This is the end of the line.
Well, not really. There’s still a full two weeks left in the year, and you’re still bracket-busting your way towards crowning a Metal Madness 2013 tournament champion. But as far as the LR staff is concerned, 2013 is officially in the the books. Record labels are gearing up for 2014 promotional blitzes, bands are hitting the road, and we’re in the midst of our favorite pastime: Celebrating our excellent (and/or terrible) taste in heavy metal.
The Last Rites Top 25 was assembled from the year-end lists of seventeen staffers. Over 140 albums were nominated for consideration. Only the following selections received universal recognition as the true kings of 2013.
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25. THRAWSUNBLAT -WANDERER ON THE CONTINENT OF SAPLINGS
“There is sorrow and melancholy, but there is strength as well. This music calls out to bloodlines sunk deep into history and old salt sunk deep into wood. We call this music ‘folk’ because it calls to the people…Thrawsunblat has created something that can speak to all of us, whether we are from New England or Canada or Norway or even Arizona or Africa.” [K. Scott Ross]
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24. BEATEN TO DEATH – DODSFEST!
“What gives this mutant its superpowers, however, are the intangibles. With the exception of the vocals, this is a live recording, and that feeling of vitality and urgency is at the forefront for the entire duration. And the way the bass rattles behind the guitars like it’s being strummed by the double pedal is just…excuse me. I need a moment alone.” [Chris Redar]
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23. CULT OF LUNA – VERTIKAL
2013 was a good year for the old guard, and Cult of Luna was no exception. It may seem strange to attach an “elder” moniker to the evolving Swedish octet-turned-septet, but they totally deserve the props, as they celebrated their crystal anniversary this year. And these genre-definers did so with a decidedly different shift — the decade-old current lineup first lost their founding vocalist, then interpreted Fritz Lang’s Metropolis in a thematic companion concept piece to the film, also their most successful effort yet. Efficiently engaging amidst effortless expansion. [Matt Longo]
22. THE RUINS OF BEVERAST – BLOOD VAULTS: THE BLAZING GOSPEL OF HEINRICH KRAMER
“Blood Vaults is split into three parts, all of which sound like they could only come from the mind of Alexander von Meilenwald himself…Stylistically, the various elements featured on each track are not necessarily congruent with the album’s three ‘sections.’ Thematically, however, the sections are meant to mirror the attitudes on each chapter of the Malleus Maleficarum, as if the music itself is actually coming from Heinrich Kramer and the listener is trapped inside his warped, fucked-up state of mind.” [Konrad Kantor]
21. SUMMONING – OLD MORNINGS DAWN
“Old mornings do indeed dawn with this album; all of them, resplendent in amber and haze. Summoning’s music is both generative and locomotive: it both creates a world and then transports the listener to it. The past is not a shadow to be dimly regarded, but another world always on the verge of being accessed.” [Dan Obstkrieg]
20. BÖLZER – AURA
“There’s a brilliant bend at play here: Martial death metal riffage breaks itself into oddball Blut Aus Nord weirdism with a mere screw’s turn. It’s highbrow primitivism at its finest, foot-clubbed by Hellhammer yet spiraling skyward, propelling itself with charred-black madness entwined in deathtrenched groove.” [Jordan Campbell]
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19. SATAN – LIFE SENTENCE
“By today’s standards, Life Sentence stands far enough away from what most of our readers would consider extreme, it ain’t even funny. But experimenting with extremes holds a lot less significance during an age when you’ve got nuttiness such as a 107.3 The Wave soft rock band fronted by a Satanic pontiff competing for ears. Life Sentence doesn’t need to challenge new grounds in order to garner attention because it’s a superlative example of how fun, melodic, classic heavy metal is intended to sound; there’s simply no need for exaggerated experimentation.” [Michael Wuensch]
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18. MAGISTER TEMPLI – LUCIFER LEVIATHAN LOGOS
“What makes Magister Templi special, and by default also Lucifer Leviathan Logos, is how natural and right the music feels, a facet which is undoubtedly a result of the individuals. This band, and particularly their vocalist, succeeds because they are being themselves, and who they are is a group of charismatic, denim-n-leather, doom-obsessed acolytes of the original metal choich.” [Zach Duvall]
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17. PORTAL – VEXOVOID
“…most important of all, Vexovoid provides ample proof that the closer Portal gets to a conventional sound, the more crystal-clear its unconventional music becomes. Seriously, the better you can follow along with these songs, the harder it becomes to deny how perfectly fucked up they are.” [Dan Obstkrieg]
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16. VOIVOD – TARGET EARTH
“The cover’s clearer definition and overall vibrancy reflects the very performances themselves. It takes the confidence of three trend-bucking decades to succeed with music that is challenging by its very nature, and when our elder statesmen strike sparks, simultaneously working with and reflecting off one another, the effect is staggering.” [Matt Longo]
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15. ARSIS – UNWELCOME
“Last year’s free Leper’s Caress EP gave us evidence that the band still had some great moments left in them, and Unwelcome slams it out of the park. James Malone hasn’t sounded this earnest since A Celebration of Guilt, and the bandmates he has chosen to surround himself with sound like a unified whole instead of just a group of technically proficient players doing their own thing.” [K. Scott Ross]
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14. EXHUMED – NECROCRACY
“Band founder and guitarist / vocalist Matt Harvey is an old pro, knows what works within his chosen field, and delivers the goods. You want some thrashy gore metal with a certain degree of technicality and melody to go along with the brutality and dense production? Look no further than Necrocracy.” [Dave Schalek]
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13. SUBROSA – MORE CONSTANT THAN THE GODS
“No one else is making these tones; no one else is exploring these landscapes; and no one else is forming such an emotional, complicated cross section of American music.” [Zach Duvall]
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12. IN SOLITUDE – SISTER
“What puts Sister over the top, however, is the fact that the band absolutely nails the new sound that now paints the edges. The overall stance still smacks of In Solitude, but brazen nods to elder Mercyful Fate are mostly dropped in favor of a different brand of dark atmosphere – one that emphasizes an enjoyable collision between The Cult’s raw energy and The Mission UK’s goth-rock slant.” [Michael Wuensch]
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11. CLUTCH – EARTH ROCKER
“Clutch has never before achieved their live sound in the way they do here. They play loosely but heavily, full of the nuance and whiskey-freeness they possess in their natural setting while achieving that wonderfully Zappa-warped Zeppelin-by-way-of-Bad Brains sound. And [Neil] Fallon, more than ever before on record, sounds as half-a-bottle-deep and utterly maniacal as he does live—a reverend of rock possessed by the spirit that moves him, delivering zany-as-always lyrics that he obviously believes in to his very core.” [Zach Duvall]
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10. ATLANTEAN KODEX – THE WHITE GODDESS
“Infectious choruses, heavy galloping, and sweeping leads (the midpoint of “Sol Invictus” and the 3-minute mark of “Twelve Stars and an Azure Gown”: pant-soilingly epic) – The White Goddess is a masterful look at how to advance antediluvian metal principles into a modern work of epic grandeur. If we must begrudgingly take a front-row seat to the decaying “progression” of civilization, why not watch the curtain fall while listening to something that makes you feel as if you’re soaring above the collapse?” [Michael Wuensch]
9. TRIBULATION – THE FORMULAS OF DEATH
“Is The Formulas of Death too long? At seventy-five minutes, yeah, of course it is. But, as I’ve said before, it’s a hell of a lot easier to have sympathy for a band whose album is way too long because it seems like they just had too many cool ideas and couldn’t bear cutting them out than for a band that simply rides the same damn idea into the ground and doesn’t know when to quit.” [Dan Obstkrieg]
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8. VHÖL – VHÖL
“As far as the members of VHOL are concerned, there’s still hell & half-an-acre’s worth of fire left in the tank, but at this point they’ve all been in the game long enough that they probably couldn’t give a teensier shit about producing a conventional, bankable modern extreme metal album that appeals to a giant market. Yes, that’s obviously possible with younger bands, but one cannot exaggerate enough the benefit that an abundance of life’s harsh realities, combined with years of colliding with every genre imaginable can bring to the table for a collection of musicians such as this.” [Michael Wuensch]
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7. ALTAR OF PLAGUES – TEETHED GLORY AND INJURY
“Gone is the four-song structure, gone are the quarter-hour plus track lengths. Gone even is the green-and-brown earth-tone palate that defined the band both visually and aurally. Instead we receive the stark black-and-white aesthetic of the modern dancer, the sterile landscape of the concrete jungle, and the thrum of electronic machinery. And yet, the signature sound of Altar of Plagues is still present.” [K. Scott Ross]
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6. DARKTHRONE – THE UNDERGROUND RESISTANCE
“What The Underground Resistance teaches us, more than Transylvanian Hunger, Hate Them, or F.O.A.D., is that the Darkthrone name is about more than any one style or movement. It is about greatness, and the secret might be hidden in the album title. Sure, you could take “The Underground Resistance” at the face value of music in the underground resisting the pressure from external sources, but part of me thinks it is something else, that Darkthrone is resisting pressure from within the underground to do what is expected of them, and instead choose to do whatever the fuck they feel like, all the time.” [Zach Duvall]
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5. AOSOTH – IV: ARROW IN HEART
“This isn’t easy Satanism for soft people. Aosoth embody the essence of their religion in a way that few bands can even dream of. This isn’t easy black metal for soft people. But if you are willing to be destroyed, you may find the joy of darkness.” [K. Scott Ross]
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4. INQUISITION – OBSCURE VERSES FOR THE MULTIVERSE
“If a single band in black metal is more likely to inspire the loitering Guitar Center youths, I haven’t heard them. Dagon flutters, pulls, pinches, trills, bends, and generally shows an Olympic gymnast’s ability to contort all over his chosen apparatus, all without ever feeling wanky or failing to serve the song. The music is at its best when things get downright smartass with the listener, as if daring them to try to come up with something cooler. (You are hereby dared to beat the ‘answer’ riff in ‘Infinite Interstellar Genocide.’ You will not.)” [Zach Duvall]
• • • • •
3. ORANSSI PAZUZU – VALONIELU
“And that brings us to the most notable thing about Valonielu: despite the high quality of their first two albums, this is easily the best album that Oranssi Pazuzu has written to this point, and it truly cements them as one of the most exciting and purely rad bands in metal today.” [Zach Duvall]
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2. CARCASS – SURGICAL STEEL
“Naturally, it will be very tempting to label Surgical Steel as Heartwork II. To some extent, it is (come on, it’s an album in the same style), but Surgical Steel is a major shot of adrenaline in the arm of a tired genre.” [Dave Schalek]
• • • • •
1. GORGUTS – COLORED SANDS
“All I can say is that this is the type of music that must be heard at least once, and even if you come away not enjoying it, the notes within will have bent your perception of the possibilities of music, if only a little.
And that, more than anything else, makes this a Gorguts album.” [Zach Duvall]
• • • • •
There you have it: 25 of the greatest albums of 2013. Take a minute to tell us what we’ve missed, or fire away with your own list below.
Thanks for reading in 2013; this was a huge year for Last Rites, and you were the ones that made it possible. There are some exciting changes in store for 2014; let’s make some noise together.