Want some more catching up? Check out our look back at rock’s biggest releases from January to June 2023 here.
July
The buzz around Blur’s return earlier this year came and went rather swiftly (as it tends to do, let’s be honest), but at least The Ballad Of Darren made the fleeting moment worth it. To a degree, anyway; Blur are coasting on the legend of former Britpop titans nowadays rather than severely pushing boundaries, especially when Damon Albarn will likely receive far more acclaim from a modern, younger audience for his work in Gorillaz. But between the gauzy textures, the of-the-moment percussive patters and the sensibility of a band looking to grow old as gracefully as possible, Blur can squeak out a win, ultimately. It was a damn sight better than a lot of the other full-lengths July produced—another exercise in bloated self-indulgence entirely riding the coattails of bands from half a century ago on Greta Van Fleet’s Starcatcher; the continued redundancy of From Ashes To New, for whom Blackout continues their baffling crusade of dumpster diving for rap-metal scraps amid an already threadbare radio-metal landscape; and Butcher Babies somehow believing they’ve got enough ideas to comprise two full releases on Eye For An Eye… and …Till The World’s Blind. In boring edge-metal that’s entirely more posturing that substance, you’re probably owed a lobotomy if you’re actively seeking out over an hour of it from this lot.
As for the EPs released…it’d be nice to say they’re an all-around improvement, but it’s more like a mixed bag. Although Charlotte Sands’ Good Now is likely more of a teaser or a stopgap for her new album early next year, this kind of cut-rate Olivia Rodrigo fare makes you actively wonder how worth it that is. Among tracks dicing with pop-rock, pop-punk and various flavours of straight-up pop, there’s never a medium where Sands feels totally comfortable. You also get some pretty bad lyrics (the motor-mouthed skip through every ‘tough childhood’ touchstone on Lost is especially painful) that leave this is a rather flimsy reminder of why the whole ‘pop-punk soloist’ movement has flamed out in a hurry. KennyHoopla, meanwhile, continues to be the best name the whole scene has produced, even though another teamup with Travis Barker for BLINK & YOULL MISS IT// (see what they did there?) isn’t exactly a masterstroke of new ideas. Rather, it’s another eight minutes of material that illustrates a pair whose creative synergy keeps on giving, with three more pop-punk hits that feel far more at home in the genre’s energetic pantheon permanently lodged in the 2000s, than much of what like artists will put out to ‘reinvent the sound’. Decent stuff.
Elsewhere, Moodring solidly prologue what’s to come with Your Light Fades Away, another three-track package, but one which sees a shapeshifting metalcore element embraced and galvanised right at the front. The unmistakable blade of Bad Omens-core might be held dangerously close to their neck, but they largely avoid the most negative aspects of it. But let’s get real—the main attraction is Better Lovers, coming out of the gate swinging with God Made Me An Animal, and proving that Greg Puciato really can do no wrong. Here’s the vaunted melding of The Dillinger Escape Plan, Every Time I Die and Fit For An Autopsy in all its glory, armed with the first’s propensity for razor-wire slicing, the second’s riff-work fuelled by the force of the earth itself, and the third’s…presence in the mix? Yeah, it’s more a Dillinger and ETID thing overall, but you’re not complaining over a concentrated, compact 15 minutes of everything incredible about that scenario on full display. The energy; the roaring power; the combustibility that still feels held together in such a firm, airtight way; it’s hard to see what more anyone would want. Except, y’know, more of it.
August
You’d think for a band as well-liked as The Maine, the buzz for their self-titled album wouldn’t have been as quick to evaporate as it was. In truth though, their last couple of full-lengths have struggled to maintain much foothold, regardless of how generally good they were. As for this one…well, it’s not bad, but it similarly represents how The Maine’s slide into homogenous alt-pop soup is only continuing in earnest. At least they’re fairly good at it—i think about you all the time bears their expectedly excellent hook-craft the best of anything here—but there’s such a low-ceiling, low-stakes fog that drifts across the entire album, in ways that their past works have had the deftness to avoid. To anyone but the diehards, you’ll either continue to forget this in record time, or just feel the disappointment sink in even deeper.
Honestly, right up to release, you could’ve said the exact same thing about The Xcerts’ Learning How To Live And Let Go, but credit to them—they pulled it back somewhat. Yes, it’s nothing close to their best (and how could it be when they’ve got some of the most joyous, impactful songs in the Britrock canon?), and yes, Gimme and Jealousy are still terrible in the exact way that a built-for-TikTok-from-the-ground-up concession always will be, but there’s enough on the album as a whole that thankfully veers away from that. They’ve not lost their ear for a surging melody and the importance of earnestness gushing out thick and fast, which allows the likes of Ache and Lovesick to squat in range of their usual towering heights, even if not directly amongst them.
Elsewhere in August, Skindred earned a Top Five album seemingly out of nowhere with Smile, a feat that comes especially out of the blue when considering how disparate the live prowess tends to be from their recorded output. To be fair though, Smile is able to translate the fun of a freewheeling alt-metal skid through genre and sound better than they’ve tended to before, even if the key features remain a fat stack of grooves (even funnelled through some straightforward dub and reggae on L.O.V.E (Smile Please) and This Appointed Love, which is nice), and Benji Webbe’s tsunami of charisma. Speaking of which, it’s a similar story for The Hives, for whom evolution in the 11 years since their last album appears to be an optional feature. It isn’t really needed, mind, seeing as The Death Of Randy Fitzsimmons thrusts its scuzzed-up garage-rock with such force and panache that a lack of innovation is a feature rather than a flaw. Like, do you really want more from The Hives than a half-hour sweat-fest fueled entirely by its own rockstar preening? Didn’t think so.
Mammoth WVH also returned with their new album Mammoth II, with the contributions to the Van Halen legacy still falling predominantly on name alone. It’s as workable as this kind of hard rock gets, though you know for a fact that, without the famous family connections, its middling position wouldn’t even be a question. At least the artwork is original on this one; that’s a plus. Finally, there’s The Front Bottoms’ You Are Who You Hang Out With, which feels as though it’s coming when their era has well and truly run out of steam. It’d explain the fact that no one actually knew this even came out, but also for how middling their indie-rock and folk-punk feels now, despite Brian Sella having his hangdog lyrics on full display. Being deeply outside of its allotted time to crest is really what does this album in most of all, in many ways coming full circle to how The Maine found themselves stymied with their album. Regardless of appeal that’s still there, maybe a shelf life running up the clock is a more powerful influence.
September
Alright, Thirty Seconds To Mars—what the hell is this? What exactly was the point behind It’s The End Of The World But It’s A Beautiful Day, besides Jared Leto maybe wanting to rip something out with even less cultural worth than Morbius? This is every stereotype about how bad Thirty Seconds To Mars are lived down to in spectacularly succinct fashion—airy, barely-there pop fluff that owes most to a combination of the final dregs of Imagine Dragons’ well-poisoning, and Leto’s cultmaster ego that was often dicey as to whether he could pull it off, but now just seems entirely laughable. At least the opener Stuck might be memorable in an “Oh god, why are they still trying to do this?” sort of way, but between the hollow pop-rock ‘bombast’ elsewhere and Leto barely able to go a single line without his lower register’s cracks betraying him entirely, this is utter crap from top to bottom. At least Corey Taylor can sing, and has tangible charisma that gives even his least impactful swings on CMF2 a bit of weight. Yeah, it’s still not great—as an exercise in retro-leaning hard rock, there’s an inessential quality past the fact that it’s Taylor up front—but you could also do far worse for this kind of thing. Just like his debut a couple of years ago, maybe the outright hate is a little overstated here.
Beyond that though, September’s releases largely seemed to strike pretty highly. When the worst of them is Black Stone Cherry’s Screamin’ At The Sky, by virtue of being just another iteration on what’s been a serviceable and generally enjoyable southern- and hard rock sound from them, it’s hard to complain all that much. Among the indie and DIY-adjacent scenes, Angel Du$t’s Brand New Soul sat as a nice return for them, where some power-pop instincts and acoustic texture put them back on track as some prime fun-merchants to come from hardcore’s great expanse. Ultimately though, it’s hard to beat Sincere Engineer, whose new album Cheap Grills is precisely what you want from a culmination of scruffy, scratched pop-punk anthemia and an alternative ‘90s spirit that deserves vastly more attention than it got. Meanwhile, CLT DRP continue their crusade as one of alternative music’s most uncatogorisable gems on Nothing Clever, Just Feelings, where the electro-punk continues to thrill and oppress in equal measure. It’s not for no reason that they’re a highlight within the UK scene—they’re genuinely in a field of one as far as their style and ingenuity within it goes, while consistently making it look easy. Very different to anything else, but enormously worthwhile all the same.
But really, September can be most defined by its lineup of heavy releases that saw to retain their creators’ sky-high bar, or in the case of Polaris with Fatalism, raise it further than ever before. Reckoning with the passing of guitarist Ryan Siew mere months before, it’s natural that a band known for grappling with loss and grief would be given even more weight, on the back of a melodic metalcore template reaching some tremendous distances. In a completely different field entirely, Code Orange continue to define nu-metal for the current generation on The Above, simultaneously streamlining their approach while also jutting off with expectedly reckless abandon. Plenty has been made about the Billy Corgan feature that emerges from a whole other universe of ‘90s worship, but Code Orange’s reputation as creative mavericks continues to run deep and pertinently, among a grinding, industrialised collection of throwdowns that are as fascinating as idol worship comes.
As for Baroness, Stone finds them right on their predetermined path, right down to John Baizley’s ever-phenomenal cover art to prelude the kaleidoscopic stoner-metal within. Even better, some of the more outwardly horrid production choices from Gold & Grey have been handily rectified (even if Last Word might feel a little touch-and-go), meaning that there’s really distractions from just how spellbinding Baroness can be. Sure, you might know what to expect at this point, but even so, more of the same can still do serious numbers for a band like this. Finally, there’s Empire State Bastard, a band which teams up Oceansize’s Mike Vennart, Slayer’s Dave Lombardo and an often-unrecognisable Simon Neil of Biffy Clyro for a mathcore / grindcore project with very few compunctions about utter aural decimation. Rivers Of Heresy might be initially buoyed by the star power in their ranks, but it’s the viciousness of the output that sends them home, with Neil as the ultimate MVP thanks to the bedraggled screams that haven’t made their way out of his mouth in this capacity for about two decades. The thrills are consistent and the electricity running through their frayed wires is palpable, to where Empire State Bastard can easily establish themselves among heavy music’s most incendiary emergers this year.
October
Anyone else fear the worst when they saw the HARDY collaboration on Beartooth’s new album? Yeah, couldn’t really blame you, given the radio-pilled ‘epiphanies’ that so many metalcore bands have been having, and how teaming up with country’s premier butt-rocker would presumably expedite some of the worst of those impulses. Fortunately The Surface isn’t quite that, although it’s definitely a weaker version of Beartooth between their slimmed-down, slogan-like take on emotion eruption becoming more and more worn down, and some cleaner production that only serves to dull the edges more. At its best, there’s the title track that’s the most textbook example of Beartooth here; at worst, you get the sinking feeling that the project’s initial M.O. of unfiltered expression is getting muddied by goals of mainstreamification. At least In This Moment’s radio-metal is a bit more form-fitting, despite GODMODE seldom breaking from the norm. Perhaps there’s a few more overt industrial leaps on SACRFICE and FATE BRINGER, sitting amid the usual unwieldy palette that’s nothing close to as heavy as it believes itself to be, and Maria Brink’s vocals that still can’t resist throwing out how profoundly limited they are in the fields of creepiness or seductiveness. Par for the course for In This Moment, then, even with all the banking on the Ice Nine Kills guest spot.
But unfortunately, the journey into fairly mediocre alt-metal doesn’t even stop there, as WARGASM have Venom as their attempt to prove themselves as more than nepo-baby rich kids pretending to be punks. To be charitable, it’s not an actively offensive listen (despite any and all notions of edge they seek to thrust into every available space), but it’s also rote and uninteresting and genuinely confusing why this has the kind of updraft it does (outside of, y’know, the obviou$ rea$on$). Poppy could’ve been in a similar boat on Zig given her track record, but honestly, this feels like the kind of stuff she always should’ve been making. The early shtick of porcelain cutesiness affixed to functionally bland / blandly functional metal is but a distant memory now, replaced by much tighter concoctions of synth-rock and alt-pop and sterile, enclosed darkwave atmosphere. Poppy herself also feels like more of a presence on her own work than a plugged-in vocaloid to keep the bit going, and it couldn’t be more obvious how much impact that has. Her best album, maybe? Could well be.
In a similar vein, ††† (Crosses) once again enthrall on Goodnight, God Bless, I Love U, Delete., venturing into their closed, nocturnal world of everything from glitch and trip-hop to trap and industrial, headed by Chino Moreno in suitably haunting and haunted stead. In other words (and like always with this group), it’s all the parts of Deftones that make them special, maybe missing some of the metal to kick it into gear across a bit of a lengthy listen, but by no means a bad one. Still, if you want your darkness a bit less…erm, dark, Twin Temple have God Is Dead, in which they continue to rinse their single idea of Satanic doo-wop and ‘50s-inspired pop, albeit in a package that’s kind enough to show some restraint at only eight songs. Still, once you’ve got to grips with the pitch (which is an extremely easy task, FYI), there’s only so far that novelty and period accuracy can go before it’s quickly ground away.
Finally, there are the few strands of miscellany that October delivered that sought to hit a notably high bar for themselves. Okay, probably not Skinny Lister, even if Shanty Punk is as reliable as it gets for an album whose entire thesis is spelled out in its title. More to the point, END’s The Sin Of Human Frailty is the kind of uncompromising steamroller of an album that can doesn’t need vast innovation to stand out. Rather, it’s the type of hardcore and metalcore plied to speak for itself—a tour de force of skin-flaying, flesh-eating brutality that works in so many self-evident ways. It’s just as true of The Callous Daoboys, albeit in a way that’s a lot larger in scope, and only seems to be growing. God Smiles Upon The Callous Daoboys could be called a victory lap after a stellar 2022, but more accurately, it’s three tracks of mathcore’s premier name right now continuing to reshape and rebuild themselves. It’s more melodic without sacrificing the killer edge; more streamlined while finding the time and space to cram in more new ideas that most bands will on an entire album. Sure, the statement of intent isn’t as massive as its full-length predecessor, but if one thing is made abundantly clear about The Callous Daoboys here, it’s that resting on their laurels simply isn’t an option.
November
A bit of a quiet one in November, for the most part. Big releases came much more sparsely, and though it wasn’t totally without quality, tremendous standouts can be few and far between. Naturally, Spiritbox feel like the ones to break that cycle with their The Fear Of Fear EP, coming more as an extension of their existing fare than something radically new, but when the consensus has been as overwhelmingly positive as it has, that’s not a knock. If anything, Spiritbox are only showing even more grace as the progress, in the most melodic tech-metal imaginable riding on the zephyr of Courtney LaPlante’s utterly flawless vocal prowess. Less of a suckerpunch than earlier on but no less potent in its blow, Spiritbox continue to pilot modern metal into the stratosphere and beyond.
The Scratch’s Mind Yourself stood as likely one of November’s more distinctive drops—folk via a metal ethos that might taper off into weird, uneven places, but offers a plainly fascinating listening experience all the same. The Thin Lizzy guitar wail that crops up from time to time is worth the price of admission alone. Pendulum might not bear a similar degree of genre-bending clout anymore, but their Anima EP proves its still there’s still life in a metal / drum ‘n’ bass fusion, particularly when you’ve got Bullet For My Valentine and Scarlxrd in your corner to edge the boundaries out a bit further still. It’s the vibrant Colourfast that stands out most of all though, fizzing and bending across a deep sonic palette—including the horns!—to really reaffirm Pendulum’s creative mojo.
This month’s top pop-punk helping came courtesy of Youth Fountain with Together In Lonesome, an album which might not stand toe-to-toe with the 2000s emo and punk it indelibly shades itself with, but also feels very confident in how it does so. It’s the fact that Tyler Zanon is so quick and eager to assimilate into that scene that really impresses on that front, alongside the genuineness in the impression that’s got character, not gonna lie. Not so for Broadside, unfortunately, who, on Hotel Bleu, squat in the hyper-sleek, neon-hued pop-punk of the early 2020s that continues to depreciate in value time after time. It’s not even that it’s outright bad—put it next to Bearings’ album from this year and their inability to also move on, and Broadside’s hook work will trump theirs—but it’s the colour palette and plastic finish that’s always made this approach hard to stick with on a longer term. For Broadside, it’s just as true as with anyone else. Might as well apply it to The Struts too, albeit in glam-rock without much in the way of texture to match their rockstar ambitions. Pretty Vicious toes the line between faithful, current-day adaptation of the sound, and a slicked-back, gentrified halfway-house committing more to the aesthetic than what’s beneath.
We’d also be remiss not to mention Dolly Parton’s Rockstar, a karaoke session masquerading as a ‘rock’ album thanks to a big, stacked list of guests and the decades-long star power of its creator. Beyond that, it’s two-and-a-half hours of cruise ship fodder that’s utterly, entirely pointless to give more than half a thought to beyond some fleeting initial curiosity, and probably among Dolly’s most flagrant wheel-spinning now that she’s 49 albums deep. There’s an unironic Kid Rock collaboration; that should be enough of a repellent for any sane human being.
December
So we’ll keep this one pretty brief, seeing that it’s been a fairly uneventful December this year (outside of the releases we’ve already talked about in full, naturally). That’s not to say there’s not highlights to be found though. The Seafloor Cinema’s self-titled album is what you’d get if Dance Gavin Dance were exponentially better in every aspect, from melody-writing to focused song construction, to an impetus for post-hardcore that can still be erratic and detailled without frazzling a few dozen brain synapses in the process. Meanwhile, Going Off continue their reign as one of UK hardcore’s newest superstars on their Kill List EP, a 12-minute beatdown-fest that’s as to-the-point in its blows thrown as you can get. Without a second to spare on anything too unimportant, this is exactly what you want from your brutality.
If you want a ‘big’ release to cap things off though, it kind of has to go to Atreyu by virtue of having a significant profile, no matter how much time they’ve spent systematically squandering it. After a year of terrible EPs, The Beautiful Dark Of Life is the inevitable terrible conclusion, bringing them together with a handful of new songs that continue to water down a metalcore legacy that was seldom high-stakes, but was at least liked. Here, the downslide to becoming as utterly forgettable and faceless and generic as possible has not let up even slightly, on what could considerably be called Atreyu’s worst album if it didn’t feel like the natural extension of a few pretty rough years. What’s left ends up feeling like such a wasted opportunity, where any bold, new frontier to be explored is instead flooded in genre banality that everyone should’ve abandoned years ago, let alone a band who are supposed to know better. What a way to finish off 2023, eh?
Words by Luke Nuttall
