HyperX64

With the shitshow that was the year 2023 now well and truly behind us, I want to share with you my top five metal releases that dropped harder the tuning they play in.

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Before I start with the list, I should note that I'm not a musician or an expert on music — I just know what I like, and this list reflects my opinion based on how much I've listened to the music contained in this list.

Surprisingly also, is that most if not all of the bands in this list are acts I've discovered through 2023.

Now that we have that nugget out of the way, let's get, as Marty McFly would day, Heavy.

1. "Ashen" by Humanity's Last Breath

This album came out in early August but it didn't pop up on my radar until early September and it's been an almost daily listen for me since.

Spotify recommended this album to me after I'd been listening to + den spanska känslan + by Vildjharta, and I later learnt that both Calle Thomer and Buster Oldenholm are members of both bands.

Me: "Why does this sound so familiar?"

Also me: "Oh, they have some of the same band members. That would be why!"

The whole album is a banger from start to finish, full of end of the world chaotic energy. My favourite tracks are:

Linger
Lifelees, Deathless
Instill
Labyrinthian (the breakdown around the three minute mark is delightful)
Death Spiral

2. "I Don't Want to Be Here Anymore EP" by Harroway

I'd started seeing promoted posts on Instagram somewhere around March for one of the tracks included in the EP, Parasite.

Having not heard of the band before, I started looking them up and found out they're from New South Wales. Whenever I learn that something I enjoy is from my own country, I dislike my country a little bit less.

The full EP launched in April and while it's relatively short (five tracks, roughly 20 minutes long), it's also another banger from start to finish.

My top tracks from this EP are Impulse, for the mad part between 2:17 and 2:50, and Once More for the delicious infusion of violins and synth that go hard with the existing instrumental.

As part of their EP launch, Harroway toured Australia and I was pissed I missed out on seeing them at the Crown & Anchor (because I'm not one of those pricks that go to things when they're sick).

They're coming back in April, so it's not all bad.

3. "The Seventh Sun" by Bury Tomorrow

While at work in February with music videos playing in a YouTube window, autoplay recommended the track Heretic by Bury Tomorrow.

Some months earlier, my Twitch community and I decided on what to refer to ourselves as (because every community has got to have its own name, right?) and the name we settled on: Heretics.

It was inspired by Warhammer 40,000: Darktide which I'd been playing a fair bit and Slipknot's The Heretic Anthem but whatever.

Anyway, the Heretic music video is playing and I'm headbanging in the office. Suffice to say this track remained on my regular playlist until the full album dropped in March, along with Abandon Us, and Boltcutter.

I'd started listening to more Bury Tomorrow from that point and had hard time deciding which clean vocalist I liked more — Tom or Christian — who are both equally as talented as each other.

4. "A Gradual Decline in Morale" by Kim Dracula

Another YouTube autoplay recommendation following a weekly scheduled stream. The track Seventy Thorns featuring Jonathan Davis of KoRn came up, and I was instantly taken aback by the impressive vocal range of Kim Dracula along with the interesting blend of music styles.

It's fast paced one minute, then dropped the bass into Trap beats, changing up the groove for something a bit Nu-metal as the vocals of the legendary Jonathan Davis kick in right before the speed picks back up to throw in some trumpets for shits and giggles.

We both described the track as musical ADHD, a description that would remain consistent in the next Kim Dracula track recommendation, Make Me Famous.

Before you run off to watch the music video for Make Me Famous, it features some pretty intense scenes involving mass shootings as a bit of societal commentary.

The music itself blends elevator jazz, a saxophone stinger, trap beats, and various metal abd rock styles along with Kim's hyperactive vocal range.

I'm delighted to say the full release is just as wild as these two tracks, both in terms of musical influence and the messages contained within the lyrics.

Over the months that followed since watching the first two music videos, I went down the rabbit hole of listening to a lot of Kim Dracula's covers including Paparazzi originally by Lady Gaga.

5. "The Death We Seek" by Currents

Opening with the titular track, featuring a fast paced and lyrically relatively relevant banger.

The sky, it swells and sings.

Begging for death at the hands of our misery.

Blind pride was our disease.

Do you accept your fate?

By the time I'd listened to the album from my Spotify recommendations, it had been out for about two months already so I was a bit late.

But that doesn't really matter.

The opening track has me tapping my fingers against my desk at work like drums to the dismay of my colleagues nearby who can't hear the track in my headphones.

Upon discovery, this was also on repeat for a very long time.

Honourable Mentions

The following don't fit into my personal top five list, or is a single, but still warrant a mention somewhere.

"The End Beyond Doubt" by Bong Coffin

I don't usually fuck with doom or sludge metal style music because if you haven't guessed from the above entries, I'm into the hyperactive, breakdown heavy type music that gives you the feeling of wanting to smash something.

But Bong Coffin hits a bit different here.

Their first full major release titled The End Beyond Doubt features some really low-tuned instrumentals, nerdy lyrics and themes, and one of my long-time good mates as the vocalist.

The instrumental tuning, particularly the bass, scratches that itch of low bass notes and the drawn out distortion from modern electric guitars which makes your brain tickle that without the context of heavy music, you would think is just white noise.

Also, the name of the track titled Ganjalf is a prime example of nerds being clever little fuckers as far as marketing goes.

There's a lot behind the scenes with the band and how it all comes together that I wont detail here, of all the bands he's been in that I've known him, this is the first he's done the vocals full-time with.

I'm unbelievably proud of him stepping out of his comfort zone as a guitarist and into a vocalist role.

"+ den spanska känslan +" by Vildhjarta

This doesn't qualify for the top five releases list because it's a single, although I suspect we're likely to see a full album from Vildjharta sometime in the next few months — and if YouTube comments are to be trusted, they'll disappear for another 10 years before releasing another banger.

Some look at the genre Djent unfavourably, be it in jest or going full into the "djent is not a genre" gatekeeper opinion mode, but Djent is something I've come to really enjoy thanks mostly to this track.

As noted earlier when talking about Humanity's Last Breath, some of the lineup play in both bands, so if you've got this far and listened to HLB you will see what I mean about the familiarity.

This track got all the hyperactive stuff that makes my brain happy: breakdowns, insane drumming, the guitar noises that could only happen as a result of palm muting, and an abundance of melodic variety to throw you off your game when you first listen to it.

Oh, and it's in Swedish which I have no understanding of but it sounds fucking cool.