What a weird year 2023 was. Underground and overground there were disappointments and even grievous crimes against audio. While a lot of albums traversed the “very good” to “great” range, truly brilliant albums were few and far between. Last year, we at The Subway were all hyping the same things and there was little doubt which albums would make our overall top ten (coming soon!), whereas this year we’ve mostly ended up siloed off in our own little bubbles and unable to find as much consensus. Nevertheless, I did manage to find ten underground gems so without any further ado, here are my favourite underground albums of 2023.
Honorable mentions (stuff that was too overground for The Subway):
- Che Aimee Dorval – The Crowned: the singer-songwriter and frequent Devin Townsend collaborator delivered a gorgeous slice of alt rock on her latest album.
- Steven Wilson – The Harmony Codex: a consummate work of electro-prog which sees Wilson reinvigorated and eclectic.
- Paramore – This is Why: from angsty emo mainstays to thoughtful pop rock, Paramore gave us a delightfully focused and matured release.
- Einar Solberg – 16: the Leprous frontman’s debut solo work weaved wonderful orchestral and electronica influences into his progressive sensibility.
10. The Anchoret – It All Began With Loneliness
Style: Progressive Metal (Mostly clean vocals)
Recommended for fans of: new Opeth, Caligula’s Horse, Steven Wilson, Pain of Salvation
The Anchoret showed everyone how debuts are done this year with this rollicking work of pure, distilled prog. With some incredibly virtuosic performances redolent of Watershed-era Opeth and The Raven That Refused to Sing-era Steven Wilson, while cultivating their own sound within that niche, It All Began With Loneliness has solos spewing from every orifice: guitar, keyboard, clarinet, sax, flute, all vying for your attention with the most insane performances you can imagine. Add to that an incredibly tight, jazz-influenced rhythm section and you’ve got a goddamn strong foundation.
While some vocal mixing choices hold The Anchoret back, diminishing solid lyrics and hooks and making me feel like I’m trying to fight that flaw when listening, It All Began With Loneliness nevertheless displays a level of compositional acumen that some bands will simply never achieve. That foundation alone makes The Anchoret one of the most exciting bands to emerge this year and I’m very much intrigued to see what they do next.
Recommended tracks: Unafraid, Forsaken, Stay
Related links: original review | Bandcamp | Spotify | Facebook
9. Alkaloid – Numen
Style: Progressive Death Metal (Mixed vocals)
Recommended for fans of: Obscura, Black Crown Initiate, old Gojira, Gorod
If you’re anything like me, you’ve always wanted a bizarre, epochal, cosmological, Lovecraftian prog death concept album from Supertramp, and I guess the closest thing we’ll ever get to that is Numen. This third full length sees Alkaloid groovier, weirder and more ambitious than ever before, veering into Kabbalism, geological time, cosmic horror and science-fiction.
Morean’s high-toned cleans are uniquely charismatic, making me want to hear Alkaloid’s take on “The Logical Song”, the noodly guitar on “Qliphosis” feels like it’s scrubbing my brain, “Clusterfuck” is just a goddamn groove, and there’s so much to enjoy here. While Numen would’ve benefitted from a little trimming of some of the weaker tracks, the core experience is nevertheless a grand work of bizarro progressive death metal.
Recommended tracks: Qliphosis, Clusterfuck, Alpha Aur
Related links: original review | Bandcamp | Spotify | Facebook
8. Haralabos Stafylakis – Calibrating Friction
Style: Progressive Metal, Modern Classical (Instrumental)
Recommended for fans of: Dmitri Shostakovich, Animals as Leaders, Igor Stravinsky, Earthside, The Dillinger Escape Plan
Harry Stafylakis’ deft fusion of classical music and progressive metal feels like a watershed for the genre. Utilising a small orchestra, with strings, woodwinds and brass, the result is like listening to Stravinsky or Shostkovich but with guitars and a drumkit; pianos djent, strings screech, woodwinds portend eerily, and moments of sublime beauty amidst the frightening, dissonant force of the compositions.
All of this makes Calibrating Friction a gloriously chaotic work, playing with atonality and melody in a way that reminds the prog fan of the mathcore pandemonium of The Dillinger Escape Plan or the technical djent madness of Animals as Leaders (indeed, Javier Reyes contributes some guest shred), and in its calmer moments, as in “Never the Same River”, the cinematic post-metal of Earthside. Harry Stafylakis has delivered a real game changer, a consummate blend of classical and prog to make something completely fresh.
Recommended tracks: Calibrating Friction, Never the Same River, Of Beauty / Of Brutality
Related links: original review | Bandcamp | Spotify | Facebook
7. The Mercury Tree – Self Similar
Style: Experimental Rock, Math Rock, Microtonal, Progressive Rock (Clean vocals)
Recommended for fans of: black midi, weird King Crimson, Kayo Dot, Radiohead, Battles, Squid
You want avant-garde? Experimental? Microtonal? The Mercury Tree have got you. Consummately blending the microtonal experiments of Spidermilk with their established noisy math rock stylings, Self Similar is a weird and challenging record but it might just be their best yet. Working on a 17-notes-to-the-octave scale, the sound is off-kilter, uncanny, and yet, within it, sublimity can be found.
As much as The Mercury Tree are experimental they’re not inaccessible, it’s more like rock music that sounds incredibly haunted, tapping into something sonically surreal. Music theory nerds will be in heaven and while Self Similar comes across as a more intellectualised way of making music, there’s nevertheless a core sense of melody and emotion underlying the compositions in a way that becomes surprisingly gripping and satisfying.
Recommended tracks: Grown Apart, Binary, After the Incident
Related links: original review | Bandcamp | Spotify | Facebook
6. Sermon – Of Golden Verse
Style: Progressive Metal, Alt Metal (Mixed vocals)
Recommended for fans of: Soen, Katatonia, Tool
Sermon continued to capitalise on the obvious potential shown in their 2019 debut, Birth of the Marvellous, on Of Golden Verse, cementing their sound as an intense, energetic and punchy take on progressive metal. Anonymous vocalist “Him” has a thundering baritone that cuts through in a manner both catchy and arresting—if ever a band name was appropriate, Sermon certainly encapsulates his urgent prophesying tone—while his guitar riffs and leads have an effective lucidity that belies their melodic force. Add to that an absolutely unhinged performance from James Stewart on drums and you’ve got a recipe for real prog brilliance.
Sermon have really managed to carve out their own compositional niche. While shades of Katatonia, Soen, and Tool linger in their music, they don’t really sound like any of those bands, bringing instead something far more high octane, urgent, and groovy, fulfilling a need that the progressive metal world didn’t know it had. Just listen to “Departure”, easily one of the best songs of the year, and you’ll see what I mean.
Recommended tracks: Royal, Light the Witch, Departure
Related links: original review | Bandcamp | Spotify | Facebook
5. Finsterforst – Jenseits
Style: Progressive Folk Metal, Symphonic Metal, Black Metal (Mixed vocals)
Recommended for fans of: Enslaved, Borknagar, Moonsorrow, Wilderun
Finsterforst always sound like their music is blasting out of the speaker system of Valhalla, geological in its heft, and this year’s plus-size forty-minute “EP” Jenseits is no exception, one enormous song in a four-piece suite. From Oliver Berlin’s thundering, lone cleans that open the work grandeur builds upon grandeur, with enormous choirs, sections of blackened intensity, and folkier contributions from flute, duduk and accordion, as well as the Wagnerian brass that thunders in accompaniment—few things you’ll hear this year will be as epic as this.
Finsterforst just nail that sense of epic, mythic grandeur—if Peter Jackson had wanted a prog metal soundtrack for The Lord of the Rings he couldn’t have done better than this. It’s impossible not to be swept up in the unstoppable rhythms, the lilting folk flavours, the rapturous symphonic work and those mountainous vocals. Like all of their work, Jenseits is an immersive feast for the auditory system.
Recommended tracks: It’s technically one long song, but start with Kapitel I – Freiheit
Related links: original review | Bandcamp | Spotify | Facebook
4. Rannoch – Conflagrations
Style: Progressive Death Metal (Mixed vocals)
Recommended for fans of: Persefone, Black Crown Initiate, Kardashev
Rannoch really came into their own on third album Conflagrations, cementing the melodicism of their progressive death by making clean vocals a staple alongside versatile harshes, pulverising riffs and relentless drumming (contributed by Dan Presland, ex-Ne Obliviscaris). The result is a polished, newly focused and more powerful Rannoch operating at the top of their game. The guitar solos on this album are some of the best I’ve heard all year—“Daguerreotype” has a legitimately jaw-dropping solo—effortless shred with an irrepressible sense of euphony.
Conflagrations is also more adventurous, daring to step outside the box, as on the Nine Inch Nails-esque instrumental “Earth-Recycle”, while the seventeen-minute closer “Threnody to a Dying Star” dares to abandon harsh vocals entirely and rely solely on Ian Gillings’ cleans, quite the gamble for a progressive death metal album, and one that reaps dividends. Every time I relisten to this album I’m struck anew by the sense of compositional vision underlying the album, and I know that Rannoch are going to continue impressing us for years to come.
Recommended tracks: Prism Black, Conflagrations, Threnody to a Dying Star
Related links: original review | Bandcamp | Spotify | Facebook
3. Ions – Counterintuitive
Style: Progressive Metal, Djent (Mostly clean vocals)
Recommended for fans of: Tesseract, VOLA, Haken, Arcane Roots’ Melancholia Hymns
Ions were a late revelation this year. Like a punchier, electro-oriented Tesseract with judiciously djenty riffs, polyrhythmic wonkery, enormous production and catchy vocal hooks, I swear these guys snuck some cocaine in this album or something because listening to it has proved addictive. There’s such a sense of energy and focus to the composition, and even the shorter tracks, which are often stumbling blocks for many bands, feel fully realised; Counterintuitive flows seamlessly.
The enormous synth atmospheres that suffuse each track give such a sense of scale, as do the massive vocals of Shorty Lago. I think what works for these guys is the immense sincerity of the project, there’s an emotional power to the compositions which I’ve found lacking in a lot of this year’s music—there weren’t so many releases that really made me feel but Counterintuitive does, and that’s some of the highest praise I can offer.
Recommended tracks: True Friendship, The Same as You, Out of Sight
Related links: original review | Bandcamp | Spotify | Facebook
2. TEMIC – Terror Management Theory
Style: Progressive Metal, Electro-Prog (Clean vocals)
Recommended for fans of: Caligula’s Horse, Maraton, Haken, Frost*, soft Devin Townsend
Prog’s latest supergroup blew away some pretty high expectations on their debut album. With a refreshingly light, synth-driven sound, galloping riffs and jaw-dropping performances, Terror Management Theory is equal parts catchy and complex. With Maraton singer Fredrik Bergersen tying everything together with his versatile melodies, at once both contemplative and belting it all out, while Gillette and Tejeida solo off one another with such effortless mastery that it’s hard not to be shocked anew on every listen, TEMIC manage that rare thing: complete synchronicity, you constantly feel like every member is on the same page.
There’s so many jaw-dropping moments and catchy choruses, to the point where I get a different track stuck in my head each day. Tejeida’s keyboard work and sound design prove a fresh focal point for the compositions to be constructed around, and each member of the group elevates all their peers, from Simen Sandnes’ spicy percussive grooves to Eric Gillette’s ludicrously mellifluous shred, to Bergesen’s infectious and soulful vocal performances. TEMIC are set to become a real force in the progressive metal scene.
Recommended tracks: Through the Sands of Time, Falling Away, Acts of Violence
Related links: original review | Bandcamp | Spotify | Facebook
1. Omnerod – The Amensal Rise
Style: Progressive Death Metal (Mixed vocals)
Recommended for fans of: heavy Devin Townsend, Between the Buried and Me, old Leprous
The Amensal RIse so quickly became a comfort album; in the same way that The Dillinger Escape Plan is comforting, a chaotic, intense and existential belter of an album, replete with all the catharsis that entails. Omnerod have outdone themselves and every other band this year on their third album, an unhinged work that takes Devin Townsend at his heaviest and most deranged and refracts it through a Between the Buried and Me sense of mania, with a touch of early Leprous’ fractured intensity for good measure. The riffs on this album are manic, Romain’s vocals are just perfect, the composition is frenetic… and yet the beauty, the lyrical depth, the sublimity that’s achieved is awe-inspiring.
Has any lyric this year gone harder than “hugging my inner child until they choke, righting wrongs once and for all”? And how much damage have I done to my vocal cords screaming “Freight by the wind like spores stuck in a storm, only time will tell where we are headed, we may tremble on the way there but we’re carried by-” [Editor’s note: he just wrote the whole song out so we cut it]? Omnerod haven’t just crafted an incredible album, they’ve made something that’s become a part of me, a sonic companion that articulates something felt but hitherto not understood. That’s the true test of art, and The Amensal Rise is certainly a work of art, as well as the greatest record of 2023.
Recommended tracks: Spore, Towards the Core, The Commensal Fall
Related links: original Review | Bandcamp | Spotify | Facebook
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The Progressive Subway's Official Top Ten Albums of 2023: A Report from the Underground - The Progressive Subway · January 11, 2024 at 16:58
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