. Altars - Paramnesia (death)
24. Obliteration - Black Death Horizon (death)
23. Nails - Abandon All Life (grindcore)
22. Inquisition - Obscure Verses for the Multiverse (black)
21. Ulcerate - Vermis (death)
20. Carcass - Surgical Steel (melodic death)
19. Beyond - Fatal Power of Death (death)
18. Altar of Plagues - Teethed Glory and Injury (atmospheric black?)
17. Progenie Terrestre Pura - U.M.A. (atmospheric black/IDM)
16. Subrosa - More Constant than the Gods (doom/sludge/stoner)
15. Leprous - Coal (progressive)
14. Summoning - Old Mornings Dawn (atmospheric/symphonic black)
13. Satan - Life Sentence (heavy)
12. Enshine - Origin (melodic doom/death)
11. Ovid's Withering - Scryers of the Ibis (djent/deathcore/symphonic)
10. Monolithe - Monolithe IV (dooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooom)
9. Deafheaven - Sunbather (blackgaze)
8. Saor - Roots (atmospheric black/pagan)
7. Avatarium - Avatarium (doom)
6. Hell - Curse and Chapter (heavy)
5. Bölzer - Aura [EP] (death)



With just 2 EPs under their belt this band has become one of the most important new faces of metal. Aura is a truly unique, highly creative and dynamic blackened death metal EP with an extremely dense atmosphere, driven by huge, all-encompassing, planet-sized RIFFS (with all caps), mixing The Ruins of Beverast, Asphyx, Neurosis, Deathspell Omega and Incantation (listing just the most obvious ones), and the end result? A masterclass nightmarish, devastating behemoth with one fatal flaw: it has only 3 songs, and yet it landed this spot with relative ease, imagine where it would go with more material! Can't wait for their full-length debut!

4. Paysage d'Hiver - Das Tor (atmospheric black)



Wow I just worship black metal like this. Das Tor delivers the most soul-crushing, cold, eerie low-fi ambient/atmospheric black metal experience you could hope for this year. I did the mistake of listening to "Offenbarung" while falling asleep (I think it was around the 15 minute mark during that wall of sound avalanche when it happened), the next day my eyes were as red as tomatoes. Apparently my brain didn't shut off completely while I slept and it kept my eyes open while I was semi-consciously drifting in an endless loop of a whirlpool of sound. More Darkspacey riffage and a bit less ambience than what we are used to from previous records is fine in my books. While not the best recording of the one man band, this still contains some of the most stellar, majestic and entrancing tracks Mockl has ever written. Absolutely essential for any metal fan.

Gris - A l'ame enflammee, l'ame constellee... (atmospheric black)



This is the black metal equivalent to F♯A♯∞. A very sophisticated, tremendous effort that takes Gris even further than where their awe-inspiring debut has led them. Dark folk is fused with neo-classical elements to forge a very passionately performed and beautifully depressing BM record. I think the word “massive” is the best to describe the orchestration here, and along with very emotional vocals, Gris does no wrong and releases another masterpiece. Extremely highly recommended.

Kayo Dot - Hubardo (avant-garde)



There is a lot of polarity coming from people who have reviewed this. Let me tell you right off the bat that Hubardo is an acquired taste, especially if the weird spectrum of metal doesn't sit well with you. But for certain this is the greatest thing Toby Driver has put out since Choirs of the Eye and the two maudlin of the Well masterpieces. A review of this thing is pretty much pointless, it is something you need to listen and rate by yourselves. All I can really say is that it is the nail-bitingly unsettling, blissfully gorgeous, intense avant-garde multi-instrumentalist 100 minute perfection you have been expecting from Driver and metal in a long time.

Gorguts - Colored Sands (death)



How listening to a Gorguts cd goes:

Song 1: WoW, this is INTENSE!
Song 2: What the hell just happened?
Song 3: What is this I don't even. Let me get a breather please.
Song 4: Make it stop, MAKE IT STOP. But I can't stop listening, my brain demands more!
Song similar to Clouded from Obscura album : ...ALL HAIL GORGUTS. ALL HAIL GORGUTS.
Last song ends: <evil grin> Again :>
And before you know it, several days have passed, you are out of a job, your girlfriend left you and you're dying from starvation.

Luc Lemay, objectively one of the greatest death metal musicians/songwriters of all time, has returned with one absolute motherfuck of a comeback album. Fanboys like me were dripping wet just thinking about all the possibilities of unexplored regions of technical death metal that Gorguts has yet to delve into. Will Colored Sands be a continuation of the legendary Obscura, will it use a more old school formula like the early Gorguts records, or will it follow a new path altogether?

Well, Colored Sands follows a template which is a compilation of all their previous albums. It encompasses textures and dissonance through a set of musical ideas which haven’t been fully explored yet, driven by riffs and very weird melodies influenced by well, I have no friggin' idea, (all I know is that Lemay loves eastern european "dissonant" classical composers of the last century so maybe there's that) which will be studied and dissected for a long long time. Typical Gorguts overall. It is crushing, organic, brutal and one of the most intricately crafted records I've ever heard. It sounds fresh, flows exceptionally well for something as dizzying as this, and doesn't contain even a single millisecond of anything subpar to the Gorguts standard. Hell it even sounds "melodic" at times. And by "melodies", imagine they are replicated by aliens trying to instrument human music, but ultimately failing in grasping the humanity of it all. It is something you just haven't heard before. While it still sounds alien, the band give the listener a lot more to latch onto compared to their previous records, and their modus operandi this time focuses on a murkier, slower and sludgier album and production. However, it will still probably prove too much for the casual listener. If Obscura was bat-shit insane asylum crazy, Colored Sands is the reformed and released into society insane person. He means well, but you know something is clearly not right.

This is what Gorguts would naturally evolve into after more than a decade of silence. This is for me the most important death metal release of the past decade. And I'm pretty sure Lemay and co. are not even close to having pulled everything yet from under their masterful hat. Judging from how easily "accessible" Colored Sands is compared to earlier works, I honestly think this CD was made as a taste to see how the metal community would react to a comeback, a small sample of a band with infinite potential, an appetizer to prepare us for an even brighter Gorguts future. I am expecting that when the next CD will land, it will be the full force, nothing will prepare us for it. It's gonna be even better than Obscura. It will completely annihilate us. 10/10.

A great review by (non-metaller) Anthony Fantano:



BONUS ROUND: Best rock of 2013 mini-list:
5. Riverside - Shrine of New Generation Slaves (progressive)
4. Queens of the Stone Age - ...Like Clockwork (alternative)
Sigur Ros - Kveikur (post)
Steven Wilson - The Raven That Refused to Sing (And Other Stories) (progressive)
Earthless - From the Ages (psychedelic)