Mining Metal: Top 10 Underground Metal Albums of 2022
The post Mining Metal: Top 10 Underground Metal Albums of 2022 appeared first on Consequence.
I sit here writing this intro essay crouched at a too-small desk, my fiance’s mother’s childhood desk, huddled beneath a blanket in my fiance’s childhood room placing the finishing touches on our list just before Christmas Eve. My body is currently scratched and busted up; I have a bad hematoma on my left arm from elbow to armpit, with deep scratches on that forearm while my left hip and right elbow feel jacked to hell. That is because last night, after bursting out of my apartment door to tell a neighbor to quiet down after they paced screaming at the top of their lungs for over two hours, I found myself locked out of my apartment with my 12-year old dog locked inside. So, I attempted what any grown man left on their own in such a situation would: I attempted to scale my apartment building to the third-floor balcony I call my own to get in through the balcony door. And, after cinching in a tight anchor lock with my armpit and walking my way up the bricks, I very nearly had it, had an arm just a foot or so from gripping the top of the rail of my own balcony some 20-ish feet off the ground. But, as it turns out, metal in the rain is quite slippery and, after about half a dozen or more near-falls, I called it and climbed my way back down my building, beat the shit and incredibly humiliated.
This is all to say that we never really know what the year will throw our way. 2022 was a lot of things to me personally; I lost a number of friends, some to the fatal sting of the opioid scourge that seems to matter so little to those in power, some because they got tired of the kind of person I am. It’s also the year I got properly engaged to the love of my life after us talking idly about it for a couple years now as well as the year I took over as the general manager at my day job. It’s the year Joe Schafer, who founded this column and brought me aboard more as a way for us to finally work together, left Mining Metal, but it’s also the year Colin Dempsey, a writer I’ve wanted to work with, came on board. Art comes and art goes but, and even great artists know this, what matters more is the lives they twine themselves up with, where and how they meet us on the road to comment on and elucidate the shapes and colors we encounter.
A benefit of our publication schedule is we get to see all the other lists as they come out, get to remind ourselves of albums we loved that we forgot about, and, just like everyone else, jeer at selections we disagree with. But both Colin and I write about a lot of stuff outside of metal and this, plus our stated strictures of only highlighting underground material and stuff you can give your money to in good conscience, means we have the opportunity to not do the thing that bores us to tears, which is making a best-of list that’s designed to impress some abstract intelligentsia or Rate Your Music/Metal Archives type. Objectivity in these types of endeavors is a great exercise and I suggest anyone who hasn’t tried to make definitive lists to give it a go. But for those of us who’ve done it a hell of a lot, the opposite becomes attractive, a radical honesty of what things met us on the road and gave themselves over to our lives the most whether these are the obvious picks or not.
So, in that spirit, we give you Mining Metal’s best underground metal albums of 2022. Are these the best? Who cares! These are our best. Keep it weird, forever. Time for me to take some more ibuprofen.
— Langdon Hickman
Ashenspire – Hostile Architecture
Consider this space shared with Forlesen’s debut. Beyond being a huge prog guy, I’m additionally big into klezmer and the entire avant-rock and avant-prog world that spins out of that space. Lots of people elsewhere have discussed this record’s ties to black metal and some even its ties to post-metal, but to my ears, I hear a devoutly metallic spin on something like Alamaailman Vasarat or Hoyry-Kone, two groups I absolutely adore. This is catnip to me, marrying the kind of wild poetry and soundscapes of groups like Soldat Hans or Anatomy of Habit to wild avant-prog. That so many other folk seem to adore it is a sign that my evil spirit is winning. Buy it on Bandcamp. –Langdon Hickman
Bekor Qilish – Throes of Death from the Dreamed Nihilism
This album honest to fucking god makes me feel like I’m going insane. There have been, like every year, plenty of albums with dope riffs. Some say we are too positive or negative toward records, but I disagree; I think we are constantly inundated by an embarrassment of riches. What this means is that albums that impact us most aren’t just a matter of good riffs but what it all sums to. For Bekor Qilish, it sums to an overwhelming sensation in me that I am actually on the verge of a psychotic episode, like my skull is about to flip inside out. I’ve had psychotic episodes before; this is not innuendo or euphemism. For progressive/avant extreme metal, this is high praise. I keep coming back to marvel at the crystal, keep telling friends about this record, keep idly sketching the cover. It stuck with me. Buy it on Bandcamp. –Langdon Hickman
Blut Aus Nord – Disharmonium – Undreamable Abysses
As humorous as it may be to refer to Blut Aus Nord’s Disharmonium – Undreamable Abysses as digestible, it’s nonetheless true. On it, the French group melds their recent psychedelic excursions with their penchant for challenging the brain’s rational circuitry. What Blut Aus Nord excel at, regardless of which incarnation they’re in, is crafting music without sacrificing their lofty intents or their legibility. Though Disharmonium is difficult, it’s also effortless to fall into, its repetitive structures and swirling guitars wave an invitation. In a phrase, Blut Aus Nord don’t get lost in their sauce. They’re masters at creating uncomfortable, stuffy, and prolonged pieces that strike the reward centers of the subconscious. Oh, and Disharmonium is the best psychedelic album of the year, if you need a tangible reason to give it a spin. Buy it on Bandcamp. –Colin Dempsey
Dream Unending – Song of Salvation
We literally just wrote about this one, so this will be more gestural than that more specific write-up. The buzz before this dropped was insane; everyone I spoke to who’d heard the promo all agreed this was going to be on year-end lists and, lo and behold, it absolutely nailed that. I’ve seen this on lists by people ranging from epic heavy metal enthusiasts, black metal kvlt types, prog lovers, and even more super mainstream lists. It’s a sign that Dream Unending absolutely have it, that this duo who sharpened their craft in a bajillion other great bands just pull out the absolute best material from one another in this setting. I want them to tap this well and suck it completely dry. I haven’t been this excited on a group’s hot streak since that immaculate trinity of Tribulation records which, from me, is extremely high praise. Buy it on Bandcamp. –Langdon Hickman
Falls of Rauros – Key to a Vanishing Future
Key to a Vanishing Future is the closest Falls of Rauros could come to cheese without self-parodying. They tread the thin line that segregates uplifting black/folk metal from hyperbolic jank in head-smackingly obvious fashion; they retain their grit. They have the heart of a teenage black metal fanatic who hungers for a scorched earth’s soundtrack. With it, they contrast their triumphant highs with beefy, full-bodied lows. Take the stunning opening of “Daggers in Floodlight.” Falls of Rauros desecrate it just after its crescendo via pounding the spotlight on the rhythm section. They’ve maintained this balance throughout their career but push it to its limit on Key to a Vanishing Future, a fact they reveal by how far they can stray from blast beats and riffs and towards solos in higher registers. It’s also arguably 2022’s prettiest metal album, combining American folk passages with European pomp. As such, it’s their most traditionally epic and adventurous album. Buy it on Bandcamp. –Colin Dempsey
Mamaleek – Diner Coffee
There’s no way to attract newcomers to Diner Coffee without forcing them to listen to it. It came from The Flenser label, so you know it’s weird, but that’s not enough to sell it. It’s also not enough to describe it as ambient-meets-lounge jazz-meets-noise-meets-black metal because that doesn’t capture its humor. In truth, Mamaleek’s latest record is unabashedly artsy. It’s filled with no-sequiturs and jokes without punchlines. It’s a hard-to-love grandpa who’s had one too many drinks and drools at the mouth while recounting his one-off experiences at cocktail bars he snuck into. There’s no overriding logic to it besides its existence. What there is in full, because of its art-experiment origins, is charm. It’s tough to find in sections like the strangled vocals and jazz that mark “Wharf Rats in the Moonlight,” but the charm comes from the contrast between velvety smooth textures and Mamaleek’s perversion. Just know that the charm never loses its dead-behind-the-eyes grin. Buy it on Bandcamp. –Colin Dempsey
Rolo Tomassi – Where Myth Becomes Memory
This one shocked me. I wasn’t a big Rolo Tomassi fan before this year, but one of my podcast co-hosts, Gareth Watkins, featured a track from this one which caused me to take the time to sit with it. It’s been a year of trials for me in a lot of different ways and, through those trials, this record has been sitting with me, through crying sessions and screaming sessions, peaceful breathing and ragged juddering. I could have plucked something worth more clout, like Negative Plane or Weathered Crest, both of whom put out phenomenal records this year, but that would be less true to me than this one. This even wound up being my second highest played record of the year on Spotify after only that new Weeknd record, meaning in that holy solace of my car, where I am in solitude with nothing but music, this was a fast companion from its release all the way through till now. I can’t pretend that’s not meaningful. Am I going soft as I age? Maybe I am. Buy it on Bandcamp. –Langdon Hickman
Sigh – Shiki
Most people would reflect on their lives and pontificate their future as death impends with patience, poise, and carefully-selected platitudes. Most people, however, are not Mirai Kawashima, and most couldn’t be him. Mirai’s inspiration for his and Dr. Mikannibal’s 12th album as Sigh was his fear of death which presents itself as toothy, symphonic, and Oriental. Shiki is a particular medication on morbidity in that it’s fucking crazy, even for Mirai’s standards. Bombastic solos and traditional Japanese flutes soar across its runtime, with the lucidity of it all contrasting Mirai’s head-on confrontation with death. Though he sings entirely in Japanese, his vocals are assured to the point that he accepts whatever death may bring. Few acts age as gracefully as Sigh, and none age with the drive to push themselves to their freaky extremities as Mirai does. Buy it on Bandcamp. –Colin Dempsey
Scarcity – Aveilut
A dear friend of mine recently said of this album that Scarcity makes good on what Liturgy promises. Even the group themselves consider themselves black metal in some regard, but that largely feels inaccurate here. This is certainly a metallic casting, but it strikes me more as experimental music, contemporary classical work, with it’s ties not just to the obvious names like Glenn Branca but also to the more challenging and riveting wings of Philip Glass at his most impenetrable or the wild and often Pulitzer-winning experiments in modern opera we’ve been seeing since the digital revolution of that genre space. Every interview this duo does confirms all my idle suspicions about the great stew of thought that goes into a piece like this and every single bit of it is catnip for someone like me. But none of that extra stuff would matter if it wasn’t one of the most riveting pieces of music I’ve heard all year. Thankfully, it is. Buy it on Bandcamp. –Langdon Hickman
The Spirit – Of Clarity and Galactic Structures
The Spirit open Of Clarity and Galactic Structures with a declaration of black metal’s manifesto, “Withdraw from this world and the tragedy of life.” Yet rather than following the traditional insular black metal insular path, they branch outwards towards the cosmos, inspecting themselves in the context of the vast universe. Their sound follows suit. It uses a clean palette rather than cosmic wanderlust, grounding the record with a sense of gravity. Thus, Of Clarity and Galactic Structures looks at man’s insignificance in the grander scheme of the universe, maintaining a humanistic tone via simple-to-follow passages. This also smacks some meat onto the album’s bones, so there’s weight behind the times The Spirit get the point across that we’re ultimately nothing in the face of the greater cosmos. Buy it on Bandcamp. –Colin Dempsey
Mining Metal: Top 10 Underground Metal Albums of 2022
Langdon Hickman and Colin Dempsey
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