Last Rites Presents: Our Most Anticipated Albums Of 2023, Part 2

Round 2 of our most anticipated releases of 2023 has so very much to offer for most any sensible fan of heavy metal: horror, war, power, misery, redemption, toy recalls, and one of the most eye-gougingly repellent metal album covers we’ve seen in a decade (clearly and carefully rendered with the sole purpose of sating our interminable thirst for bitching and moaning all dang day.)

With only one segment left—slated for Friday—now might be a good time to prep for sweating like adorable pigs smothered in the wooliest of blankets if you haven’t seen your most anticipated release listed yet. God bless the hail mary?

King Diamond / Mercyful Fate

TBD; Metal Blade

Here’s what I had to say in part 1 of our Most Anticipated Albums from January 2019:

“The only thing that stands in the way of us getting a new King Diamond album in 2019 is Kim Bendix Petersen’s boundless capacity for thoroughness. On March 29th, 2018, King conducted a very lengthy interview with Eddie Trunk where it was revealed that 80% of the new album’s storyline was complete and Andy LaRocque was on the way to Texas to commence work on the music in King’s home studio. Nine months could be enough to see a full record’s worth of new material finalized, but I’d still say there’s about a 50% chance that the album won’t see the light of day until December or early 2020 because Andy and King are voracious sticklers.”

Here’s what I had to say in part 1 of our Most Anticipated Albums from January 2020:

“But yes, there’s a ways to go before the—news flash—first part of this two-album concept finally hits ears. In fact, Andy LaRocque recently disclosed the rather unfortunate truth that there are only ‘four or five [songs] in the loop,’ with a number of other ideas currently swimming around King’s head. Additionally, a portion of the start of 2020 will now be devoted to—holy shit again—the reunion of Mercyful Fate for some exclusive European dates. Pretty tough to complain about that element, because that could also lead to new Fate material? Anyway, both King and Andy are sticking to their ‘late 2020’ guns in interviews, but the likelihood I’ll be writing something King Diamond-related again for our most anticipated records of 2021 is floating somewhere around 80%.”

Here’s what I had to say in part 1 of our Most Anticipated Albums from January 2021:

“Barring some grim, unforeseen Three-Body Problem alien takeover scenario or something equally as inauspicious, it’s going to happen in 2021—this year we will see and hear The Institution, the first of a brand new two-part King Diamond album, and based on a few hints from key members, we will witness a brand new Mercyful Fate record as well. From Hank Shermann’s recent post on social media: ‘All cylinders fired up for 2021 // Mercyful Fate // solo album and much more I can’t talk about.’”

Here’s what I had to say in part 1 of our Most Anticipated Albums from January 2022:

“Who the hell knows. I suppose I’ll just go ahead and expect we’ll meet up right here in a very similar spot in January 2023. Thankfully, both of King’s projects have provided well enough good-to-greatness to last fans a lifetime. Stay heavily patient!”

And now, here’s what I have to say in part 2 of our Most Anticipated Albums for January 2023:

There is absolutely no way we will see a new King Diamond and / or Mercyful Fate album in 2023. In fact, if either band releases a new album this year, our very own Zach Duvall will eat 70 chili dogs inside one week while walking around Central Park wearing a shirt that reads “THE NEW YORK METS WILL ONLY WIN TEN GAMES THIS YEAR.” [CAPTAIN]

Quality Confidence Factor: The Titanic Sinks At The End Of The Film

REDEMPTION – I Am The Storm

March 17; AFM Records

As a band, Redemption has navigated its share of trials and tribulations, from Nick van Dyk’s battle with cancer to guitarist Bernie Versailles’ own struggle with unexpected illness to the loss of longtime vocalist Ray Alder to his full time gig with Fates Warning. And, through it all, Nick and his crew have done such a wonderful job of focusing on the strength that comes from struggle. It’s kind of what they’ve always been about, so whenever some unfortunate circumstance has threatened to waylay them, they’ve gathered their strength together and fought through to the light on the other side.

And now, after nearly five years with a consistent lineup that includes vocalist Tom Englund and keyboard phenom Vikram Shankar, Redemption appears to be poised to make good on all that optimism.

There’s not a whole lot of information out there yet on Redemption’s upcoming eighth LP, I Am The Storm, which might be a reflection of new label AFM’s PR (or lack of it), but the band’s website is behind, too, their MR page has only the barest details, and their Wikipedia page has nothing on the new record. Such a sparse smattering in the lead up is usually a bad sign, but we are a little early yet and there is, at least, that most basic info, including a release date and a lead single with a video, the latter of which is a terrific sign if it’s at all indicative of the album around it.

“I Am The Storm” is everything a Redemption fan wants from a lead single. It’s powerful and melodic and dynamic and about as heavy as one could fairly expect from a prog metal song. Englund sounds amazing and Shankar’s keys play a prominent role in building a massive energy fully realized by a nightsky-ripping lead from van Dyk. [LONE WATIE]

Quality Confidence Factor: 90%

MINENWERFER – TBD

TBD; Osmose Productions

Minenwerfer garnered plenty of well-deserved praise for 2019’s epic, Alpenpässe. It was seemingly a staunch departure from the black/death/thrash the band have been hammering away at for over a decade now. The much more somber, melancholic approach focused on the vast, isolated, snow-capped mountainous fronts of World War I. A casual listen across their discography would understandably mark Alpenpässe as a shift in the band’s sound, but it’s really par for the course in terms of the band’s goals.

Every release focuses on a different aspect, front, or division from World War I, and the music is written to best reflect the topic. From the shells and gas of the trenches on Volkslieder to the ironclad naval barrage on Nihilistischen to the aerial thrash with dogfighting solos on the Der Rote Kampfflieger EP, Minenwerfer are crafting a discography that is slowly building a more complete vision of the war piece-by-piece, throwing their listeners right into the mud, blood, and guts of the front. Wachtmeister Verwüstung’s solos, in particular, have a knack for coloring each release with just the right overtones to drive the focus of the subject home–Compare the long, soulful notes on Alpanpässe to the soaring blitzkrieg on Der Rote Kampfflieger.

Alpanpässe did mark a watershed moment for the band in terms of a massive leap in ability to convey the mood they’re reaching for–much like their German, it has improved with dedication to crafting the most authentic World War I experience black metal can convey. Plenty of bands have, in recent years, turned their attention to the Great War, but none quite touch the attention to detail, or, more importantly, the music in the way Minenwerfer do.

It is equally pleasing to note that the band have already promised that their follow-up effort won’t be Alpanpässe Pt. II. As breathtaking as the album is, it would be a shame to see a band with such talent for shaping the mood of their muse pigeonhole themselves. They take their time with each release, hell, even if it doesn’t actually come to fruition in 2023 I will gladly wait to see what they’ve got cooking within the armor of the Sturmpanzerwagen. Go back and listen to some of those earlier releases–Minenwerfer are the real deal, keeping the past alive amongst the smoke of the shells, the chloride gas, the burning diesel, and the stench of the rotting young souls so confidently and arrogantly thrown to the meat grinder of the First World War. [RYAN TYSINGER]

(P.S. It would be awesome if the records came with a corresponding recommended reading list in the liner notes!)

Quality Confidence Factor: 95%
Will It Actually Release This Year Confidence Factor: 65%

DANGEROUS TOYS – TBD

TBD; label not announced

It’s been 28 years since the last Dangerous Toys album, 1995’s The *Rtist Formerly Known As Dangerous Toys, which was the band’s (surprisingly solid) foray into 90s-styled alternative rock…

…which means it’s been 30 years since the last Dangerous Toys album that sounded like Dangerous Toys, which was 1993’s Pissed. On the first three records, these Texans kicked out jams that sounded like a Southern boogie Guns N’ Roses, all funky bloozy swagger and Jason McMaster’s soaring wail. The first album has both of Toys’ “hits” – the rollicking backdoor-man tale of “Teas’n Pleas’n” and the Alice Cooper tribute “Scared” – but for my money, 1991’s Hellacious Acres is the band’s best, even with the unnecessary cover of “Feel Like Makin’ Love.” (As if any cover of that song could ever be deemed “necessary.”) Aside from that track (and maybe the ballad “Best Of Friends”), that album pretty much smokes, with kickassery like “Gunfighter” and “Line ‘Em Up” defining what this band was capable of. Unfortunately, when Acres arrived, the tides were turning, and overnight, nobody wanted skinny longhairs or catchy hard rockers like “Gypsy (Black & Blue Valentine)” anymore.

In the decades since, the Toys have put forth a few live records, and they’ve been slowly but steadily creating new music, according to sporadic reports. (A few new songs have found their way into the band’s equally sporadic live shows, including “Hangman Boogie” last February.) McMaster has kept busy with various projects – Broken Teeth, Ignitor, Howling Sycamore, and more – and recently, he made many a Blabbermouth headline as a last-minute fill-in for both Accept’s Mark Tornillo and Armored Saint’s John Bush in the span of a month or so. As near as I can tell, the line-up from Pissed is still intact (which wasn’t the case for *Rtist), and YouTube footage confirms that those new songs sound like vintage Toys. They’ve been working on this one for so long that a 2023 release date seems like a pipe dream, but I’ve waited for thirty damn years, so the kid inside me who wore out Hellacious Acres for years straight is keeping his fingers crossed… [ANDREW EDMUNDS]

Quality Confidence Factor: 75% confident that it’s good…
but only 20% confident that it will actually come out this year.

UNLEASH THE ARCHERS – TBD

Photo by: Shimon Photo

TBD; Napalm Records

Without a doubt, North America’s best power metal band really shook things up on their fifth album, 2020’s Abyss. Celebrated not just for Brittney Slayes’ incredible voice but also for its full-on riff fest, Abyss’ immediate predecessor, Apex, quickly became a modern genre staple. Abyss, on the other hand, was an absolute shock to the system thanks to at least two of the album’s first three singles, “Soulbound” and “Legacy,” and the sharp turn to a more diverse, rock-oriented vibe that they represented.

In hindsight, Abyss shouldn’t have been the shock that it was — after all, Apex itself was a sharp turn from Unleash the Archers’ three prior albums. Yet Apex was so widely celebrated, even by those outside the very specific world of power metal, that it seemed entirely logical that the band would follow it up with an Apex Pt. II. That they didn’t required a mental leap from me to make that initial connection with Abyss. But it wasn’t long before I began to appreciate the more diverse songwriting and the way in which that approach suited Slayes’ voice. In some sense, with remnants of their melodic death metal past still intact, the sound the band embraced with Apex was hardly traditional North American power metal, so some hybridity was already there. Nonetheless, the difference between the two records is obvious.

Unleash the Archers announced that they were writing the follow-up to Abyss back in May 2022 and the fact that we don’t know quite what to expect sounds about right from where I am sitting. Regardless of where the band takes its sound next, I am fairly confident that the leap will be worth it. [CHRIS C.]

Quality Confidence Factor: 85%

DEMONIAC – TBD

TBD; Edged Circle Productions

Apologies for squeezing this in, but the news just dropped yesterday that Valparaíso, Chile’s Demoniac have promised a new album in 2023. Coming in off their 2020** thrash epic So It Goes, Demoniac are primed to solidify themselves as a modern thrash great. Things have stayed busy in the interim: Demoniac signed to Edged Circle Productions and received a full reissue of their first two albums, the band recorded a live DVD of So It Goes played in its entirety, and mainman Javier Ortiz setting up his own Nube Negra Productions imprint to release his projects (one of which happened to secure my album of the year this past year).

The band don’t just play thrash, they speak it–there’s a language all its own. It’s artful without ever losing the essence of a thrasher’s soul, that need for speed that pumps in the veins of Valparaíso’s metal. I’ll let Demoniac have the last word. [RYAN TYSINGER]

Quality Confidence Factor: 97%

HOST – IX

February 24; Nuclear Blast

I’m guessing you’re well aware of the fact that Paradise Lost threw one hell of a curveball back in 1997 with their sixth full-length, One Second. It had only been two years since the release of the very well received Draconian Times, and dropping something so… well, unlike that record and so synth-driven was about as bold a move a metal band could make in the late ‘90s. Of course, metal fans were and still are no strangers to shifts into much more commercial waters, but Paradise Lost morphed into a harder-edged Depeche Mode seemingly overnight—a move realized to maximum capacity two years later with the even dancier Host. The band has long since admitted to sailing without a compass inside those radical years, but despite the fact that most Paradise Lost diehards would concede they’re quite happy to have a more “classic” sounding PL to come home to in the modern age, a significant portion of those fans still enjoy and regularly spin the innovative synth records.

Enter Host, the new project pieced together by Greg Mackintosh (guitars, synth, programming) and Nick Holmes (vocals) amidst a prolonged pandemic downtime, and an ideal drop zone for anyone who misses the gloomy synth-rock face of Paradise Lost that owes as much to Depeche Mode and Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark as it does records like Concrete Blonde’s Bloodletting and Clan of Xymox’s Creatures. Expect a more modern edge to the overall design, though, as Mackintosh and Holmes seem just as keen about looking forward as they do to paying homage to the past, which once again links the two to that familiar old adage: Fortune favors the bold. [CAPTAIN]

Quality Confidence Factor: 85%

METALLICA – 72 Seasons

April 14; Blackened Recordings

Anything new related to Metallica since, oh, about the time of the first Gulf War, has involved both musical and… other aspects. When those other aspects outweigh the music, they might as well read like a set of Seinfeldica episodes: The Haircuts, The Snare, The Hurdy Gurdy, The Armani Bag, The Clipping, The Snow White Lyric, The Some Kind of Monster, THE LULU, etc. etc. etc. When post-80s Metallica stumbles or outright fails, they usually do so spectacularly and/or hilariously.

But in the rare moments over the last 30-plus years when they have offered music of quality, it’s been… pretty good! Despite the mess of its production, Death Magnetic remains extremely solid, and if Hardwired… to Self-Destruct had been edited to about its best two-third it’d handily be their best record since the 80s.

So here comes Metallica in 2023 with 72 Seasons, and if the early returns are any hint, it might deliver some musical fun and embarrassing calamity tidbits all in one. The only thing we’ve heard from it so far is “Lux Æterna,” an extremely concise and catchy bit of NWOBHM worship that feels like old dudes trying to recapture their youth, and at least here there’s nothing at all wrong with that. Great choice for a first single, and about as promising as we could hope.

As for the potentially embarrassing side… what the hell were they thinking with that cover art? More than three decades after paying tribute to Smell the Glove they’re asking the question, “How much more yellow could this be?” The answer, of course, is none. None more yellow. And what’s with all that stuff? Why is it all burnt? Why does it look like something escaped from the crib? Why the broken guitar? Did Bobby Knight throw that chair? Is Rosebud somewhere just out of the frame? What kind of beer was that? We demand answers… in the form of a completely nonsense Lars Ulrich interview in which he is obviously making up answers on the spot and trying desperately not to laugh.

Buckle up for silliness, and hopefully a few good tunes. [ZACH DUVALL]

Quality Confidence Factor: 50%
Media Circus Factor:

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