Year Currently Covered: 2023

Hey folks! Welcome to the greatly coveted Guib Awards! Instead of creating a list every year, I've decided to make a single one that will change yearly to feature my favorite albums of the past one. So this first iteration will feature albums for 2023!

I will not be covering every genre nor a specific one and I won't limit myself to a single album per genre. It will literally be my absolute favorites of the year currently covered or albums that I listened to a lot more than I'd like to admit, so this won't be as big as my usual lists. Also, I will only cover a maximum of 50 albums, all featured on MS and they will be placed in alphabetical order (of the band's name).

Hope some of you will agree with me, but as always... It doesn't really matter, does it?

Cheers to good music and have fun!

Note: Albums with a "√" are albums I voted for in one of the categories of the last MS awards.

Last Updated: April 15th, 2024

1.Altarage - Worst Case Scenario

2.Baroness - Stone

3.Bloodletter - A Different Kind Of Hell

4.Capra - Errors

5.CauseNeffect - Validation Through Suffering

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Not totally clean, and I had to cut some categories to stay in the 1000 lines limit.

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2.Avatar - Dance Devil Dance

3.Avenged Sevenfold - Life Is But A Dream...

4.Code Orange - The Above

5.Death Dealer Union - Initiation

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1.Shylmagoghnar - Convergence

2.Sacred Outcry - Towers Of Gold

3.Fires In The Distance - Air Not Meant For Us

4.Cattle Decapitation - Terrasite

5.Moonlight Sorcery - Horned Lord Of The Thorned Castle

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1.Night Verses - Every Sound Has A Color In The Valley Of Night: Part 1

2.Fange - Privation

3.Conjureth - The Parasitic Chambers

4.Torture Rack - Primeval Onslaught

5.Spinebreaker - Cavern Of Inoculated Cognition

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Albums i've listened to multiple times that were released this year. Ranking will be made at the end of the year.

1.Baroness - Stone

2.Steven Wilson - The Harmony Codex

3.Riverside - ID.Entity

4.Cattle Decapitation - Terrasite

5.Enslaved - Heimdal

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I reckon 735 albums in the first 6 months of this year is a 6-month record I will never match, but let's see how many I get through in Q3 and Q4

1.Bees Made Honey In The Vein Tree - Aion

2.Meridian Sun - The Curse

3.The Gorge - Mechanical Fiction

4.Earthside - Let The Truth Speak

5.Wayfarer - American Gothic

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1.Sulphur Aeon - Seven Crowns And Seven Seals

2.Cattle Decapitation - Terrasite

3.Horrendous - Ontological Mysterium

4.Fires In The Distance - Air Not Meant For Us

5.Wayfarer - American Gothic

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1.Riverside - ID.Entity

2.Steven Wilson - The Harmony Codex

3.Baroness - Stone

4.Haken - Fauna

5.Cattle Decapitation - Terrasite

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1.Hanging Garden - The Garden

2.Katatonia - Sky Void Of Stars

3.Obituary - Dying Of Everything

4.Runemagick - Beyond The Cenotaph Of Mankind

5.Dødheimsgard - Black Medium Current

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These are my favourite albums from the year 2023, ranked in order from my most favourite at number 1 to my least favourite.

1.TesseracT - War Of Being

2.Sleep Token - Take Me Back To Eden

3.Periphery - Periphery V: Djent Is Not A Genre

4.Haken - Fauna

5.Extreme - Six

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1.Ne Obliviscaris - Exul

2.Alkaloid - Numen

3.Cattle Decapitation - Terrasite

4.Sulphur Aeon - Seven Crowns And Seven Seals

5.Horrendous - Ontological Mysterium

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Here is my top 50 for 2023! Only LPs, no re-recording (looking at you brilliant Paradise Lost, Kauan and Cavalera), that I rated 8 and above.

My biggest year yet in number of album I've given an ear to. Strangely, a tough one for the top 10. A lot a great records. I could have easily add 20 more, but first year I can't really see clear winners (imo of course). So I've mostly gone for comfort with Saturnus, Panopticon and Enslaved, knowing full well I've heard better from them in the past. Still, they genuinely caught my preference. The top spot goes to the biggest "surprise" for me, more than anything else. I did not expect to be that taken by the eerie and glacial atmosphere of Wolvennest DPTL, but I could not stop going back to it again and again.

Album count: 987 (!)
Average rating: 6.37

1.Wolvennest - The Dark Path To The Light

2.Saturnus - The Storm Within

3.Panopticon - The Rime Of Memory

4.Cattle Decapitation - Terrasite

5.Enslaved - Heimdal

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1.Orbit Culture - Descent

2.Tryglav - The Ritual

3.Code Orange - The Above

4.Cloak - Black Flame Eternal

5.Thy Catafalque - Alföld

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1.Riverside - ID.Entity

2.Katatonia - Sky Void Of Stars

3.Obituary - Dying Of Everything

4.Uriah Heep - Chaos & Colour

5.In Flames - Foregone

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1.Amorphis - Queen Of Time - Live At Tavastia 2021

2.Riverside - ID.Entity

3.Ne Obliviscaris - Exul

4.Finsterforst - Jenseits

5.Paradise Lost - Icon 30

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