MY Top 8 Metal(/hard rock?) Albums of 2013 SO FAR

I've been enjoying a good amount of metal and some hard rock that's come out this year so far, so I'm going to share MY OPINION of the top 8 metal (and a few hard rock) albums of the year so far. Ideally I would have listed 10, but to be honest I couldn't really pick two additional albums that I found as memorable as these. Of course there are some exciting upcoming albums as well, and I might post a revised list towards the end of the year, but this is just based on what I've heard so far.



8. Riverside - Shrine of New Generation Slaves

Not nearly as metal as their last album (2009's Anno Domini High Definition), but Riverside continue their streak of consistent progressive songwriting with this album. Most if not all of the songs here lean in a more rocky direction, but of course this isn't a bad thing. This album abounds with catchy riffs and memorable melodies. Good build-ups, and a lot of "pretty" (not in a BS way) moments. In my opinion, this is a great direction for progressive hard rock to be taking. Also, the two-part bonus track "Night Session," while being a long, entirely calm instrumental, is quite interesting for what it is, in my opinion. I'd recommend this album to any fan of progressive rock, older or more recent, as a lot of this album nods to Riverside's classic hard rock influences.

7. Steven Wilson - The Raven That Refused To Sing (And Other Stories)

Having recently explored more Porcupine Tree and then listened through this album (after putting off listening to it for a while), I now think of Steven Wilson as one of the most consistent modern progressive songwriters, and I still have to listen to a lot of Porcupine Tree, not to mention his previous (and equally acclaimed) solo album, Grace for Drowning. Anyway, in my opinion this is modern progressive rock at its finest. The opening track, "Luminol," demanded a second listen when I listened through this album on my own for the first time. That track in particular is superbly written, and if it's not the epitome of modern progressive songwriting, it's damn near close. While "Luminol" was my favorite track, the album is consistent, has a good mix of rockish and calmer parts, and - I assume, based on my playing it for my friends - should be pretty accessible for any fan of progressive rock.

6. Deafheaven - Sunbather

I've seen a few people arguing about whether Sunbather by Deafheaven can be called black metal or not. While I view this as pointless, possibly purist genre-nerd-ing, I found this album to be a great blend of black metal, shoegaze, and post-rock/metal elements. On RateYourMusic.com, there is a genre "blackgaze," used for a few releases of Alcest along with this, and I think that, if you need to put a genre on everything, "blackgaze" would certainly work for this.

Genre nerd-ing aside, I really like the feel of this album. It's instrumentally pretty melodic, as I would expect from the small amount of shoegaze I've checked out (mainly Alcest besides a few other bands having been influenced by the genre), and the black metal-style vocals definitely fit in with the layers of sound that at times lead to a hypnotic atmosphere, as you might expect from post-rock/metal. The music is emotional (as most music should be) and I found many parts to be memorable. Some parts bring in more black metal influences than other parts, but the emotion, melody, and memorability is consistent throughout this album in my opinion. This might be as accessible as black metal-influenced music may get, if only because of its great sense of melody and emotion, although the vocal style will still probably turn off a lot of listeners.

On a final somewhat-irrelevant genre-nerd-related note, RateYourMusic has "screamo" as a sub-genre of this album, which I really don't hear at all. Screamo may be a genre unto itself, but I roll my eyes when people refer to any music with screamed vocals as screamo. Sunbather may have screaming and may have emotion, but it sounds nothing like any screamo I've heard, which admittedly hasn't been much.

Sorry for wasting space with pointless genre-nerd discussion, it really does no justice to this album. I think Sunbather should resonate with fans of bands like Alcest. May be a bit of a stretch, but the emotion in this album feels somewhat like Anathema as well, despite very different styles.

5. Amorphis - Circle

Amorphis might not have really changed up their sound much since the coming of vocalist Tomi Joutsen in 2005 and the release of Eclipse in 2006, but in my opinion this really doesn't matter much, because the band has been incredibly consistent since Eclipse, with their songwriting, in my opinion, possibly even reaching its peak with 2009's Skyforger. While many elements of Amorphis's recent sound are quite different than their 1994 melodic death/doom metal staple Tales from the Thousand Lakes, in my opinion all of their music is still distinguishable as Amorphis, mainly from their ability to come up with memorable and catchy yet dark and/or melancholic melodies, which in my opinion is definitely carried on with Circle. A lot of this album feels somewhat folk-metal-ish, which I guess has been a part of Amorphis's recent sound, but I did find myself noticing folkish melodies more on this album than on others. At any rate, in my opinion this is great melodic metal. I found the most interesting song to be "Nightbird's Song," which actually brings in some black/death/extremewhatever metal elements, topped off with Amorphis's signature consistent catchiness. This album has a pretty powerful feel, actually kind of in a power metal-ish way, without the cheesiness. I would recommend this to fans of epic-feeling metal, and actually to fans of melodic death metal; while the vocals are mostly melodic, I feel that this album has a lot in common with some epic-feeling melodic death metal, leaning more towards epicness and melody than darkness or brutality, although the music is still generally somewhat melancholic and dark.

4. Dark Tranquillity - Construct

In general, Dark Tranquillity are my favorite band to release an album this year (except for Katatonia, although their upcoming release is a softer re-recording of last year's Dead End Kings), and thus Construct was my most anticipated album of the year. In my opinion, Dark Tranquillity and Insomnium are easily the most consistent pure melodic death metal bands. DT's 2010 album We Are The Void may have been, albeit enjoyable, slightly weaker than their previous work, but they definitely bounce back here with Construct. Here, Dark Tranquillity kind of change up their style from the range of albums from Damage Done through Fiction, while remaining melodic death metal. The songwriting on this album, to me, felt kind of like a melodic death metal version of recent Katatonia. Indeed, the music is melodic and dark, which you would expect from DT, but the execution of melody and darkness on this album does feel to me more like Katatonia's interweaving of melancholy and brooding heaviness (found on albums such as The Great Cold Distance) than Dark Tranquillity's recent style of catchy often-synth-based melodeath. Probably more than anything, however, the way the album expresses darkness feels like DT's own 1999 album, Projector. I feel like Construct shows Dark Tranquillity perfectly integrating the gothic feel of Projector and some Katatonia (although I kind of doubt DT looked to them for influence) with DT's own established take on melodic death metal. Some songs are stronger than others, but when this album shines, it showcases some of Dark Tranquillity's best material in a long time - and I fucking loved 2007's Fiction.

Before Construct came out, I was somewhat disappointed by the first song revealed, "For Broken Words," but the second song revealed, "The Science of Noise," reaffirmed my hopes for this album. "The Science of Noise" has easily become one of my all-time favorite Dark Tranquillity songs, but it is far from the only memorable track on this album. As a whole, this album (including "For Broken Words" and especially "Uniformity") has grown on me a lot over a few listens. Recommended for any fans of Gothic or melodic death metal, perhaps leaning more to the Gothic side, as this doesn't sound that much like Insomnium, old In Flames, or even most other Dark Tranquillity (notably other than Projector). That said, this is still certainly melodic death metal, just executed in a somewhat Gothic manner. Construct would have fulfilled my anticipation for its being metal album of the year, but to be honest the following top three albums really took me by surprise.

3. The Ocean - Pelagial

This was actually the first album by The Ocean that I heard; I have since picked up Precambrian and Fluxion, and have noted this progressive/post-sludge metal band's interesting evolution. While Precambrian sounded to me like Meshuggah meets Mastodon meets post-metal (and resulted in, in my opinion, an absolutely perfectly-executed concept album), I found Pelagial to be more melodic, with more noticeable clean vocals, which are utilized in some pretty memorable vocal melodies, even though I am normally not a huge fan of the vocalist's style of singing. Precambrian was atmospheric in a very dark way - such that even its quieter parts felt crushingly heavy - and Pelagial is equally atmospheric, although I feel in a less outright dark way than on Precambrian. It's definitely not as crushingly heavy, although this isn't a bad thing.

Like Precambrian (this is the last comparison I will make, I promise), Pelagial is a concept album. Indeed, as far as I know Pelagial is based on the layers of depth of the ocean, with each successive song (some of which are split into two or three tracks) named after a deeper layer than the previous. I didn't particularly notice the songs getting heavier or that much darker as the album went on, but the music is consistent throughout. I'm not sure that I can compare this to any other band or album that I've heard, except MAYBE Isis; The Ocean may well have established their own sound at this point. Regardless, I would recommend Pelagial to any fan of melodic, progressive, and/or atmospheric metal. The vocal style might turn some listeners off, but if it does, there exists an instrumental version of the album!

On a side note, if you're going to buy this album, I would recommend the CD version over any digital version, as the packaging is pretty cool, and it includes a small chart showing the layers of depth of the ocean, which I think is also pretty cool considering the concept of the album. That said, I know not everyone cares for things like that.

2. Witherscape - The Inheritance

About a decade after the final dissolution of Edge of Sanity, and a few years since we've last heard anything of Nightingale, Dan Swanö returns with a new band/project/album that I found to combine the best of both of the aforementioned bands, along with much of the same classic progressive rock elements that Opeth have always used. To be honest, while I was anticipating this album, for some reason I had my doubts, and expected it to be merely okay. However, my first listen through The Inheritance really impressed and pleasantly surprised me.

Swanö got someone else to handle death vocals on Edge of Sanity's final album, Crimson II, but I was excited to see that his death vocals return here, sounding somewhat different and perhaps more forced than at Edge of Sanity's peak (that, in my opinion, being Purgatory Afterglow and Crimson), but not really worse, just different. Swanö's clean singing remains quite good, bearing some similarity to Mikael Akerfeldt's. Although Dan Swanö (handling vocals, drums, and keyboards on the album) is undoubtedly more established in his zone of metal than his bandmate, Ragnar Widerberg (playing guitar and bass on the album), Widerberg is not to be discredited at all, as there are many really interesting guitar parts on the album, and the guitar playing is great throughout. In addition, much credit is due to Swanö for the production on The Inheritance; it's really perfect for its style, and I understand he actually mixed the album several times, for the best sound on each respective format.

Even though I feel The Inheritance can best be described as combining the melodic death metal elements of Edge of Sanity with the catchy-yet-dark Gothic elements of Nightingale along with progressive rock influences, I feel like Witherscape's debut also sounds somewhat like a combination of a few other dark progressive metal bands. Namely, the catchiness of The Inheritance reminds me of Amorphis and the variety and progression reminds me of Opeth, while the melancholic atmosphere of the album reminds me of Katatonia. This would kind of make sense seeing as a sticker on the CD's plastic wrap advertised the album as being for fans of those exact bands, but I feel that it was very accurate.

I will admit that, perhaps due to over-listening about a year ago, Edge of Sanity had fallen out of my listening patterns several months ago, but The Inheritance really renews my interest in Dan Swanö's work. I feel that this album is exactly what we would have gotten from Swanö, had his old bands stayed active and continued to evolve, because Witherscape's sound comes across as very refined. A lot of it does sound and feel kind of like Opeth, but as a huge Opeth fan this is not at all a bad thing, as the strength of the songwriting, in my opinion, comes very close to that of Opeth's. I would definitely second the packaging sticker's recommendation of this album for fans of dark progressive bands like Opeth, Katatonia, and Amorphis. I'm actually really excited to see what Witherscape do in the future.

The Inheritance pleasantly surprised me and became my definite pick for metal album of the year after a few listens, but was later dethroned by the following album, instead coming in a strong 2nd...

1. Gorguts - Colored Sands

 

Wow. This album completely came out of nowhere for me, and very quickly became my confident pick for album of the year. I saw Gorguts open for the Death tribute concert in June 2012 but didn't know anything by them and thus none of their songs really stuck with me. Not going to lie, I still haven't heard anything else by Gorguts (not even their technical death metal classic Obscura), but actually saw this album on the top of RateYourMusic's list of 2013 albums OF ALL GENRES, so decided that, as a fan of extreme metal (despite preferring melodic to otherwise), I should check it out.

And then I found myself blown the fuck away.

At least in my opinion, there hasn't really been a groundbreaking pure death metal album for many years. Many classic death metal bands are kind of reaching the most-of-the-time-inevitable point where they lose some if not all consistency (see: most classic thrash and "heavy" metal bands). And then Gorguts decide to make a comeback, and show the metal world EVERYTHING death metal should be in 2013. It is progressive without drawing out, trying too hard, or losing the listener; it flows pretty much perfectly from song to song, perhaps with one minor exception; it is technical in just the right way, without ever dissolving into pointless wanking; it is even melodic without sacrificing heaviness and brutality. And yes, it achieves great heaviness, mostly through some of the best use of dissonance I've heard and perfectly-controlled chaos.

With Colored Sands, Gorguts absolutely perfect what many death metal bands utilize in varying degrees, styles, and effectiveness: atmosphere. A lot of death metal can be called bleak or chaotic, but if I had to pick one word to describe Colored Sands: "haunting." Some death metal bands do perfect the atmosphere they're going for, and some seem to not even bother for whatever reason, perhaps for the sake of technicality or raw brutality, but with Colored Sands Gorguts go above and beyond perfecting the downright haunting atmosphere of the album. Sure, you wouldn't say that the album (or mostly any death metal album) is "atmospheric," but in my opinion the atmosphere is undeniably there. I'm not sure how to fully describe how Gorguts achieve this, but I can say that there is one very simple part of the music that adds a lot: breaks. I've read some people on the internet say that Colored Sands even seems to take some cues from Opeth's old take on progressive death metal, and I can definitely see this, although any Opeth-ish elements are executed completely in this album's style; I guess you could say that they are done in a more death metal-ish way. Of course, there are no clean vocals or anything, but what I see in common is the progression and dynamics, which I acknowledge is executed very differently.

Colored Sands has amazing flow. One of my favorite parts about the album is how, on many of the tracks, a good portion of the end of a given track will be a quiet, haunting foreshadow of the following track. The only thing regarding album flow that I would complain about is the instrumental "The Battle of Chamdo." It's not a bad song (although it's not exactly metal, not that that would be a bad thing) and it is transitioned into well, but honestly on a few listens through this album I found myself completely into the music until that track, and then having trouble sticking with it from that point on. The following tracks are just as strong as the preceding ones and I would encourage giving this album an attentive listen, I just feel like the heaviness and eerie breaks are perfectly balanced until this song that is basically an extended eerie break, disrupting some of the balance achieved throughout the rest of the album. That said, I don't mean to make this sound like a huge flaw, and some people may find "The Battle of Chamdo" more effective or interesting than I did, but to me it proves a bit too long of a break that threatens (but does not necessarily break) the brilliant flow of Colored Sands.

I feel I can't really do this album much justice through my writing. I'd recommend Colored Sands far above any other semi-recent death metal release for any listener of extreme metal. I read another internet-goer say that Colored Sands will in time be seen as a death metal classic, and I can definitely see this, despite that I haven't even explored as much death metal as many other metalheads. On a related note, in my opinion this is easily the best comeback album in metal in a long time.

***

There they are. This is all just my opinion, but I encourage anyone interested in any of this music to check out some of these albums.