Best Music Of 2023

author PP date 10/01/24

As is customary each year, music magazines across the globe gather around and form an arbitrary ranking of the best music released that year. Since music is largely a matter of taste, no magazine typically agrees, not necessarily even internally on what is the best album, the second best album, and so forth.

So here at Rockfreaks.net we have always taken a different approach: we think it's far more important to try to capture all relevant albums from a given year of release that will have some significance a few years later. That is to say: if you look back at the albums we've picked in this article three years down the line, you will still remember them and go: "oh yeah, that IS a good release", even if you hadn't listened to it for a while.

So our writers were given the usual task: pick and mix your favorite records from 2023 and combine them into an ordered list of sorts. There is no particular minimum or maximum limit for each list. The only catch? They had to be releases that you'd reflect on three to five years from now, thinking along the lines of "damn, that album was good", or ones that you'd keep returning to as they pass the test of time, thus cementing their place among the highlights in their given genre when we look back at the decade gone by at some point in the future.

Thus whatever you take interest in from below, you can rest assured that we have listened to it many times over and ultimately found that these records satisfy from the first track to the last. Usually, the ones in the top three or top five are typically assumed to become classics in their respective genres as time passes by. PP

Petteri ‘PP’ Pertola

I'm primarily covering punk, hardcore, and related genres with occasional ventures into other genres as well. With between one and two hundred album reviews a year for almost two decades straight, you can be sure that if an album is on this list, it's still worth a listen a few years down the line. My list may be the longest, but that’s because there are just so many great albums to take with you into the years to come. That Paint It Black record is probably the best one in its genre in the last ten years, which isn’t a big surprise to be honest, but had you told me last year that Foo Fighters would take the number two stop, I’d laugh you out of the room. Sleep Token’s genre-fluid elegance and Crime In Stereo’s brilliant return are for those of you yearning for depth, whilst Samiam, Hot Mulligan, and Wicker Bears delivered sublime examples of a genre done just right, respectively. The quality across the board has been fantastic, which is why we’re once again approaching the forty-mark with my list this time around.

Kristoffer ‘KW’ Witt

The second of our Århus-based writers, Kristoffer's broad taste in anything technical, atmospheric, progressive, and far-reaching takes him across a wide array of genres ranging from technical death metal to post-rock. Those of you whose music tastes aren't limited to just one style of rock or metal will find plenty of gems in his list, and much more!

1. TesseracT - War of Being (progressive metal / djent)

TesseracT return with an album that feels like a culmination of all their past work; a magnum opus of modern progressive metal that is as complex as it is melodic and seismically heavy and contains - by far - the best vocal performance from Dan Tompkins.

2. Dødheimsgard - Black Medium Current (experimental black metal)

A multi-layered, strange experience that sinks its teeth deeper in you with every listen, revealing a creepy, grandiose and wholly unique fusion of black metal and progressive rock.

3. Sermon - Of Golden Verse (progressive metal)

An album that seems made for my tastes, fusing the tribalistic nature of Tool with the melancholy of Katatonia, in turn creating a catchy and atmospheric journey that spans from gothic to progressive to black.

4. Invent Animate - Heavener (progressive metalcore)

This latest outing from progressive metalcore stalwarts in Invent Animate sees the band nail their songwriting while maintaining the technical riffs to produce an infectious mix of soaring choruses and gurn-inducing breakdowns.

5. Svalbard - The Weight of the Mask (metalcore)

Svalbard is a band that keeps getting better and better with every release, getting that much closer to perfecting their brand of heartwrenching post-hardcore and “The Weight of the Mask" once again contains the single best lead guitar melodies of the year.

6. END - The Sin of Human Frailty (hardcore)

Best caveman album of the year - stupidly heavy but also the best-flowing album the band has released thus far with the well-fitting addition of industrial elements to their relentless hardcore.

7. Panopticon - The Rime of Memory (post-black metal)

If the rest of the record was the same quality as the stunning opening one-two punch of “Winter’s Ghost" and “Cedar Skeletons" (spanning no less than 36 minutes of the highest quality, ice-cold post-black metal), this latest Panopticon album could have well competed for the number one spot.

8. Johnny Booth - Moments Elsewhere (metalcore / mathcore)

A raging metalcore record with a sprinkle of math, a ton of fun and grooves to last the whole winter.

9. Night Verses - Every Sound Has a Color in the Valley of Night… (progressive metal)

The long-awaited follow-up to 2018’s “From the Gallery of Sleep" might not reach the same greatness but it comes very close - Night Verses prove themselves as the single most forward-thinking and unique instrumental metal band in the game.

10. Herod - Iconoclast (post-metal)

Herod, unfortunately, parted ways last year but left us with a pummeling of a post-metal album that sounds like a sludgier Meshuggah and has one of the heaviest metal productions in a while.

Honorable mentions:

  • Sleep Token - Take Me Back To Eden (alternative metal)
  • Periphery - Periphery V: Djent Is Not A Genre (progressive metalcore / djent)
  • The Arcane Order - Distortions from Cosmogony (blackened death metal)
  • Silent Planet - Superbloom (metalcore)
  • Polaris - Fatalism (metalcore)
  • Cattle Decapitation - Terrasite (deathgrind)
  • The Ocean - Holocene (post-metal / progressive metal)
  • Humanity’s Last Breath - Ashen (deathcore)
  • Unprocessed - ...And Everything In Between (progressive metal)
  • MSPAINT - Post-American (post-punk)
  • Telos - Delude (blackened mathcore)
  • Ὁπλίτης - Τρωθησομένη (mathcore / grindcore)
  • Sulphur Aeon - Seven Crowns and Seven Seals (blackened death metal)
  • Chamber - A Love To Kill For (hardcore / mathcore)
  • Katatonia - Sky Void of Stars (progressive rock)
  • HEALTH - Rat Wars (industrial metal / synthwave)
  • Earthside - Let The Truth Speak (progressive rock)
  • Suffocation - Hymns From the Apocrypha (death metal)
  • Haken - Fauna (progressive rock)
  • Hypno5e - Sheol (progressive metal)
  • Big|Brave - nature morte (drone metal)
  • Dying Wish - Symptoms of Survival (metalcore)
  • The Hirsch Effekt - Urian (mathcore) (mathcore)
  • Steven Wilson - The Harmony Codex (progressive rock)
  • Thy Art Is Murder - Godlike (deathcore)
  • Holding Absence - The Noble Art of Self-Destruction (post-hardcore)
  • GridLink - Coronet Juniper (grindcore)
  • Stellar Circuits - Sight To Sound (progressive rock)
  • The Acacia Strain - Failure Will Follow (doom metal)
  • Downfall of Gaia - Silhouettes Of Disgust (post black metal)
  • Cannibal Corpse - Chaos Horrific (death metal)

Makky “MAK" Hall

Much like last year, my list is far more quality than quantity, a good selection on this list being the majority of what I listened to over the last year. Once again it is very heavy on ska-punk, this is becoming less surprising each year. One surprise this year was Suicide Silence’s return to deathcore prime, as much as I listen to the genre anymore, it’s good to see them doing what they do best.

Honorable mentions:

  • Spoilers - There or Thereabouts (punk rock)
  • Knife Club - Our Club Our Rules (punk rock)
  • J Navarro & The Traitors - All Of Us Or None (ska punk)
  • Thirsty Guys - … Out To Lunch (ska punk)
  • Popes of Chillitown - Take A Picture (ska punk)
  • Clowns - Endless (hardcore punk)
  • Bruise Control - Useless For Something (punk rock)
  • Baldhead - Tales Fron The Alley (ska punk)
  • Tripsun - Kill The Dream (pop punk)

Best Of 2023 Spotify Playlist

Throughout the year, we’ve collected one or two best songs from each album we’ve rated 7.5 and above into a Spotify playlist. Here’s your chance to shuffle through our selections and listen to the best tracks from 2023 overall.

YOUR TURN

And with that note, dear readers, we invite you to list your favorite records of the year below in the comments section. Feel free to argue, praise, or defame if you so wish, but please do provide your own 'best of' list that consists primarily of records you know you'll be listening to in years to come as well.

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