MUSIC 2025: TOP 4 non-album releases

Another mini-list before we're wrapping music of the year season 2025 up with my favorite albums. While I'm still unfairly ignoring everything I don't own in a physical format, other than that this category includes everything which is not a studio or live album (except split releases) or not a reissue. I once again have been pretty focussed on all of these however and not so much singles, EPs, compilations... so a longer list just wouldn't make much sense. And while four isn't a high number this quartet is a really strong selection - pinky promise! 

TOP 4 non-album releases 2025:

1. GREEN MILK FROM THE PLANET ORANGE - Tragedy Overground
   
   
   
   The crazy Japanese Psychedelic Prog Punk trio Green Milk From The Planet Orange are surely one of my most exciting new discoveries of 2025. From delicate songwriting with wonderful melodies to total power trio jam excess and pained panic this one track EP encapsulates everything which makes this group so spectacular. What a fun ride!
   
   
   
   
   
2. SARMAT - Upgrade
   
   
   
   More increasingly insane Progressive Death Metal! More unhinged bonkers Jazz Fusion with trumpets, keytar and upright bass! Sarmat are back with the spiritial successor to the 2023 "Dubious Disk" EP and deliver one of the best bastards of Avantgarde Jazz and Extreme Metal ever. There's no doubt - we need more - and longer! - releases of this delightful madness.
   
   
   
   
   
3. SUNN O))) - Eternity's Pillars b/w Raise the Chalice & Reverantial
   
   
   
   
   Stephen O'Malley and Greg Anderson, the core duo of Sunn O))) released their latest EP on Sub Pop Records, old home of their greatest inspiration Earth. And just as that move feels like a throwback, you shouldn't expect these three tracks of the guitar-only essence of their Drone Metal to reinvent their sound. Instead this nicely packed record feels like a perfect rekindling of their initial spirit.
   
   
   
   
   
   
4. UBOA & WHITEHORSE - The Dissolution of Eternity

   
   

   

   Fuck yeah, what a killer split release! On side A Whitehorse pummel you down with their misanthropic Sludge powered by awesome riffs and seemingly recorded in a giant dystopian dome of torture. And that was only the warm-up for the trip through psychological hell and back - with surprising moments of remembering the existence of sunlight - by Noise artist Uboa.

   
   

favorite MUSIC 2025 - all my lists:

TOP 25 albums   |   TOP 7 live albums   |   TOP 4 reissues

TOP 4 non-album releases   |   TOP 25 live shows

Hanging in the Void with ODIOUS SPIRIT, SARMAT, SLEEP PARALYSIS and THE OVERMOLD

Who doesn't like a package from the weird Avantgarde and Extreme Metal specialist label I. Voidhanger Records? Here's my latest one. It contains four CDs, two of them in regular, the other two in DVD-tray-sized digipaks.

We're starting with the arguably most traditional release, a Death Metal banger from last year:

ODIOUS SPIRIT - The Treason Of Consciousness (CD) (2024)

Well, actually... Don't let yourself be fooled by my usage of the word traditional, since we're in very subjective territory here!

Because while in theory Odious Spirit are playing a quite oldschool brand of technical Death Metal with lots of sick lead guitars, blast and double bass attacks, their slightly Blackened Dissonant sound completely refuses to feel nostalgic - not due to some special shtick, but just because mastermind James Oskarbski has an oustanding flair for composing classicaly inspired riffs and melodies which somehow feel completely fresh, even though they are undeniably one hundred percent Metal and should all have been used by other artists decades ago.

An impressive proof of Death Metal not being dead at all - with the fitting and appropriately presented cover artwork.

SARMAT - Upgrade (CD) (2025)

Obviously Sarmat's spiritual successor to the 2023 "Dubious Disk" EP is a very different beast. While their ferocious Progressive Death Metal is just as strong, the New Yorkers also make sure to bring the Jazz with trumpets, keytar (!) and upright bass. And yeah, they're bringing a lot of it, with a cast of musicians that knows exactly what it's doing.

Both the fourteen-minute title track, which includes themes from "Landform" of their full album "Determined To Strike", and the shorter, but even wilder trumpet trip "Serum Visions" are prime examples of how to merge creative Extreme Metal with Jazz Fusion and unhinged John Zorn school Avantgarde. Bonkers and brilliant stuff for everyone who would like a much jazzier and mr.bunglishly insane version of Imperial Triumphant (whose bass player is also contributing to this EP again).

You know I fucking love this shit - and you should too. How else could I possibly take you serious from now on?   

THE OVERMOLD - The Overmold (CD) (2025)

Also an album which feels very much inspired by New York Avantgarde, but in a completely different way, much more akin to "Choirs Of The Eye" era Kayo Dot, is the self-titled debut of the Drone Doom duo The Overmold.

Drummer Tim Wyskida and guitarist / bassist Mick Barr open the album with a over twelve minutes of atmospheric rise and decay, crescendo and descent, over and over again... until finally you realize that a song has arrived. Or has it? It's almost to slow to tell. But don't think the whole thrirty-five minutes of this track will stay this way! No, this will soon go into much more agile directions you won't expect... The whole thing is a super dynamic and suspenseful unorthodox journey for friends of Toby Driver, Dylan Carlson, Insect Ark (where Wyskida is drumming too), but also Sumac, Swans and minimalist Experimental Jazz.

Even though on paper the three following - only four to six minutes short - pieces may look like an afterthought, but being a little more "to the point" and featuring more prominent vocals, they're actually an important completion of the album as a whole.

The Overmold demand patience and attention, but once you let their sound in it will captivate and fascinate you. 

SLEEP PARALYSIS - Sleep Paralysis (CD) (2025)

You think we've already talked about the wildest release in this bunch? Think again! Conceptually Sleep Paralysis's debut is a very stringent work dealing with all kinds of nightly mental horrors. And musically there are also the clear leitmotifs of a base in Black Metal on one and a lot of piano on the other side.

That piano opens the album like the prologue to a silent movie, but remains a key element through most of album's eleven tracks. It seems inspired by Italo horror cinema and Classical composers, but it also swings, does the Honky Tonk or erupts in Free Jazz explosions like in the Deathjazz chaos of "Sarmat" (the album, not the band!) by Effluence.

With these pillars in place Stephan Knapp's solo project would already provide a sufficient reign of brilliant psychological terror, but like the randomness of a "Fever Dream" and the mind illogically jumping around during "Stress", Sleep Paralysis doesn't stop there.
At any given moment the album can also surprise you with Electronic stuff like menacingly glitchy beats in combination with Vaporwave (of all things!) keyboards or a hilarious use of a Windows error sound effect, which is really confusing when you're listening to the this the first time on your PC.

No, despite the bloodcurling idea this album doesn't shy away from musical  humour. If you're still not over that possibility in a Black metal context in 2025, why are you even reading my blog? Hush and away with you! All others: Enjoy this fantastic phantasmagoric madness!

MUSIC 2023: top 23 albums

Albums which I play in the car all the time. Albums which are way too long to listen to every day. Albums which I already listened to too much. Albums which I unjustifiably neglected. Albums with a profound message. Albums which are just pure fucking fun. Albums from bands I've been a fan of for ages. Albums I only just got in the last couple of weeks. And so on and so forth...

So many different albums with so many criteria coming into play. So many different moods and styles. What is more valuable? An album which calms me down? And album which makes me think? An album which puts me into a cathartic rage?

I feel that it's getting harder to come to a satisfying result when putting together my favorite studio releases of the year every time I'm doing this. My usual practice of only considering studio albums which I own as physical copies narrows the list down a little (obviously not always in a way that's fair), but the task still remains impossible. At some not too far point in the future I will inevatibly look back on some choices I made or missed and shake my head in disbelief.
How couldn't I with all those varied great releases that just didn't fit in anymore? When I had settled on 22 (or really 24, because I bent the rules twice) I still had a competition of names like Årabrot, Crawl, Edena Gardens, Fleshvessel, Jegong, John Zorn, Les Nadie, Onkos, Sulphur Aeon and more battling for that last spot. And that's good! As long as it's a pain the ass to put together a ranking like this it means that I've been exposed to an abundance of great music.

In this spirit: Here are - cast in stone for all eternity, or at least until tomorrow morning - my personal...

TOP 23 albums of 2023:

1. BELL WITCH - Future's Shadow Part 1: The Clandestine Gate
   
   
   
   Even though the one eighty-three-minutes song album (their second in that specific format after "Mirror Reaper"!) cannot even be conclusively judged yet, because it is only the first part of a trilogy, I already predicted back in July that I would probably crown this glacially moving Funeral Doom behemoth as album of the year. And how could I not? Dylan Desmond and Jesse Shreibman have even improved their songwriting and arrangement skills and expanded their sound palette to appeareantly score the sorrowful fading of existence as a whole. Stillstand beyond the laws of time has never felt as crushing as floating here, in the void behind the Clandestine Gate.
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
2. LAIBACH - Sketches of the Red Districts
   
   
   
   Yes, the Slovenian collective has made it into top positions of four different MUSIC 2023 lists now! One answer to how they can pull this off lies in several writing teams. "Sketches of the Red Districts", an Industrial / Ambient / Electronic historical recontextualization of Laibach's birth myth in 1980 in connection with a bloody conflict between Yugoslav fascists and the local labour movement of Trbovlje in 1924, saw the current drummer and guitar player step forward to create an atmospheric masterpiece, which is one of the most classic sounding Laibach releases post the 1980's, but still presents a fresh new take on their aesthetics.
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
3. POIL UEDA - PoiL Ueda / Yoshitsune
   
   
   
   Bending the list rules, part one: This spot inevitably had to be shared by two equally brilliant albums, on which traditional Japanese vocalist and satsuma-biwa player Junko Ueda tells epic stories from the Far Eastern Middle Ages with the aid of the absolutely bonkers Magma- and King Crimson-inspired French Avantgarde Prog Rock group PoiL. Both albums of their joint cross-cultural project PoiL Ueda burst with boundless creativity in stunningly intense virtuosic performances. Undoubtly one - err, two - of the wildest and most exciting musical adventures of the year!
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
4. BIG|BRAVE - Nature Morte
   
   
   
   Once again the Canadian Noise Rock trio crushes our hearts, souls and bodies with the deeply satisfying Drone of monolithic guitars and the honest rawest emotion in Ronin Wattie's piercing heartfelt vocal  performance. In a discography that has never shown any sign of weakness "Nature Morte" sees Big|Brave broadening their compositional toolset by drawing lessons from the previous collaboration with The Body without sacrifing their principles of maximalist minimalism.
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
5. HEALTHYLIVING - Songs of Abundance, Psalms of Grief
   
   
   
   While it's impossible to pin this band down on one specific reference like (old) Gggolddd, Brutus, Dool or Chelsea Wolfe, because every track shows a different side of their Post Rock/Punk/Hardcore/Doom/Noise/etc. mix and showcases another facet of Amaya López Carromero's amazing voice, which you might also know from her solo project Maud the Moth, one thing is for sure: Their amazing debut album is filled to the bursting point with strong songs which won't leave your head anytime soon.
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
6. THE KEENING - Little Bird
   
   
   
   After the rest of Salt Lake City's sadly disbanded Doom Metal giants SubRosa have already released an album as The Otolith in 2022, it was now time for front woman and main songwriter Rebecca Vernon to also step into the light again. And be it as singer and lyricist or as a composer, arranger and multi-instrumentalist - she has so much to say on this genre-transcending full-length of wonderful Alternative Gothic Doom Folk greatness! The epic closer "The Truth" alone in truth is one of the greatest songs of the year. Gorgeous!   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
7. ESBEN AND THE WITCH - Hold Sacred
   
   
   
   "I am down here, in my chapel, where I'm safe from the evils of the world." Esben And The Witch's goodbye before an undetermined long break due to living far apart from each other now, is a magically intimate beauty I cannot stop listening to. Never has the trio's music been so stripped-down Ambient, so centered around Rachel Davies' mesmerizing voice and words. "Hold Sacred" goes right to the soul. This album is a soothing, consouling embrace in the darkness.
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
8. DYMNA LOTVA - Зямля Пад Чорнымі Крыламі: Кроў (The Land Under The Black Wings: Blood)
   
   
   
   A Belarusian Post Black Metal band fleeing from the regime - right into Ukraine before Putin's  invasion - releases an anti-war album based on both the horrors of WWII in their home country and their personal experiences. Even after that serious premise you're hardly prepared for the gut-wrenching storytelling and adamant earnest stance of "Land Under The Black Wings: Blood". Musically Dymna Lotva's Black Metal incorporates Doom as much as influences from Folk, Classical music and even Jazz in a similar way artists like Dordeduh or White Ward are doing it. Very haunting and unfortunately so significant!
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
9. GILDED FORM - Gilded Form
   
   
   
   Hardly even moving synths, the halting heartbeat of minimal drums and a guitar slowing down the Blues to tectonic lentitude pay homage to Dylan Carlson's Earth with a coat of bohrenish Doomjazz. Besides Bell Witch no album here will let you hover in a world-withdrawing state of timelessness like Dead Neanderthals (Otto Kokke, Rene Aquarius) and Nick Millevoi are achieving it on their joint project, debut release and forty-minute track "Gilded Form". Even though this is as conceptually reduced as ever it ranks among the most  powerful things the prolific Dutch duo has done so far.
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
10. THE END - Why Do You Mourn
    
    
    
    Is it the chaotic baritone guitar and drums rhythm section of Anders Hana and Børge Fjordheim? Is it the double saxophone force of Mats Gustafsson and Kjetil Møster? Or is it the mind-boggling vocal craziness of Sofia Jernberg? Each of these elements alone would already make the dynamic experimental Heavy Jazz Fusion on "Why Do You Mourn" special. Together however The End are capable of anything - even super-slowing down the Sudan Archives Trip Hop track "Black Vivaldi Sonata" to thrice of its original length. 
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
11. SWANS - The Beggar
    
    
    
    How to summarize two hours of Swans in just one paragraph? Yes, Michael isn't done yet at all, so here's another ginormous, existential offering, which combines the recent sound and wordiness of "Leaving Meaning" with the reverb aesthetics of "The Great Annihilator". This huge meditation on decline, decay, dissolution and Death even contains an album within the album with the forty+ minutes of the studio collage "The Beggar Lover (Three)". With all those larger than life works of the past it's unlikely that many Swans fans will crown "The Beggar" as their all-time-favorite. Yet of course the usual scale of operation alone still lets "The Beggar" tower far above most other music releases out there easily.
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
12. AUTOPSY - Ashes. Organs, Blood and Crypts
    
    
    
    Fuck yeah! No deep analytical thoughts necessary for this one - it's a bloody gory new Autopsy album. Starting with the title it's a completely accurate what you see is what you get situation - that goes literally for the sick album cover and just as much for its rotten content. Last year's first album with new bassist Greg Wilkinson "Morbidity Triumphant" was already old school rancid Death Metal bliss at its best like only Chris Reifert and Co. can deliver it. But somehow the legends got even darker and filthier now. Gut-splashing, grave-desecrating Autopsy - they just always know how to throw the greatest parties.
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
13. GODFLESH - Purge
    
    
    
    JK Broadrick and BC Green added only one letter to the title of their 1991 classic, and indeed the new Godflesh album is an open throwback to the sound and mindset of "Pure". While the guitar sound is fuller and sludgier now, the sawing riffs and screeching leads complimenting Broadrick's nihilist vocals are as similar as the rumbling bass sound and the Hip Hop inspired programmed and sampled drums. Due to its referential nature "Purge" isn't Godflesh's most experimental or original album by far, but with this execution - damn, it's a monstrously grooving cold and heavy Industrial Metal beast.
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
14. SARMAT - Determined to Strike
    
    
    
    Recorded before, but released after their "Dubious Disk", which already made it into my TOP 7 non-album releases 2023, the album debut of Sarmat starts more on the Technical Dissonant Death side, before spreading wider into all kinds of Exreme Metal / Avantgarde Jazz Fusion insanity. "Determined to Strike" brings together brutality and classy brass with natural ease. This short but highly entertaining brainmelter for sure is a peak exemplary I, Voidhanger Records release and definitely one of the finest works in the current wave of Jazz Metal!
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
15. KING GIZZARD AND THE LIZARD WIZARD - PetroDragonic Apocalypse; or, Dawn of Eternal Night: An Annihilation of Planet Earth and the Beginning of Merciless Damnation /
    The Silver Cord (Extended Mix)
    
    
    
    
    Of course! With Joey Walker instead of Stu Mackenzie wearing the main composer's helmet this time, the hyper-prolific Australians released an unlikey pair of twin albums based on related song ideas - and who am I to seperate them? "PetroDragonic Apocalypse" is King Gizzard's longer, more refined and more relentless second Thrash Metal album after "Infest The Rats' Nest", which also calls back to the Psychedelic Prog greatness of "Polygondwanaland".
    
    
    
    
    "The Silver Cord" on the other hand is their first completely (vintage) electronic work, which bounces between Klaus Schultze Synth Kraut, 90's Euro Dance, Beastie Boys raps and many more influences. Both albums can easily look eye to eye with the top tiers in the band's always growing discography - at least if you don't count the regular twenty-six minutes version of "The Silver Cord" and go for the vastly superior hypnotic one-and-a-half hour Extended Mix instead!
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
16. REVEREND KRISTIN MICHAEL HAYTER - Saved!
    
    
    
    This album was the hardest to place in this ranking. It's just so hard to decide whether this incredibly fervent exploration of worship songs by the artist formerly known as Lingua Ignota is creepy, barely listenable - or an addictive, completely transfixing experience. How can these old and new blatantly religious hymns be so eerily alienating yet comforting, so ambivalently non-judgemental and still so powerful? Presented more detached from personal experiences than her previous work, with an analogue low-fi production simulating the decayed quality of unearthed, worn out historic recordings "Saved!" lays open the ecstatic core of congregational songs and deliberately leaves it up to us what to make of it. I guess I'm still in that process.
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
17. COLD DEW - Yuyu 欲欲
    
    
    
    Released in early February the debut record of Cold Dew starts out so sugary and schmaltzy that I almost dismissed it immediately. And now look where we are eleven months later! "Yuyu 欲欲" still remains my favorite Krautrock album of the year - if the term is even sufficient enough for the boundlessly creative journey through East, West, mind and cosmos these Taiwanese Psychedelic Rockers allow us to share with them, as they confidently step into the space between the void which the departure of Kikagaku Moyo has left and Acid Mothers Temple, without trying to copy either of them.
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
18. P/O MASSACRE + ALEX BUESS & MERZBOW - Aural Corrosion
    
    
    

    Best Harsh Electronics is a subcategory I probably wouldn't even have been able to fill every year since I've been doing these annual rankings. The double album of exile Russians Anton Ponomarev and Anton Obrazeena - featuring collaborative longtracks with Swiss experimental musician Alex Buess and Japanese Noise legend Merzbow - however must be included here. Made of Electronic Noise, guitar, saxophone and trumpet P/O Massacre is fighting fire with fire, as this unsparing "Anti-War" music sounds just like propaganda, invasion, occupation... war! Someone should melt the wannabe-czar's face with this!
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
19. DIVIDE & DISSOLVE - Systemic
    
    
    
    Black Native American and Maori girls unite against the state of the world! A ridiculously over-amplified duo playing instrumental Sludge / Doom / Noise Rock with interludes of looped Jazz saxophones and keys against the white supremacist system. It's a good sign that a band with this specific niché premise can even exist in today's Metal environment. The actual execution of Divide and Dissolve's raw and real fourth album however is even better. Crushing!
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
20. NI - Fol Naïs
    
    
    
    Is Benoit Lecomte the MVP of this TOP 23? The bass player did not only play the acoustic four strings on both PoiL Ueda albums, but is also plugged-in member of the absolutely loony Avantgarde Math Noise Metal band Ni. Their delightfully heavy new coo-coo complex instrumental album sounds pretty much like its hilarious cover looks and totally fits its Old French title, which translates to "Born Mad".
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
21. THE NECKS - Travel
    
    
    
    The great mysterious question lingering on my mind when listening to The Necks is whether the Australian trio even needs to prepare or concentrate on a certain mood before they press record, or if this kind of almost spiritually hypnotic Post Jazz just comes out naturally in up to over twenty minutes long jams when you put these seasoned players into one room. Piano/organ, upright bass and drums - plus some overdubs and post production - forming transcendent signals and imprinting it into your bloodstream. (Look how I snuck all song titles into that sentence!)
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    


22. CAZAYOUX - Cazayoux
    
    
    
    My number one exclusively uplifting feel-good studio release of the year hails from Texas. The self-titled debut album of drummer Forest Cazayoux'  big band is grooving with a many-layered, rich and smoothly produced amalgam of infectiously funky instrumental Psychedelic Latin Afro-Beat Jazz Rock Fusion. This sweet and spicy record bursts with amazing individual performances from innumerable instruments, yet noone steals the spotlight too much from the ensemble as a whole, which is the sparlking star of the show.
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
23. HENRIK LINDSTRAND - Klangland
    
    

    

    Need a score to turn any everyday situation into emotionally complex, melancholically longing arthouse cinema? Swedish composer Henrik Lindstrand's sat down at his piano and composed a roundel of achingly beautiful melodic pieces, which accompanied by a sixteen-piece string ensemble will give you exactly that. Contempory Classical music which captures the fugitiveness of the moment in genuine purity.
    
    
    
    
    
    
    

    favorite MUSIC 2023 - all my lists:

    TOP 23 albums   |   TOP 7 live albums   |   TOP 5 reissues
    TOP 7 non-album releases   |   TOP 23 live shows

MUSIC 2023: top 7 non-album releases

Here's the (almost) best of the rest category. As always this ranking only consists of releases, which I own in some physical form. Like the title says here's the top seven of everything which is neither a studio nor live album. Re-issues are also excluded, while split albums form an exception from the rule. So taken into consideration were singles, EPs (I know, the distinction between album and EP can be foggy sometimes), split releases and compilations. And damn, I almost put Effluence's "Liquified" at the top, even though I heavily argued that it's indeed an album before. But then I realized that it already had been out there as a CD in 2022, so it didn't qualify anyway.

TOP 7 non-album releases 2023:

1. LAIBACH - Love Is Still Alive
   
   
   
   If you ever wanted to fail really badly at something, just try to unravel and seperate all levels of  irony and earnestness, of ridiculous fun and highbrow art in the work of Laibach! On its own their "Iron Sky: The Coming Race" soundtrack walking bass Country song couldn't be a greater cliché, yet it's also a fitting and successful homage to the movie "Dark Star". But then in the next step turning this song into a full-blown eight-part space odyssey, which travels through all kinds of styles and moods is borderline ingenious. The sheer fact of this being from the same group stunning us with the deeply moving orchestral "Alamut" performance this year, makes the EP even better.
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
2. OTAY:ONII - 夢​之​駭​客 Dream Hacker
   
   
   

   Few artists have impressed and touched me as profoundly as Chinese-American singer and experimental musician Lane Shi Otayonii this year. Her performance at Roadburn already won my ranking of favorite festival shows and this new mini album, which consists of entirely different songs than she played there,  came within a whisker of repeating that victory. On "Dream Hacker" her range of inspiration and expression between Eastern tradition and Western Pop culture seems more boundless and unpredictable than ever. Not from this world!
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
3. ZAÄAR / SPINTRIA - Genesis of Cycplopean Sorcerer
   
   
   

   The secret to a great split release is combining artists, who feel like different sides of the same coin, so their individual contributions add up to more than just the sum of playing times. WV Sorcerer Productions bringing together Belgian primeval Free Jazzers Zaäar and Tennessean trio Spintria's wild genre hopping from Drone and Dungeon Synth to Prog, Metal, Grind and Jazzcore is a paramount example of how this is done. Both bands' longtracks alone are already fantastic, but the whole of this barbarically beautiful LP is an epic Avantgarde masterstroke.
    
   
   
   
   
   
   
4. SARMAT - Dubious Disk
   
   
   

   And now that we have entered the world of musical Avantgarde extremism it's only logical to continue with Sarmat's debut CD/DVD, on which the band introduces us to their own brand of Extreme Metal / Jazz Fusion with a significantly extended rendition of the "Determined To Strike" album track "Disturbing Advances". In my book we can set this as the gold standard for this specific genre hybrid.
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
5. GGGOLDDD - PTSD
   
   
   

   Even more electronically minimalistic than "This Shame Should Not Be Mine" this EP also continues the album's concept by exploring life after the trauma caused by the abuse thematized there. Three songs of "PTSD" are new, the other two are alternative versions of tracks from older albums in the recent sound of the Dutch Post Post Everything band.
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
6. KING DUDE - Songs From The 1940s - vol 1 & 2

   
   

   

   You didn't expect to find a double 7" with Great American Songbook classics from the 1940's here? I wouldn't have bet on this happening either. But thanks to T.J. Cowgill bidding his alter ego King Dude farewell with his most Folk / Country release ever here we are now. Mostly performed just on acoustic guitar with ambient sprinkles on top and drenched in his typical cavernous echo, songs like "Oh Death" or "Riders In The Sky" expose their eeriest side, which makes this EP the perfect male companion (or counterpart) to Reverend Kristin Michael Hayter's "Saved!".
   
   

   
   
   
   
   
7. 夢遊病者 - Skopofoexoskelett
   
   
   

   With a plethora of Classical, Jazz and ethnic instrument guest musicians and singers the enigmatic Far Beyond Post Black Metal trio Sleepwalker returns with four tracks almost impossible to pin down in terms of genres or even music-historical time frame or continents associated with their inspiration. The only thing holding this amazing creative chaos back from ascending higher on this list is its dramatic lack of length. Being even shorter than the predeccessing "Noč Na Krayu Sveta" the twenty-five minutes of this so-called album seriously just aren't enough.
   
   

favorite MUSIC 2023 - all my lists:

TOP 23 albums   |   TOP 7 live albums   |   TOP 5 reissues
TOP 7 non-album releases   |   TOP 23 live shows

Me, voidhanging again, this time with FLESHVESSEL, ONKOS and SARMAT

You know why of all cruel things Nu Metal is a thing again? It's a matter of cosmic karmatic balance, the necessary nuisance, because there's so much excellent merging of Extreme Metal and Jazz out there! And one label (among others) definitely responsible for that wave is I, Voidhanger Records.  My latest little haul of CDs here leaves no doubt about that.

SARMAT - Dubious Disk (CD+DVD) (2023)

"Dubious Disk" is a misleading title for the EP, because this "strictly limited to 200 pcs and never to be repressed" EP actually consists of two discs: One is the CD with one seventeen and a half minutes long track and the second is a DVD (or is it even really with an mp4 file on it?) with the same thing on video plus a couple of short behind the scenes interview snippets.

That doesn't sound like much yet? Let me tell you that it fucking is, because this live studio jam is complete Jazz Death Metal insanity. The members of Sarmat are all active in other projects too, and the most prominent (normally mostly masked) face is bassist Steve Blanco from the mighty Imperial Triumphant, who also adds some grand piano here. Together with two guitar players, drums, trumpet and a Death Metal growler he unleashes an incredibly fluid and just super legit (Free) Jazz Metal inferno that is just spectacularly good. Both sides inform this insanity in equal measure and it's just absolutely glorious, among the best things you'll ever have heard in this direction.

So don't let yourself be held back by the short total running time! This is absolutely worthwhile. Plus you get the bonus of a brilliant artwork, which also - finally! - is printed on matte cardboard. Why not always, I, Voidhanger? Sorry, but the usual glossy digipaks are an aesthetic Irrweg!

It should be mentioned that the EP also documents the first time the band actually came together to play after working apart from each other on their full debut for years. And while the title  of the the track isn't reveales yet, it actually is a drastically enhanced double-length version of "Disturbing Advances" from that now also released album...

SARMAT - Determined To Strike (CD) (2023)

Surprisingly the album doesn't start that ultra jazzy at all. The first couple of tracks are rather full-on technical Death Metal with a lot of sick Nocturnus leads and the guitar providing weird sounding higher counterpoints to the very deep and guttural, yet astonishingly pronounced vocals. The most Jazz-adjacent things happening during the first two (of six) tracks are the typiccal Dissonant Death Metal usage of "Voivod chords", a brief piano intro and some solos / breakdowns with a Masvidalian/Schuldinerian Fusion feeling to it.
Naturally there's more than one part which would also feel at home on an Imperial Triumphant record, but while also being chaotic and brutal the overall sound of Sarmat seems a little bit less monolithic and oppressive and more colourful.

It's only in the middle of the third song "Arsenal Of Tyranny" however that we get into territory the "Dubious Disk" had prepared us for. Yet still the first trumpet solo doesn't actually scream "Look at me, I'm the Jazz thing!", but rather radiates a casual naturalness of that instrument shredding a nasty solo in this context, just as a guitar would do it.
From here on however the floodgates are wide open: Almost as a starting symbol we get meditating android Cynic background vocals, and now the free soloing on this album - by guitars, brass or bass - knows no boundaries. Sickness, brutally and Jazztasy all permanently outdo each other in a brain-melting firestorm vortex, until we reach the Dubious "Disturbing Advances" and the Sarmat circle closes in a final, mental spectacle.

I already know that chosing my favorite Metal albums of the year will be a daunting task in 2023. These Deathjazz cats however are definitely in the running!

ONKOS - Vascular Labyrinth (CD) (2023)

"I, Sycophantom, the fig-bearer, with Acid and Cologne,

My innumerable hands resting reverently on the illustrious Codex Aktinic.

Rummaging around in my giddy head, quivering like sparrows in the belfry."

So you thought we've already reached the end of the Avant-Garde flagpole? That couldn't be further from the truth! *laughs in Onkos*
This former one-man project turned seven-members ensemble goes about the whole Extreme Metal/Jazz  merger in a very singular way, which still was able to really surprise me.

"Vascular Labyrinth" is a holistically coherent package of artwork, cryptic lyrics and a creatively unlimited blend of Metal, Jazz, Acoustic, Folk, Neo Classical, Electronic etc. with one simple twist: While Progressive Extreme Metal is embedded in the core of most structures and arrangements, it's not mirrored in the instrumentation at all. We can hear brass and woodwinds, vibraphone, marimba and keyboards. There are multiple percussion sounds, but not a Rock drumkit. There's a guitar, but it's almost exclusively acoustic. In fact two of the nine tracks on this hour-long album are actually nothing more than this acoustic guitar, yet they are not mere intros or interludes, but feel as whole and important as every other song.

Very few instances remotely resemble any kind of Rock music at all. The only thing which actually always sounds Metal as rotting fuck are the gurgling Death Metal growls. On first listen that's a quite funny contrast, but once you're accustomed to the combination as it is presented here, it's just a very unique and compelling musical language.

Of course - once again - it helps to be accustomed with the John Zorns and Toby Drivers of this world. Or obviously labels like I, Voidhanger Records. But ultimately you won't find many record sounding even close to "Vascular Labyrinth". And that's nothing but an unequivocally good thing, because each and every minute of this huge statement of artistic nonconformism is fantastic! 

FLESHVESSEL - Bile Of Men Reborn (CD) (2020)

As if my brain wasn't already frizzling, here come Fleshvessel with their twenty-five minutes one-track EP, which employs a line-up of special ingridients quite similar to Onkos, yet here the unreadable band logo shirt is turned back from inside out again!

The Death Metal on this multi-part epic is brutal, viscious, cavernous... and paired with Classical piano / flute duets, 70's Prog, Doom, Jazzy Folk, Clerical vocals... well, actually much more musical information than one should be able to process after already voidhanging through the rest of this haul, but yes Baby, this also just is the shit!
No matter which unexpected turn this band takes, it's all done tasteful and expertly. Total freedom of expression in an uncompromising flow from Neoclassical Ambient to pummeling Death Metal grandiosity. Look how far we've come since My Dying Bride released "Symphonaire Infernus Et Spera Empyrium" in 1991! This is absolutely magnificent.

And yes, I have noticed that this release is already two years old and Fleshvessel have recently put out a full-length album. But that one I ordered from a different label, so it will reviewed in he next part of my cassette craze chronicles.

Until then please check out all this gloriously sick and amazing stuff! Nu Metal might be the universe's price for the sheer existence of these bands, but that's ok with me. I'm content to pay it.