There were a ton of heavy, heavy metals this year. Way beyond a ton, several metric shit-tons I think were involved, if it is is even quantifiable. So much so that it deserves its own list. It is much like 2011 was: way more great metal than usual, and a lot of it was very innovative or at least creating its own path, as much as that's possible any more. A lot of what was enjoyable is that it seems like death metal is in some kind of golden age, and black metal is continuing to innovate in the lesser explored territories of musical direction; which is usually dissonance. Several of the death metal bands also explored dissonance, including the big return of Gorguts, the godfathers of death metal dissonance as well as technical wizardry.
2013 also saw the return of Carcass, the creators of goregrind and still far better than any other band inspired by their early stuff. This new iteration blends together all their styles as heard on their pioneering early albums, as well as the more technical/thrash/death metal sounds heard on 'Heartwork', and even the more classic sounding 'Swansong'. It also saw the return of weirdos like Antediluvian, Portal, and more of the odd range of bands that started cropping up a few years ago. And there were even some great vintage metal inspired bands like Blood Ceremony, Clutch, and Subrosa. There are so many captivating albums from last year, I can't even remember what I was going to say, thinking about all the heaviness... so let's get on to the actual list.
Wow, that was a ton of the good stuff. A nice even 32 superb heavy metal releases there, and I encourage you to get them all! All of them! hahaha. You may also be interested in these, Honorable Mentions...
EPs of awesomeness:
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Although there are some albums on this list that rock very hard, or for some, could be called Heavy (or even Metal), there were so many quality albums that were released in 2013 that I am making two year end lists to kick off the blog version of Questionable Taste (what once was a facebook page for my internet radio station called Through The Cracks, which morphed into some other manifestation of posting some music through the magic of youtube). "Like" the Facebook version of this blog on your Facebook please, if you are into that, so you can get any updates..
The purpose of this inaugural post is to get a list out there as quickly as possible, since this page is not really done yet, and 2014 is now well under way. I cannot even explain how excited I am about music right now, both as a listener and as a musician... it is truly a wonder to be into and follow the routes music is taking currently. Production keeps getting better, the musicians more imaginative and more connected to information than ever, and the cross referencing of ideas is phenomenal. Music is everywhere, and it has never been so easy to get the word out about it. Which is another problem unto itself, to get noticed or even recognition; but I digress. What makes this year different from my tumblr blog about 2012's music is that I am going to just list my favorite albums of 2013, and not worry about a cutoff (the blog format was a top 40). Since I know that I loved more than 40 albums from 2013, I am moving on from that format. Also, I will not do a countdown to #1 album style of blog, as I felt that was too arbitrary a way of doing things, and made me look at music rating too linearly, or whatever... maybe hierarchically is a better way to describe what I was doing. And tier-ing is lame and played out, isn't it? So I suppose I will still rate the albums, as I go through and review them all (albeit more succinctly than last year) alphabetically this time, according to 6 categories. Just like everyone, my taste is difficult to attribute to anything or to sum up, predict, etc. Music is just super subjective like that (which is part of what makes it so great). The things that I have been liking more and more over time are jazz and experimental music, and pop less and less. And I will always love heavy music, innovative and/or adventurous rock and roll, as well as electronic music of the progressive variety (well, prog probably applies to all those other genres too, but sometimes I can find prog to be exceedingly boring or cheesy). So all I can offer here is my expert, completely subjective as ever and convoluted opinion; and hope to turn people on to some music they would not have heard otherwise. Ok, so, the list, is what this is all about... the non-metal list:
And now, for the Honorable Mentions...
Well, that's that, and that was there. 2013 was an incredibly great year for music, and I encourage you to get every one of those albums I just listed, even the Honorable's. Next up, will be my picks for best Heavy Metal albums of 2013! |
AuthorG.M. Bowles Archives
February 2017
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