2013's Best (Least Worst) Musical Releases

As I sit here reflecting on the good and bad, fortunate and unfortunate happenings 2013 has presented to me, I have a lot to be thankful for. Life is pretty bitchin', as a whole. However, I have to say that overall, the music I've listened to has been VERY hit or miss. A lot of artists I had high expectations for let me down. Metallica didn't release Ride The Lightning II and instead played a show in Antarctica while a buncha penguins blew eachother. Pig Destroyer is still the laziest touring band in history. Converge played/recorded a live gig in Belgium or something. Integrity's album sounded like every other thing they've ever done. No one has broken into Celine Dion's house yet, tortured her frail, useless Canadian body, sold her organs on the black market, and set her worldly possessions on fire. However, for all of the letdowns from powerhouses I expected more of, there were just as many total surprises. A band, Deafheaven, who I've never bothered to listen to literally MOVED me with their release. This is the first album to give me chills from beginning to end since Terrifyer. I expected a mediocre-at-best release from Dillinger Escape Plan, but this is by far their best material to date. Defeater, another band who was never really on my radar, drops an album that I've listened to at least two dozen times and told countless people to give it a spin. 2013's music was strange for me, to say the least, but immersive, fun and full of discovery and exploration. Like a college cheerleader's sex life. But for your ears. With less yeast infections. Or more. Whichever.

20. Modern Life Is War - Fever Hunting

19. Terror - Live By The Code

18. Portal - Vexovoid

17. Carcass - Surgical Steel

16. Nails - Abandon All Life

15. Noisem - Agony Defined

14. World Of Pain - Improvise And Survive

13. Mammoth Grinder - Underworlds

12. Liferuiner - Future Revisionists

11. Serpent Crown - Serpent Crown

10. Boy Sets Fire - While A Nation Sleeps

9. Dillinger Escape Plan - One Of Us Is The Killer

8. Anciients - Heart Of Oak

7. Rivers Of Nihil - The Conscious Seed Of Light

6. Left For Dead - Devoid Of Everything

5. Doomriders - Grand Blood

4. Coffins - The Fleshland

3. Skeletonwitch - Serpents Unleashed

2. Deafheaven - Sunbather

1. Defeater - Letters Home

Honorable mention to Earthless. Didn't make the list because it's not my proverbial cup of tea, but those guys shred the fuck outta some guitars. There you have it. Hopefully someone was interested enough to read this and check out some tunes you might've missed this year because you were too busy trying to convince yourself that your elitist indie friends are right and that Arcade Fire and Vampire Weekend "are total musical breakthroughs with a lot to say."

ZWB's Top 20 of 2013

Alas, since neither Converge nor Baroness released a new record in 2013, Decibel didn't know what to do with themselves. As much as I love both of those bands - the former slightly approximately 1000x times more than the latter - this year still proved to be an astounding little sonic adventure. I enjoyed much more than I can fit into twenty line items, and even given my self-imposed restrictions to metal for these purposes, I will be leaving albums out that I nonetheless listened to furiously. One aspect of this year I wish to highlight, and I hope my list highlights, is what I'll call "doom/black-revival": the return to mass popularity, even to the hipster paradiso of Pitchfork, of doom and black metal acts that are shunning norms about song lengths, lyrical content, and - to put it directly - "scene". I've included numerous such acts in my previous lists on this blog, but never to the extent that I'm about to. Same goes for hardcore. Call me a Decibel-sellout, but metal is evolving, which is what makes it so beautiful. Noise is in; chugs are out. Pig Destroyers and Cattle Decapitations over Lambs of God and Mastodons. This is as it should be, given the strikingly low quality coming from the latter of these groups nowadays. We all yearn - myself less so than others - for another Ashes of the Wake or Leviathan, but it is not clearly in the cards. Until then, we shall - and I argue, should - revel in the splendor of the modern era. Please enjoy the following list (or don't, I don't fucking care):

Dat List

20. Deeds of Flesh - Portals to Canaan

19. The Ocean - Pelagial

18. Castevet - Obsian

17. Noisem - Agony Defined

16. Anciients - Heart of Oak

15. Cult of Luna - Vertikal

14. Defeated Sanity - Passages Into Deformity

13. Altar of Plagues - Teethed Glory and Injury

12. The Dillinger Escape Plan - One of Us Is the Killer

11. Inter Arma - Sky Burial

10. Portal - Vexovoid

9. Rivers of Nihil - The Conscious Seed of Light

8. Ulcerate - Vermis

7. Coliseum - Sister Faith

6. Intronaut - Habitual Levitations

5. Title Fight - Spring Songs EP

4. Skeletonwitch - Serpents Unleashed

3. Nails - Abandon All Hope

2. Gorguts - Colored Sands

1. Deafheaven - Sunbather