Siegbran's top ten favourite Metal records of 2013

I don't have a blog nor do I write for any of the fine publications some other board members do, so ILM is as good a place as any to do this. I listened to a shit ton of new music this year, more than any of the past fifteen years or so. Thought it would be nice to highlight my ten favourites & comment on a couple things to gather my thoughts on a pretty great Metal year. Hopefully it will also influence the voters in the ILM Metal poll heavily. I'll roll em out over the next two days.

I didn't only listen to new stuff and as usual discovered quite a few fantastic older records: Witchrist "The Grand Tormentor", Lugubrum "Face Lion, Face Oignon", Novembers Doom "Amid Its Hallowed Mirth", Pestilence "Resurrection Macabre" and Sabaton "Carolus Rex" all come highly recommended and would've easily made my end of year lists if I'd heard them in the year they were released.

10. Entrails - Raging Death
http://www.metalblade.com/us/covers/Entrails-RagingDeath.jpg
Playing boneheaded d-beat infused oldschool swedish Death Metal has been a big thing for a while now, and with the original bands pretty much gone to shit (I saw Entombed live this year and it wasn't pretty), it was a close contest between Nails and Entrails who did it best this year. There's not a shred of originality between them, but that's besides the point. It's infectiously groovy, the sound of the Boss HM-2 still rules supreme and, most of all, it's fun as hell.

Sure, recreating an old classic sound of Nihilist/Dismember/Grave is artistically not the most ambitions thing to do, but if Carcass and Black Sabbath are widely praised for coming back to record new albums that sound just like their own classics, why aren't others allowed to do it too?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oS7Wu2fTO_w

9. Kultura Kureniya (Культура Курения) - Некрофилия
http://musicscore.ms/covers/2313-3609.jpg
A complete surprise find. I know nothing about this band, on the few live clips I've seen they look like a bunch of wimpy Russian hipsters. Their record Некрофилия seems to have no distribution outside of Russia, and nobody seems to have noticed or written anything about it. That's a goddamn shame, because they are on to something here: a perfect 50/50 fusion of postpunk and depressive black metal, as if the Editors and Interpol fell in love with Lifelover and Hypothermia.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KWsi9Kx677A

The Fall Of Every Season - Amends

http://www.angrymetalguy.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/The-Fall-of-Every-Season.jpg

This record is building on what Katatonia's "Brave Murder Day" and Saturnus "Paradise Belongs To You" left unfinished years ago. Beautifully melancholic, dynamic and very well written songs that effortlessly surpass what lesser bands like Opeth and Agalloch churn out in this style. Apparently this album took the sole member, Marius Strand, six years to write - it's impressive how sparse and restrained it all is, and how this makes it all the more intense. This is everything a prog doom album should be.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j39-ZpYfAH4

digging this thread, thanks!

7. Strzępy - Śmierć We Mnie, Nicość Poza Mną

http://www.metal-archives.com/images/3/7/0/6/370623.jpg

This is just an 18 minute EP, titled "Death within me, nothingness beyond me" - and Strzępy is one of the most promising bands I've heard in a while. Again, I know nothing about this band apart from the fact that they're Polish, this tape just came out of nowhere. It sounds like it was recorded inside a steel tank, features great waves of droning walls-of-distortion, psychedelic guitar lines that sound like a "Pink Floyd shreds" Youtube video, vocals that sound somewhat like Pestilence's Patrick Mameli circa "Spheres", and in the middle of it, they throw in a five minute improvised bass solo over some cosmic synth pads.

This is the best $5 you'll spend this year. Someone needs to sign these guys and let them make an album.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kAPbUdIzd1Y

yes Siegbran, preach on brother

stoked for more of your finds

amen

nice! also very psyched for this rollout.

came acrpss strzępy while poking through year-end lists last week. still haven't heard the whole EP yet, but for those who are curious, the first track is up on soundcloud as well:
https://soundcloud.com/deadbodytemple/strz-py-i

I bought that Strzepy tape, loved it, and then forgot all about it, which is what happens with tapes a lot of the time. There was a bunch of Legion Blotan stuff I meant to review at year's end that I ended up blanking on.

6. Nonexistence - Antarctica
http://www.mediaboom.org/uploads/posts/2013-04/1365328657_cover-kopirovat.jpg

The band name and album title say it all: this is deeply cold and bleak music. Austria's Nonexistence fire off wave after wave of hopelessness in various shades of grey and black, enhanced by Philip Santoll's amazing vocal performance - he switches effortlessly from a fantastic deep death growl to a troaty rasp (reminicent of Lunar Aurora) and even throws in some excellent clean vocals. The instrumental backing is heavy as fuck and falls somewhere between black, death and doom metal, the production is crisp and clean like a winter morning and the melodies (guitars, strings and keys) are amazing throughout.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tkUBUKEvLGw

5. Lustre - Lost In Lustrous Nights/Wonder/A Spark Of Times Of Old
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-yUbLXPLghiQ/UnbSimRhUsI/AAAAAAAARNc/wI23XHQgzHY/s1600/capa.jpghttp://i1.sndcdn.com/artworks-000053423264-knbynu-crop.jpghttp://www.atmf.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/spark_cover_450.jpg
Lustre is showing no sign of progress. I could easily give up on the whole thing - is three releases in one year too much? But I'm actually starting to appreciate Nachtzeit's little project more and more because of it. Every Lustre track is an exercise in glorious monotony - a sublime, monolithic, static piece of ambient fuzz, repeating itself ad infinitum, no buildup, no development, no surprise. Each song is a mere minuscule variation on the previous one. The soft trickle of hazily distorted guitars, the same lethargic drum pattern over and over again, the tinkling bells that will either function as a sedative or as chinese water torture, the cozy blanket of synth pads smothering everything and very, very faintly in the distance, there's someone howling and shrieking into the night. Is this even Metal?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iqa1gYxV4C0

i'm always interested in what you are listening to, Siegbran. if you are on facebook, look me up. I don't post here anymore. i LOVE the singlemindedness of Lustre. i have an endless capacity for it. this, in case you are interested, was my favorite metal release of the year:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RWUr3JWi9ZM

Echoing the above, great thread, Siegbran!

4. Gris - À l'Âme Enflammée, l'Äme Constellée...

http://www.musicalwarfare.com/theme/images/coverart/3902/cover_400.jpg

It was a fantastic year for Quebecois black metal: Sombres Foréts, Csejthe, Sombres Forêts, Neige Éternelle and Monarque all released great material - and Gris was back. Six years after the icy cold depressive BM classic "Il Était Un Forêt..." these Canadians returned with a much warmer and richer sound, spread out over two discs of melancholic dark metal and acoustic folk. The touchstones are of course familiar - mainly Agalloch and Alcest, but Gris are much better songwriters than the former and know how to play to their strengths better than the latter. What really makes this record stand out is the gorgeous production: it's incredibly dynamic, there is wonderful bass playing everywhere, the drums are crisp and spacial, and nowhere does the transition between the strings, acoustic guitar and horns sections and the overdriven black metal guitars feel anything but natural. It has none of the squashed compressed sound of nearly all bands in this style.

Spots 4 to 10 were much harder to choose than the top three, and some excellent records just missed the cut. These include Inquisition, Nails, Immolation, Carcass, Ataraxie, Csejthe, Wędrujący Wiatr, Cult Of Fire, Agrimonia, The Ruins Of Beverast, Oranssi Pazuzu, Clandestine Blaze, Black Sabbath, Angizia and Ghost.

3. Aeternus - ...And The Seventh His Soul Detesteth

http://bravewords-public.s3.amazonaws.com/images/p17j7nd6hg6qe5k71pp515colv34.jpg

It feels like a year of comebacks - half of this list consists of bands that returned after many years of inactivity. Aeternus was a minor legend after two incredible albums in the mid nineties, but subsequently fizzled out after a couple of subpar and boring records that seemed to suggest the fire was out forever and their songwriting skills were all gone. But main man Ares recruited a completely new band around him, and Aeternus more or less continued where they left things in 1998 - albeit with much better musicians and some new tricks. Familiar are the brutally effective death metal riffs, the rolling double bass grooves with hihat triplets on top, the deep deep growls and the lengthy compositions. New are the fantastic long and wandering guitar solos and the heaviest sound they've gotten themselves to date - the downtuned guitars have this thunderous, thick distortion that at times makes the band sound like a nimbler Bolt Thrower.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iwtBbgqiTbU

A fantastic year for Quebecois black metal is a statement that gives me an almost surreal degree of satisfaction.

2. Summoning - Old Mornings Dawn

http://bravewords-public.s3.amazonaws.com/images/p17giksg0jq71cf215dp18omv234.jpg

Summoning sets out to make the most preposterously grandiose music possible. Their reverb box goes to eleven, there is no french horn melody too majestic, stately male voice choirs are a matter of course, and if you can insert eagles cries to enhance the awesomeness - hell why not. Triumphant timpani rhythms are everywhere, hoarse roars echo around the cavernous compositions and a hazy tapestry of buzzing guitars is meticulously draped all over the half dozen medieval orchestral themes that make up the long awaited seventh Summoning album. Gone is the overly muffled sound of "Oath Bound", and the syncopated drum programming is much better developed, but otherwise it is as if Richard Lederer and Michael Gregor never went away. Points are deduced for the goofy narrator and the inclusion of two wholly unnecessary bonus tracks that make the record overlong, but Summoning delivered in a big way - no pun intended.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p-wZTxJoDCQ

1. Progenie Terrestre Pura - U.M.A.

http://f0.bcbits.com/img/0001283067_20.jpg

The Italian label Avantgarde Music has been releasing extremely interesting metal for over thirty years now, and with the signing of Progenie Terrestre Pura they have bagged the best new metal band in the past five years. PTP hits all the spots simultaneously on their debut "U.M.A." (Uomini, Macchine, Anime), their sound is immense, dense and overwhelming. How the hell you want to call it, progressive space industrial post-hardcore black metal whatever. It is all fantastic. The four long, long, long songs are full of endless droning tremolo picked riffs over furious blast beats, dissonant carpets of thick distorted guitars showcasing the drummer's glorious double bass runs, moody synth pads and the frequent launch into super tight jazzy prog metal before returning to full-on blast mode - this is no wimp-ass prog band. Vocals are whispers, moans and rasps reminding me of Funeral Mist, deeply buried within the mix, with occasional processing to make them sound robotic. The band makes incredible use of synths to let the space theme work (the electrical "short circuit" sounds all throughout "Sinapsi Divelte" are truly unsettling).

Best of all, with this debut, I can hear that the band has not reached its peak yet - one clear area of improvement for example is the production which sadly totally squashes and compresses all dynamics, especially hurting the cymbals and vocals. This might've been a tradeoff to make for a super-dense and intense listen, but I can't wait to hear their next album.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wRijSrel6NU

its funny to see siegbran and I having some crossover with our lists. I guess hanging out in soundrop underground metal room does that.

Anyone feel free to add me on fb if you havent already too.
Im gonna start an ILM Rolling Metal group on there BUT i wont be inviting anyone because it doesnt let people accept or refuse and just adds them (i hate being randomly added to groups) so you will need to join yourself.
Please dont let the fact i started it put you off skot.

https://www.facebook.com/groups/1441765582702805/

https://www.facebook.com/groups/ILMrollingMetal/ should work too now

Tried the Культура Курения track, but couldn't get past the vocals. I think 2014 is the year I completely give up on black metal and all things "blackened." The music was pretty great, though, which makes it a shame. I'm liking the Strzępy track a lot more; might grab that one.

Vocals are definitively the worst part of Kultura Kureniya yes. As seems the case with pretty much every "hipster black metal" band, but yeah you cant have it all. Luckily this album doesn't have that much singing, there's a couple tracks that are almost completely instrumental.

And after all these magnificent records, some of the disappointments of 2013. The loss of Jeff Hanneman of course, but I was deeply disappointed by how bad Entombed has gotten over the years, and the terrible albums of Hail Of Bullets (boring ass riffs, shit vocals - what the hell happened????), Arckanum (the guitar tone is total shit, the riffs are limp, the vocals are stale...pass!) and Anthrax (what's the point, as a well-known band, of recording covers if you're just going to mimic the originals as close as possible like you're a fucking karaoke machine?). Those are bands that should've been better, there are always the ones that seem to get rave reviews everywhere but I keep failing to see any value in: Ihsahn, In Solitude, Subrosa, Protest The Hero, Haken, Ulcerate, Amon Amarth. Raise yer standards I say...

the In Solitude record was a letdown but I loved the one before it.

I loved it!

really liked u.m.a. but I have some weird mental block where I can never remember the band name ("what was that one with the mega modern prog cover again?") >_<

I def dig the new ulcerate but I LOVED the one before it

nonexistence is new to me. into it!

Spotify link of 10 chosen cuts.

siegbran are you on FB?

Nope...

get an account with a fake name (haha) so you can chat to scott and join the group. You dont need to use your real name. We will never know what is it so you're safe!

the 'tweak tiny elements to get ever closer to cutting a perfect track' lustre songwriting style is very techno to me. easy to admire the focus (provided you dig the template an artist is working from, of course. and for lustre, I do). although their palette is broader, it's one of the things I like about meshuggah as well.

facebook sux, don't do it! sorry, AG ;-)

and what gives? come back, scott!

why has scott quit?

Great list, I've only heard one of these, gives me lots more to check out.

Ihsahn, In Solitude, Subrosa, Protest The Hero, Haken, Ulcerate, Amon Amarth

I disagree with you on the first three and Ulcerate, those are all pretty tremendous to my ears. The Amon Amarth was alright, but I don't see why it should get more praise than other stuff they've done (the "in the style of" bonus EP was way more fun). I've never understood what anyone hears in Protest the Hero. As for Haken, I like it when I listen to it with my prog ears on, but I don't really consider them metal.

Kultura Kureniya on Bandcamp, stream the whole album!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DeguKnbyjXY

Will definitely do, thanks!