Melody's Top 50 Metal Albums of 2023

2023 has been the first year that I've really gotten to listen to virtually all of the new releases that I've been interested in, and it's led to me having just... an abominable list of albums that I enjoyed. So I figured, y'know, why the hell not send my top 50 out to be relentlessly ridiculed for the many perceived snubs and embarrassing choices?

Note: this list is only roughly ordered after the top 13. You could bump a lot of these albums up or down a slot or two and it'd still be pretty accurate.

1. Exulansis - Overtures of Uprising
2. Carnosus - Visions of Infinihility
3. Massen - Gentle Brutality
4. Fires in the Distance - Air Not Meant for Us
5. Krigsgrav - Fires in the Fall
6. Stortregn - Finitude
7. King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard - PetroDragonic Apocalypse; or, Dawn of Eternal Night: An Annihilation of Planet Earth and the Beginning of Merciless Damnation
8. Temple Balls - Avalanche
9. Vanishing Kids - Miracle of Death
10. Hyde - Ardwena
11. Tomb Mold - The Enduring Spirit
12. Sermon - Of Golden Verse
13. Megaton Sword - Might & Power
14. Nothingness - Supraliminal
15. Wayfarer - American Gothic
    
16. Anareta - Fear Not
17. Victory Over the Sun - Dance You Monster to My Soft Song!
18. Tanith - Voyage
19. KRUELTY - Untopia
20. Hot Graves - Plaguewielder
21. Thy Catafalque - Alföld
22. Hellripper - Warlocks Grim & Withered Hags
23. Ok Goodnight - The Fox & the Bird
    
24. Horrendous - Ontological Mysterium
25. Nightmarer - Deformity Adrift
26. Pupil Slicer - Blossom
27. Burner - It All Returns to Nothing
28. Transgressive - Extreme Transgression
29. Moonlight Sorcery - Horned Lord of the Thorned Castle
30. Lamp of Murmuur - Saturnian Bloodstorm
31. The Night Eternal - Fatale
32. Autopsy - Ashes, Organs, Blood, and Crypts
33. Grandma's Ashes - This Too Shall Pass
34. Underdark - Managed Decline
35. Kvelgeyst - Blut, Milch, und Thränen
    
36. Oak - Disintegrate
    
37. Colony Drop - Brace for Impact
38. Warcrab - The Eternal Silence
39. Somnuri - Desiderium
40. Xoth - Exogalactic
41. Quasarborn - Novo Oružje Protiv Bola
42. Helfró - Tálgröf
43. Knife - Heaven Into Dust
44. Mouthbreather - Self-Tape
45. Nithing - Agonal Hymns
    
46. Blindness - Everything Has a Life Has an End
47. Body Void - Atrocity Machine
48. Woe - Legacies of Frailty
49. NUCLEAR DUDES - Boss Blades
50. Svalbard - The Weight of the Mask
    

- Melody Jett Werner