Best New Music 2023 edition

How was Rökflöte? Better/same/worse than Zealot Gene?
IT's much better in my opinion, more flute and the guitar has more presence too. It reminds me to Roots to Branches sometimes. Ian voice is limited these times so some songs have very good instrumental passages. Some folky and some prog. It's a very good album :cool:
 
So far, the only thing in 2023 worth mentioning is
Metallica - 72 Seasons;
Riverside - ID.entity;
The National - First 2 Pages of Frankenstein

@The_7th_one Thanks for those list, I had no idea The Answer had new album. TBH, I have heard only first two some 10 years ago but I loved them both!
 
MY FAVOURITE MAY ALBUMS:

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  • Hawkwind - The Future Never Waits (Prog Rock /Space Rock)
  • Tanith - Voyage (Metal)
  • Sweet & Lynch - Heart & Sacrifice (Hard Rock)
  • Yes - Mirrors to the Sky (Prog Rock)
  • Axel Rudi Pell - The Ballads VI (Metal)
  • Bend the Future - Sounds So Wrong (Jazz Rock)
 
Right now enjoying Duff McKagans new EP. Sound nice and good, but nothing special.

Have also given Metallica and Lucassen’s Supersonic revolution a listen, buth both need more time
 


Sacred Outcry is a Greek power metal band that had one previous album under their belt, but the bass player put together a completely new lineup for this release, Towers Of Gold, including legendary Lost Horizon singer Daniel Heiman (who will apparently sing for any Greek band who wants to pay him these days!). The lyrics are all in English and Heiman doesn't have an accent.

This is really well-executed power metal that takes obvious influence from Maiden, Helloween, and Gamma Ray, but forges its own path with unique riffs and unusual guitar harmonies, and a very epic light & shade approach to the songwriting, including lots of great melodic guitar interludes. I also like how the drums don’t just lapse into rote double-bass patterns all the time — there’s some much richer rock drumming happening here.

Daniel Heiman isn’t for everyone, but damn if he doesn’t sound great. He’s one of the few histrionic wailers who can actually sell the squeals to me, and he sounds fantastic on the normal-register stuff where he actually spends most of his time here. I still spin those Lost Horizon albums on occasion, and he sounds like he’s barely aged a day in the last 20 years.

I'm only 3 listens in, but this is already my favorite power metal album since Orden Ogan's Final Days from 2021, and it may end up surpassing that one in the end.
 
MY FAVOURITE JUNE ALBUMS:

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  • The Ocean - Holocene (Metal)
  • Eydís Evensen - The Light (Classical Crossover)
  • Envy of None - That Was Then (Alt Rock)
  • Black Sabbath - Live Evil Super Deluxe Edition (Metal)
  • Eloy - Echoes from the Past (Prog Rock)
  • Marillion - Seasons End Super Deluxe Edition (Prog Rock)
 
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If you're into that, the new Cattle Decapitation album is pretty great.

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Nothing new, really, everything that you'd expect from their current MO is there - visceral misanthropy, ridiculous technicality, brutality to the max, haunting atmospherics (and Travis' doomy cleans), but it's stil worth giving a listen, IMHO.

Somebody commented under a review - "It takes the best parts of the last three: The brutality and technicality of Monolith, the nihilistic atmosphere of Anthropocene and the progressive melodic approach of Death Atlas." and I tend to agree.
 
MY FAVOURITE JULY ALBUMS:

I have no listen too many albums this month but there are a few that I liked me:

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  • Blaze Bayley - Damaged Strange Different and Live (Metal)
  • Wishbone Ash - Alive and Rockin' (Hard Rock / Prog Rock)
  • Agusa - Prima Materia (Prog Rock)
 
Maybe I'm the weird one, but I can't imagine listening to that much new music all the time. I like "my bands" and mainly stick to the same handful of bands and only seldom do I venture out and try and listen to something new. I mean that's kinda weird right? Am I broke-brained?
 
Maybe I'm the weird one, but I can't imagine listening to that much new music all the time. I like "my bands" and mainly stick to the same handful of bands and only seldom do I venture out and try and listen to something new. I mean that's kinda weird right? Am I broke-brained?
This is why I invented the Greatest Metal Album Cup and now the Greatest Metal Song Cup. Helps me break out of a rut and listen to new to me stuff.
 
I've been listening to the new Voyager album non-stop. It's seriously infectious. It's like if Depeche Mode were a prog band. Love it.

 
Maybe I'm the weird one, but I can't imagine listening to that much new music all the time. I like "my bands" and mainly stick to the same handful of bands and only seldom do I venture out and try and listen to something new. I mean that's kinda weird right? Am I broke-brained?
Not so weird. I used to be more like that, but I started feeling starved for new and interesting stuff, so I've been making more of an effort to listen to new things, and I usually run into one or two great unexpected albums each year. But I couldn't listen to 100+ new albums in a year like some of these folks do -- I just sample more things on a regular basis and only dig in deeper if something grabs me.
 
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